America's Army. A great game, but much less than it used to be.
Ever since I started playing AA:O, I have loved it like no other: the way your
character moves, the feel of the weapons your are
operating, the general charme of the game, but ever since the release of the new
patch, a big part of that has vanished. The
reason for that is because of the lessened amount of grenades supplied in the
old maps (both frag grenades and 203 grenades)
Personally I don't see the use of it. Nobody was complaining about the supplied
amount of explosives (atleast to my knowledge) so
why fix something that isn't broken?
"trying to make the game even more lifelike" seems to be the key sentence here.
Reducing the amount of nades will make people use
their nades in the intended way: killing an enemy that has been sighted,
therefor eliminating or reducing spam nading. I perfectly
understand that.
This way of using nades is a perfect reflection of the way grenades are used in
real life, but this is a game, not real life.
In real life soldiers get in a specific war/conflict-scenario only once,
therefor, they judge that situation according to general
standards and act to it with the means at hands. (this insinuates not wasting
valuable ammunition) If they get wounded or die, it
is over and they will not be given a second chance.
In the game on the other hand, people can start and stop fighting whenever they
want. They can engage battle and withdraw from it
at any given time. Also, due to the fact that they can repeat a specific
scenario over and over again, they will find loopholes
and things that make life easier on themselves because of the gained experience.
It is man's nature to learn from his mistakes. If
throwing a nade to an area where an enemy hasn't been seen or cannot be seen
means that it might prolongue your life in-game, then
doing that is completely justified. From the enemies point of view, getting hit
by a spammed nade will teach him a valuable lesson
on how to handle that area he was killed at in a previous round, therefor he
will not rush up hoping he can get some quick kills
(endangering his whole team by doing that)
Limiting our amount of grenades doesn't give us that possibility anymore,
ruining a whole facet of this otherwise great game.
Making the game as realistic as possible has taken the upper hand, so much even that the factor 'fun' is no longer a criterion anymore.
