Do you care about unrealistic/inaccurate guns?

[Artman2004]

A lot of video games (usually older ones) tend to get a lot wrong when depicting firearms, both real-world and fictional. They'll have ejection ports on the wrong side, have the player cock the gun every time they reload, or not even cock it at all. Maybe one fictional firearm is mostly functional with just one part that doesn't work, and then there's another that defies all understanding of how guns work (TF2's scattergun comes to mind). Does any of this sort of stuff bother you at all?

[DNSKILL5]

It only bothers me when people believe the way they work in games is how they work in real life and seemingly base all their knowledge of guns on works of fiction such as from movies and games. If all you know about guns comes from the media, movies, and games, then don’t act like a know-it-all. 
 

Anyways, video games are made to be fun, and the realistic nature of guns doesn’t always translate to fun gameplay.

Edited January 25 by DNSKILL5

[Panzermann11]

I used to, but I eventually get used to it. I once was upset when they potray a revolver being flicked. I remember watching videos from a YouTube user named FrostThreat48 that point out mistakes in guns in games and one of his famous pointers is "Flicking the revolver isn't recommended, as it couild damage the crane". I believe he popularized this phonomenon, so much so that Hyper made a video about it.

[Jello]

31 minutes ago, Panzermann11 said:

I used to, but I eventually get used to it. I once was upset when they potray a revolver being flicked. I remember watching videos from a YouTube user named FrostThreat48 that point out mistakes in guns in games and one of his famous pointers is "Flicking the revolver isn't recommended, as it couild damage the crane". I believe he popularized this phonomenon, so much so that Hyper made a video about it.

Speaking as someone who has "flicked" a Smith & Wesson 586 .357, and a Taurus 856 .38, yeah, you can't fire them until the cylinder is aligned. The cylinder has to lock into place before you can even pull the trigger, so even after "flicking" it, you may have to turn the cylinder slightly to lock it in place, otherwise it's not going to do anything. And honestly, with a firing pin on the hammer or with a transfer bar, there's a small hole that needs to be passed through to hit the primer on the cartridge, and if that's not lined up, the round wouldn't fire even if you were able to pull the trigger. Which, on any revolver I've ever used, you can't pull the trigger or operate the hammer unless the cylinder is locked in place.

 

Sometimes it bothers me, other times it doesn't. When the weapons are meant to be realistic representations of firearms, it does bother me when they behave unrealistically. But for the most part, they're a videogame, they're not meant to be taken seriously, so it's fine. 

 

I did really like the way firearms were portrayed in Soldier of Fortune 2, especially with the Weapons Mod v5, which made the weapons behave more like their real life counterparts. The MP5SD for example used to be able to go through body armor, but with the mod anything under a rifle cartridge will generally be stopped, staggering the enemy, but not killing them. So you would have to go for head shots when using pistol caliber weapons or shotguns. Rifle caliber would do fine against body armor.

Edited January 25 by Jello

[Chow Yun Thin]

Certain things bug me. One is Gatling gun spinning, where you hold down an altfire key to keep the barrel cluster spinning without firing to bypass the spool-up time. Turns out a real-life loaded Gatling gun will fire as long as it is spinning at all, as this warning shows.

 

I never did understand why Doomguy reloads his super shotgun the way he does. The way I visualize it, he'd have to swing it up while moving it to the left, put the stock, grip and right hand up against his left armpit while reloading, then swing it back up while moving it back to the right. It just seems like a lot of needless motion, probably for that visual kinetic flair in the vein of hot virtual brass spraying across your field of view onto your virtual uncovered forearm.

 

Maybe he's giving the hellspawn a chance to strike back if they live, because if he reloaded like Caleb...

[Kinsie]

I live in Australia. The handheld conventional firearm is a fictional device invented to act as a plot element in 1950s noir thrillers because choreographed fistfights were getting too expensive and eating up too much screentime, and the idea of the magic wands of fantasy appearing in an otherwise-contemporary setting had yet to catch on. It is impossible for anything smaller than a mounted aircraft turret to be "unrealistic" or "inaccurately depicted" by definition, because they do not exist in the real world of flesh and man. 

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

I appreciate when they go the extra mile but for the most part, inaccuracies don't bother me as long as they're fun to use. If game like Arma got its weapons wrong, that would annoy me because it prides itself on accuracy. But for something more arcade, do whatever. Hell, if making a new animations for left handed people is too much unjustified work, just mirror the sprite. I don't care it's inaccurate when i can get better immersed in the action. 

 

Anyway, there's already so many bs things about guns in games we just accept. Like holding a pistol way off to the side. Nobody does that, you couldn't hit anything holding like that. Revolvers always doing more damage, that is to balance small capacity and long reload. Hell, you're sucking bullets from fallen enemies guns into a one big pocket, and they instantly load themselves into magazines by magic. You know how much all that stuff would weigh? I don't care. It's fun, it's a game. Let me run fifty miles an hour with a hundred rockets in my backpack, to hell with realism. 

 

If the devs do the effort of not cocking a gun after reloading partial magazine, I say "aw, that's cute" and then never think about it again. 

 

Edit: on the other hand, if that's what the game is about, that matters, like with the Arma example. Or Hideous Destructor. That's where the fun is for those specific things. 

Edited January 25 by Sneezy McGlassFace

[QuaketallicA]

I don't think most people who aren't firearm nuts would notice. The only time getting guns wrong has bothered me is CoD WW2 having Germans with Russian PPSH sub-machine guns and SVT-40 rifles...on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Also the M-1 Garand in that game doesn't have the magazine spring into place once inserted. I know that's a thing, because it's why "Garand thumb" exists. But it was a mild annoyance to see these minor errors, that I quickly got over.

 

I think the most famous thing Hollywood gets wrong is the "silencer," or how it's now more appropriately called, a "suppressor." Although the "pew pew" you hear in Hollywood actually isn't entirely fictional. It sounds like that from several hundred meters away. Just not right up close like it does in movies. It's meant to not blow your eardrums out, not make it library level quiet.

Edited January 25 by QuaketallicA

[Michael63]

Guns in Doom were not realistic, but I loved them from my childhood. So, I think I can say that it's not an important point for me.

 

A bit more interesting question for me is whether levels or locations in first-person shooters must look realistic. In this question I don't have the single "right" point of view. I still love Doom with its not-too-realistic design (and don't like overdetailing in Doom maps), but also I like modern games with their more realistic design.

[Murdoch]

I grew up around guns, but I absolutely positively could not give less of a shit. I don't play games for realism. I only have three things I care about for weapons.

 

1. Does it look and sound awesome?

2. Is it fun to use?

3. Does it reliably murder my enemies?

Edited January 25 by Murdoch

[Remilia Scarlet]

Quote

Does any of this sort of stuff bother you at all?

lol not in the slightest, except in games that are meant to be hyper realistic.

[FletcherHonoroma]

Nothing worse than an inaccurate gun. Can never hit my target.

[ZeroTheEro]

honestly the more I see it, inaccuracy makes other people learn how guns and stuff actually work. We've gone from pulling the M4A1's forward assist in Counter-Strike as if it's a charging handle to actually pushing it in Call of Duty Modern Warfare in its intended use.

Concessions to be made, sure, but people just love the attention to detail the more things evolve.

[yakfak]

I'm trying to play less games with guns

and anyway, tbh, guns, shoes and cars fall under the same category for me - if they're roughly the shape of the thing I know almost nothing about then they work fine in gestalt and I don't care about the specific design whatsoever

[Wo0p]

20 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

lol not in the slightest, except in games that are meant to be hyper realistic.

^ this

[Pechudin]

3 hours ago, QuaketallicA said:

he only time getting guns wrong has bothered me is CoD WW2 having Germans with Russian PPSH sub-machine guns and SVT-40 rifles...on the beaches of Normandy on D-Da

 

Is that unrealistic? Don't know what a SVT-40 is but Germans were infamous for hoarding captured weapons, to the chagrin of their logistic officers. Also D-Day troops were often low-quality soldiers and "volunteers" from the eastern territories of the Reich.

[Decay]

I prefer when the gun functions are very obviously not meant to be real or mimic reality. One can't (or shouldn't) be able to delude themselves into thinking things will go like that.

 

This thread is a great example of why trying to base firearms in reality yet smoothing it out and being inaccurate can be problematic. "I love X, but I've never even fired one" "These are my favourite types of guns but I've never owned/fired one" "These are great but they don't exist for me because BAnNEd in my country". How can anything be a favourite or you love X when you've never experienced it or know about the manufacturing process, the machining quality/lack thereof, handling or fit, overall weight, trigger weight, perceived recoil vs actual recoil, etc. Fuck games and movies for creating a bunch of fetishists for things they don't actually know.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Only if it's meant to be realistic. I expect at least some accuracy because pretty much all the information about any gun you'd want to know about is readily available on the internet. A lot of times games portray swords and close combat weapons inaccurately too. It's much easier to simulate a realistic gunfight or warzone than a swordfight, though. One day I'd like to see a swordfighting game equivalent to ARMA.

[PsychEyeball]

I love Painkiller because its arsenal is literally the opposite of realistic. I mean, the titular weapon of the game is a blender on a stick. This would be like going to war with a weed eater on steroids.

 

Let's pair a shotgun with a freezer gun just because in the end, it feels very practical. 

 

Next, you have a gun that shoots literal telephone poles at enemies to pin them on the floor or walls. And it also shoots grenades. The later is somehow the most underwhelming part of the weapon.

 

Next is a no-recoil/perfect accuracy chaingun coupled with a rocket launcher. This weapon would never exist in real life and yet it is the sweetest thing ever used in a shooter. 

 

And at last, a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning. Not the most useful weapon, but it definitely strikes the imagination. Also being able to fire electrified shurikens on the floor to act as crowd control or area denial is fun. 

 

So yeah, I only care if the weapons are fun to use. I don't know jack about real-life weapons and I feel this isn't knowledge I need to acquire to enjoy living.

Edited January 25 by PsychEyeball
typo oops

[Roebloz]

I'll keep my 'Shorty' M203 grenade launcher attached to an MP5, thank you.

[Mr. Freeze]

Canted aiming is stupid and exists mostly in videogames. Red dot lasers are obsolete but designers jam them onto weapons for TEAR WUN OPERATUR points. Also enlarged iron sights bother me too. 

 

My biggest problem isn't even the guns, it's how Special Forces are portrayed as independent demigods and not simply one part of a much larger army who are supporting them from behind. 

[Cammy]

I care about unrealistic guns. I want all of my guns to be unrealistic. All of them. NEVER be realistic. If it looks cool and I remember it, you have succeeded, no matter how wacky or weird it is. The only internal mechanism I understand to be an essential part of firearm design is Pull Trigger = Bullet Go Out and I have absolutely no interest in further educating myself. Melee weapons should also be unrealistic - swords should be detailed, axes should be so huge that no real person could possibly wield them. Hybridize weapons at any cost. Revolver nunchucks? I'll marry you.

 

This is not a joke.

[VanaheimRanger]

I would shoot things with finger guns in a game if the gameplay was fun. (That means no, I don't care if guns are unrealistic in a game.)

 

EDIT: Let me add that I was in the military, and have handled several different real world guns...I still don't care, it's a game.

Edited January 27 by VanaheimRanger

[Enzo Carozza]

As long as guns have feedback to them, I don't really care.

[The Royal We]

I've never even touched a gun in real life.
So who am I to judge whether a weapon is realistic in a game whose pixelated monsters turn in the player's direction after being killed?

 

“Oh, but we’re not talking about Doom. Call of Whatever is a super yupi realistic game”.

Aha.

Edited January 25 by The Royal We

[Panzermann11]

18 hours ago, QuaketallicA said:

I think the most famous thing Hollywood gets wrong is the "silencer," or how it's now more appropriately called, a "suppressor." Although the "pew pew" you hear in Hollywood actually isn't entirely fictional. It sounds like that from several hundred meters away. Just not right up close like it does in movies. It's meant to not blow your eardrums out, not make it library level quiet.

There are real-life guns that sound close to how Hollywood and video games depict suppressed weapons: the AS Val and VSS Vintorez. From what I hear, the gun has an integrated supressor and it makes use of a sub-sonic ammo type. Here's a video of the gun in action, it sounds like a god-damn airsoft gun.

Edited January 26 by Panzermann11

[Major Arlene]

I definitely have never really messed with guns IRL so I can't really have an opinion on how realistic guns are, ergo, I don't really care too much in the general scheme of things. there are some examples where there's things that don't make much sense will annoy me. i.e. I saw a gun model with a flashlight attachment clearly in the way of the big-ass scope behind it, like I know at least enough to be annoyed by that sort of thing. but otherwise I'm pretty much w/e, guns in lots of media either don't sound the way they do IRL or look they way they do IRL.

[Stupid Bunny]

In principle I'm with the "only if the game sells itself on real-world accuracy thing", but the truth is I wouldn't know an unrealistic/inaccurate gun short of it being, like, a gatling flamethrower-meets-shotgun with all 20 of its barrels spinning and firing simultaneously and three completely pointless scopes and laser sights attached (and that would be fucking awesome in a game).  So, no, I couldn't care about it even if I wanted to.

 

Now unrealistic/inaccurate depictions of rigid airships on the other hand...

Edited January 25 by Stupid Bunny

[Explorer of Time]

I have only one thing to say on this topic.

Spoiler

 

Suffice it to say I do not care much about firearm realism.

[INfront95]

Unless its something really egregious like some guns in Fallout 4, no, don't care that much.
On the other hand, when gun is made maximally realistically or with thought in mind, even if its sci-fi or normal ones, it only benefit player experience