Thoughts on Game Design: Controls in Tactical Shooters

Ghost Recon: Wildlands was a fine game. It asks the player to control an operator while at the same time leading a fire team. Senior NCOs frequently said that being a fire team leader was the hardest job in the Army because it required the Corporal to lead from the front: to shoot, move, and communicate while leading others who do the same. Having to directly engage with the enemy while leading others similarly engaged is a tremendous challenge. And when a game asks the player to do this, it needs to equip said player with the tools to do it.

The basic Call of Duty controls for a individual shooter work well enough. And all it takes is a headset, good communication skills, and patience to effectively coordinate in co-op. Leading NPCs in a fight is another matter. Striking a balance between enabling the player character to fire and maneuver while at the same time direct team tactics is the approach to control scheme in GR: W. GR: W allows the player to shoot and move, while at the same time authorizing engagement, calling for indirect fire, and directing team movement. The setup that enables drone and scope recon to paint multiple targets and organize fires is brilliant and important in the game. But is any truly satisfactory balance possible even with four main buttons, four triggers, two joysticks, a d-pad, an option button, and a touch pad? I would argue that it is not. I think both shooting and tactical leading require full and separate control schemes.

So how would this work operationally? I would say, simply use an options button to rapidly switch back and forth between a full tactical leadership control scheme and a standard shooter control scheme. The idea behind the specific tactical control scheme is to allow the player to direct fires: to control where the team members shoot, their rate of fire, and their angles of fire (e.g. using an M203 to lob 40mm grenade rounds in an arc over an object interposed between the shooter and the enemy). There should also be a way to call for indirect fires and air support, when available, on specific enemy assets rather than just general areas, and to allow both to sustain fire for effect when directed, rather than just a singular barrage.

To understand why this is important, one must understand the way conventional American units fight. Aside from Special Forces working with indigs on unconventional warfare or joint direct action, we are not guerrilla warriors who ambush with massive bursts of fire and then break contact quickly and disappear if decisive control isn’t promptly won. The basic concept of our battle drills is the standoff, though this isn’t talked about as explicitly as it should be. We try to engage the enemy in a standoff, gain fire superiority, and maneuver other elements to close with and destroy the enemy with ever closer fire. We are self-assured because of extensive logistical support, so we don’t shoot in a way meant to conserve rounds and increase single shot lethality. We absolutely take aimed shots and love the phrase “one shot, one kill,” but the idea is really to win with volume of fire. The basic element of battle drills is the squad, though the same concepts could work with a four-man fire team with each buddy team operating as the maneuver element. Tactical controls in games need to reflect this philosophy and the nature of the challenges that it imposes. The goal is to titrate up fires and use them in a directed way to get the enemy focused more on cover and not returning effective fire, so that the distance can be more safely closed by a maneuver element who hit the enemy hard, fast, and close. The art of tactical leadership in this way of fighting is basically the art of directing individual fires with various weapon systems in order to win standoffs.

Special Forces small unit tactics are even more complex in their level of coordination. They are put on display fairly well in the movie Tears of the Sun. A platoon mate of mine who went to Robin Sage as an OpFor told me that SF 12-man teams will get online at night and direct their tac-lights at a target and walk towards it and shoot with a variety of weapon systems, as well as lob hand grenades. They maneuver together in sync. It would be tremendously difficult to implement this in game with NPCs or even in co-op without extensive practice. It’s also difficult to develop a good breach and room clear mechanic for MOUT tactics, though this could presumably be done and is to some extent in the planning-intensive Rainbow Six series.

Sure, there are situations when both schemes could work harmoniously in one. For instance, in a nighttime engagement with sufficiently clever AI, one could direct fires with tracer rounds. The AI could be designed to read and react to where the player put tracer rounds, provided they were in range and not so overwhelmed by enemy fires they could engage the player’s target. That might work seamlessly. But not all tactical situations allow for that, especially if combined arms are involved. Indirect fire elements cannot directly observe tracer rounds. They have to shoot at what they cannot visualize. And tracer rounds aren’t illuminating in the day time, though they can catch dry brush on fire. In many cases, separate schemes are simply necessary to fight in a realistic way.

Ghost Recon: Breakpoints has some control innovations significant of individual movement techniques. The ability to to use prone camo, which also modifies the prone position to create a even lower profile, allows the player to take advantage of microterrain features for concealment. That ol’ Gunny H. John Poole would be proud. But there’s nothing in it that improves on patrolling or small unit tactics.