Ideas for FPS games

[ray245]

We have a ideas or innovation for RTS games thread, perhaps we can discuss about what new ideas FPS can have. Personally, I think there should be a open-ended sandbox WW2 game. Instead of having one big map with soldiers spread all around, the 5 by 5 KM map is a historical battleground, like the battle of Kursk for example.

In the game, you are in command of a company, and the company is able to have decent AI without having the need to micro-manage. So, you will be in the huge battleground where the battle is being fought. Almost everywhere on the map, there is chaos and huge amounts of troops fighting each other, like call of duty series. You have a overall commander AI system, which is there to decides on the battle plan, calling for troops reinforcment on a certain areas where it is needed, conduct flanking manauvers and so on.

However, you can choose to explore around the entire battlefield with your company following you, reinforcing places where it is needed as missions, lead your conduct and conduct a flanking manauver if needed, attack the enemy supplies and so on.

In the end, the battle isn't being decided by the actions of your squads alone, as people fighting usually makes a tiny or small impact that matters only on the grand scale. Hence you do not need to constantly rush from place to place, however, your units can ensure that you win the battle with less lost and so on.


Basically, a GTA, Crysis or Far cry like game, except for the fact that you are in the middle of a war, and all around the map, there is troops on both sides fighting against each other, and the battles all over the map is intense, and there is no real boring momment.

When you move from one point of the battle to another point, you can see units from other companies fighting, tanks trucks and etc moving all around, artillery and air strikes pounding each other.


Basically allow you to be in a battle, a battle that has a truly huge scope, and the ability to move around as you wish on the map.

Imagine a D-Day map, instead of having to load and have a story-line approach, you can actually has the ability to move from place to place on the map itself, the whole of normandy, and finds lots of fighting all over the game or map.


Combining the best of Crysis, Far cry, call of duty and those rainbow six games. A sandbox game that is set in a battle! With thousands of troops fighting all over the map!

[Zixinus]

Well, if I were to dream...

Play as a Punisher-style superhero with a bit less guns and more brawns. Instead of just massacring hordes and hordes and hordes of gangmembers, you actually have some conscience and you work your way to help the uncorrupted part of the police to do their job. Of course, this is a comic-book level of realism and a shooter after all, so our hero is some sort of superhuman that is powerful enough to repetitively survive shoot-outs with gangs but not powerful enough for you to fear it. So the hero can come and start killing hordes of gangsters, however the key that it serves a point: shooting gang members on the street archives nothing. Shooting gang members on the street will archive you nothing but trouble and the title of murderer. Shooting gang members while they make an important deal with an influential Russian arms dealer contact (whom you carefully avoid shooting, or at least not all of his escort) will do something. Why? Because the growing gang will suddenly be infamous (by criminal standards) and without a direct supply of weapons, thus weakening them from more than one side.

The key would be allowing you to set up the location and freedom to choose tactics.

Say, this scenario? Typical meeting in the docks-type of thing. You will have to sneak past the already existing security and plant your assault: you can place bombs, you can smuggle in health-kits or other useful items in to your location for convenient use. You can place booby-traps, sabotage equipment or even mere terrain to your advantage.

A key feature I often find myself looking for in various FPS or shooter games, is customizability of your weapon. Putting various shit on my gun to pimp it out makes it feel MY gun rather than just A gun. Stuff like silencers, laser pointers, various telescopic mounts, extended magazines or even grenade launchers and bayonets. All useful to some extent. Like, say, the XM-206, just to engage in some rudimentary gun-wanking. Ever wanted to have the accuracy and fire-power of an assault rifle but also wanted to have the simplicity of a shotgun for corridors? Here's this.

It may sound like giving too much power to the player, but remember, this is one guy going against several, so any advantage given is useful.

The idea is to allow players to come up with their own ideas and tactics, being apparently clever but all intended along the way.

Like, busting the fusebox so criminals will suddenly find themselves in pitch-black darkness instead of their well-illuminated warehouse while you have brought along a silenced weapon and night vision goggles. Or, you know, just blow the whole place to smithereens with some hidden explosives and mow down any survivors with your assault rifle with an under-barrel grenade launcher.

On second thought, why not be a spy set on destroying a powerful organization that gets allot of money from crime? You would be rated between "One-man army" and "Shadow", according to your playstlye.

Another example. A coke shipment is coming in. What do you do? Do you kill every fucking one or just burn down the coke shipment? Both will archive allot, but if you make it look like if the problem is mostly within the criminals than you, you can cause much internal chaos. Of course, the news of one guy single-handily wiping out entire hordes will make any gang member rethink his membership status.

[Covenant]

Please, no more WWII games, and especially not Normandy. It's gotten so bad that there are probably more fictional soldiers having fought Normandy by this point than real ones. Even if you wanted to though, soldiers didn't just mill around aimlessly looking for Germans to punch holes in, so any WWII game would include a command structure that has someone telling you what to do. That is, unless, you want to make a game called "Desertion." It just wouldn't work out logically, and plus, the AI requirements would utterly murder your peformance--and despite what people say, keeping the physical constraints in mind is not antithetical to being creative and coming up with ideas.

I think you also need to target your terms. BioShock was marketed as a shooter, but it was probably the most braindead simple shooter I've ever played, so as a FPS it was a dismal failure, but was an interesting first-person RPG. If you want to make a hybrid, fine. But if you're making a straight-up FPS game the shooter elements should not be interfered with by an unnecessary plot contrivance or enforced stealth and so forth. An espionage game is fine, but that's an entirely different sort of game. That may be nitpicking but I do see genre-specific differences between a Metal Gear Solid/Splinter Cell game and a standard Quake/Halo shooter that should really exclude the hybrids from being called a FPS.

Honestly, I think that diluting the shooter elements with more hybridization helps other mediums more than the shooters, but the most essential kinds of innovation needed in a shooter is the inclusion of more variety in the primary method of play--shooting. We can add as many other elements as the game can handle, but the essential experience is still point and click death. If the weapons became something other than just differently shaped damage hoses, such as a game where your entire arsenal consisted of the Portal Gun, the Garry's Mod Physics Welder, Quake's Grapple Axe, and a box of blobs from World of Goo... then you might see a bit more innovation. Shooters suffer not from a lack of plot (HL2), open environs (Crysis) or unnecessary restraints on who you may kill and where, but from a lack of ingenuity in actual shooter gameplay. Fracture was one of the few games to actually take this idea and make something of it, but it turned it's terrain modification into a nearly-worthless gimmick element instead of an actual primary play method.

I am definately not encouraging every game to become Portal puzzle shooters, but I think it important to take gimmick devices out of their context and give them a wider application in a context where there is no puzzle solution to the problem, with an easily available A+B=Victory style setup. In Portal you always have what you need to beat the puzzle. In HL2, anytime you have a Gravity Gun physics puzzle, you have all the bits there you need. That's limiting the usefulness. Just make the gimmick devices very adaptable, don't provide any obvious solutions to the problems, and let players work it out. We've seen so many new shooters come out with new design elements, plots, stats, hidden things, unlockables, etc, without a single real innovation in gameplay itself. A few funny gizmos occasionally, but it all boils down to a puzzle device and not an actual innovative experience. That's where the most cleverness is needed.

[Joviwan]

What I'd most be interested in is less on-a-rails storyline. There doesn't seemed to be too many FPS's who's story doesn't resolve the same way every single time. I want a story that changes based on who I blow up or what I kill or what objectives I achieve in mission. I'm not asking for sandbox, I don't care too much about being a super soldier who can eat rockets or someone who blows over in a stiff breeze as long as the engine supports solid, fun shooting. But give me a cohesive storyline that I can affect the outcome of! It'd encourage me to play your game more than once, goddammit. And none of this "one or the other" crap. I'd be more engaged in the world if I thought I was having an effect on it other than "You shots lots of dudes, here's the ends."

[Stark]

I'd be curious to see multi ideas transfer to a single-player FPS; the concepts used in multiplayer tactical shooters (ie, small detailed map, flexibility in achieving broad objectives, no downtime due to round-based nature, etc) would make a fine 'episodic' FPS where you're put into a series of widely separated situations with your xyz and your abc to achieve blah blah. It'd be easier to make a proper flexible story in this way too, and I'm not convinced the current trend towards huge maps is always a good thing. Multiplayer shooters have a lot of 'drop in, drop out' appeal that is lacking in most SP shooters, and in a decent campaign framework you could have a changing story and all the 'team management' silliness. Call it 'World in Crysis' and have it be able superpowered guys killing terrorists or aliens all over the world in short tactical phases. Silent Storm with a Crosshair. UFO: Ironsights Unknown. SWAT5 - medal of duty heroes!

[Zixinus]

If the weapons became something other than just differently shaped damage hoses, such as a game where your entire arsenal consisted of the Portal Gun, the Garry's Mod Physics Welder, Quake's Grapple Axe, and a box of blobs from World of Goo... then you might see a bit more innovation.

I am reminded of my sci-fi fiction I'm slowly forming and writing.

In it, inspired by the OICW's "computerized sight", I had the idea that most standard-issue gear for soldiers is a computer that handles ballistics for you and rather than relying on some optics on your weapon, every weapon only needs a small tube filled with various sensors that will allow you to know where your bullet, slug, laser blast, granade, rocket-bullet, etc will go as soon as you hit the trigger.

Essentially, players would not see just "aim and click" thing, but combine this with intelligence-gathering and the like, this would create a genuine tactical element, in theory anyway.

What I have in mind is something like Tribes but the grenade launches suddenly becomes a overhead-field suppression device rather than the 1334 kid's favourite n00b pwner

Let me elaborate: Imagine that you have a slight, holographic beam projecting out of your weapon (well, on your helmet visor/retina implant) to show where and how will it impact. It will do so with allies and, if you have the necessary prerequisites, the enemy's will be shown too.

A rocket's path and blast radius is appearent. So is the thin but precise line of fire of a sniper rifle or the widening cone of a chaingun/machine gun.

Now, add some interesting dodge-moves, technologies and abilites (various forms of jetpacks?) and I think we may have an interesting game or the potential for one. Well, on paper anyway.

In multiplayer, intelligence assets like satellites will genuinely matter, camouflage can mean the difference between a good sniper or a bad one. Teams will be more forced to work together, as playing Rambo will get your ass wiped faster than you can say "toilet paper". Why? Defenders will know that you are coming, they will know how to avoid your weapon before you can even use them.

Of course, it might still be just a gimmick, but hey. It's just an idea.

[Stark]

Yes, what FPS games need is more gimmicks, and absurd yet irrelevant backstories.

Did you design FEAR, by any chance?

[Covenant]

I am reminded of my sci-fi fiction I'm slowly forming and writing.
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Of course, it might still be just a gimmick, but hey. It's just an idea.

It shouldn't be gimmicks. Consider for a moment that despite how fancy you dress up the weapon-swapping function, even a gun that changes modes is basically the same as the weapon hotbar we had back in Doom. The only difference is that I press 2 to select burst mode instead of pull out my Uzi. Disregard the window dressing and it's still the same experience. Adding a few one-off items that are only functional when the game designers create a need for them and you end up with a bunch of samey bullshit ways to throw a bullet at the enemy (in a rainbow of colors) and the one gizmo you're constantly forced to use.

Many times they'll had a few gizmos which are basically only used in those areas where it's really abundantly clear they can be used, or you tailor the entire game to working with your specific hardware allotment. That's very poor design and not at all what I mean. And if you want to add radar and squad control stuff, fine, but we're still basically using a type of gunplay dynamic that hasn't changed one iota since Wolfenstein 3D. That's where we really need the innovation, and that's what I meant. We need less gimmicky puzzle bullshit breaking up the shooter elements, and to just let people use the creative weapons more often, rather than shoehorning it in at a few points and rendering it useless everywhere else.

We're essentially trying to improve the wheel by adding more and more things to the wheel, rather than building a better wheel itself. I'm really suprised that nobody has ever wanted more from a FPS than an irrelevent story, some bullshit puzzle stuff, and just more of the same point-and-click death. We might as well just be playing different GUI's for the same game.

[Stark]

I wasn't addressing that to you; your post was pretty clear on how interesting features should be implemented and integrated from the ground up so as to NOT be gimmicks.

Regarding the genre being stale, it's interesting to note that the features people get excited about are generally not related to the actual business of shooting people; in Crysis it was the big world and the superpowers, and Far Cry it's the framework provided for the player, and so on. Games that are just 'moar shootin' are generally twitch-shooters like Halo or UT3, and that end of the genre is definately stale. Little tweaks to dps and mag size and blast radius aren't really big sellers - deformable terrain, fire, and AI are, which almost suggests to me that most FPS players don't know WHAT they want since they demand moar shotin but the interesting part is really the new knobs on the old wheel.

[Covenant]

I wasn't addressing that to you; your post was pretty clear on how interesting features should be implemented and integrated from the ground up so as to NOT be gimmicks.

Regarding the genre being stale, it's interesting to note that the features people get excited about are generally not related to the actual business of shooting people; in Crysis it was the big world and the superpowers, and Far Cry it's the framework provided for the player, and so on. Games that are just 'moar shootin' are generally twitch-shooters like Halo or UT3, and that end of the genre is definately stale. Little tweaks to dps and mag size and blast radius aren't really big sellers - deformable terrain, fire, and AI are, which almost suggests to me that most FPS players don't know WHAT they want since they demand moar shotin but the interesting part is really the new knobs on the old wheel.

Dammit Stark, you posted too fast. I tried to clarify my post to make it clear I was addressing Zin, not you.

I agree though, as my post should be clear about. The actual business of killing people is the exact same damn experience every time, and if you stripped the game of all the context and asked people what it played like, they wouldn't know the difference between a new Halo game and a new Duke Nukem game. In game terms, the bullet is the unit of damage you do. The way it works is always pretty basic, and there's nearly always version of the unholy weapon bar: melee, pistol, shotgun, uzi, sniper, bazooka, and gizmo.

If we could change that, so people actually dealt with shooting in a different way--and not through forcing stealth or tactical dismemberment bullshit--then you may have some real innovation that would keep the gameplay of a shooter pure enough that everyone would play it like a shooter (and not like a hyrbid or a puzzle shooter) but feel that they were doing something new and exciting, even if the setting and enemy lineup was bland.

[wautd]

I always loved to see a FPS which let you play as the Silencer (Crusader: No Remorse & No Regret). Maybe it's me but firing a 5 rps rocket launcher in a completely destructible environment seems like a good stress-relief.

[Zor]

Howabout this...

1-Take your gun toating action hero
2-Give him/her along with conventional weaponry an Apature Science Portal Gun

For a rough basic concept.

Zor

[Stark]

Yeah that's a good example of fucking terrible, gimmick-driven game design thanks Zod. lol!

[Zixinus]

Stark, Covenant, did you read the rest of my post besides the first and last line?

I'm calling it a possible gimmick because I don't know how much this idea would impact gameplay or shooter experience. It might change it entirely or might be just a gimmick. I don't know because you would have to see how it works in a gameplay and whether players would truly notice and take advantage of the thing.

And you are asking how to invent something that changes how people shoot in shooters. How do we reinvent the wheel? Call me mad, but there is the issue that its just too damn simple: point and click.

You propose that we should be given more fancy weapons that are useful. OK. Let me blurt out a few things.

Well, on the top of my had, let me point to Tron 2.0. In it, your main weapon was a disk that you could throw and augment to your taste. You could recall it mid-flight and block incoming disks at you right back into the enemy's face.
Of course, later you could get a machine-gun like thingy, a machine-gun thingy and a grenade-like thingy. But really, the disk was very fun to play with.
Modify it a bit and I think you could create a truly awesome weapon.

Now let me think of something of my own... hmm...

Gun combos.

Essentially, give the ability for the player to not only just shoot and aim the gun, but to do combos by taking advantage of the terrain and environment.

Stranglehold did try to focus on stylistically killing enemies but it only did so with a few moves and doing stuff like shooting people from a moving tray or while sliding down a rail.

What I have in mind is something of a mix between slow-mo, quick-time events and well, let me just describe the scenario.

Skyline. Normally, you aim from it and steady on the first guy and shoot him. Than you shoot another guy while moving so you won't catch a bullet. If you are smart, you might drop a grenade too and won't drop down the skyline until you know its safe.

Enter gun-combos. You simply drop down and have a dynamic sequence where you drop unto the table and select targets. Once you run out of ammo, you don't reload but instead aim at the nearest guy, grab him and use him as a meat shield. If you the meat shield has too many bullet holes, you could throw the meat-shield towards an enemy and jump over cover.

Or, say you are about to enter a door: in a regular FPS you just open it, perhaps drop in a few grenades and shot from leaning at the doorway.

In a gun-combo, you kick the door, automatically roll towards a point of cover or nearest enemy and make another open sequence. You could push a filing cabinet towards the bad guys, making it absord bullets or jump atop a file tray and get behind enemy cover. Or even use a desk and cubicle wall to jump over several other cubicles to get into a firing position that you would only get by getting a few bullet holes on your own.

Essentially, slow-mo with allowing acrobatic and tactical movement.

[Sarevok]

Zixinus how do you propose your game hero uses these cinematic moves without seeming like a ridicules contrived boss battle from a bad 90s game ? If he can do this shit he should be able to speed blitz everything ! Consistency is more desirable than gimmicky powers that emerge only when it is "dramatic".

[Commander 598]

I have an idea: Damage modeling/Gore effects. Generic ragdolls and almost non-existent blood effects are getting a little stale... Being able to sever someone's head or dismember them and cover the entire room in blood used to practically be a selling point back in the day.

[Zixinus]

Zixinus how do you propose your game hero uses these cinematic moves without seeming like a ridicules contrived boss battle from a bad 90s game ? If he can do this shit he should be able to speed blitz everything ! Consistency is more desirable than gimmicky powers that emerge only when it is "dramatic".

Consistently used map triggers? That is locations and areas that allow this, that are repeatedly used? Or even just certain environments?

The idea is to do it whenever you want it to do and whenever you can.

Movie-moves like being able to automatically climb over a bucket, ramp, etc should be automatic. Punch, slash, fire, throw everything in reach and use it to your maximum advantage, making YOU the weapon, as opposed to just pointing around a weapon hose. The idea is to not only have far greater mobility, but to take advantage of that.

EDIT: Actually, these events could be triggered by targeting enemies before you perform them. From there on, a small system figures which move to use.

I have an idea: Damage modeling/Gore effects. Generic ragdolls and almost non-existent blood effects are getting a little stale... Being able to sever someone's head or dismember them and cover the entire room in blood used to practically be a selling point back in the day.

That's been done in Soldier and Fortune and possibly in other games. There is a reason why its not done:

Ratings.

Perplexity, as long as you don't show any blood or gore directly, you can get a marketing-friendly PG13 rating. Being marketing-friendly is very important if you want to gobble at those millions coming to you.

Besides, gore is overrated.

[Joviwan]

I have an idea: Damage modeling/Gore effects. Generic ragdolls and almost non-existent blood effects are getting a little stale... Being able to sever someone's head or dismember them and cover the entire room in blood used to practically be a selling point back in the day.

And it made exactly one good game, and a whole series of shitty ones. And the good game didn't even have anything to do with the shitty ones except use the same engine. And the good game required you to turn the effect on using console commands, first. You need more than fancy gore and dismemberment to make an interesting game. May be if the fancy gore and dismemberment actually had an effect on game play, it'd be vaguely more interesting.

[Sarevok]

Something not to gloss over is the AI. All the graphics, physics and damage modeling is useless if the AI is bad. German soldiers teleporting into battlefields in unlimited numbers straight from clone factories forever killed Call of Duty for me. Not only that but they never run out of ammo and some of the AI seems downright invincible. It's hard to enjoy a game like that. So making the AI behave more like the simulated critters they are supposed to represent would be a very important thing.

Consistently used map triggers? That is locations and areas that allow this, that are repeatedly used? Or even just certain environments?

The idea is to do it whenever you want it to do and whenever you can.

Movie-moves like being able to automatically climb over a bucket, ramp, etc should be automatic. Punch, slash, fire, throw everything in reach and use it to your maximum advantage, making YOU the weapon, as opposed to just pointing around a weapon hose. The idea is to not only have far greater mobility, but to take advantage of that.

EDIT: Actually, these events could be triggered by targeting enemies before you perform them. From there on, a small system figures which move to use.

Ah so you are talking about context sensitive actions. It's a neat idea but will need some excellent well thought out control schemes.

[Commander 598]

That's been done in Soldier and Fortune and possibly in other games. There is a reason why its not done:

Ratings.

Perplexity, as long as you don't show any blood or gore directly, you can get a marketing-friendly PG13 rating. Being marketing-friendly is very important if you want to gobble at those millions coming to you.

I don't know about other countries rating systems, but in America everything that pertains here usually ends up with an M/17+ rating anyway, unless it's a bloodless WW2 game.

And it made exactly one good game, and a whole series of shitty ones. And the good game didn't even have anything to do with the shitty ones except use the same engine. And the good game required you to turn the effect on using console commands, first. You need more than fancy gore and dismemberment to make an interesting game. May be if the fancy gore and dismemberment actually had an effect on game play, it'd be vaguely more interesting.

And it made exactly one good game, and a whole series of shitty ones. And the good game didn't even have anything to do with the shitty ones except use the same engine. And the good game required you to turn the effect on using console commands, first. You need more than fancy gore and dismemberment to make an interesting game. May be if the fancy gore and dismemberment actually had an effect on game play, it'd be vaguely more interesting.

Well, I wasn't saying base the entire game around it. AvP1 wasn't "exactly" based around the concept of ripping people to pieces, but blowing the upper body of a human into numerous pieces and spraying the entire wall with blood with a Predator's plasmacaster had an undeniable effect...also the Alien ripping corpses apart was how you got more health so it actually had some effect on game play.

[Joviwan]

Well, I wasn't saying base the entire game around it. AvP1 wasn't "exactly" based around the concept of ripping people to pieces, but blowing the upper body of a human into numerous pieces and spraying the entire wall with blood with a Predator's plasmacaster had an undeniable effect...also the Alien ripping corpses apart was how you got more health so it actually had some effect on game play.

An arbitrary effect. A better system for that would be one where the damage you deal is actually taken into account instead of being used as candy the instant something dies. If I need to chase someone down, putting a bullet through his ankle should give me a significant advantage, shouldn't it? If I just plastered the floor with entrails, the next group of people that come tearing around the corner should be slipping and sliding along the gore, trying to keep balance. If I shoot someone through the hand, shouldn't they be unable to shoot back using that hand? If I slash someone across the eyes, why not have him flail around blindly until you actually kill him?

[Davey]

I would like to add, let's find a suitable alternative for checkpoints and bring back the ability to save progress or rewind gameplay. Call of Duty 4 felt just like Halo with a few minor differences, and the same went for the sequel and its sequel. If I had to say everything I have to say about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, it would probably be that it felt like I was watching a movie that progressed the faster I pressed MOUSE1. Walking from checkpoint to checkpoint just didn't do it for me. I was like "Okay, on last health bar! Must reach checkpoint!... okay, there, checkpoint reached. Oops, died. Okay, try again..." all through it, and that kind of tension breeds frustration really, really fast.

There are other things, like storylines that I'd like to touch on, but I think I'd be beating a dead horse here.

[Darth Ruinus]

Zixinus how do you propose your game hero uses these cinematic moves without seeming like a ridicules contrived boss battle from a bad 90s game ? If he can do this shit he should be able to speed blitz everything ! Consistency is more desirable than gimmicky powers that emerge only when it is "dramatic".

Well, the bosses, sub-bosses, or even the normal enemies could also do the same thing. Everything you can do, they could do, except maybe not as well as you could (with the exception of bosses)

Speed blitz? Blitz already means speed, so putting the two words together doesn't seem to make sense.

[Zixinus]

"Nimble Blitz" would actually be a good title for the game.

What I have in mind is not just context sensitive combos but allowing them to be used in string without needing to look out for an opportunity. This would mean being actually acrobatic enough to move between cover easily. Also, it would involve pauses in the action, to give you a second to think.

Also, not just environment but enemy positions: if you have three guys walking in a line, you can kick the first so the other two gets knocked down and while you shoot your uzi so the third one can be shot as well. This can be done with a non-combo kick but a combo would ensure that the second guy would actually fall.

I also have some old ideas festering on my HDD I'd need to expand.

[Covenant]

I did read it, I just didn't want to get into a pissing match about ideas when it was really the larger focus I was taking exception to. I don't think that changing a FPS into a non-FPS is a way to make an innovative FPS.

The idea you posted is essentially the same thing as a Wing Commander bullet-lead reticle on a first person shooter interface in a genre where most of the time bullets either have infinite travel speed and completely ignore drop. Adding actual physical bullets that obey gravity would change extremely little, so all the reticle would do is add in a little diamond on your HUD slightly below the target. Lasers don't drop so it won't show any drop of that either--the reticle is where the shot will end up. Same with a rocket, since those generally travel in a straight line. The only thing it would matter for is a grenade, but Metal Gear Solid and Gears of War already have things where you can see the path the grenade will follow before you throw it... so that's really not innovation when you slap that on a gun, it's just gimmicky, because for this addition to be of any use you'll need to shoehorn in more ballistic arc weapons or create dramatic bullet drop where games previously never had a real reason for it.

Adding it to a tactical element will take you to a Rainbow Six style tactical shooter, but that's not really innovative--and the holocone of where the fire will go is irrelvent. We should be doing away with conefire when appropriate, and Unreal Tournament even handles this well, by changing the reticle shape/size depending on the amount of conefire the weapon usually causes. While being able to see the explosion radius of the rocket before you fire it is nice, it's really rather irrelevent unless you add in deformable explosions, which Aliens versus Predator already did too. So unless you add in some REAL innovations, which aren't even new, the holocam gunsight is just a gizmo and adds nothing to play except a slight performance drop. I never have problems telling where my bullets will land as is.

Throwing in dodge stuff, jetpacks and so forth... eh. Metal Gear Solid, once more, does most of this--as did the Blood Opera mod for half life. And action half life. And didn't Max Payne? Worse yet, you want to merge this cinematic gunplay with things like quicktime events or scripted encounters/dynamic sequences, which are only applicable in singleplayer mode unless you want to slow down the entire game everytime someone uses their bullet-time power. At this point the game has become nearly a God of War with guns rather than a first person shooter anyway, so what's the point of calling it a first person shooter?