TF2 vs. Vanilla FPS

April 8th, 2008 · 9 Comments

Just about every game hits a point where they need to start talking about fine tuning the balance of how their combat works, and oftentimes, guns are usually brought up as the proper way to get the balance ball rolling. Normally, this is a pretty good argument to base a balancing conversation on, but typically only if you’re actually making a gun game. It comes down to a “narrow vs. broad” scope issue, which I hope I can successfully illustrate below.

Too often, I think we as designers rely on the ideas of how the different ranged weapons work to find where the damage models in our games should belong. Additionally, we as gamers wind up rewarding developers who keep making the same kind of gun games (CoD4, R6, Battlefield, etc.) that don’t differentiate themselves very much due to being mired in a “sim” mentality. The problem with this mentality is that guns (real guns, that is) are just too fine of a scope to use for anything other than gun combat balance. Let’s face it: they all do the same thing. They shoot a bullet in a relatively straight line. This fact rarely changes, regardless if it’s a pistol, assault rifle, or a sniper rifle (and even a shotgun). The only variables you have to play with now are range, damage, rate of fire, ammo capacity, and spread if you’re dealing with any kind of repeating weapon. And even then, when you get down to the brass tacks, you wind up with a graph that looks a lot like this:

Narrow Band Gameplay

I like to call this Narrow Band gameplay. I’m not saying it’s not fun. It’s just narrow. The weapons have their differences; their scale and scope are just closer together than I think people realize. On the surface, especially to a game engine and the engine’s rules, a pistol isn’t really all that different than a sniper rifle.

So when I first played Team Fortress 2, I was a bit frustrated with the way the game played, because I was so accustomed to this Narrow Band form of FPS gameplay. Sure, Halo had the Needler, and Unreal Tournament had a goo gun, but you could always just pick up another weapon in those games if you didn’t like the one you had. You weren’t forced to keep the gun you had when you chose it, and so the gameplay model wasn’t horribly changed from the Narrow Band form of gameplay. It danced in the Broad Band path of balance, but if you could find a gun that shot straight when you needed it, you could always use it.

What I found in TF2 surprised me to a great extent, and I think it’s why it has such staying power. They pretty much built off of the previous “team” gametype models (TF, Unreal Tournament) and ratcheted that knob up to 11. First, they seemed to adopt the Blizzard multiplayer strategy of “make every weapon feel overpowered,” and then they balanced their weapons in such a way that hardly any gun shoots straight, and then made you keep them. This, from a FPS design model, blew my frickin’ mind. That to me is the definition of Broad Band balancing.

Just looking at the damage graph for their game is like looking at a cartoon model for weapon damage (an irony not lost on anyone, to be sure):

Broad Band Gameplay

Take a look at the two different “Combined Experiences.” The typical vanilla FPS seems paltry by comparison. That isn’t to say that it’s a worse game or even a worse experience. I actually enjoy both kinds of FPS combat balanced games. But, I mean, dayum. Look at that TF2 damage model. It’s just so freakin’ different compared to the other FPS shooters out there (and no, Quake’s guns weren’t balanced quite like this). Weapons deal less damage the further the shot goes, some guns have a ridiculous spread/damage ratio on them mitigated by build/cooldown phases, and still others are completely useless save for a singular purpose. And yet, it’s a nearly perfectly balanced system. No one weapon in TF2 has any clear uber advantage over all of the weapons in the game (obviously, some have a designed advantage over another class).

But the amazing thing to me despite these radical differences in the style of combat balance, is that they are really just a matter of scale and perspective. So long as you don’t cross-over worlds, each system is balanced within its own universe. Essentially, when both systems are balanced at their own respective scales, they almost become the same system, even though they appear to be worlds apart.

Despite this, I have the feeling that the “Broad” style games are much more difficult to balance, due to the “overpowered” nature of each gun, than the sim-like “Narrow” ones. Anyone have any experience balancing both?

Bookmark and Share

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Tags: combat · design · multiplayer

9 responses so far ↓

1 Saxifridge // Apr 9, 2008 at 1:29 am

Interesting. I never really gave the systems this much of a look before. To be honest i didn’t really like TF2 at first because of how different the weapons acted. I have been trained to play games like BF2 and COD4, where you want to find a stable firing platform, squeeze off bursts of round, and lead your target. The game play experience in TF2 was so fundamentally different that I did not know how to recieve it at first. Of course it grew on me, but to be honest I find myself not really playing it to relax anymore. I think because it is so heavy on the team dynamic, that if I don’t have friends to play it with I don’t want to play it at all. I don’t want to be social online with complete strangers most of the time. I would rather be the quiet guy int he corner with and assault rifle dropping net-tards without saying a word.
2 Pijama // Apr 9, 2008 at 5:24 pm

Excellent post mate. The only reason why I don’t play TF2 is that my old computer would bitch and whine through the whole gaming session…

BTW, nice graphs. When you look at the gameplay differences like that, I wonder: “How the heck developers can’t see that you can actually INNOVATE the FPS genre?”
3 jake // Apr 9, 2008 at 8:15 pm

i think it’s brass “tax”

but I could be wrong.

solid reading, thanks
4 Project // Apr 10, 2008 at 9:26 am

Something COD4 did was change how fast you can run and turn with the guns, like the imfamos p90, you can move faster both on sights and not and you can turn fast, also you can squeeze off rounds faster from a sprint then other guns.

Don’t forget, I looked at your chart for TF2 and i was reminded of both a grenade launcher and a rocket propelled grenade.

And I know in games like BF2 bullets do have less damage when the get further away, so in the end, I don’t see how TF2 started this, I just think the did it better then some.

I don’t play BF2 much anymore, but they did something right to have lasting power, I hope to play TF2, looks very fun.
5 Ace // Apr 10, 2008 at 10:15 am

BF2’s bullet damage does NOT vary with distance.

http://bf2issues.digitalsoftware.se/damage_table.php
6 Chris // Apr 11, 2008 at 4:52 pm

Jake, you can be, and are, wrong.

It’s brass “tacks” and always has been.
7 maximus // Apr 11, 2008 at 5:31 pm

stumble upon gives you a thumbs up
8 Cloud // Apr 12, 2008 at 6:26 am

“No one weapon in TF2 has any clear uber advantage over all of the weapons in the game”

Well, except for the Soldiers Rocket Launcher. :u
9 Benny // Apr 12, 2008 at 2:30 pm

So, it’s much easier to hit people in TF2 then other games. Doesn’t make it better or worse. Just different. I find TF2 to be a bit boring, I much prefer the accuracy of CSS for example.