- dan91bauer
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- Elder Legendary Member
Beserker, do yourself a favor and don't read my posts. I'm sure there is an ignore function on these forums where you can block all content that comes from my typing fingers.
But if you want to argue what's good design and what's not, you should know that Halo 3 is ultimately failed game design.
I've been doing some research on randomness in games, there's all kinds of degrees of randomness that I have been able to learn.
Examples: Minesweeper on the PC...that game, despite one's skill of eliminating the mines, can and might eventually come down to a 50.50 guess of which square to flag and which one to clear. Regardless of how good one is...that final move will be 50.50 resulting in a win or a loss. If you lose, did you lose because you suck? Nope. If you win, do you win because you were skilled? Nope. You could argue...well you got that far to where you had to make the final move and it resulted in a 50.50 chance...so your odds were pretty good in that favor.
Another example would be Poker, game about odds.
Slot Machines, games about pure luck and odds, scratch off tickets, hell...playing your local state lottery, total luck...if you win...does that mean you're skilled at choosing lottery balls?
Then there's the other example of randomness in most of todays shooters...that didn't really exist in the past ones, but has come up more frequently in todays next-gen shooters. It's the cone of spread on these weapons.
Now a game like Shadowrun which i praise a lot does actually have a great deal of randomness, i.e., the pistol. The pistol has a small crosshair and within that crosshair is the limit at which a pistol shot will go...it may go straight, it may goto the very end of the circle...but within it's non-bloom it will fire somewhere inside that circle. So...in order to increase one's odds...it would be wise to have that entire circle fill up the player model's face right? That's balance but still using a degree of randomness.
In Halo 3 however, that's not that case, especially with the BR, it's suppose to be a medium to long range weapon. But referring to Luke's weekly update on the BR, the 1 shot has a 0-.15 degree of randomness, the 3rd shot has a 0-.38 degree of randomness, and the 2nd shot is somewhere inbetween those two numerical values, lets say as an example .25
Now when we take two players, one being the best in the world, and the other being someone who just bought the game, lets put them into a straight up BR duel. Is it fair for the noob to kill the pro when we know for a fact that the pro can aim better, out-strafe better, just simply out play better the noob? Is it fair for the noob to win? Is that balanced? Is that good game design?
And here's the ticker dude, this happens in other games too, COD, UT, Gears of War, etc.... A lot of these new shooters are implementing degrees of randomness not with just the crosshairs of how a gun reacts in the game, but with specific items, settings in-game, mechanics, etc...
Quake 3 Arena is probably one of the BEST shooters out there that doesn't really have any randomness at all, at least none that will allow a random scrub be able to defeat a pro.
But my friend just told me on the phone, there is an element of PLAYER CONTROLLER randomness...which is basically called LUCK. In a Quake 3 match, lets say that a scrub just so happened to have the railgun, rockets, and shotgun. At some moment the scrub had his rockets out, but his drink fell over onto his keyboard, and by some sheer luck, it hit a key which then switched his weapon to the railgun, then by some reflex from the drink spilling, he hit his mouse button to fire a weapon on-screen, and the railgun he now had in his hand fired...and at that same exact moment, he turned the corner and the pro was right there and he killed him......did the game do that or did the player do that? The player did that. What's the odds of that repeating itself? VERRRRRRRY RARE.
Now...backtrack to Halo 3's BR. How many times do you think the BR's spread can account for a player's poor aim and give him the upperhand in a battle? Is that player-controlled randomness or is it being controlled by the game? It's being controlled by the game.
That kind of randomness shouldn't be programmed into shooters at all, not under any circumstance, or any reason.
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