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Overconservation of Ammunition
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Does anyone else find themselves jealously hording the shots for their Rocket Launcher or SMG, holding back to blast even the toughest enemies with your pistol, waiting for that 'one boss that REALLY needs it'?
This here is the thread to share your obsessive-compulsive experiences!
Lately, I just finished Prey tonight, and until the final disgusting gauntlet of enemies(the last three/four levels, really,) I REFUSED to use any gun aside from the basic rifle and the Leech Gun(which are the first two guns you get in the game,) and flinched every time I had to use the Leech Gun anyways.
It made the game a lot harder. I'm frustrated with myself. Is there any cure?
This here is the thread to share your obsessive-compulsive experiences!
Lately, I just finished Prey tonight, and until the final disgusting gauntlet of enemies(the last three/four levels, really,) I REFUSED to use any gun aside from the basic rifle and the Leech Gun(which are the first two guns you get in the game,) and flinched every time I had to use the Leech Gun anyways.
It made the game a lot harder. I'm frustrated with myself. Is there any cure?
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Consequently, I'm pretty fucked in my Bioshock file right now.
A friend and I were switching off on the controller for our first RE4 file, and this habit enraged him to no end.
"Man don't waste our broken butterfly shots!"
"Bitch I'm motherfucking Leon Kennedy!"
http://www.audioentropy.com/
So much.
Almost as bad was Half-Life 2, although that was partly because throwing toilets around was a faster way to kill things than actually shooting them.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I have been involved in almost this exact same conversation. Leon saves ammo for no bitch!
I am, however, diametrically opposed to wasting ammo in FPS games. As such I can often be found hovering near my friends shoulder when they play saying "Short controlled bursts, dammit. That shit doesn't grow on trees, short controlled bursts!!"
Bioshock is absolutely horrible for this - thrown cash registers are like the most damaging weapon in the game (I'm not totally sure they do less damage than frag grenades do), and with the wrench so overpowered after you get a couple plasmids... I think I was full on every single ammo in the last fight
I'm not sure where I started this habit either... I'm thinking either the first half life or Deus Ex, both of them seem to give me memories of conserving ammo (with Deus Ex being more because it was more fun to kill everyone with the energy sword thing), and I can't really remember playing an ammo-consious FPS before those two
The secondary fire for the Combine rifle in HL2 is like this.
Uh, refresh my memory on what the combine rifle is. <.<
It's a vicious cycle.
cuz those later weapons were great but you only had like 10 of each ammo wise... conserve conserve conserve!
I never had this problem in Bioshock; between EveLink, plentiful Eve hypos and first-aid kits, and the fact that lighting crazy bitches on fire never gets old I pretty much only used ammo on Daddies and Nitro Splicers (which take way too long to die, frankly.)
My favourite weapons. I got them, and clutched them, finally free of my obsessive compulsive tendencies. Used them whenever I could, only switching when things got too hot.
I loved that little rocket launcher worm thing. He would stroke it to calm it. It made this awesome chomping sound when you fed it balls of death.
So dissapointed that things like that weren't in Half life 2. Gravity gun is not the same. It's too makeshift.
It gets mandatory in the Episodes. In one particular mission in episode Two, (minor, non-plot intensive spoilers)
There's tons of them scattered around the area, so the entire fight is you running around, picking up logs and pinging them off hunters a couple of times until they keel over, then flinging the bomb and running to the next target. It gets absolutely hairy at times, and there's no way I can imagine it being done without using lots and lots of log-flinging. There's just not nearly enough ammo, and if you run to the resupply buildings constantly you won't get the Striders down quickly enough. I think Valve loves its little Gravity Gun like a Companion Cube -- it just never, ever lets go of it. So many places in both the original game and the episodes require it.
Anyway, no doubt I exaggerated a bit, but the logs do make things a hell of a lot easier... if you're able to chuck them accurately, which isn't all that easy in itself. I found that the damage was only significant if you managed to punch it with the log dead-on; a glancing blow barely made them flinch, but two solid shots of a log and they crumpled.
edit: what lork said :P
Still, we do finish these games even with the ammo hoarding and as the saying goes, the only time you can have too much ammo is when you're drowning or on fire.
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For me, this phenomenon isn't just limited to shooters. RPG's too. Won't use stat up items, won't use full heal items. Everything is saved for a doomsday scenario that never comes. My mind is telling me that that's the only megaelixir in the game, and if you use it on this dinky boss, you're going to be screwed for when you really need it. So, I purposefully make myself suffer. C'est la vie.
What, seriously?
RPGs on the other hand... I'm ALWAYS convinced that I'll NEED that heal potion or whatever OR ELSE I'LL LOSE and so end up never using them. I'm especially bad about this in the Infinity engine games and JRPG's. I can remember running through Icewind Dale with all of my characters' entire inventories being filled with potions that I never used. And then in Final Fantasy game where there is no inventory limit I'll just have zillions of potions, phoenix downs, etc. and never end up using them either.
I do notice that I seem to dread stumbling upon a huge cache of ammo that isn't hidden. Usually (especially in survival horror games, but to an extent in FPS-s as well), the game doesn't ever really give you a shitload of magnum rounds or rockets or whatever unless you're gonna need it (usually because there is a boss around the corner who wants to rip your head off).
It's like "Oh awesome a ton of grenade launcher rounds and some crossbow bolts and two first aid sprays! Neat lets go through here and OH SHIT IT'S BIRKIN AND HE IS SO PISSED".
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Cause that part pissed me off so much that I had to take a damn break.
However, if a game has any sort of thing where you have to collect ammo, I hoard like a crazy old cat lady. When I played REmake last year, I had something like 18 magnum rounds left for the final boss aside from all the other (rifle, pistol, etc.) ammo I had extra. I killed the guy in something like 5 shots. I felt so dumb.
RE4? Tons and tons of ammo, but then for the last boss you get ammo thrown at you.
Bioshock? So much of each type of ammo that I could've killed the boss multiple times almost entirely with each ammo type for each weapon.
And when I recently played System Shock 2, my hoarding of energy weapons and projectiles turned the endgame into a complete breeze. I took more damage from radiation than enemy attacks.
And as for HL2 Ep2
I'm sure I'm going to be horrible about conserving ammo when that Left4Dead game comes out, too. Nothing makes you hoard ammo like rationalizing that letting a buddy get eaten is worth preserving your two remaining clips.
I blame my packratting on the original The Bard's Tale back in the C64 days. In that game, if you played with the pregenerated party, El Cid the bard had an uber fire-breathing horn with only around 10 uses. Starting out was very tough, especially if you hadn't found the Adventurer's Guild to train and level up. That horn hit every enemy in every group, easily winning fights that should have been lost.
And I feel like a retard in the end.
Naturally though, second, third playthroughs, you know the kinks and the ammo locations, so I use the shit proper.
The only RPG I saw deal with this is Fable. On your heal hotkey (right dpad on Xbox), it'll automatically assign the healing item that best fits the amount of life you need to recover.
My basic algorithm is this.
1) Hoard
2) Run across ammo I can't even use because I've maxed out
3) Start burning that ammo down to about half
4) Goto 1
Considering that I've usually maxed out the ammo for one of my other guns while I've been trying to expend ammo on the first one, I end up spending most of my time using good guns. By a casual observer, I could even be mistaken for sane.
This is highly dependent on the game, though. In survival horror games, hoarding is generally the order of the day, so I let my natural tendencies prevail. In other games, it's fairly obvious when you're supposed to use particular weapons, so I do what I'm supposed to. And then there are games where I can't possibly use all the ammo that's being thrown at me. But I'm still using short, controlled bursts for aiming and because that's how I learn how much punishment an enemy can take. And finally, sometimes the ammoless weapons rule. Gun or chainsaw? Chainsaw. Grenade or high velocity toilet? Toilet.
The truth is, you've taken the first step. Now when a game's starting to frustrate you (because of difficulty or because you feel like you're progressing too slowly), you'll be aware that it might just be a hoarding problem, and you can start applying the higher caliber solution to your enemies' craniums.
Occasionally a game will force me to use one (I'm looking at you random horribly tough battle in FFXII), but that's rare. And I have a habit of powerleveling sometimes, so I don't usually use them on the end boss either.
I think it has something to do with a roleplaying ego. I don't want to have to depend on an item, ever. I want my pure stats, through physical attacks and magic, to thwart any foe. I want to be godlike. Gods don't drink potions.
Same, I always feel bad when I cheap a boss or a part of a game.
Even when I'd beaten GTA SA and started my "using cheats" runthrough, I never ever used cheats.