Would tactical shooters become tacticool?

Tactical shooters won't ever come back like that RB6 Vegas is as tactical as they'll get but I am looking forward to Patriots or what ever the name of the next Rainbow Six game will be

I hope they make a return this gen.

Do you remember this garbage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_Rainbow_Six:_Lockdown

???

When they wanted to totally casualize the series???

Oh my God, was it so bad...

Tactical shooters are niche and cannot support the budgets that the few fans of the genre actually want out of them. Genres don't fade away because of consoles, genres fade away because their fanbase is too small to support rising dev costs.

If there is a large enough demand, games get made. It's that simple. Crying about it and blaming the consoles completely ignores this point.

Operation Flashpoint (the original) was on the original Xbox. BI has ported their games successfully to the console before. The Xbox 360 probably didn't have enough ram for the massive environments that ArmA II had. The whole ArmA engine is pretty dated anyways. They worked on the renderer for ArmA 3 and it's a good looking game but the core tech of the engine remains largely the same which is a huge issue for the game's future. Considering they barely make enough money off of ArmA sales as it is, I doubt they'll be investing heavily into increasing the technology as that would add greatly to the cost. ArmA 3 couldn't even be finished in time and they had to release it in chunks because their team was stretched too thin as it was.

Operation Flashpoint 2 was made by Codemasters who made no real attempt at making it anything more than a slower paced version of Battlefield. The design was never intended on being a simulator despite what their marketing told us. Bohemian would still make a sim and then try to fit it on the console. They did that back with the original Operation Flashpoint and they were probably trying with ArmA 2 only to realize the Xbox 360's CPU was pretty weak and the thing didn't have nearly the ram needed for the environments.

Furthermore your argument heavily relies upon the notion that consoles are a direct reason why a game loses complexity. Never once have I seen you consider the fact that those complex shooters just don't have a large market in the first place. They don't even do well on the PC anymore. This is due to the fact that their audience is not large enough to support them anymore. Sure back when dev teams were 10-15 people working with very basic and proprietary tech they could develop a game on a small enough budget the small tactical shooter market could actually support it, but now that's really not the case.

I'm not bashing on tactical shooters because I do love the ArmA series and enjoy shooters with a more focus on teamwork and tactics rather than just guns blazing action, but I do understand their appeal is extremely niche. The consoles wouldn't hold them back, you can build UIs around a controller that have all of the same control of a mouse and keyboard. That's not the problem. What's the problem is the lack of the market. Why spend the money on properly porting on a genre that barely can survive on the PC where the audience is? I don't see why BI doesn't see this. There is no sim market on the console. They'll spend all of the time and money to port and then the games will do terribly. BI isn't the type of dev that would gut a series to meet a new market either.

Hell even if they gut it down to a sim-light ArmA experience the game wouldn't stand a chance in the market. People would rather just play the far higher budget AAA military shooters out there than some small budget attempt to copy.

Does Arma II still have these audio cut-off bugs? I can definetly see what you mean with the same core tech powering these games. BTW have you ever played Hidden & Dangerous?

perfect.

/thread

@Salt_The_Fries: ArmA 3's audio engine still has some of the old bugs and robotic tone of ArmA 1&2 but they've worked on it quite a bit and the audio is much more natural sounding than before. I know the engine is largely the same due to the same persistent bugs and performance issues they have on the server side and client side. CPU utilization is still garbage. AI pathfinding and behavior hasn't improved since ArmA 1.

At first I was actually looking forward to Codemaster's attempt at Operation Flashpoint because they had their own engine and it was finally an alternative to ArmA. At first it came across as a sim and even had a level editor. However the end result was one of the most obtuse games I've ever played. Really sad.

I have not played Hidden & Dangerous.

Never had any cutoff bugs. I use a sound mod though.

It's worth installing blastcore as well, very impressive visual effects (primarily smoke and fire) upgrade. It also makes fire spread like far cry 2.

My friend, and favorite moderator (outside of blue and that guy in off topic who isn't a moderator anymore for some reason but whom I still like very much) Consoles are a direct result. Ubisoft confirmed it themselves. As did the veteran developers behind Takedown. Nothing was implied, it was outright said in clear concise terms publishers think console gamers are stupid. If this is true or false is irrelevant, it has an obvious outcome.

http://kotaku.com/5893236/christian-allen-wants-your-money-to-make-a-great-old-school-shooter-that-publishers-dont-think-you-want/all

And what happened when he pitched his tactical shooter to publishers? Mind you, he was one of the top designers on Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Halo Reach.

The pitch hasn't gone so well. "It's like pitching a flight sim," Allen says. And the publishers rattle off the excuses: "'It's a super-vocal audience.' 'They don't buy a lot of games.' 'They buy one game a year.' 'Console gamers are too impatient; they won't play this kind of game.' Console gamers literally are too dumb to play this kind of game.'

THey never were hugely popular genre. In it;s heyday they bassicaly had three-four IPs that sold million each. It's not that much different anyway. Indies are slowly filling the void left by Ubisoft.

What the genre needs is one smaller scale, but highly polished CQB tactical shooter with campaign. A game like this could easily sell over milion copies on PC alone and as long as they don't go crazy with budget it should be profitable. Hopefully sooner or later some european dev will make an attempt.

Publishers aren't the only ones behind making games. Plenty of indie titles could have filled the void yet none have. You also just confirmed what I said. They didn't see a large enough market that is viable so they stopped backing the extremely niche tactical shooters. Consoles had nothing to do with the fact that the audience is so small publishers didn't even bother.

Of course people who are reaching out to PC gamers on kickstarter are going to blame consoles because in general PC gamers seem to have some inferiority complex and need to point the blame on something else instead of analyzing the whole situation.

Only some indie developers like Bohemian Interactive have been making tactical shooters and they can barely get by because of the tiny market. Don't try to spin this against consoles. If the market was there the publishers and other devs would back it more. The market is simply not there. Even Tactical Intervention had problems getting funded. We can ignore that the game is completely broken and unfun and look at how the devs had to run two Kickstarters before enough interest was generated. That Kickstarter barely got by in the end. That's how little interest there really is in tactical shooters.

@Salt_The_Fries link basically sums it up. You're arguments sound like the ones made in the link, trying to push the blame onto consoles when in reality it's just a tiny, niche market that has vocal fans.

If you look at more realistic and tactics focused shooters on the PC that have come out recently like Red Orchestra 2, Rising Storm, and lately Insurgency, you'll see that the market for these games is pretty small. It can exist, but don't expect anybody to be throwing millions at developing a game for such a small market. Even on the PC these markets are pretty small.

This is like wondering why there aren't more focused flight sims. The biggest one right now on the PC is easily Warthunder and that's popular because of it's arcade mode, not its sim. It's an extremely niche market that doesn't have a lot of people to back larger scale development. The few games that exist there are supported by a pretty dedicated fanbase who is used to putting up with buggy and broken games because devs just don't have the budgets needed to polish them properly. IL-2 Strumovik: Cliffs of Dover is a prime example of that. I personally believe the flight sim genre is more popular than the tactical shooter genre.

Sorry, these words weren't mine, I've quoted them. I am not the one of such opinion, however Rainbow Six Lockdown was an utter garbage.

I didn't mean for you to think I was implying those were your words. It was just the link you posted. I was still talking to uninsipiredcup, not you. I was just using your link as the example. Sorry for the confusion.

run and gun is super popular right now and i hate that shyt.

we need more games that punish you for running around like a madman not games that reward you for it.

r.i.p. tactical no respawn shooter.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is one of my all time favorite multiplayer shooters, so I'm glad that Ubisoft finally broke their silence about R6: Patriots. It wasn't good enough, so they started over from scratch...

H-Hour Worlds Elite.... Coming to PS4 and PC. Early 2015. www.sofstudios.com The true successor to SOCOM 1 and 2. People who have never experienced SOCOM... look into H-Hour. This game is currently in the greenlight process on Steam, so you should vote it up. If you don't wind up liking it then you are losing NOTHING. However, being a fan of most ALL the games that were posted in the OP... SOCOM games were ALWAYS number one... and by no slim margin. This is PC players chance to get to experience it.

Yes I am a mod at the studio, and yes I am heavily invested (time wise)... that is because I saw a chance to BRING BACK tactical shooters. Not just ANY tactical shooters either... the greatest of ALL TIME.

Those who think you can not have a tactical shooter on consoles have never played SOCOM... period. and H-Hour is taking on that legacy.

No respawn, no aim assist, no sticky cover (snap to cover), no health regen, no unlocks, and retaining tactical 8v8 gameplay brought to you by the creative mind behind S1 and S2 "David Sears" and one of the best map makers of all time "Russ Phillips" not to mention it was recently announced Penka is the musical composer.... this is not your typical indie.. this will be a GAME CHANGER this gen... mark my words.

be a part of history and help ensure it comes to Steam. It is already guaranteed for PS4 either way.

On that note.... no.... tactical shooters are not dead.

I hope not for your sake. I don't care personally. Find them boring, and after high speed tactical maneuvers in the service, it just doesn't work for my gaming time.

My friend, Vegas was the start of it, third person gears of war with terrorism. The main characters all American. Trying to be a Hollywood movie.

Ubisofts wording has always been corrupt. What it will most likely mean is "not accessible enoguh" "not enough like assassins creed". Muneys.

But Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for the Xbox 360 was simply put, amazing...

Oh my god, what the ****.

Of course it was dumbed down compared to the hardcore PC originals which I enjoyed immensely, but compared to what followed GRAW 1 (the 360 version which is the best one by miles and a separate game from all the other versions), GRAW 1 was a tactical masterpiece.

tacticool is cringe worthy.

Lol.. it's always funny to see herms blaming the consoles for their shortcomings. The bottom line: If you don't support a product, don't get upset when that product is no longer available.

Blame your fellow herms.

Except that all big tactical shooters actually sold really well on PC. They were all profitable with each selling well over million copies.

It's not that people didn't support those games, it;s just that publishers decided they wanted to chase after arcade shooting console market and instead of making new IPs they decided to turn existing ones into those products.

GRAW actually had three separate versions. PC one was pretty faithful to Ghost Recon 1, but pretty unpolished. 360 one was pretty healthy mix of arcade and tactical. I liked it. Not as much as PC one, but it was propably overall better game. Just a shame unltimatelly Ubisoft went full arcade with Future Soldier.