With news that the new Wolfenstein will feature ironsights on its guns, I have to ask the question of whether or not ironsights will really be all that bad. Since they are a confirmed part of the game, we should be looking at ways to work with ironsights rather than continuing to post that we don't like them. Even if you are not a fan of the mechanic, there is no changing the fact that they will be a part of Wolfenstein multiplayer.
First let's look at why people denounce ironsights so strongly.
- RTCW and ET did not feature ironsights, and including them feels like Wolfenstein is trying to clone Call of Duty rather than staying faithful to the classic Wolfenstein feel.
- Ironsights slow down gameplay which is completely counter-intuitive to the fast pace that Wolfenstein players are used to. If I want to aim, I shouldn't have to pull up ironsights in order to get decent spread.
- If drawgun is forced on like in CoD, having to aim with more than half of your screen covered up by vision-obscuring gun sights is annoying and frankly not fun.
Throughout the course of this article I will take a position that I do not necessarily agree with 100%, but it is still a viewpoint that I think needs to be heard among the Wolfenstein community. Now that we know for a fact that ironsights will be featured in the upcoming Wolfenstein game we should be looking for ways that we can accept the game as it is. I am of the opinion that ironsights will not need to be modded out of Wolfenstein as long as they are done right. Before you flame me in the comments I encourage you to actually read the rest of this article and take in to consideration what I have to say.
Let's look at the first point, that ET did not include ironsights. What most people fail to realize is that ET includes a feature extremely similar to ironsights, which we know crouching. What do ironsights do? They slow your movement and improve your accuracy. What does crouching do? Slows movement and increases accuracy; mechanically, they serve the same function. The mechanic is the same, but physically your character does not look down ironsights. Some people even use FOV and/or sensitivity changing binds that activate when they crouch to make it even more like what we know as ironsights. The actual mechanic of using ironsights isn't that bad if done correctly, and that is evidenced by the use of crouch in ET/RTCW.
The second point people make is that ironsights slow down gameplay and make it so that shooting normally gives too high of a spread. With the new information released today, and based on some earlier information about weapon spread, we have heard that the developers are making a conscious effort to make ironsights not necessary in short range firefights.
Obviously no final judgment can be made on weapon spread until we see the final product, but from the looks of it the unscoped weapon spread will probably be similar to ET. Take this screenshot for example. It shows the weapon spread on bremen, shooting from the ledge near the command post spawn down to the road from the generator to the CP stairs.
Compare the standing aim to the crouched aim. Over medium to long ranges, the standing weapon spread in ET actually becomes pretty bad. Most people improve this by crouching. I expect that the gameplay in Wolf will be similar to this, but instead of crouching to shoot long range, people will simply enable ironsights. Playstyle when shooting long range will probably not change very much from one game to the other, we are simply trading one mechanic for another very similar one. On the other hand, what nobody wants is to be forced to use ironsights every time they shoot the gun like in CoD (barring very close range encounters).
The final point is that having drawgun forced on with ironsights creates a very annoying aiming process. I agree with this point, and I can see a very simple solution. Competitive leagues simply need to recognize this and unlock the drawgun cvar. One of my main objections about ironsights is the vision blocking, and removing this would definitely make the idea of ironsights much friendlier.
Wrapping up, I really do not think that ironsights will be a bad idea as long as they are implemented correctly. Hip fire needs to be decent enough that we can use it as we do standing fire in ET (good for close to medium range), and from the looks of things, the developers realize this too. Beyond that, ironsights are a perfectly acceptable mechanic of gameplay as long as they don't become obtrusive and vision blocking.
