Do you prefer lots of guns, or a few?

[Brian Boru]

I'm definitely in the few camp here. Don't give me a dozen shotguns, sniper rifles and handguns, along with 2 dozen assault rifles. I want to play, not spend an hour looking over the stats. When changing loadouts, I want to make a quick swap and be on my way, and be able to quickly swap back again next outing.

However, I often see reviews and comments criticizing a game for having a poor selection of weapons, so obviously a large selection is a thing. Please help me understand what the appeal is.

I do wish games had an option to hide weapons in the selection process, that would help a lot.

 

[Lutfij]

Borderlands was one title that had a LOT of gunz...Neo would be jelly if he was in that title. Perhaps the immense array of arsenal let's you choose how your victim get's to say dasviDAniya?

 

[Brian Boru]

"16,164,886 guns in Borderlands"

Yup, that's a lot!

 

[Alm]

I like unlocking a few guns while progressing in a game like Doom. I can understand the annoyance of looting weapons of differing stats off each enemy sort of like The Division. Maybe an auto function to select the best statted weapons would be a good option for some.

 

[ZedClampet]

I like a large selection of weapons. Honestly, I enjoy playing with my loadout more than I enjoy shooting baddies. There are other examples of things some would consider busy work that I enjoy. In survival horror games, you have very limited inventory space and you can only select certain items to take with you. Even though ammo is limited, you frequently have to make tough choices on that, too. I love that inventory management. But back to your question, looter shooters, which are enormously popular these days, usually have an extreme number of different weapons (or a few different weapons with a lot of different versions with different stats). In The Division 2, my favorite thing was coming back to the HQ and sorting through all the stuff I'd picked up on my last outing, mostly weapons and armor pieces.

Same thing goes with skills and abilities. I finally decided, after going back and forth, that I really didn't care for Far Cry 6. One of the main reasons is because they got rid of leveling and skill points. And, you'll be glad to know, the selection of weapons is crap. They aren't worth looking through. I've used the same 3 guns basically since the beginning. That's boring to me.

For me, loadouts, inventories, deciding skill paths, etc. is the only reason I still play shooters at all.

 

[Johnway]

Personally i prefer to use a few or at the very least use justify their existence. I like to have fewer so that i can reach them on my keyboard. Anything beyond 6 and i 'm going to struggle to reach them without letting go of the keyboard.

I remember playing the russian overkill mod on doom 2 and that annoyed me no end. it was just jock full of guns, so many you had to scroll through keys to reach them and under pressure its a juggling act and it was frustrating attributing to a couple of deaths.

 

[Brian Boru]

an auto function to select the best statted weapons

I like that option! You prioritize your top-3 stats—say Damage, Range, Accuracy—and game tells you how latest available pick-up compares to what you have. One of the annoying things about my recent brief reacquaintance with Crysis 3 was dead guys with different guns, while a chopper was trying to reroute my blood supply—ie no chance to linger and gaze in wonder.

favorite thing … sorting through all the stuff

I'm the opposite, as per OP
I'm like you in the busy work dept, it's just diff busy work I enjoy—eg going after all the side quests and collectibles, whatever gets me out in new areas of the world. Or just wandering looking for unnecessary trouble.

Far Cry 6 … got rid of leveling and skill

That's a shame indeed, I enjoy those aspects a lot, plus the base building they introduced in Primal and New Dawn. Oh well, I'll pick it up in a year or two at a deep discount.

I don't think it helps you, but fyi anyway: the folks who made the wonderful Resistance Mod packager for FC5 have made a very similar Libertad Mod for FC6. Might be worth checking once or twice a year as more mods become available in it.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I get tired of loot in some games and not in others, a decent level of loot in most isometric type RPGs is definitely a plus point, but Diablo levels of item splurge doesn't suit every game. Same applies to shooters, Borderlands loot in Doom would ruin it, and a standardized weapon loadout in Borderlands wouldnt work either.

So, my usual answer. It depends. I like it all in the right context.

 

[ZedClampet]

I don't think it helps you, but fyi anyway: the folks who made the wonderful Resistance Mod packager for FC5 have made a very similar Libertad Mod for FC6. Might be worth checking once or twice a year as more mods become available in it.

With all the game modding I've done through the years, it's odd I've never modded a Far Cry game. Looks like there aren't a lot of mods yet, but I'll keep checking back.

The bases, btw, are the best thing (for me) in FC6. It's not nearly as fleshed out as in New Dawn, but you have maybe six types of. stations that you can put in different bases. You have bases, or hideouts, all over the place. So you pick which bases to put your stations in, like a fishing station or a cooking station, and then you go back to that base whenever you want to use the station there or improve that station. They aren't really that helpful, honestly, except for the cooking, and it was bugged and not working correctly. But, theoretically, you could go hunting for particular animals, come back and cook them and get buffs that lasted for a few hours.

 

[Pifanjr]

So, my usual answer. It depends. I like it all in the right context.

Exactly, it really depends on the game and how well it is executed.

 

[mainer]

I don't play a lot of strictly shooter-type games (gods, how many posts have I made starting with that statement), regardless, I'd like to reference Fallout 4 when it comes to gun variety.

Fallout 4 is still an RPG, though many people consider it more of a shooter (and it certainly can be played that way), and there weren't that many "base" guns, but you were able to do so much with the crafting system (even un-modded), that you could tailor almost any gun to suit your playstyle.

Find a little pipe pistol, take it to a workbench, add a new barrel, receiver, scope; or some cans, glass, asbestos and you could have a scoped sniper rifle that would last you for hours. Or make it into an automatic sub-machinegun.

So that would be my preference in a shooter or shooter type game: a few base weapon types, but the ability to mod & change those to my preferred playstyle. To me that overrides having too few guns, or way too many, with the ability to modify what you find to your character.

 

[Frindis]

I'm with @mainer on the modding part. There is not much point with a gazillion weapons, like in the Borderlands series when 99,99% of them are absolute garbage. Sure, loot explosions can be perdy to look at and different colored beams (I really like when you can color them) can be a visual cum laude.

Dying Light 2 I'm looking forward to since you need to spend some time crafting/customizing weapons and some weapons will break easier depending on what materials you use. This way the weapons will always seem fresh, as you pick up new components and mix them up with something new, like a baseball bat with barbed wire Neagan bludgeoning style blueprint.

 

[Brian Boru]

a few base weapon types, but the ability to mod & change those to my preferred playstyle

Perfect!

 

[Withywarlock]

I prefer fewer, especially if they each have a distinct purpose like the shooters of old. The gatling gun did the same damage as a pistol but it fired more rounds per second; the shotgun was instakill up close but useless at range; the sniper rifle the opposite; the grenade launcher being a slower physics based weapon but had explosive, instant killing power upon a hit, etc.

The problem isn't so much a greater amount of weapons, but a mind-boggling lack of information. See the below picture (from the aforementioned link) and tell me what the meaningful differences in damage are, besides those numbers?

Because when I shoot someone, the numbers "180, 180, 180, 180" do not pop out of their head. The numbers "336, 336, 336, 336" didn't either. What does an accuracy of 4 versus 75 mean? 75% of my sustained fire will hit? Out of how many rounds? The 63 shots per overheat, making that 47?

At least Mass Effect provides numbers. Below is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)'s weapon stats look like:

That bottom left corner with the bars is the most context you get for your weapon's performance out of play. In play, those bars mean diddly squat. This question goes for all developers who use a system that isn't ThAC0 or whatever: do you know what that information means? Like, if I were to show you only those bars, could you tell me what that weapon is, does, and how that affects an enemy player (because health numbers aren't known outside of Black Ops)? This is far more helpful, and surprisingly The Outer Worlds did something similar.

Meanwhile, Baldur's Gate - which once upon a time I was part of the unwashed masses who couldn't get into it - has a very simple equation for working out your damage: Attacker's ThAC0 - Defender's AC = [minimum number on the dice required to hit] . Meanwhile, its contempories such as Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Roleplaying Game had information a little along the lines of this:

I apologise for such a long rant, but I thought I'd get to the core of it.

TL;DR - A smörgåsbord of guns is absolutely fine so long as there's a tangible, measurable difference between them all that can be seen at a glance.

 

[Brian Boru]

In play, those bars mean diddly squat

As a relative newbie to shooters, I regard the bars as relative indicators—eg if the damage bar is double another gun, then it should deal twice the damage. Is that not usually the case?

 

[Withywarlock]

As a relative newbie to shooters, I regard the bars as relative indicators—eg if the damage bar is double another gun, then it should deal twice the damage. Is that not usually the case?

I honestly don't know at this point, it varies from game to game. Like I say, without knowing the numbers I can't begin to make an educated guess. Especially as modern shooters become more advanced with bullet velocity, damage ranges, and many other factors (time-to-kill, or TTK being the ultimate factor; in a game where you can die to three bullets to centre mass, who's to say how much the difference a bit of the bar makes?)

Once upon a time, double the bar might well have meant double the damage/range/accuracy and so forth, but there's so many new factors to take into account that I'm not sure what they mean any more. I genuinely believe developers don't know either, which is why they have such a ballache trying to achieve balance.

 

[Mazer]

Part of me really misses the old-school FPS trope of filling in your number keys from left to right throughout the campaign.

You know what I mean, you start with a melee weapon and a basic pistol in keys 1 and 2, maybe get a submachine gun or assault rifle in 3 after a level or two, then as the numbers fill in the weapons on offer get increasingly bizarre or overpowered. It was always exciting waiting to see what was going to be in keys 9 or 0, and always super disappointing when it was something as unimaginative as a rocket launcher.

 

[McStabStab]

I don't care about the qty of guns, I care about how I can customize them. I relish in games like Escape From Tarkov where I can make a rifle with three scopes, four flashlights, no stock, and a pistol grip.

Take a game like Control - one gun, multiple options for customization. I loved the Titanfall 2 campaign, but I loved the weapons and gear even more when I could toss different scopes on in Apex Legends.

Let me add and remove attachments and I'm happy man.

 

[Zloth]

You know what I mean, you start with a melee weapon and a basic pistol in keys 1 and 2, maybe get a submachine gun or assault rifle in 3 after a level or two...

Shotgun is 3. Always 3. If I'm playing a wizard, the first AoE power goes on key 3. Doom taught me this, and so shall it ever be.

 

[Mazer]

Shotgun is 3. Always 3. If I'm playing a wizard, the first AoE power goes on key 3. Doom taught me this, and so shall it ever be.

I still put close range attacks/weapons/spells in 3 as well! In fact I seem to recall seeing a thread online ages ago where someone was complaining about a game putting an assault rifle in 3 and the shotgun in 4 or 5 and they were livid.