Why we will never have true realistic first person shooters

by Megagun

We won't, because it won't really make any particular kind of sense in most modern popular multiplayer shooters.

You see, realism has some massive drabacks: it's slow, boring, and imbalanced. Think about what would happen if Battlefield had a realistic flight model with a realistic flight ceiling. A single jet or chopper pilot could dominate the battlefield without putting himself in much danger. Snipers could position themselves at strategic positions and only really have to worry about enemy snipers and vehicles. Close-quarters combat would be nearly nonexistant, and most engagements would be fought by eliminating all opposition from afar, and then slowly walking in to take over enemy bases.

But to improve the game, they've added respawning. They've lowered the flight ceiling so that everyone knows there's a jet around at all times, and so that anti-air could be a bit more effective. The battlefield is limited in landscape size so that the entire battle is focused around a few choke points. All of this has been done to improve the game experience; to make engagements between you and an enemy happen often, and with both players understanding that there's an engagement.

This last part is especially important. Games that have lots of 1v1 battles within a larger game are popular. I think it has to do with the adrenaline rush you get when you're walking around, spot an enemy, the enemy spots you, and it's a short one-versus-one match to the death, followed by the victor running off to find another target to kill. Even in games that aren't as fast-paced (ArmA, DayZ), these moments make the game. Nobody likes walking around and suddenly dying because an enemy shot you in the face without you being able to do anything about it. People like being put against an enemy and trying to out-skill him.

Now think about what happens if the damage model becomes more realistic. The first person to fire a bullet will have a far greater advantage, and will win a lot more engagements. Engagements will also be a lot shorter: the first proper hit will be fatal or incapacitating enough so that the opponent can't do anything anymore. Although this can be quite interesting and exciting (high tension level), it changes the entire nature of the game significantly.

In engagements where one person is left crippled, and the other is left dead, the game may become rather annoying. If the game has respawning, this means that even though one person was the victor of an engagement, his crippled state means that he'll spend the next few moments in the game being bored/annoyed at his character's health, especially if he has a broken bone and can't move effectively around the battlefield. The loser of the engagement died and lost the engagement, but he's able to respawn into a fresh body and continue to have fun! So, really, who was the victor in that engagement? The one who died, or the one who got crippled?

So, only having a realistic damage model in a multiplayer shooter won't really work, as respawning becomes an issue. Introducing a new feature (the realistic damage model) broke another. So now this problem has to be fixed, perhaps by removing respawning altogether, which will in turn create another problem (people being bored after dying). And so on, and so forth.

Perhaps there is a nice solution for this, but I doubt that it'll be able to break into mainstream multiplayer gaming, and I bet that these games with truly realistic damage models will continue to be a niche.