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

News & General Discussion
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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?

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Dude. Those lamey weapons? Lol! (Joke) :stuck_out_tongue:

You’re missing a cool FPS weapon…
Samus’ chozo powersuit arm beam cannon, from Metroid Prime. :smile:

Even a light saber might be a good one too.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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Why nerf it?

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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.

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So that you can use it more frequently.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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