Old FPS games have too many guns!! (kinda) 

About a year or two ago I started exclusively pistol starting Doom levels and it makes a huge difference, especially with community wads better suited to that play style. It makes every weapon pickup a lot more valuable and forces players to familiarize themselves with high-damage weapons other than the super shotgun like the rocket launcher and berserk pack. I found it's even forced me to consider the chaingun as that game's sniper rifle, as the first shot of every burst is perfectly accurate. The only weapons in Doom's arsenal that come out seeming useless are the pistol and chainsaw. The hardest weapon to master is probably the BFG, since you have to familiarize yourself with how the invisible tracers work to pull off feats like killing a cyberdemon in two hits. Not a necessity in vanilla Doom but as the skill ceiling gets higher and higher with community wads, this in-depth knowledge of mechanics becomes way more important. Which goes to show that level design and context are as important as the design of the weapons themselves.

From SMGs to RPGs I carry quite an arsenal And skip around a warzone like a subatomic particle!

The rocket launcher isn't the best example IMO because it has splash damage making it a more apt weapon for crowd control while providing a notably higher DPS and at long distances at that. Further, when comparing the plasma rifle vs. the SSG, you have higher DPS but slower projectile vs. instant hitscan but the need to close distance. Within the context of only playing the original Doom 2 maps what you say is more true though. But to be honest, Doom 2 and more so Plutonia are proofs of concept for what Doom matured into: custom map sets. The only weapons that lose importance when you have all weapons and ammo are the unberserked fist, chainsaw, pistol, and the regular shotgun. (Pistol starting reduces this gap.) Otherwise, every weapon still retains distinct niches. In fact I consider Doom 2's weapon set a masterclass in balance and I'm certainly not alone in that assessment.

I recently played the Turok 2 remaster, or as i called it: a reason to scream YES at the title. Turok 2 has a huge arsenal. And i remember that as kids me and my friends would have been "oh cool, so many weapons" but adult me see the detriment. You start with the bow, and almost immediately, you get the Tek-Bow and for the rest of the game, you have to mousewheel-scroll through that thing and there's never a reason to use it as the Tek-Bow can use normal arrows. Smilar things happen with the big claw that is just better than the small claws and the whatever-its-called that uses shotgun ammo and just does better shotgun. And don't get me started on the stupid tranq-rifle. Within an arsenal, there are upgrades and sidegrades. * Upgrades replace an existing weapon. Example: Dooms chaingun has the same accuracity and damage/bullet as the pistol. It just fires faster. There is no longer a need to use the pistol. It could just as well replace the pistol. * Sidegrades add a new usecase. Example: Dooms BFG uses the same ammo as the plasmarifle, but it's not always superior, it's the situation that makes one or the other the better choice. There's this quote "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away", which i see as my guiding star to weapon design on my little shooter project (which uses the arsenal). I want every weapon to be meaningful, which then acts as a filter that prevents arsenal-clutter or having to use the 0 button to select a weapon while 2,3 and 5 are occupied by weapons that have been succeeded by upgrades and 1 is useless crap.

I love one thing That og shooters Have a big Arsenal of weapons and every weapon is different.CoD has just the same weapons with different stats

There were many examples you showed where you said you'd always use the super shotgun but IMO in those cases I'd have rather used the rocket launcher. The SS makes you have to get in super close to dangerous enemies which is not necessarily what you want when you get just lob a few missiles. I kind of see the arguments you're trying to make but I just think these are kind of peripheral reasons for why Halo/etc stopped doing this.

Great video! Really enjoyed this exploration

Its interesting that you bring up Doom 2016, because ID also came to find that 2016's weapons were too versatile for their own good, particularly the Super Shotgun, and made weapon switching a key focus in Doom Eternal. The ways they implemented this were undoubtedly pretty heavy handed, i love it personally but a lot of boomer shooter fans really dislike it. If you ever played Doom Eternal, id be very interested to hear your thoughts on this!

I disagree with your stance on the SSG from Doom 2. It is a universal use case weapon but only at close range. At long range, rocket launcher, chaingun or normal shotgun are much more useful. It’s hardly something you could use all the time and get away with unless you’re playing a really close quarters map like The Focus for example.

The real reason why 2 weapon system exist is because gamepads have small amout of buttons, so game devs had to create dumbed down system.

ULTRAKILL does very well with several issues raised in this video, but I don't get the impression it's quite what you're looking for. Its style system, assuming the player is interested in engaging with it, effectively mandates constant weapon switching. Each weapon has several variants, and each variant has a seperate freshness meter that diminishes as damage is dealt. That freshness meter is a multiplier on style, so if you haven't used a weapon in "a while" (by ULTRAKILL's standards lol) it gives lots of style, but if you've been using it lots it gives no style at all. This means that all weapons are designed to be universal-use weapons, but they're also kind of niche-use weapons at the same time. Each one has very prominently different functions, even between variants of the same weapon, and these functions can at best open up a staggering number of options. Perhaps the best example is the green revolver variant, which has a throwable coin that is shockingly versatile. But the reason I say they're partially niche-use weapons is that these functions, and the weapon bases generally, have defined roles. The revolver is the closest equivalent to a sniper and is great for long range precision; the shotgun is largely useful as you'd expect a shotgun to be, but there's a feature of it that makes it a lot more useful at longer ranges; the nailgun does great damage but is so unwieldy as to only make much sense against rather strong enemies. The game has to balance these niche use cases with the fact that the player has to swap weapons regularly, meaning that their roles aren't terribly strictly enforced. This is done both through making the weapons themselves more versatile, but also through the great maneuverability of the player character making it very feasible to alter the scenario itself to better suit the available weapons. If you need to use the shotgun against an enemy resistant to its long-ranged function, you can simply close that gap to ensure its efficacy. In this sense they _are_ niche-use, but they expect the player to be able to massage situations to permit that niche to be used. But that necessarily means the niches aren't generally that strict. There are a ton of very niche mechanics even still, but... yeah, they tend to be individual little factors of guns as opposed to the gun's fundamental role. I think its weapons are brilliantly designed and relatively unique, but ultimately it's an incredibly tight arsenal that doesn't really have enough leeway for the sillier or more 'superfluous' type of niche-use weapon you seem to be discussing in the video. Moreover it's such an intensely fast-paced game that the sniper playstyle you described as your favourite is almost completely unviable. Hence saying that I don't think it's what you're looking for... >v> still a phenomenal example though, I think!

My favorite arsenal in shooters is probably from Ratchet and Clank. If that doesnt count then I'll take Resistance 3. Highly recommend. That series would be a good companion on this topic. R1 has a weapon wheel, R2 doesn't, then R3 goes back to the wheel.😊

I was really disappointed by DUSK's arsenal too. I feel like Half-Life 2 got it right by just not pretending that guns are different because the particles they shoot are different. They kinda did that with the AR2 but I guess the low ammo count does serve some function, even if it is just a better SMG. Trying to make a new gun for an FPS is like trying to break the holy trinity in RPGs. You can make weird and funky stuff that is genuinely fun but if you're not the gravity gun you're not breaking any new ground.

There's a particular philosophy found in a particular corner of the Halo community that I hope to see some dev really embrace wholeheartedly. Even Halo itself has never really gone for it after CE. If it _was_ embraced I don't think how many weapons you can carry would matter. What you call universal weapons are called _utility guns._ There should only be _one_ and it should be _awesome._ It's the Ryu. It's the thing that everything else deviates from. Maybe it's the Magnum, maybe it's a Battle Rifle, but it's a weapon that's simultaneously easy to use and hard to master. Other weapons are justified by their ability to perform a specific role well. Have a shotgun that functions as a close-range OHK you can pull out of your ass if you need it? Ok, then why do you _also_ have an Energy Sword and a Gravity Hammer that do the exact same thing? Come up with weapons that have weird but legitimately useful niches. CE's plasma rifle was a great flanking tool because it "stuns" players by slowing their movement and camera. The AR is a melee demon and perfect for figuring out where a camouflaged enemy is. The sniper is a sniper. Etc.

Halo is near 25 years old. Limited gun amounts is old thinking, not new school. The reason why you use the shotgun in Doom is because you’re in a 2D game where matching up the line. If you shoot and make a line, you get a hit. The shotgun is a sniper rifle.

A handful of Deep Rock Galactic's weapons feel like they take the "niche" role (to me) especially with overclocks that mean your movement has to be either slow and methodical or like being in a pinball machine

I do agree with your point to a large extent, but I disagree on why the loadout system caught on. I think the move towards loadouts instead of arsenals came for a few reasons. 1. Console controllers don't mesh well with a game where you have to juggle between like 5 weapons 2. The push towards "realism" for two very different reasons. The obvious reason being that carrying ten guns on your person isn't realistic. The less obvious, but equally important, reason is that most modern FPS games basically have a "jack of all trades" weapon in the form of assault rifles. ARs are good up close, great at mid-range, and ok at long-range. If CoD allowed you to carry 5 guns, people would still overwhelmingly use the AR because it's so damn good, only occasionally pulling out a sniper for a difficult shot or a shotgun for a CQB section of the map.

2:23 guy flies over wall

While pretty clunky, I found the weapon system from Crysis was a good balance between the two, allowing 2 main weapons (rifles, shotguns), one sidearm (pistol), one special (eg. Limited use Rocket launcher), and heavy weapons which you could equip, but not stow. It allowed both the situational flexibility of the arsenal, with the swappability & contextual variety of the loadout. So you weren't stuck with a useless bugbait option cluttering your weapon selection for the last 2 hours.

Hard disagree. I loved and still love having a large selection of weapons to choose from. Blood is a fantastic example. I dont think that a limited amount of weapons you can hold is a problem, but theres room for both an arcadey solution and a more realistic solution. It really depends what the game is. But if you made a mod for Doom 2 that only allowed you to hold two or three weapons at a time, that wouldn't improve the game.

If you're trying to make your videos 4:3, then you got to render it in 4:3. 😺

Man the entire video is played in 4:3 but you rendered/uploaded it in 16:9. Missed opportunities? No kidding.

Any thoughts on re4 and dead space 2s weapons? Where weapons are used more like attacks ina beat em up with specific uses

I like how this video is actually pretty balanced and not just "this thing bad this thing good" garbage. I've played an equal amount of both designs and I think they are equally as good, just different. As long as the gameplay/lore itself suits the weapons you could have 50 for all I care lol. Like I wouldn't really compare Postal 2's weapons with Battlefront 2 2005's, the gameplay is so completely different that it would be foolish to do so. Halo and Half-Life are closer, but even then the actual level design is quite different. Halo is much more open and has many more (armed) enemies so you'll almost always have a new weapon to pick up. Half-Life is more cramped but has more varieties of enemies and weapons (not more weapons, just more relatively unique). Also, it's funny that the literal super soldier in the 24th century carries less than a 27yr old scientist 😂

what happened to your microphone?

Your voice is like a dying dove. 😮

Modern shooters don't have enough guns. Two to three weapon limits killed FPS games until boomer shooters corrected things.

could be a third the length if you focused on your thesis... not sure your audience needs the logic spelled out quite so explicitly.

Not the first to point it out, but Doom Eternal made using the entire arsenal an essential aspect of combat. Doing so id made the greatest game ever made. The majority of fans absolutely hated it. They are weak.

gaussjumping is good in single player too, just watch a speedrun lol

Title = wrong. Didn't/won't watch.

thankfully modern designers are starting to realize this

I disagree.