The Script for the ADS video

The following is the script for my most recent published video. Excuse the poor grammar, it was only meant to be read:

I want to make this video more accessible, with clear examples illustrating my point. I want to show definitively how certain games are affected by aim down sights. And hopefully explain to you how these games would be better without it, or with a reduced presence of the feature. Basically, it works well in some games, but I think it’s getting included in games where it shouldn’t be due to market pressure.

Getting right into it, I think a great example is Back 4 Blood. It was obviously meant to be the spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead. The same dev studio coming back to reclaim the throne of the ever popular zombie co-op shooter. Of course, we know in hindsight that it dropped with a wet fart, famous only for the gamer zombie. I had an inkling before launch that the game wouldn’t be great. What clued me in, at least partially, was the presence of sprint and ADS. The original Left 4 Dead didn’t have aim down sights. And it doesn’t suit this type of game. Now you might think introducing these features is modernizing the game. But these things aren’t just the natural evolution of mechanics. In 2009, when Left 4 Dead 2 released, these features were already the norm. This was the same year as modern warfare 2. They deliberately ignored the sprint and ADS mechanics. Because Left 4 Dead is centred around constant movement. The focus is literally on getting to the next safe house as quick as possible. When you stand still in that game, you die. All the mechanics support this. The director system they had was designed to maximise the intensity of the experience. The zombies don’t even do that much damage, the real danger of their attacks is that they stun you and slow you down. And the melee doesn’t do much damage either, it’s just supposed to keep them from hitting you so that you can keep running. So much of the game is just running while shooting zombies behind you. Imagine you had to slow down dramatically to aim. It just runs counter to the design. I think for this style of game, it is better without ADS.

Another Obvious example is Halo Infinite. Now, Halo doesn’t really have ADS, but they have some in between system. Smart link arose when 343 realised they couldn’t just put ADS in Halo without messing it up. Having to slow down for accuracy wouldn’t work in a high ttk game like Halo. It would advantage people fleeing way too much. It’s like they’re trying to have their feet in both worlds. I think 343 recognise that ADS doesn’t really work with the Halo style of gameplay. But they are split between that and their market research, which I’m going to guess follows the pattern we witnessed in my previous videos on this subject: People feel really strongly about having ADS in their games. But I think 343 should be brave and commit. Doom Eternal did it and it worked fine. Having these half baked, superfluous mechanics just bogs down the experience. Cut the smart scope. It isn’t necessary for Halo and it isn’t necessary for every modern shooter. If anything, Halo was notable early on for it’s streamlining. For cutting superfluous features. They bound grenades and melee to just one button each. Had just two weapons. They cut down on the weapon carry capacity. This is in an effort to focus on the core elements of a shooter, and see how much you can do with as little ephemera as possible. 30 seconds of fun and all that.

Titanfall is another interesting example. Everybody told me about the ways to mitigate the effects of ADS in Titanfall. Use certain guns like the alternator with no penalty for not ADSing. Stay in the air. Always keep jumping. It seems as though people really hate being bogged down by the effects of ADS in this movement shooter. ADS is a choice to be slowed down in exchange for greater accuracy. But does slowing you down for ideal accuracy not run in opposition to the central idea of a game that wants you to keep moving. To be fair, I think it’s exacerbated by Titanfall 2’s larger, more open map design. There are many battles that’ll boil down to long distance ADS gun battles from the roofs of the buildings. You’d think the game would be at it’s best when you’re maximizing the use of the movement mechanics. When you’re bunny hopping everywhere. There are some weapons like the pistols and SMGs where this type of gameplay happens. And they’re the most fun to use. ADS kind of works as a noob trap. The game obviously has this cool movement that is the main draw. But ADS leads new players astray. It promotes the exact opposite type of gameplay to the style that the game wants you to use. Let’s say a new player comes over from CoD, they’ll default to the boots on ground play style. I think part of the success of Apex Legends is that they moved away from some of the vestigial mechanics they inherited from CoD. Like low times to kill. I think Titanfall is a different type of game and the developers should reconsider even the most seemingly fundamental of mechanics. Look at how it plays out in game. Look, they use all this cool movement to get around the map. When fighting an enemy in close range he hipfires. That’s all good, he keeps moving and using the cool movement. But then, inevitably, as always happens, he has to engage an enemy from a distance, and must ADS. Suddenly he’s lost all that momentum and needs to slow down to stay in this gun battle. He’s not moving any more. I think titanfalls continuation of CoDs mechanics has been to it’s detriment.

It’s made it a more shallow experience about hyperreactivity. Like even more twitchy CoD. CoD with even less pacing and strategy. Titanfall fans constantly blame the release date of the game for it’s suboptimal performance and small community, basically from launch. But I think that’s a cop out. You can’t blame it on that alone. Good games can gain an audience well after their launch. [show examples in siege and CSGO]. The game being basically hyper-CoD contributed to it's downfall. The lead designer of Titanfall 2 even admitted this fact. One of the key downfalls of the whole formula is the focus on reaction, rather than strategy.

Basically, Titanfall had it’s feet in two worlds. [say this line softer] That seems to be the recurring issue. With Apex Legends, they committed more to a vision. They did keep ADS, but it worked better because the game was slowed down a lot. The movement mechanics were gutted and the times to kill were notably raised. They made ADS work in Apex because it’s a far slower, more tactical game with much slower pacing. For what it’s worth, I do think ADS works in Apex because it actually is a tactical choice. There is some risk for some reward.

Another game I’d consider is Destiny. I wouldn’t cut ADS from Destiny 2. It’s already built into the game. But I think it’d be interesting for future content to reduce the presence or necessity of the feature. “Classic shreddednerd, clickbaiting again”. What I mean by this is that there should be more guns that are a smidge more interesting than: “You need to aim down sights to shoot”. A good example is alt fire. There should be more weapons with that alternative fire modes. Like Duality. It’s ADS mode isn’t just “slow down to be accurate”. It provides an entirely new utility. The glaives are similar. The button bound to ADS raised your shield instead. I think this would obviously be good for diversity in weapons. You’d still have ADS weapons, just make some of the new weapons… different. I think the popularity of the BxR battler, the forerunner and the dead mans tale, which are basically the battle rifle, magnum and DMR from Halo, tell the story pretty well. These weapons have a scope that functions more analogous to the classic Halo weapons of old, rather than typical ADS. And they pair very well with the movement focused gameplay of Destiny. More weapons like that please. More alternatives to the typical ADS style. And I know some nitpicker is going to come out in the comments with something like: “umm akchually, in the season of the boner these weapons did not see any use”. You get these pedantic people because Bungie updates the values in new patches every 8 hours and every single player of the game uses the same weapon, desperately chasing whats new. Destiny fans are the biggest meta slaves in the world. If Bungie patch notes said that wearing a cock cage increased rifle accuracy by 10%, at least half of the population would probably do it. Look... People find them fun to use [show example of youtubers discussing them].

So, in short, I’m not taking away your games. I think some games should have ADS. But I also think it’s become a mold. That some games should break. When I said it’s a bad mechanic. All I meant is that I think it has a bad overall effect on gaming at large. Not that it’s bad in every single game. I think it’s in too many games where it doesn’t benefit the experience. And yes, obviously it’s my opinion. I never presented it as objective fact. Hint: any video that has a value judgment like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is inherently going to be subjective. ADS should be in CoD. In fact, in recent CoDs the ADS has been rendered a bit slower than older ones, with a lot of attachments that penalize you with slower ADS as a trade off. I think this is good actually. You get penalties in exchange for an advantage [show list of penalties then flashing green tick next to tactical choice]. ADS actually functions as a tactical choice. Because there is risk with a reward. If a game were to take away the penalties, then ADS stops being a tactical choice [show big red x instead with the penalties disappearing]. Because there is no risk to the reward. It is at best, superfluous and at worst, misleading to newer players, if it is a movement game that you aren’t meant to play like CoD. So I don’t think you can have it both ways, with a foot in both worlds. I think there are developers who just include the feature because it’s the assumed default. The standard. But I think you should either commit to ADS as a mechanic, or reconsider whether you need it at all. It’s a simple question, is your game the type of game where you want players to incur these penalties for ideal accuracy? For games focused on movement, it might not be.