Lack of modding has killed the hardcore PC fps

[Warbie]

//old man rant

PC fps in the 90s were great. Wolfenstein and Doom started things, but it wasn't until Quake, and particularly the modding scene, that things really got exciting. My fave mod at the time was Team Fortress (first game to have headshots btw), which later led to TFC on the HL engine and then to TF2 on Source. I lost silly amounts of time to them all. Quake 2 turned up and, again, shed loads of mods with it. Jailbreak was my bag. That led on to RTCW (still the best) and ET. Years of my life accounted for here. Interestingly, the competitive side of ET, and with it the online community, was entirely driven by user made maps as the official ones weren't up to the task. And, of course, Half-Life. Counter Strike, DoD, the aforementioned TFC, and loads more. Infact, there are too many good mods to mention here - Unreal had a great scene - and everyone has their faves. This is what PC fps used to be. Either driven or created by modders, and I honestly feel sorry for those who missed it. And now that side of things has all but gone - and with it the hardcore fps.

This isn't an 'I'm too pro for Battlefield/CoD' thread. Accessible fps are fine. It's more of a look at what's missing today, which is pc fps with some meat to them. fps with learning curves. It's what fps fans want and as it was fps fans turning to mod making and mapping that drove the scene in the 90s, it's what we got. In abundance. We were spoilt for choice. These days we don't get dev tools and user made content. We get console ports of games designed to appeal to as many people as possible. To say the PC fps scene is a pale shadow of what it used to be is a massive understatement. Quite frankly, it's ****e now. And the reason for this thread and my frustration is I want an fps to get stuck into. Something that isn't ancient or a remake of an ancient game. And there's nothing. I literally can't find anything to play

 

[Warbie]

there are many good, polished and balanced shooters and they provide a huge variety of gameplay elements so there's not much room for modders anymore.

I have to disagree - there is very little that pushes things today and, for the most part, fps play like dumbed down versions of what we had before. I enjoy BF, but movement and aim wise it's massively less demanding than any no. of fps from the mid 90s. Part of the issue is current fps are designed primarily for consoles, with the limitations pads introduce, and then ported to pc. Hence slow movement speed, little verticality in maps and uber quick time to kill as you just can't twitch aim or track well with a pad (I'm a big console fps fan btw. there's no bias here - just the way it is). Now compare this to when fps were being made primarily for the pc, with maps and modifications designed by pc fps fans. From a pure mechanics point of view these games/mods were more interesting to play with skill ceilings that eclipse what we have today. There's a reason players tire of current fps once they've unlocked everything - it's because the core games have little depth to them. Now compare this to something like Quake - you can play for a decade and still be trying to improve your skills.

This isn't a request for every fps to be a super speed, twitch aim, arena pro-fest. But there was a time when games like Counter Strike, RTCW/ET, TFC *insert great pc fps from yesteryear* etc were being released on the PC and rather than building from there, we've taken a big jump backwards. As others have said, dlc and the resulting lack of dev tools is a big part of this. Which brings us to another problem - we're limited to what devs produce, which often isn't great. Especially when it comes to map design. So we're getting fps designed for consoles with maps that aren't that great and no way to improve things

 

[Warbie]

As for the OP, I think lack of modding only really impacts on the 'hardcore' scene when it comes to competition mods and the like.

There's more to it than just balance tweaks. Remember, Counter Strike, along with the massive influence it had on the genre, is a game in itself and wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for mods. The same with Team Fortress and various others. We'll never know what fps might have come to be, and the direction they may have pushed things, had developers been releasing development tools in more recent times. There's no doubt in my mind some of them would have been pretty ****ing fantastic and more focussed on what fps fans really want, rather than the appeal to the masses offerings we get today.

 

[Warbie]

CS:GO, Planetside 2, Insurgency all have hardcore elements and they take years to master(for those that can master them, most can't). More recently you have Overwatch which is also easy to start but very hard to master. All of these games are very different, all of them can be enjoyed by hardcore gamers. These games all get their 'formula' just right, modders can't add much to that.

The spaminess in footage I watched of Overwatch put me off initially, but it looks fun still. Like TF2 is a fun, spam filled version of TFC. Whether it ticks the hardcore box, I can't say. I did mention in the original post that I'm not interested in ancient games or remakes of ancient games. CS:GO, for example, falls right into that category. That horse has been flogged and flogged and flogged. Insurgency is hardly new either (and not my bag at all - super quick time to kill etc). Planetside is all good. Gameplay doesn't blow me away, but there has to be a hit given it's impressive scope. Without meaning to sound harsh - at best these exceptions that prove the rule.

Doom multiplayer is a failure simply because it isn't very good. A weird half way house between arena shooter and I don't know what.

Modders thrive in niches that have not been saturated by developers. Know a lot of open world, rpg mixed with rts games? No, that's why you have a million Mount n Blade mods. Know a lot of grand strategy games? No, which is why Crusaders Kings and Europa Universalis have lots of mods.

Agreed. Where we probably disagree is in what is saturated at the moment. Very little ticks the hardcore box these days. Overwatch and Lawbreakers may do. In a spammy kind of way. I'm into fast, ballistic shooters. Started with Action Quake, moved to Counter Strike, found it a bit too slow and found RTCW and ET. SOF2 as well and umpteen mods for Unreal. We really were spoilt for choice. Now there's next to no choice. Like wise with more arena influenced team shooters - Jailbreak to TF and everything in between. These aren't catered for either. Well, we have TF2. A spammy version. And what is it with spam these days? - every fps is full to the brim! CoD bases it's entire design around it. My guess is randomness coupled with a short time to kill lowers the skill ceiling such that anyone can jump on a server and get some kills. So all in the name of accessibility and $.

 

[Warbie]

I think this is quite accurate personally. Where have the modders gone?

A good bunch of people never got into fps modding, and never will get into, because the option isn't there. My brother, until recently, was lead character artist for Creative Assembly. He did Alien Isolation, Total War etc. It was mapping for Quake mods that got him the industry. That's quite specific when you think about it - making maps for Quake modifications. Through that the interest led into tinkering with gameplay elements and then onto making games. That doesn't happen these days. Today we don't get fps mods full stop, let alone the option to make maps for them. And on the topic of people jumping straight into making games - that's often not a good thing. With user made content it's natural selection in game form. The good stuff takes off and the crap never sees the light of day. I'm not going to name any names, but I've been involved in various alphas and betas of fps and without exception the majority of the developers don't know their arse from their elbow when it comes to shooters. You wouldn't believe how little experience some of these guys have. Many of them have only ever played CoD! It's a constant exercise in face palming as they make art pass after art pass on truly awful maps and gloss over game breakingly poor design and gameplay choices. But hey, the micro transaction side of things works well ...

I could take the word hardcore out of this thread title and it wouldn't be far wrong.

 

[Warbie]

Except there's still quite a few games that have thriving modding scenes. Maybe not 'hardcore fps's', but those hardly constitute the entirety of gaming. :/

Agreed, this is just fps I'm talking about in this thread. It was the norm when a big game came out for the mod tools to be released. Imagine had that happened with Titan Fall, for example. Maybe we'd be up to our neck in maps now. Maybe there'd have been an entirely new, great mech modification. Maybe the game wouldn't be dead. Who knows.

I agree with what you say re. the tools available today. And that's great. You can make a game from scratch. What isn't great is that's a colossal **** tonne of work. The driving force in fps modding was always making content for games with an existing player base.

 

[Warbie]

Only scanned the thread but did anyone used to play Sven coop, me and my brother were on that practically every night.

Same - Sven co-op was great. There were some very trippy levels. One in particular I can't remember the name of. And the Mario ones

 

[Warbie]

I gave Overwatch a go and had a blast. It is the most massive spam fest, though, and is as far away from 'hardcore' game as it gets. Not that that's a bad thing, but the massive gap of hardcore shooters on the PC is just as gaping as it was before.