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[zixiao]

Taxonomy may not be the most accurate term for what I mean but humor me for a bit:

There are a lot of shooters these days that feature a huge number of weapons; MGS4 for instance features well over 50 guns. But when you examine MGS4's arsenal a little more closely, you find that a lot of guns are pretty much the same. Pistols, rifles, rocket launchers and shotguns pretty much behave the same way as other weapons within the same category save for statistics like range and damage. FPS games like Rainbow six are even more guilty of this.

From a game play perspective, I personally don't attempt to optimize my weapon selection for every variance in the range and toughness of my target, and I don't imagine most of you do either... especially in shooters where the playfield is changing very rapidly in a non-uniform way. So what is the point of having relatively large taxa of weapons besides aesthetic allure? Does the sensory feedback from weapons actually effect your perception of them? Please rely with your thoughs.

Zi-Xiao

[Valter]

For one, it allows you to give more powerful weapons as the game progresses. In the early levels, you would have access to a low power shotgun, but in later levels you would get a much more powerful shotgun. It's a way of allowing you to take on more enemies at one point in time, and it lets the developer make the battles later in the game much more climactic and frenzied.

Also, there's the "collection" feature. Many games have tons of guns just to give the user a chance to find and collect them all. It reaches out to the OCD in all of us

Thirdly: games like Rainbow Six are usually trying to be as realistic as possible. In a game like that, you wouldn't have both sides of a battle using the same stock-issue rifles. Gun variety is used to give one side of the battle a certain set of weapons, and the other side a different set. Cop and Swat-issued guns are not the same guns you would see drug dealers carrying.

[Inane]

Argh, Gun pissed me off because they gave you a buncha revolvers and rifles and the like, and the ability to switch to any of the ones you got before, but there was absolutely no reason to do so. Weapon B always had higher firerate, power, etc. than Weapon A.
I think Outlaws actually had good variety with its shotguns, though.
Shotgun A didn't generally eat up ammo as quick as the others and was well balanced,
Shotgun B had the most concentrated shot (and thus did the most damage on average) and had two barrels so you could fire twice without reloading (Alt fire shot both at once).
Shotgun C was the same as B only the spread of the shot was insane. In a crowded room you can kill 4-5 enemies in one shot, but if you're aiming for a specific guy you waste a lot of ammo because you can't bloody hit him.

[William Broom]

Really, I think the most important factor is that they can put '50 different guns!' on the back of the box. But it can work out pretty well all the same, for the reasons the others pointed out.

[Gainsworthy]

Just to chip in, Timesplitters has a pretty varied, interesting weapon set. Especially the third one. A few pistols and sniper rifles could be a little samey, but on the whole, whacking great bunch of guns which did different things.

[zixiao]

A clarification of my original point about weapon taxonomies:
I think its one thing to structure a weapons systems where a small number of arms progressively improve in a certain category (for example the shotgun and double-barrel shotgun in Doom), but quite another to structure a weapons system where a large number of arms vary in statistics, and are indeed are meant to be balanced (for example the m500 and spas12 shotguns in Rainbow Six). The latter structure of weapons is the kind my original question was intended to challenge.

I appreciate GeneralValter's point about realism but I would argue that the extent of realism that a large variety of weapons may provide is limited to aesthetic realism; simply seeing that a guy shooting back at you has a different weapon adds value to your experience. So we're still back at my original question.

chutup, I must with some contempt acknowledge that your probably right.

Zi-Xiao

[Lith]

I think there are a LOT of people out there who just appreciate guns for what they are, as opposed to what they could be. This is probably why we'll always have more Rainbow Six then we do Turok 64.

Turok 64 = swoon

[William Broom]

Yeah, I guess a lot of people who play FPS games are the same kind of people who own and use real guns, buy Guns & Ammo magazine, and so on. Seeing some obscure gun in Rainbow Six might make them feel kind of how I do when I see Jill or Saki pop up in Super Smash Bros. Sure, they basically do the same thing as most other assist trophies, but it's the thrill of recognition, the feeling that you've gotten something out of the game that other players didn't.

Even though I couldn't care less about different makes of real-world guns, I think I understand the appeal.

[undertech]

Look at mod teams for FPSes. They represent this very well. Not just guns, we're talking real military hardware!

A good example:
www.aixtended.com

[Lazer]

as a rule of thumb I love the AK-47, and while I recognize it is completely inferior in Vegas 2 in mostly all situations (up close is the exception), I still HAVE to use it instead of any other rifle in the game.

I mean if it's that kind've game I just EXPECT it to have a buttload of guns.

if I'm playing team fortress 2 I want one gun that does something and another gun that does something else and no more or less. it really pends on the genre. MGS4 does not have room to sport so many weapons, but it does regardless. A lot of games do this and it confuses me, unlike vegas or lets say counter strike where it makes at least some sense.

beats me.

[FARTRON]

I think the impact of realism is deeper than simply aesthetic. Dismissing the diversity those games apply to the weapons is ignoring the distinction between approaching simulation or arcade in the design.

Why bother making an AK-47 and an M4A1? You might as well say that WWII games are merely aesthetically different from other shooters. Why bother recreating a mauser and an m1 rifle? Why bother making a panzer and a sherman tank?

The choices of the designers to mimic reality in their designs have cascading effects on the gameplay. The sound of an AK-47 firing or an M4 firing might give a hint to a player as to which team is shooting. The subtle differences in firing rate, accuracy or penetration might lend a player to choose one rifle over another to better suit their particular playing style.

I think it really just comes down to the goals of the game's design, and subjective preferences of the designers and players.

[BoboDaHobo]

Yeah, I think a lot of people do just have favorite weapons (I know mine is definitely an MP5 and a USP sidearm). And, for more realistic games, having a wide variety of weapons is desirable. In Operation Flashpoint, for example, an AK47 feels a lot different than an M16. Of course most games don't bother portraying their weapons very realistically, and too many weapons in a game can definitely screw up the flow. I think most FPS's benefit from a smaller, more tuned armory, such as Half Life 2. All the weapons in HL2 has a specific purpose, and while they certainly overlap some, they all feel very individual.

*deposits 2 cents*

[muku]

You might as well say that WWII games are merely aesthetically different from other shooters.

I haven't played a new shooter in years (well, I did play the HL2 demo, that rocked, have to get the Orange Box one of these days), but isn't that basically true? So I might be way off here because I haven't played that sort of stuff for so long, but I thought the distinction was really only superficial. IIRC there are mods which make "futuristic" shooters into WWII ones and vice versa, so the differences can't be that fundamental, can they?

[Tobasco Panda]

Thus far, Resident Evil 4 has still been my favorite as far as presentation of the standard shooter weapons (pistol, shotgun, machinegun, rocket launcher, grenades). The way that they made it so that the player really weighed the options as far as WHICH gun to buy and take actually mattered. It wasn't that one gun was clearly better than all the others, at least in the case of the pistols, but each had trade offs (damage, capacity, reload time, etc). The ability to upgrade these stats also made effected the players choice as one might wait longer to replace a gun that they had spend money upgrading (upgraded guns sold for a good fraction of the cost of the gun and the upgrades so as not to punish the player).

Also, having limited inventory space can help to make the decision more interesting as well as helping to get around the issue of having to move through too many weapons to get to the one you want.

[Lucaz]

My favorites when it comes to weapons are Doom II and Quake II. Good weapons, most being useful for the whole game. The railgun from Q2 was pure fun.

More realistic games (meaning, no magic nor sci-fi weapons, no unlimited space to carry a bazooka, a rifle, a minigun and a shotgun) are better to have good array of similar weapons. When all you have SMGs and rifles, it's nice to have different models, with different characteristics.

Also, there is no big difference between WWII games and others, the diference is between war or SWAT style games, like Battlefield and Counter Strike, and the more action based games, like Doom, Quake and Half-Life. That shows in the hits before dying, effectivity of headshots, etc.

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

A) weapon upgrades "This gun is like the other one but faster and stronger!" = designer can now put 2 more enemies in each ambush and, voila, you have the tools to kill them.
B) functionality. played Perfect Dark? every weapon has an alternate function, some of them are inventive. Example: a lock on "target painter" mode for an SMG. A threat (explosives, mines and turrets) for a rifle. A proximity self-destruct thrown weapon for a rifle. Laptop gun: takes AGES to get ready when you switch to it (this is significant!!). You won't be using it much because you'll want to conserve ammunition for its secondary mode -- deploying as a wall-hugging sentry gun. The AR zooms in whenever you start aiming with it, secondary fire lets you be permanently zoomed in, allowing you to move around (you can't move around much when aiming). Play perfect dark 64 if you haven't, it's an excellent shooter.
C) It's just damn awesome to have 50 guns instead of 5. Sure, 10 guns might be 'worse' then 5, but having a crapload more is just.. sort of cool.
D) New weapon types. Laser guns? Homing pulses that bounce bullets of wall? Grenade launchers? Homing missiles? UT Shock Combo? There's always room for innovation

On the other hand.. did anyone play Metal Gear Online (for ps2)? I thought the weapon selection was small, and brilliant (I'll post, I gotta go @ work -_-)