Unpopular opinion: not every shooter needs head shots

[ExecutiveOdin]

I'm just going to put it out there. I don't think head shots need to be instant kill and I don't think head shots even need to be a thing in every shooter. Team Fortress 2 is a good example of a game that has a low occurrence of head shots along with several other arcade shooters so there is some precedence for what I'm putting out here.

Don't get me wrong I don't hate head shots entirely but there is this trend that I have been noticing lately in shooters and it seems to just be getting worse where head shots are becoming instant kill regardless of the games usual TTK, armor, weapon damage, etc.
In older shooters if the game had a very low TTK like say a gun took 3-4 body shots to put someone down then 1 head shot would also do the job and that made it possible to potentially put someone down with a single bullet even if they got the drop on you.

Now recently that feels like it has gone out the window and I can talk about stuff like Rainbow Six Siege like how the weakest pistol will one shot head shot every character whether they have a helmet or not through a wall or Far Cry 5 where it takes sometimes 15 bullets to kill someone, or, one head shot. Or the smattering of battle royale games where I honestly find instant kills to be terribly boring because of the huge to get back to the fun after getting kicked back to menu.

But mainly what I wanted to bring up is finding this exact same practice on Red Red Redemption 2 Online. For those that don't know RDR2 Online has instant kill head shots. It also shows your enemies on a minimap at all times. It also has very heavy auto aim. On top of that the guns damage and your character health has absolutely no bearing on head shot death. Using the shotgun point blank? dead. Using the weakest gun in the game at long range? dead. This creates this unusually lopsided TTK where when dumping bullets into a guys body you could have to push the fire button 12 times for a single action revolver. Or once with the lowest damage gun, the varmint rifle, if you get a head shot. Now you could argue this rewards skill but that isn't accurate in this case. On RDR2 when you aim your gun your crosshair snaps to the nearest target to it whether that be the enemy or a random passing horse. Now when you do lock onto an enemy it sets about their mid body and follows them as they move. If you adjust left or right then the crosshair will move off of them a little but still maintain speed with them so there is no aiming ahead of someone and letting them run into your line of fire as the crosshair will just float in front/behind them as they sprint around.
So what people end up doing is lock on to an enemy, there is no dodging now unless you start doing that crouch flopping around thing, then moving the crosshair up a little, and bam headshot. Even if the guy is actively shooting you the TTK is so high with some guns doing very low damage to having such a low rate of fire that it just comes down to who can get a head shot first. And I ask: Is this fun? Do instant kill body/head shot have a place in a game with auto aim? And beyond that are the TTK in games now a days just getting too low?

I look forward to seeing some other peoples opinions and welcome the oncoming flames.

[fenrif]

I think if your game is in any way attempting to portray reality then yes, headshots should do instant kills if not massive damage. If you are shooting a regular old human a headshot should ruin his fun in the most immediate and catastrophic manner. If you're shooting a 10 foot tall space mutant then you have some wiggle room. But if you are shooting him with a railgun that you just used to take down a tank, then you'lve got some serious explaining to do as to why it isn't doing the same damage to his face as it did to an armoured vehicle.

That being said, the reason headshots are so annoying in modern games is because developers don't want to make any other aspect of gunplay that realistic. As you said, you can have a bullet in each elbow and use your gun perfectly. You can have someone unload a pistol into your foot and still sprint and climb ladders. Autoaim is just a crutch for people playing with controllers, and needs some very careful consideration before being just dumped into an online mode unceremoniously. For example, if you're using autoaim the weapons should not be hitscan, and the bullets trajectory should matter. Falloff at range for example, should stop people being headshotted with pistols from long range.

I think we should push games forward, not backwards. Removing headshots from games were it is appropriate is a step backwards. Instead we should ask devs to work on their gunplay a bit more and the graphics a bit less. Maybe hire less Hollywood voice actors and just get a student actor from the local university. Perhaps don't spend 20 million on advertising and instead put that 20 million into the weapon physics.

[JayinGray]

i agree with the entirety of that
well said

[Eggy the Merry]

Only a juggernaut like a Space Marine would shrug off shells to the face. I think your preference for arcade shooters is what matters. Rainbow Six sudden death styled games are very very appealing to people but it's not for everyone.

[Elmo]

IMO I feel head shots should always be a quicker kill than body shots. Are there any games that can be compared to real life each game has an unreal aspect to it(not just the fact your sitting in front of a screen because IRL drone pilots do that).

Hitting a main artery in the body or even heart directly would take a person down immediately, but games aren't real life. I may be missing the aim of the thread(excuse the pun).

When i get a FPS/3rd person shooting game, I'm more concerned about how beefy the shooting is, when i click that LMB I want to feel like I have actually shot the gun in game from the feed back in both the sound and reaction to the thing I hit.

Getting back to head shots, aiming for the head of a character rather than just the body requires more skill(smaller target) so the reward IMO is a quicker kill.

Regards to "not every shooter needs a head shot", I can't see any reason why that's not a valid argument because weakness in a human body is not just in the head or do you mean "not every shot needs to be a head shot" in general across all shooting games, in Dead Space it's best to aim for the legs of the Aliens and finish on a head shot with the laser gun thing.

But as usual i could be wrong, hence why IMO.

[ExecutiveOdin]

Head shots should always be quicker than body shots. The idea I'm putting forth here is that I don't think they always need to be instant kill. Think of so many single player shooters where a head shot is just a percentage damage bonus if these multiplayer shooters did that then games with damage requirements like 8-12 body shots could be 3-6 head shots with the same rifle. Sniper rifles should always be one hit head shots. So should shotguns at close range.
But I was also putting forth that not every game needs area specific damage. Again like TF2. And I imagine I would enjoy overwatch much much more if it wasn't chasing at Esports and had a more TF2 style damage model.

[Dub-Z]

Quake III all day.

[ethansito]

CSGO head armor

woop woop

[Valkenr]

Here's my take: Realism First.

If headshots don't kill, there needs to be a reason (Power Armor, Force Shield, Magic, Cast-iron pan). I think most games have a body-shot TTK problem, if you can shoot someone first, you should get the kill most of the time. Its not hard to write a reason for a health bar if you control the setting entirely. But if you want to play a Western, or WWII game based on reality, or anything where there are guns, heads, and no magic/sci-fi armor, you have to stick to realism or the immersion is broken, IMO.

Is this fun? Sounds like RDR2 needs work. Rockstar snap-aim is a c-hair away from tab-targeting, so it can't be treated like other shooters.
Does instakill have a place in auto-aim? Yes, the GTA/RDR aiming system allows for minor correction, so skilled players can pull off headshots. (at east it did when I played GTAV)
Are TTK's getting too low? No they are way to high across the board.

IMO, from what you have said, RDR2 needs non-headshot damage jacked up across the board, the headshot advantage shouldn't be so noticeable. 99 times out of 100 the first hit should get the kill, in any game.

[ExecutiveOdin]

IMO, from what you have said, RDR2 needs non-headshot damage jacked up across the board, the headshot advantage shouldn't be so noticeable. 99 times out of 100 the first hit should get the kill, in any game.

This is part of my argument. Instant kill head shots are mainly an issue in games where body shots are significantly weaker. As I said the starting revolver can take 5-6 body shots to kill meanings 10-12 trigger pulls as you have to recock the gun each shot and on top of that you need to let the crosshair re-tighten between shots or your bullet will be unpredictable. The other starting gun a repeater takes 3-4 shots to kill but also needs recocked so that's still 6-8 trigger pulls with delays between each shot. Each of these guns is also a one shot head shot. Then there is the varmint rifle which is incredibly accurate, takes 8-10+ shots to kill due to it's very low damage...or one head shot.

[Gray]

Head shots are just a number for fragheads to jerk off to.

[Kiran04]

I'm more on the no-heat shot or at least no one shot kill bandwagon than on the head shot wagon. The idea of "realism" has been discarded for decades. No shooter has ever even attempted to implement the idea of ballistics or zeroing your rifle. Bullets do not fly in straight lines or travel instantaneously. Even at real world distances, the travel time for a bullet is noticeable. The idea of hold over is lost upon game developers. "Quick scoping" is a physical impossibility that anyone who had ever used a scoped rifle would know. No knife attack would ever do more damage than a gunshot wound, let alone instakill you. So the realism argument is a lie to me. Shooting games stopped trying to be real a long time ago. I thought back in the Quake 3 days that the idea of bleeding out and bandaging gunshot wounds would be the new norm, but after Urban Terror it was completely abandoned. So given all that, why even bother with easily exploited, un-balancing mechanics like head shots. They add to my aggravation, not my immersion.

[ExecutiveOdin]

I feel the same way every time someone brings up the "realism" argument when I talk about something like this. The guy that defends the head shots due to realism is the same guy that is alright with jumping from a second floor window shooting with no accuracy loss in mid air and landing with no damage. To be clear I'm not against that sort of thing in general but it bugs me when realism is put in here and there instead of having consistent mechanics.

[isturbo1984]

Well, not every shooter does.

[Kiran04]

I feel the same way every time someone brings up the "realism" argument when I talk about something like this. The guy that defends the head shots due to realism is the same guy that is alright with jumping from a second floor window shooting with no accuracy loss in mid air and landing with no damage. To be clear I'm not against that sort of thing in general but it bugs me when realism is put in here and there instead of having consistent mechanics.

My thoughts exactly. What hardcore gamers really like is "big plays", not realism. They like realism as far as it suits their ability to appear impressive. Capping 10 people in a row while jumping out a window with head shots on the way down and landing a knife attack on the guy at the bottom feels great, but it is the furthest thing from realism. Ironically, if you take that away they'll bitch to no end because they no longer feel epic and they can't farm noobs like there's no tomorrow. "Realism" is always elite speak for "I want to be able to cap 20 noobs without breaking a sweat", and heat shots greatly add to that kind of play style. Longer TTK's handicap long kill streaks as the number of enemies you face at once increases since you can't thin their numbers quickly. But in the end, "realism" in modern shooters is one gigantic, fat, stinky, slimy, blatant, lie. There is nothing real about them. It's just the kind of play pace and noob farm fest that elitists love.

[Hopeless Wombat]

I think it's important to have a weak point mechanic of some type. Headshots are basically the weak point of a shooter like type advantage is in Pokemon.

In fact I'd say it's more prevalent in a shooter because it helps concentrate your accuracy as you play. So a player should be rewarded with additional damage for threading the needle.