作者：Josh Bycer

在之前关于敌人的文章中，我提到了角色如何独自对抗一整支军队。在过去一代游戏中，除了像Marcus Fenix以及Master Chief等士兵角色，还有其他角色需要面临这种疯狂的情境。如Nathan Drake和Lara Croft，就像Lara的职业原本只是考古学家，但是最后却会变成职业杀手。

而较为奇怪的一环便在于，这些看似正常且从未使用过武器的人是如何拥有像士兵那般高超的技能和精确度。在《古墓丽影》和《孤岛惊魂3》中，为了让玩家真正感受到主角们的成长，我们可以发现他们在执行第一次杀人任务后都具有明显的不安情绪。

但是他们总是能够很快恢复而花几个小时的时间以极高的精确度去射击目标。这种懊悔感再也未曾出现于之后的游戏中，而我们脆弱的主角也瞬间变成了名义般的士兵。

我知道第一次的感受总是很让人震惊，但是你也会想他们在射死100个人后肯定会做出某种解释。

尽管政治家和家长们会说：电子游戏并不会训练你如何用枪。但是它们却能够帮助你提高反应力和手指力量，而在现实生活中射击与在游戏中的开枪并无关系。那些认为现实生活中熟悉枪支使用的人也能够在电子游戏中快速精通射击的想法真的很可笑。

还有很多现实元素是电子游戏玩家未曾考虑过的：枪支的重量，重装，关闭的安全锁，卡壳，风，噪音甚至是火药的味道等等。只花一天时间便想成为神射手是不可能的事，这需要你花费大量时间才能实现。

所以当回到电子游戏中，我们总是无法理解像Lara Croft那样的射击新手是如何在短短的几天时间里便变成了一名专业的女射击手，或者Nathan Drake突然掌握了强大技能并成为了雇佣兵去执行杀人任务。

这种游戏玩法是关于设计师实现玩家能力幻想的另一种方法。大多数玩家都不愿意玩那些角色不能射中车库边侧的射击游戏。这也是近来军事基地类多人射击游戏越发受欢迎的一大原因，即让玩家可以使用现实生活中不可能触及的武器相互射击。

如果我们所面对的是更加现实的射击游戏便会更加有趣，即游戏角色在一开始并不是神射手，而是在之后不断地提高自己的射击能力。这种提高环节引出了另一个点，即这是我们想要快速略过的内容。

TombRaiderGameInformer（from game-wisdom）

Lara Croft从受害人转变成幸存者以及神射手与Nathan Drake单独抗击整个军事集团一样不现实。

对于那些强调主角尝试着自谋生路的游戏（游戏邦注：如恐怖游戏），未让角色在游戏过程中提高自己的能力与成为神射手一样不现实。

如果你因为正在使用之前从未接触过的武器抗击怪物，你便会在几个小时的防御后开始掌握主动权。

让我们从枪支的使用转向携带枪支的不现实描述中。

以前的射击游戏总是会让主角背着一个深不见底的背包：他们可以泰然地从中掏出散枪，火箭发射器，迷你枪等等。

而在过去十年里，设计师们决定对此进行限制：要么主角总共只拥有2种武器，要么是2种武器加上一把并不强大的候补枪。现在，即使设置限制标志着我们朝着现实性的发展，但是这种限制也仍具有非现实性。

让我们举个简单的例子：在现实中，在背包/枪套中，手枪所占据的空间不可能和狙击步枪一样大。这种对于武器携带的限制将推动着玩家做出最艰难的决定。

当需要执行狙击任务时，你总是想要携带长射程的枪支。而当你面对的是大量敌人时，你便会用一些炸药去取代长射程武器。这两种武器所存在的缺陷便在于会限制玩家获得不同武器体验的机会。

当玩家发现两种武器刚好与自己喜欢的类别相吻合时，他们便没有理由去尝试其它武器了。较为糟糕的情况是，玩家扔下一个武器并发现附近根本没有自己所需要的武器。

FarCry3Steam（from game-wisdom）

不管这一代的游戏看起来多么现实，关于握枪，开枪以及携带枪支等的描述都还是不现实的。

这种武器囤积与RPG游戏的道具囤积类似：即使在最需要的时刻玩家也不会使用相关武器，因为他们害怕将会出现更加迫切的时刻。

这在RPG游戏射击中并不是一种合适的游戏玩法，在射击游戏中也是如此。

就像在玩《生化危机》时，我总是会用尽枪支的弹药，并尝试着转换成可能拖延时间的不同枪支。但是当你开始升级特定的枪支时，你将会因为转换枪支而受到惩罚。

在现实生活中携带枪支有两种现实元素。首先，也是我们之前所提到的，不同武器所占领的空间是不同的：特别是手枪的设计特色便是较轻且容易携带。关于人们携带了导弹发射器和短枪后便不能携带手枪的说法并不存在合理的解释。

其次，对于士兵或经受严格训练之人来说，他们的服装设计不仅能够方便所需武器的携带，同时也能容纳像附加弹片，手榴弹以及预备武器等。我们在许多现代射击游戏中所看到的最低弹药数总是与真正危险情况下人们所携带的弹药数相矛盾。

还有一个元素便是，许多游戏都在好人或坏人所使用的突击步枪，短枪以及手枪中设置了“枪疯”功能。在标准的警察厅或军事机构中，每个人都会配备同样高质量的武器，而让6人群组中的每一名成员使用不同的武器则是没有意义的。

我们希望射抢能够像敌人设计那样获得重生。我同样也希望看到在更多多人射击游戏中，跳到空中发射短枪将不再是一种固定的战略设置。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

5 Realistic Fallacies in Game Design: Weapons

By Josh Bycer

Talk Softly and Go on Murderous Rampages:

In my earlier part about enemies, I talked about how the main character was tasked with taking out an army by themselves. Over the last generation besides seeing soldiers like Marcus Fenix and Master Chief, there have been several regular people thrown into these crazy situations. Characters like Nathan Drake and (rebooted) Lara Croft who may be archeologist by trade, nevertheless become expert killers.

The odd part is how quickly these seemingly regular people go from rarely using a weapon, to having the same accuracy and skill as a marine. In both Tomb Raider and Far Cry 3, both main characters felt very uneasy after their first kill in order to make you feel invested in their growth.

But they immediately go from 0 to 60 and spend the next several hours shooting anything and everything with pinpoint accuracy. Those feelings of remorse were never mentioned again and our vulnerable main character became the titular one man (or woman) army.

I understand that the first time was the most shocking, but you would think that some part of their conscious would say something after they just wiped out 100 men with shots to the head.

Despite what politicians and parents groups say: video games do not train you to use a gun. While they do help with reflexes and finger strength, shooting a gun in real life has no relation to firing one in game. Anyone who thinks that the quick progress of gun mastery seen in video games is anyway related to real life is crazy.

There are a lot of real world factors that someone who plays video games would never have to consider: weight of the gun, reloading and turning the safety off, weapon jams, wind, noise and even just the smell of gunpowder. Becoming a skilled marksman is not something that happens in one day, but can take a very long time to achieve.

Going back to video games, there is no way that someone like Lara Croft who was a novice at firing a gun , spent a few days on an island and became a master marks-woman. Or how Nathan Drake was somehow better skilled then paid mercenaries who kill for a living.

This gameplay trope is yet another example of designers fulfilling the power fantasy for the audience. Most people wouldn’t want to play a shooter where their character couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. This is part of the popularity of the recent surge of military based multiplayer shooters, allowing gamers to run around blasting each other with weapons they would probably never use in real life.

It would be interesting to see a more down-to-earth shooter, where the characters aren’t master marksmen from the beginning and have to improve themselves. The improvement part brings up another point that I want to go over quickly.

Lara Croft’s transformation from victim to master survivalist and marksman is just as unrealistic as Nathan Drake’s one-man assault on military companies.

For games that feature regular characters trying to fend for themselves such as horror titles, it is just as unrealistic as being a marksmen as having the character never improve over the course of the game.

If you were stuck fighting monsters using guns you never used before, you would start to pick things up after a few hours of fending for your life.

Let’s move on from talking about using guns to the unrealistic depiction of carrying them.

The Limits Of Magic Pockets:

In the old days of shooters it was common for the main character to have a bottomless backpack: Where they could carry shotguns, rocket launchers, mini-guns and so on with impunity.

As we moved into the last decade designers decided to crack down on this with a limit: Either two weapons total, or two weapons plus a weak backup gun. Now, while having a limit is a sign of moving forward in terms of realism, the limits in place today are still unrealistic.

Let’s get the easy one out of the way: It is physically impossible in our Universe that a handgun would somehow take up the same space as a sniper rifle in someone’s backpack/holster/whatever. The arbitrary limit on carrying weapons was supposed to force the player to make tough decisions, but it does anything but.

Most of the time you want to carry a short to mid range gun backed up by a long range weapon for sniping.  In cases where you’re dealing with heavy enemies, replace the long range weapon with something explosive. The problem with this two weapon limit is that it more often than not, restricts the player from experimenting with the variety of weapons.

Once the player has found two weapons that fit the categories that they like, there is no reason to try something else. Or even worse, the player drops a weapon and finds themselves in a position where they need it but there are none nearby.

No matter how realistic looking games have gotten this generation, the act of holding, firing and carrying guns is still portrayed unrealistically.

This weapon hoarding draws a parallel to RPG item hoarding: Where the player will not use items when they need to, on fear that something more pressing will come down the line.

It wasn’t good gameplay in RPG design and the same can be said for shooters.

Playing through Bioshock Infinite, I was consistently running out of ammo for the guns I was using and trying to switch to a different gun would just delay the inevitable. Once you started upgrading specific weapons, you would be further punished for switching due to not having the advantages of the specific weapon type.

There are two realism elements to carrying weapons in real-life. First is the already mentioned fact that different weapons don’t take up the same amount of space: Especially a hand-gun which was designed to be lightweight and easily carried. There is no rational reason why someone would not be able to carry a handgun if they are already somehow carrying a missile launcher and a shotgun.

Second, for military or swat trained personal their apparel is designed to not only easily carry the weapons they need, but also secondary items like additional clips, grenades and any backup weapons.  The low ammo counts we see in a lot of modern shooters contradict the amount of ammo someone going into a dangerous situation would carry.

Another aspect is the fact that many games seem to go “gun crazy” putting in multiple assault rifles, shotguns, pistols etc that the bad or good guys would use. In any standard police or military outfit, everyone is usually outfitted with the same high quality weapons and having a six man group using six different weapons doesn’t make sense.

Shooting guns, like enemy design is something else that I would like to see a redesign of for new series. And I would like to see more multiplayer shooters where jumping in the air firing a shotgun, is not a valid tactic.(source:game-wisdom)