GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! Help me pick the best FPS weapons (POLL)

Hey all, I'm still prototyping my DOOM clone and right now I'm trying to decide what weapons to use.

I either want to have 4 guns and a melee, OR 7 guns and a melee.

It really all comes down to controls. I would like to do more with less and have the weapons cover a wide range of uses, so that players aren't left juggling their inventories.

Four seemed a good number so that you can assign one to each direction on the D-pad, and then have a dedicated button that whips out the melee instantly (or possibly press a direction twice).

Seven works too since I can have a weapon equip at the press of a button then pick the second weapon by pressing it twice (or maybe use angles on the D-pad).

ANYWAY, the four that I am doing for sure are:
1) Railgun with a continuous fire alt fire
2) Rocket Launcher with a Grenade Launcher alt fire
3) Plasma Rifle with a BFG alt (The BFG is nerfed by high ammo cost and a long cooldown)
4) Flack Cannon with a concussion grenade alt fire

For the melee I'm debating:
a) Something like Halo's plasma sword
b) Something like Doom's chainsaw, with an alt fire that sticks it in the enemy
c) A mix between the two. Primary does continuous damage and alt does a grappling attack

If I DO go for 8 weapons I will definitely have a Flame Thrower like the Pyro's from TF2. I pondered if I should use the flame thrower or the flack cannon for WAY too long. I love them both so much I don't want to give up either.

That leaves TWO other weapons to pick if I do go for 8 weapons.

Here's what I have as front runners:
a) Halo's Needler, but with a shotgun style burst. I know there are a lot of people who LOVED the needler and a lot of people who HATED it. I love the idea of pumping an enemy with high damage, but having a delay before it goes through.

b) Explosive Crossbow that sticks into an enemy for a little damage, but then explodes after a delay for a large amount of damage. Not sure what to do with the alt fire. Suggestions are welcome.

c) Blood's Flare Gun that does the same as the crossbow, but leaves the enemy engulfed in flames. Again, not sure what to do with the alt fire. Suggestions are welcome. Maybe combine the flare and the crossbow?

d) Assault Rifle with a zoom for alt that turns it to a burst mode. I realized that of all the weapons listed so far only the Railgun has a hitscan attack. I'm not a huge fan of hitscan weapons, but I also think people would miss it.

e) Mini gun that revs up with alt fire. Again, nice to get another hitscan weapon, although the wind up defeats that, huh?

f) Magnum. Slow, beefy shots with medium range. No idea what to do with the alt.

g) Orbital laser. I just always wanted to see one in a game since watching Akira as a kid. It was pretty good in GoW. I just want to do my own take on it. Only trouble is that orbital lasers only work outside.

h) Snarks from HL1 (Or some other short term AI companion). I sometimes feel like I'm the only one that missed watching soldiers freak out as these over grown fleas bored into their guts. Honestly, they were always one of my favorite weapons of all time and I would pick them in a hearthbeat, but I just hear so much overwhelming disdain for them.

i) Microwave Beam. I have not seen this one before, but the idea is that you shoot a continuous beam at an enemy and they gain a charge. If the charge is more than their health they explode. The bigger the charge, the bigger the explosion. Alt fire would be a spread shot that does less damage.

j) Razor Jack from UT. (or some other weapon that bounces around like crazy). The razor jack always sounded so cool, but had zero practicality.


THAT SAID, here are some weapons that I will not consider since:
a) Gravity Gun. It would not fit in a Doom clone. I want weapons that keep you moving. Not stopping to look for ammo, or standing around watching the outcome of the shot.

b) Any traps. Again, traps don't keep you moving forward. This includes prox mines, the demo's gun from TF2, and trip wires.

c) Weapons that are objectively weaker or stronger. I really want to emphasis using weapons to expand playstyle, not jut be a continuation of power. I will start the player with two weak weapons (a fist and a plasma pistol) and both will be replaced and not be in the game once their counterparts are found. And any strong attacks will be balanced out with cool downs and ammo consumption.



What do you all think?

Which of the weapons mentioned that I'm considering do you like the most?

Did I miss any of your favorite weapons?

 

Dude. Those lamey weapons? Lol! (Joke)

You're missing a cool FPS weapon......
Samus' chozo powersuit arm beam cannon, from Metroid Prime.

Even a light saber might be a good one too.

 

Well, I meant for this to come from an angle of mechanics.

Samus' Arm Cannon does lots of things and is really multiple weapons in one.

And light sabers are cool and all, but not really a mechanic.

Unless I did a throw and force snap back, which is cool I suppose.

 

I really enjoyed using Doom 2016's plasma rifle. The speed of the projectiles was just right for making you feel like a super badass when you cut someone down doing the counter-strike strafe dance, and the secondary plasma blast that temporarily made an impassable pile of ooze on the floor was both fun to use and useful for controlling enemy movement.

The needler was complete junk. Did anybody ever use that weapon? I don't think so.

Shotgun in Turok 2 was probably one of my all time favorites. I wish more games had badass shotguns. Why are shotguns always relegated to point-blank range only? Such nonsense. Counter-Strike has decent shotguns. Rainbow Six Siege had decent shotguns, but they got nerfed. And I don't get it. So shotguns were dominating in close range combat. Shouldn't they? They get nerfed, now nobody uses them at all. There was more balance before!

 

I think shotguns are point blank only because that's how they are IRL.

A birdshot from a 12 gauge is no longer lethal to even birds at 40 yards. The pellets have no spin to them to keep them on course and they are very prone to wind resistance. Of course games greatly exaggerate this.

Buckshot is another story. Buckshot is a fat slug of lead and the weight keeps it lethal for much longer, but it has no spread.

 

Oh, I forgot to mention. That's my first prototype gun and I'm almost done with it. It's very close to that, but with a nerfed BFG fire.

 

Why nerf it?

 

I've killed squirrels at 50 meters with birdshot. And squirrels are damn tough. There's all kinds of birdshot. But why would you be fighting humans or monsters with birdshot?

I think you've confused buckshot with slugs. Slugs typically are a single projectile, and they'll kill anything. You can kill moose with slugs, and I bet you could kill dinosaurs too, once scientist hurry up and clone them so that Trump Jr can go hunt them.

The furthest shot I'd take with a slug is 100m, which is pretty far. That's not guessing, I shoot shotguns all the time. It's a bit of a hobby. Buckshot is like birdshot, but fewer pellets that are bigger. Again, there is a million varieties of buckshot. 9 pellet, 40 pellet, buckshot with two half ounce balls mixed in... all kinds of stuff.

Shotguns are like, the coolest weapons ever, and are effective at all kinds of ranges. FPS developers must embrace the shotgun. It's probably the most perfect weapon for a video game. It's big, its loud, it's hilariously imprecise and crude. A cannon that launches lots of small balls, or a few big balls, or spiky balls, or a handful of nails... whatever. You can make it do whatever you want. It's perfect.

 

So that you can use it more frequently.

 

I voted for Quake rocket launcher and Doom chainsaw, but they are really only awesome in the context not just of their respective games but the time they came out. They were both things that players just hadn't really seen before at that time.

The rocket launcher in Quake wasn't much better than the one in the original Doom, but Quake's "true" 3D perspective and new for its time physics interactions made it revolutionary. The rocket jump was born from the combination of being able to aim down at the floor and the physics interactions from the explosion, and quite by accident. It was awesome not for being any good of a weapon, but because what you could do with it was so new.

Doom's chainsaw in most ways was just another melee weapon, but from a time when you'd normally see punches, knife stabs, or a sword swing. Doom went and dialed up the gore to 10 with the chainsaw's loud distinctive sound, blood flying, and the monster's scream as you're cutting it up. Early in the game it is only found through a hidden door, which made it all the more fun when you learned how to get it (no internet at the time to just google it, you had to know someone who knew or figure it out). It also opened up a new play style, where rather than strafing and firing you'd charge at the enemies and just try to hack them all down before they could put enough damage into you to kill you.

Neither of those are revolutionary today, having been copied endlessly in the decades since, and they won't evoke the same response even in a clone game that they did when they first came out. Instead being yet another rocket launcher and chainsaw.

 

With a 12 gauge you don't use bird shot unless you're shooting birds. Buck shot or slugs would be what you'd use in a shooter game. Shot don't need spin to stay on course because the point is you fire a lot of them in a spread pattern, and you're not trying to get each projectile to hit an exact spot.

Slugs on the other hand would be what you'd expect to be used if trying to blow a hole in a human sized target at 40+ yards with relatively good accuracy. They spin as if fired from a rifle due to rifling being cut into the projectile itself instead of into the barrel.

 

I'm not really looking to be revolutionary. Just looking to make fun mechanics.

 

The best game weapons are ones that make you move in a unique way. Like the Doom plasma rifle is perfect for strafe dancing. It's actually harder to use if you stand still. The assault rifle, however, is just kind of bleh. You don't have to change the way you operate at all with it. Just hold down the trigger and do whatever. Rocket launchers of course have their "rocket launcher jump" tactic, which is always fun.

Charging the Halo plasma pistol with that homing shot that depleted shields and health so that you could swap to the human pistol for a quick, one headshot finisher was fantastic. Weapons taht work in tandem with others is a great idea.

What I like about shotguns in games is that they aid you in quick reflex shooting, which always amkes you feel like a badass. I also like the aggressive tactics of bouncing from cover to cover to get in close and get that power shot to the face.

 

Counter Strike is probably the gold standard for fun weapons. Just with subtle changes to recoil dynamics, the way you use each weapon can be vastly different. The fine line between instant headshot kills and worthless spray and pray is very easy to cross. It's a simple game but requires immense skill to get good at. Probably why it's the one shooter that will never die.

 

Yeah, CS is fun, but I just don't see CS weapons working well with Doom/Quake weapons.

Maybe I could add a kick to the assault weapon and balance from there.

I do agree that the assault weapon is boring, but I also want to add it for people want a raycast gun.

 

yeah, CS is a pretty diff style altogether. I think making the assault rifle more powerful per shot, and perhaps making it semi-auto or burst fire, so that it becomes a powerful "headshot" type of weapon, would make it more unique than just a run-n-gun, keep the crosshair on the enemy for as long as possible until they die weapon.

 

Nah, I'm deliberately avoiding regional hit boxes.

My goal is have ~500 enemies on screen at any given time.

Right now I have 108 doing 60 fps, but can still squeeze more out.

But I don't see multiple colliders that aren't rotation locked doing it.

 

Holy cow. Well you definitely need a cannon with a physics based ball that tumbles around, smashing through enemies like a bowling ball. I mean, you just gotta.

 

Wow! As I heard that, it reminded me of an old fps called Serious Sam.
Tons of enemies would be on screen, and they would come at you, and you
would have to destroy them.

 

The needler was good in a couple of specific situations. It was one of the better weapons for taking down hunters. It was pretty decent for taking out sheilds on a brute, the time delay meant all of the damage happened in an instant which prevented regeneration. Its heat seeking capability meant it was useful against large groups of enemies when you didn't have the time to aim. Plus it had the advantage of having more ammo lying around then most other guns.

Ultimately there was no way to beat the game on legendary without extensive use of the needler. If you didn't use it, you were either playing on easy/normal or multiplayer. And while halo multiplayer was fun, you missed out on most of the subtleties of the gun system that way.

Duke Nukem 3D shrink ray. Nothing is quite as satisfying as squashing your enemies. In fact Duke Nukem 3D is a good study in unusual weapons. Not everything in a FPS has to follow the same pattern of 'point at the bad guy and fire'. Trip wires, remote detonations, snipers, ballistic arcs, buffs, heat seeking; all of these add more variety to your game play.

Why not make C the alternate of B? You can do the same with many ideas you present.

Strongly recommend against this approach. Power curves and progression are a core part of the power fantasy appeal. And FPS games are pure power fantasy. Part of the design for a power fantasy is allowing players moments when they are absolute gods. If all of your weapons fall on the same damage vs time curve, you are loosing a powerful design option.

I typically see the 'having all guns available at once' as a weakness in game design, rather then a strength. Forcing players to choose which gun to carry is a powerful design tool. Do they pick up the powerful gun now, knowing the ammo won't last long? Or do they hang onto the run of the mill weapon knowing its ammo is easy to find?

Its possible to create some of the same tension by limiting available ammo instead of weapons. But the idea of carrying around a gun for half the game that has no ammo seems a bit off.

 

Yeah, I think I'm going to keep it to 4 weapons just to eliminate juggling. I just really wanted a flame thrower

And you make a good point about power fantasy. I already planned on scaling up weapons to give a power curve. Start with a plasma pistol that shoots twice a second, then get the rifle that does 10 shots per second, then get the alt fire that acts like a BFG with a big cooldown and eats up ammo.

Once all the weapons are acquired I may add situational power trips like Quad damage or maybe vehicles.

 

I think you missed my point. Limit the player to holding 2-4 weapons. But that doesn't mean you can't have 20+ weapons in the game. Then you can have a flame thrower.

And you can use it to throw specific hints to your players. "Here is a flame thrower, that means behind the next door there are enemies that are vulnerable to flame, hint hint wink nudge". Then later on in the game you can subvert that expectation by handing them a flame thrower when it most definitely is not time to use one.

 

I beat all Halos on legendary and never used the needler! You only need the pistol, nothing else.

 

Ah, I get what you're saying.

I'm still not crazy about having to swap weapons out mid level. I want it to be GO! GO! GO!

But maybe I can have it an option between levels. That could work.

Like, instead of doing stage after stage, I could make it more modern and have stages unlock after you beat the previous, but be able to replay stages at different difficulties.

Then the ammo could spawned could just correspond to the weapon in any given slot, which would be another layer to figuring out how to beat a stage on harder difficulties and speed runners.

 

There is not enough pistol ammo in the game to do this. Not unless you are simply ignoring the vast majority of the enemies.

 

Perfect Dark was the greatest multiplayer shooter ever.

Just re-make.

 

Except they never solved the issue of screen watchers.

 

That was an issue? I loved that feature. Campers be gone!

 

I think you mean feature. Screen watching was an integral part of late 90s / early 00s console FPS experience.

(Also there is a local game studio that converted screen watching into the entire game. I hear they are doing quite well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencheat)

 

You dirty screen watchers! Have you no shame?!?

 

Just don't put in that gun that let you see through and shoot through walls. I hated that.

 

I can't relate. I didn't care for any of the N64 FPS games, except for DOOM 64. But that's because it was DOOM with new graphics and stages.

 

Brute Force was an unsung hero. But maybe that was xbox?

 

XBox.

The single player game was okay. But it suffered heavily from the AI doing dumb things when you weren't watching it. So most of the time it made sense to just go in guns blazing with one character at a time and keep the others out of the action. The multiplayer game was absolutely terrible.

I wanted the game to be good. The concept was cool. But it just didn't work.

Doom really was a previous generation FPS to any of the N64 games. Each generation added new features and tweaks to the game. The progression was something like this:

Wolfienstien -> Doom -> Quake -> 007 Golden Eye -> Perfect Dark -> Halo -> I got married and had kids and lost track.

 

Perfect Dark is worth checking out. The multiplayer was awesome for the huge array fo settings it had. It was almost limitless in its replayability.

The weapons also had some cool mechanics.
Laptop gun -> throw it away to set it up as a turret (one clip of ammo)
Tranquilliser -> made opponent's screen blurry
Slappers -> (punch) could hurt or disarm (steal weapon) opponent , also made the opponent blurry.
Farsight -> scope and shoot through walls but left you completely vulnerable while doing it, aiming was also slow....
Seekers -> remote controlled rockets, again left you vulnerable and you often flew a rocket around the whole level only to end up finding yourself first, I can't tell you how hard it is to recognise yourself threw the eyes of a rocket. Ouch.
Mines -> of all kinds
Dual Wield -> pick up any single handed weapon twice!
Combat Boost -> a drug that slowed down time... kinda annoying in multiplayer especially if there are bots using it too!

On top of those there's also every possible combination of gun stats in all possible forms of guns.

Then they have a million game modes, AI with a large array of difficulties as well as personality layered on top that you could mix and match in any way. Peace Sim was my favourite, he just ran around and disarmed people with his slappers.

Finally it had a million pre defined challenges for 1 -> 4 players to complete cooperatively.

Seriously awesome game.

 

I agree shotguns are often too weak and spread too much.
Our spread is +-1.5 degrees max per pellet which is less than many games. We shoot 5 pellets each doing 25 damage so if all hit to the chest you are dead in one shot upto 30 meters. Further if any of the 5 pellets also hit the head.

The low spread and powerful damage probably make our shotgun more deadly than many other games, though since its VR you need to reload manually which balances it.

 

I like weapons that are secret power weapons that give you an AHA moment when you figure out how it's supposed to work. Someone mentioned the Halo noob combo. It's not completely obvious that you'r supposed to overcharge plasma shot an elite then headshot it with the pistol. You have to learn by having your shields drained by a jackal and thinking "does that work on an elite?" Then you do it and suddenly the Legendary difficulty becomes much more tame.

In Halo 1, there are also many close quarters maps, so most players head straight to the shotgun, but I tend to stick with my assault rifle. A shotgun is a one-shot kill under the best circumstance, but most of the time it takes two shots. The AR in Halo 1 has a really fast and powerful double melee combo, which will beat the shotgun most of the time. I'm pretty sure the double melee is a glitch, but most people know it so it's made one of the weaker weapons one of the best.

I hate 99% of melee weapons in games. Their lunge is either too exaggerated or not enough. The DOOM chainsaw did a nice job of pulling you towards whatever you were cutting, but only if you made contact. I hate the sword lunge in Halo.

The BFG is the mac daddy of all guns, but I'm not sure how necessary it is today. It's probably useful for campaigns, but in multiplayer it'd probably be overpowered as all hell. The reason that it worked so well in DOOM is because the aiming was kind of funky and you moved so fast. In DOOM you could chose to disengage another player and be halfway across the map in a second, where in modern FPS, you pretty much just have to fight.

I also like when some weapons can't be used all of the time, especially powerful weapons. Like how you couldn't use the lightning gun in Quake while you were underwater or it'd electrocute you.

I also have two weapons that aren't from FPS that I think would be pretty cool. The Spread gun from Contra. That thing was epic. I'd love to have a first person weapon like that. The other is Mario's fireballs. I guess Quake's grenade launcher was sort of like that, but I think the idea of having your projectile bounce along the ground is cool.


For me the biggest thing to get right is the aim assist. Most indie games tend to omit this feature and it's soooooorely needed. Different weapons should have different amount of aim assist. A machine gun or pistol should be heavily drawn towards the closest enemy, a shotgun melee weapon should have some magnetism, but not too much, and a sniper rifle should have minimal (if any).

 

10/10. Would buy, if I didn't have to also get buy a VR headset.

 

You and the rest of the world it seems

 

My BFG alt fire is not really going to be like the DOOM BFG. It's going to essentially do the same thing (shoot out and hit everyone it passes by, do extra damage to whoever it hits, then make a large explosion that does damage).

BUT I'm tweaking the damage, ranges, and speed so that rather than being meant to go shoot then run for cover (like in DOOM) the dance will more go like shoot through a crowd, then continue shooting primary fire and strafing while the orb moves slowly through them.

I had considered a few other tweaks to emphasis this different tactic like:
-Having primary shots that pass through the aura power up and doing extra damage. But this reminds me of the shockwave cannon from Unreal Tournament, which was basically universally hated.
-Ignore enemies as a collision that sets off the explosion so that it continues to do aura damage until it hits a surface.
-Have it start off small and moving quickly, then grow and slow down, so that it will get a good distance away from you before slowing.

Ha! I had the same thought before, but ricochet weapons are very random, and I don't think that fits the whole DOOM clone angle.

Of course, Snarks are VERY similar to fireballs.

TBH, I haven't even considered aim assist. Thank you for mentioning it.

 

I dont think mkb needs aim assist. It's a handicap for analog controllers, because aiming with a joystick is pretty terrible.

 

That's such tired and emphatically untrue statement.

Aim assist is great when you want to emphasize movement and tactics, over pure reflex.

And games that over emphasize reflex over positioning are often over glorified whack-a-mole clones.

And here's some games with aim assist:
-Doom
-Duke Nukem
-Blood
-Hexen
-Heretic
-Shadow Warrior

 

I think it depends on the type of shooter you are going for. Want a difficult challenge, sure, omit aim assist. Want a powertrip, you need it. Personally, I'd experiment. I played plenty of kbm games and I still felt a huge difference between those with and without autoaim. Without it, the games just feel clunky and unpolished, especially as resolutions kept going up, heads got subjectively smaller and smaller. Lots of games let you turn it off to let you see the difference.

Try it in Quake.
* sv_aim=0 - Aim assist always hits
* sv_aim=1 - Default behavior
* sv_aim=2 - Aim assist off completely

 

You know, all my weapons are projectile and none of them are raycast, so this may just be a moot point.

 

Depends on how slowly they move. Aim-assist doesn't put the crosshairs directly over the enemy, it'll still allow for leading with a projectile weapon. Most people probably assume that that awesome Halo 1 pistol is a hitscan weapon, but it's not. If you're firing all the way across a large map like Hang em High, you have to lead your shots slightly. Aim-assist does not interfere with this.

 

Aim assist with MKB is, for me -- a 20 year competitive FPS player -- a major no-no. It's annoying as hell. I don't know any PC FPS players who'd disagree. I don't know any PC FPS's that have aim assist (by default turned on).

Console games always have it. I don't know one that doesn't.

It's just a matter of leveraging the tools player is using. I don't see how it can be argued to be untrue.

 

I didn't know that about the pistol.

My projectiles go up to 50 units a second so they're noticeable, but makes dodging them impossible around 20-30 meters.

I'm not sure (heh) if aim assist works at that low of speeds though.

Right now I have large colliders for movement AND projectile collision so aim assist may not be necessary.

 

Uh, I play FPS s on my PC all the time? Quake, Unreal, Halo, DOOM (both old and new), Battlefield, BlackOps, GTA, Fallout, Portal, Half Life, Titanfall, Wolfenstein all have aim assist turned on by default. Sorry, but your statement is just categorically wrong, those are some of the most popular games on PC from both the past and modern generations.

I see lots of complaining about aim-assist on forums, but it's mostly just children who try to look big by belittling aim-assist because they think they're too good for that. I think it shows a poor player without aim assist multiplayer would be waaaaay too easy. The aim assist helps keep the crosshairs on the enemy so you actually have to be good to not get shot. In Halo for example, it takes three shots with a pistol to the head to make a kill. I very rarely get three-shotted because I'm good. If Halo didn't have aim-assist I'd probably go zero deaths every single game, which would not be fun at all.

 

Depends on what you're shooting I'd bet. Halo has some slow projectile weapons. If you have the Master Chief Collection, you can turn the aim-assist on or off with a skull. Try The Library with a Plasma Rifle too see how it affects slow moving projectiles. Shooting the Flood infection forms is actually quite difficult without aim-assist.

 

Of those games you mentioned that began as PC games that I have played, pretty sure aim assist was not a default option.

In any case, make sure player can turn off aim assist. It's not tough-guy-ism. Some of us -- alot of us -- play the games for a competitive challenge. We want the full challenge : the challenge in reflexive skill, in maintaing fine motor control during faced paced decision making, and the challenge in tactical positioning. It all works together, its not 1 on 1 off.

Aim assist does not negate reflexive skill and turn the game into a purely tactics based thing. It just levels the playing field for people with less reflexive skill, but annoys those with it. Both types of players can enjoy the game with a simple toggle.