The Ideal Armory: Psi's Approach

I have been playing FPS games since I was roughly four years old, and, to date, I have not found the perfect armory emulated in a game. I am a bit of a gun nut (though not a very good one, due to a horrible memory), so this might get a little technical. Bear in mind that this system would only work well in an RPG environment; some of the complexity stems from customizable weapons in tandem with player skill levels in a certain brand of firearm.

My ideal armory has four main tenets. First, the bulk of it must be composed of real world weapons. Second, they must be customizable to the point that I am swapping individual parts at will. Third, the skill system must encourage the player to find a single weapon and stick with it. Finally, any nonrealistic weapons must be highly specialized.

Nothing quite breaks immersion for me like a drab armory. To prevent this, each of the realistic weapons needs to be based on real world data. I find myself sometimes laughing at the liberties game developers take with firearms, such as magazine size, and the monkey in your backpack that automatically refills half-spent magazines. I’d also like to see procedurally spawned variants of each weapon. Perhaps one has a different attachment, or is just a hair more accurate. Finally, first person shooters need to make each weapon handle slightly different. Instead of having five submachine guns that are exactly the same save for ammo types, I’d prefer to have two very different submachine guns.

Customizability is a must for an armory to keep me interested in the long term. Not only do I want to find myself attached to a specific weapon, I want to constantly keep upgrading it with parts I find from the procedurally spawned weapons. If I can’t find a better part, I’d like to be able to make it, which leads to my next point.

I’d like to see an RPG where the proficiency with each gun is tracked as a stat, either with the weapon type, or on a page where the player can see all the weapons he has found. Two submachine guns, while being used in the same manner, have their own little quirks and intricacies. A player’s ability with an MP-5 would not be the same as his ability with a P-90. I’d like to see a game actually force the player to decide which gun to carry, beyond ‘generic submachine gun’. I’d also like to see various levels of proficiency; it’s one thing to know the loud end of a gun, it’s another to completely take it apart

Last, we have the nonrealistic weapons; the lasers, the gravity guns, the ‘oh shit’ weapons. I don’t mean games where these are commonplace; I mean games where these are one of a kind artifacts left by a forgotten civilization. Each of these weapons needs to have a very specific use; I don’t want a laser-ized version of some kind of weapon I already have. The weapons I have will be upgraded to the point where they’re incredibly powerful. I don’t think these weapons need a specific skill each; nonrealistic weapons generally don’t come with a manual. These weapons need to be rare, incredibly useful, and ideally obviously powerful to anyone looking on.