Ammo Drops

[SymonTheZealot]

Hello to everyone of you!

 

I'm not exactly sure if it's gameplay feedback or weapon feedback - anyway...

 

What's starting to bug me more and more are the many different colored ammo drops, rifle-, shotgun-, sniper rifle and pistol ammo. Everytime an enemy drops something I think in my head: "Yay! Something I can use!" but then it turns out it's for the sniper rifle or shotgun, which I don't have equipped! Ammo-pickups spreading the floor, cluttering up my view, distracting me from the important pickups (like credits)!

 

Now I was thinking to de-clutter all these ammo-drops... and actually make me feel happy that the enemy is dropping something useful for me... I imagined a system as it is used in another TPS ... not stating any game names... but Commander Shepard there (:P) gets something called "Thermal Clips" which have to eject after the weapon has been fired a set number of times - these Clips aren't bound to any specific weapon... they are used up when a weapon has filled up the clips' heat limit and gets ejected (strangely even though he only picks up ONE clip... ALL weapons seem to be able to get one... this seems illogical to me). So I thought of a similar system:

 

If we could use one ammo-drop, let's say the blue one for rifles as a "Primary ammo drop" that gives ammo for any primary weapon equipped (rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles) and another, let's just keep the standard pistol ammo drop for the "Secondary ammo drop" to fuel the secondary weapons -> with this it would already cut all the clutter-drops that aren't usable for the current equipment by half. Everytime an enemy drops an ammo drop it would be usable to the player.

 

Let's take the MK1-Braton as an example here:

60 Shots in the magazine

540 Shots Maximum / 60 = 9 times this weapon can be emptied (9 clips)

 

So when I pick up my Primary Ammo drop I should be able to fire another 60 rounds (depending on the magazine-size)

When it is modded with a Magazine Warp 0 (+5% ammo in magazine) it gets +3 rounds (63) into the magazine -> which should again impact the ammo pickup to actually make me fire another 63 rounds (cuz that fits into my magazine!) Of course the maximum threshold shouldn't be exceeded, it would still be 540 shots maximum and ejecting a clip earlier wouldn't cut you down by 63 rounds.

This would get rid of the "ammo-cost-efficiency"-problems with some of the weapons.

 

Plus, with this apporach it would give the chance to have some additional, temporary effects for the other two drops - like an elemental clip that is loaded into the currently equipped weapon and is used up in the following clip until ejected. Or a ghost clip that penetrates cover to a degree.

 

 

tl:dr

Take 50% of the ammo-drops and throw them away!

 

Looking forward to your ideas,

Sy~

Edited May 14, 2013 by SymonTheZealot