I’ve played all the games you mentioned and I am a huge fan of squad control games. I’ve recently looked through Steam games with tags “single player” and "shooter"most recent titles are primarily arcade style shooters.
One thing I’ve noticed while playing CTA Gates of Hell is that no AI, whether friendly or not has ever had any sense of self preservation, and this is true for any game. So what ends up happening is, you as a player always end up babysitting your AI. You expect a squad full of capable soldiers, but end up having one capable one and a punch of crayon eating babies. That’s why most modern titles cheat with their friendly AI, making them immortal, invisible, teleporting them and giving then wall hacks. I’ve mostly given on the Idea that a squad control game can have satisfying AI interaction. If I have to tell every single unit where to go, who to shoot and when to hide, I’m not playing a shooter, I’m playing a strategy game in first person.
It sounds like you specifically don’t like the sub-genre as a whole. Thats perfectly fine, but can you accept that there are people who do like these games? I mean clearly, since those older titles still have fans those people exist. That is the audience for this game.
Quite the contrary, I love this subgenre more than any other one regarding shooters. But I’ve never seen it done right. If you know any game that doesn’t end in frustration about the AI, please tell me.
I’m more than OK with micromanagement in games, but that’s not how it should work in shooters. Men of War is a good example, it’s a strategy series with a notorious amount of micromanagement, but the difference is, you get all the information needed to manage your units and you as a player are not part of the battlefield. No enemy unit can look up in the sky and shoot down your birds-eye camera. But in shooters, not only do you have limited information about your enemies and your own team, you can also be killed during micromanagement. This is not how it should work. Your friendlies being a little bit more pro active is the least one could ask for.
Like imagine you storm Osama’s hideout and every time your soldiers have to ask you - the captain if its OK to shoot the terrorist in the room, or if its OK to move onto the next room, or its OK to take cover, that’s how it feels.
And because you’re essentially responsible for every single action of your team, you also feel responsible for every single mishap, whether it actually was your fault or not.
Also modern shooters themselves have already fairly demanding controls, pairing that with the ability to command different units means compromises have to be made in user experience. Your commands are usually limited by line of sight, you can’t tell your units to advance behind this wall and search for cover. Arma 3 tries to address this issue with the “Command Mode” that let’s you zoom out the camera to a birds-eye view, but that’s essentially what a strategy game is anyway. You also can’t command multiple squad simultaneously, each squad needs separate attention, while the AI computer can do everything at once, putting you even more at a disadvantage.
Developers also rarely bother implementing actual military techniques. The only 2 examples I can think of are Arma 3s combat advance (half the units cover, the other half moves) or Ready or Not’s room clearing. What ends up happening is, people just take 4 machine gunners with scopes or 4 snipers, since all units essentially behave the same AI wise, there no downside to that.
In my opinion a squad control game should essentially play itself, meaning that if your character dies, the rest of your AI should be smart enough to finish the mission or at least retreat on their own, just like a real squad would if their commander dies. The challenge shouldn’t come from janky controls or cheating AI, it should come from having the odds stacked against you. The goal shouldn’t be to just finish the mission, but have everybody come out alive. A lot of those games become almost trivial, if you just leave the AI at spawn and run through the mission yourself.
If I have to tell every single unit where to go, who to shoot and when to hide, I’m not playing a shooter, I’m playing a strategy game in first person.
Yeah, that’s what I’m here for. Another way to look at it is this: remember how much “All Ghillied Up” wowed people when they showed it off at E3, and then again when people got to play it? I wanted to be the guy telling the player what to do, not just following a series of instructions. You’re right that when a game like Wildlands has to resort to wallhacks, there’s a lot of satisfaction that evaporates with it, and that’s why there might be a market for a game made the old-school way.
I really recommended you the 2nd Misson in the Soviet Campaign in CTA Gates of Hell. It took me a good 3 days to get through it but its as close to All Ghillied Up as you can get.
I’ve played all the games you mentioned and I am a huge fan of squad control games. I’ve recently looked through Steam games with tags “single player” and "shooter"most recent titles are primarily arcade style shooters. One thing I’ve noticed while playing CTA Gates of Hell is that no AI, whether friendly or not has ever had any sense of self preservation, and this is true for any game. So what ends up happening is, you as a player always end up babysitting your AI. You expect a squad full of capable soldiers, but end up having one capable one and a punch of crayon eating babies. That’s why most modern titles cheat with their friendly AI, making them immortal, invisible, teleporting them and giving then wall hacks. I’ve mostly given on the Idea that a squad control game can have satisfying AI interaction. If I have to tell every single unit where to go, who to shoot and when to hide, I’m not playing a shooter, I’m playing a strategy game in first person.
It sounds like you specifically don’t like the sub-genre as a whole. Thats perfectly fine, but can you accept that there are people who do like these games? I mean clearly, since those older titles still have fans those people exist. That is the audience for this game.
Quite the contrary, I love this subgenre more than any other one regarding shooters. But I’ve never seen it done right. If you know any game that doesn’t end in frustration about the AI, please tell me.
I’m more than OK with micromanagement in games, but that’s not how it should work in shooters. Men of War is a good example, it’s a strategy series with a notorious amount of micromanagement, but the difference is, you get all the information needed to manage your units and you as a player are not part of the battlefield. No enemy unit can look up in the sky and shoot down your birds-eye camera. But in shooters, not only do you have limited information about your enemies and your own team, you can also be killed during micromanagement. This is not how it should work. Your friendlies being a little bit more pro active is the least one could ask for.
Like imagine you storm Osama’s hideout and every time your soldiers have to ask you - the captain if its OK to shoot the terrorist in the room, or if its OK to move onto the next room, or its OK to take cover, that’s how it feels.
And because you’re essentially responsible for every single action of your team, you also feel responsible for every single mishap, whether it actually was your fault or not.
Also modern shooters themselves have already fairly demanding controls, pairing that with the ability to command different units means compromises have to be made in user experience. Your commands are usually limited by line of sight, you can’t tell your units to advance behind this wall and search for cover. Arma 3 tries to address this issue with the “Command Mode” that let’s you zoom out the camera to a birds-eye view, but that’s essentially what a strategy game is anyway. You also can’t command multiple squad simultaneously, each squad needs separate attention, while the AI computer can do everything at once, putting you even more at a disadvantage.
Developers also rarely bother implementing actual military techniques. The only 2 examples I can think of are Arma 3s combat advance (half the units cover, the other half moves) or Ready or Not’s room clearing. What ends up happening is, people just take 4 machine gunners with scopes or 4 snipers, since all units essentially behave the same AI wise, there no downside to that.
In my opinion a squad control game should essentially play itself, meaning that if your character dies, the rest of your AI should be smart enough to finish the mission or at least retreat on their own, just like a real squad would if their commander dies. The challenge shouldn’t come from janky controls or cheating AI, it should come from having the odds stacked against you. The goal shouldn’t be to just finish the mission, but have everybody come out alive. A lot of those games become almost trivial, if you just leave the AI at spawn and run through the mission yourself.
So you don’t like GRAW, Brothers In Arms, or Full Spectrum Warrior. Thats fine. This game is made for people who do.
Yeah, that’s what I’m here for. Another way to look at it is this: remember how much “All Ghillied Up” wowed people when they showed it off at E3, and then again when people got to play it? I wanted to be the guy telling the player what to do, not just following a series of instructions. You’re right that when a game like Wildlands has to resort to wallhacks, there’s a lot of satisfaction that evaporates with it, and that’s why there might be a market for a game made the old-school way.
I really recommended you the 2nd Misson in the Soviet Campaign in CTA Gates of Hell. It took me a good 3 days to get through it but its as close to All Ghillied Up as you can get.