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[NewEraBlood]

Lol...

I stand corrected. How on Earth I could forget about the needler is beyond me.

I'll gladly mail all of my Halo books, games, and comics to someone in need of them now. Also my apology letter to Jason Jones is in the mail.

 

[Poimandres]

Pretty sure STALKER has enemies that legitimately loot each others corpses, which is pretty cool. They have infinite ammo though... unless you switch that flag off

 

[Khronico]

In Mount and Blade Warband, enemies with ranged weapons can and will run out of ammo and have to switch to melee.

In STALKER, enemies need to reload but I don't think I've ever seen them run out of ammo. There's probably a mod that makes it happen though. STALKER AI will also flank you when they can and provide covering fire for their allies.

Pretty sure FEAR enemies reloaded. The AI in that game is extremely intelligent as well.

In the Men of War series (super indepth rts), enemies have the same limitations as you do. Enemy soldiers will run out of ammo and have to find more, enemy vehicles can run out of gas, enemy tanks can run out of rounds to fire, etc.

Honestly, it DOES bug me when games have enemies that never need to do the things players need to do. It just sucks. Plain and simple.

 

[entremet]

Infinite ammo is to prevent stall out tactics in SP.

 

[Shrike_Priest]

It's literally just two additional values for each character. Ammo in Clip:XX; Total Ammo:XX. There's only a few changes you'd have to make to AI to keep it working, too: A) Enemies only fire when they have a clear shot at the player, not when he's behind cover and B) Groups of enemies take turns firing and provide cover fire while allies change positions. C) Enemies are more liberal with ammo at the beginning of hostilities, and more conservative as the fight drags on. That's all you gotta do.

Actually, that would drastically change the balance of the game. I doubt they did it because of RAM-constraints.

In Grounded they talk about how they balanced rate of fire, accuracy, damage etc. pretty extensively (and on an encounter by encounter basis). If they had a set number of bullets, we'd have a situation where either there wouldn't be bullets flying while you're in cover (but lots hitting you as soon as you're out), or seriously gimping their aim when they've got you in line-of-sight. Either that or we get the situation where all you have to do is wait until their ammo is out and then have a melee fest. I'm sure there is some way around it, but I think there are many pitfalls there.

I also really wanted that type of mechanic, but I think it probably impacts the combat system too much to do it easily. I do still want enemies to loot through areas and pick up/carry/drop loot if you don't take em out before they get to it.

 

[Yusaku]

Hey enemies have terrible aim too. What's the deal with that?!

 

[Windam]

Hey enemies have terrible aim too. What's the deal with that?!

Wut

 

[Dr Amazon MD]

Wut

He may have gotten movies and video games mixed up. Or maybe easy mode.

Spoiler

and there is nothing wrong with playing on easy

 

[Windam]

He may have gotten movies and video games mixed up. Or maybe easy mode.

Spoiler

and there is nothing wrong with playing on easy

Spoiler

If you're 4, sure.

Or you just wanna clear the game as fast as possible or do a speedrun.

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Hey enemies have terrible aim too. What's the deal with that?!

Huh? Not in video games. Movies or even cartoon/anime(GI JOE!!!!!!!) yeah, but rarely video games.

 

[Gun Animal]

Actually, that would drastically change the balance of the game. I doubt they did it because of RAM-constraints.

In Grounded they talk about how they balanced rate of fire, accuracy, damage etc. pretty extensively (and on an encounter by encounter basis). If they had a set number of bullets, we'd have a situation where either there wouldn't be bullets flying while you're in cover (but lots hitting you as soon as you're out), or seriously gimping their aim when they've got you in line-of-sight. Either that or we get the situation where all you have to do is wait until their ammo is out and then have a melee fest. I'm sure there is some way around it, but I think there are many pitfalls there.

I also really wanted that type of mechanic, but I think it probably impacts the combat system too much to do it easily. I do still want enemies to loot through areas and pick up/carry/drop loot if you don't take em out before they get to it.

You're right, you'd have to balance the whole game and all the level designs and enemy placements around it... which would be great. For starters, flanking and other guerrilla warfare tactics would become a much bigger part of gameplay. On enemy firing-accuracy, I would say make enemy accuracy directly proportionate to how fast the player is moving, especially if they're moving to the left or right relative to that enemy rather than towards or away from. Enemies would also have to react to your own cover fire, ie when you change positions and fire while moving they flinch and hide behind cover; cover fire (firing your gun to keep enemies from firing at you while you advance or retreat, as opposed to firing AT enemies to kill them) should play a much bigger part of gameplay, and gameplay should usually be focused around an objective that isn't inherently violent (move from point a to b, for example) so that avoiding, scaring off, disarming or injuring enemies is just as good as killing them.

All of these changes are in service of both more realistic gameplay and less murder-centric gameplay. Think about any action movie you've ever watched: how often is the the hero's goal to kill people? Usually, movie protagonists show their enemies mercy or intentionally avoid combat just as often as they engage in it. Why then do so many games boil down to 'kill everyone in the room, move onto the next room, kill everyone in that room etc'?

 

[BouncyFrag]

It would be pretty derpy to stay in cover until they ran out of ammo, but it would be really funny to see once. Imagine an Uncharted moment with all the baddies flipping out and Drake doing his best Billy Madison impersonation.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hShxpYG_ql0

 

[RedSwirl]

Man, adjusting back and forth between ArmA and other shooters is a slightly mind-blowing experience. I know ArmA is supposed to be a realistic simulator but that's part of the point. At some point you have to concede realism to fun.

In ArmA, if you fire towards an enemy but don't hit him, he'll usually immediately hit the deck. If he has a shot at finding cover, he'll run for it. If he doesn't he'll just shoot at you while prone. If you shoot at him while he's in cover, he won't leave cover (I think enemies in a lot of mainstream games do this too). There are times in these games where enemies will actually spend 20 minutes running all the way around a large hill or forest just to flank your ass. What I find to be the most jarring thing about ArmA (and a lot of other combat sims) is that if you stick your head out of the same cover more than twice, the AI will know it's coming and almost always nail you with a headshot.

Some of this stuff I wish would happen in more mainstream shooters, but you also have to keep up the quick pace and close combat to make those games fun. The most off-putting thing about simulators with realistic enemies is the fact that most of the time you're shooting at enemies and being shot at from 300 yards away.

What bugs me is that more games don't go for Magazine management.

Use 13 of 24 bullets in a magazine, reload, that magazine is still in your inventory unless you take 20 seconds to consolidate your inventory.

This should be a thing for harder difficulty levels in more "realistic" games.

This is another thing ArmA does. If you reload halfway into a clip, that half-empty clip stays in your inventory. I don't think you can reorganize bullets though. NeoTokyo discards the magazine when you manually reload, regardless of how many bullets are left in it.

 

[Black Mantis]

Pretty sure they reload in Watch Dogs.

 

[Tenrius]

Enemies do reload in most shooters. I'm not sure about TLoU, but here's a list of action games I've played through in the past year that do feature enemies reloading:

Killzone 2
Sniper Elite V2
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Bioshock
Grand Theft Auto V
Resident Evil 4

etc.

Just an example I pulled from my backloggery profile.