cuevas said:
That's obvious to everyone except a couple people in this thread.
Well, let me try to explain myself so you can maybe see my perspective better (by the way, there is no right or wrong answer to this).
Every FPS has exactly the same core mechanic. The player has a weapon. A button on a mouse or pad fires the weapon. The player aims their weapon at other players to try to shoot them. That's it.
On top of this of course there are lots of neat variations. Some games like UT2K4 have alternate fire so your weapon can do different things. For example if you have the rocket launcher primary fire will spread the rockets out and alternate fire will coil them into a spiral. Some games like Halo give you a shield so it takes some serious fire power to kill someone. The list goes on, but all these games are just variations of the same mechanic that was introduced by games such as Maze War, Doom, Wolfenstein, etc.
Let's say that each new feature adds to total complexity. So in Doom there were no shields. In Halo there is. That's one more thing my brain is trying to juggle. Unreal has twice as many weapons as the original Doom. That's a lot more to think about. Quake 3 has more complicated maps, launchers and teleports, more power ups, etc. We can say that it is more complex than Doom.
However, we should not confuse varying complexity as some sort proxy for skill required to be 'successful.' Why? Because the player always plays by that game's specific rules and against other players who are also following the same rules. A player may be very familiar with the characteristics of a particular game. I'm very familiar with every UK2K4 weapon, the unique trajectory of the bullets/energy from each weapon, and weapon/power up locations on all maps. But I'm playing against other players who are also intimately familiar with all of this stuff! The intrinsic complexity of the game is essentially neutralized because everyone is trying to do the same thing as I am.
Research in behavioural decision theory has revealed that the brain can only process 7 or 8 variables simultaneously. To compensate we use heuristics, stereotyping, etc. In UT2K4 I have 7 or 8 variables going on in my head (weapon location, player location, ammo count, map location, automatic math in my head that calculates trajectories, etc.). In Call of Duty I only have 7 or 8 variables, too. But they're different. For example, I'm not thinking about weapon location, I'm thinking about choke points. So I cannot say that because Call of Duty has less complexity (no power ups, simpler weapons) that my skills will immediately cross over--or ever cross over. While it has less complexity, it also has very specific and unique features that I need to master.
I'll give you an example. I play Black Ops a lot with a Gaffer. This Gaffer is amazing at Gears of War. I've played a lot of Gears and I can tell you over about three years of playing Gears this guy has done stuff I've never seen anyone else do. Truly amazing things. This Gaffer is also very good at Halo 3/Reach. Yet only until recently he always carried a k/d less than 1 in the Call of Duty series! Why? Because the game had not clicked for him. He tried to use his Gears/Halo skills and he was getting slaughtered. So for him, Call of Duty is very challenging indeed! He had to unlearn all this stuff and then relearn new skills to become just a mediocre Call of Duty player. He needed to completely replace the variables that his brain was trying to juggle.
Look at Dax01 here in this thread. I know he plays lots of Halo. I'm sure he's very good at Halo. Yet earlier he said
please give me tips on how to get more than 2 consecutive kills.For someone like me I can't even understand how
not to get more than two consecutive kills. I'm a good Call of Duty player so getting big kill streaks is very easy for me. I'm a very mediocre Halo player yet an amazing UT2K4 and Quake 3 player. I'm sure Dax01 would shake his head at me if he watched me play Halo. Maybe Dax01 will never be a good Black Ops player. So somehow he's good at a game with more complexity.
Is sprinting easier to master than a marathon? They both share the same basic thing: putting one foot infront of the other to make the body move. But they have very different things going on that requires very specific skills to master.
I've played almost virtually every single major FPS over the last 20 years. In my opinion, the big ones (Quake, UT, Call of Duty, Halo, Crysis, etc.) are all so unique that all that can be said is they require specific skills to be excel.
