I remember in the early Gamespot videos, there were Americans in the comments accusing him of never having fired a gun and being a «fake» expert, on account of him being British… 😂
LMG’s are often very precise weapons irl. In the danish infantry regiments I saw very experienced lmg users trigger-control the german mg3 (m/62 in Denmark) , making single- precision shots on half-torso sized targets out to 600-800 m. Not what you’d normally expect from the mg3😂
Minimi with 1,5 magnified scope will similarly land consistent hits on half and full silhuets. I would definitely not be standing around to find out at that distance....
I remember test-firing LMGs in Battlefield 4 on the test range, and it works the same way - the first shot is accurate so you can tap the trigger for greater accuracy, but sustained fire becomes harder to maintain precision. The same principle works for assault rifles too, so I only use full auto at short and medium ranges but switch to semi-auto mode for targets at a distance.
It's a genuinely joyful experience in HLL to meaningfully impact a large 100 player match by deploying an LMG in just the right position to either suppress a contested point for your allies advance, or to hold off key avenues of enemy advances through chokepoints and killzones, all whilst being rewarded for using the LMG properly with xp and score.
Insurgency has a unique approach to balancing LMGs, most LMGs, and all open bolt guns for that matter, have a slight trigger delay and aim shift with that. Not to mention their awful ADS time and recoil when off the bipod
Squad is very similar. An LMG is a hopeless weapon when going from building to building. It's slow and heavy and has zero accuracy. But when mounted in a bipod, it will easily take out a whole squad and pin another squad down. The game really plays in to their advantages and disadvantages and makes you think about where you need to set it up
Huh, I never noticed this. Played a 1K+ hours of PvE Sandstorm. Another thing is long guns are long, especially the MG3 less useful for room clearing. Long barrels will make them longer. The recoil is beastly. You can easily end up pointing at the sky without short controlled burst in a crouch posture or better. I never use auto bipod as it throws off your aim at the worse times. Dumping a belt is sick. I am one of the few players who actually use their pistol aggressively and pairs really well if you know what you are doing.
I've noticed COD has also brought the open bolt system into the recent Modern Warfare games. Adding an additional 72ms before the gun can shoot after the trigger is pulled
Rising Storm 2 has a pretty intense suppression mechanic that lends itself well to the LMG, it's personally one of the better depictions I know. No matter how under represented or difficult they are to use, I'll always love the LMG!
I've only really played Squad when it comes to good suppression mechanics and as much as I'm aware experienced players shrug it off and mostly just double tap any machine gunners trying to suppress with direct line of fire, i still find that the majority will get scared shitless and hit the dirt. Edit: oh shoot i somehow misread rising storm 2 for insurgency sandstorm lol but yeah Rs2 has that classic feeling of "oh god oh Jesus they're in the trees man, they're mowing us down man!"
You mean Red Orchestra. That whole series of games started with Red Orchestra and that's where the whole LMG suppression mechanic began in multiplayer FPSes. One good gunner who knew how to deploy well to the back and keyhole himself could take down entire waves of enemy spawns on defense, or shut down all reinforcement routes to an objective on offense. I loved learning how to be a good gunner, and hated enemy gunners with a passion.
I think ARMA 3 needs a special mention here, specially in pvp and no respawn. Another player with good cover/concealment will pin you down and limit your options drastically, and if we only have 1 enemy with an LMG, when the player is reloading is the only moment to peek your head out and try to find him or asses your tactical option and come with a plan.
when playing milsim PvP nothing was worse than a lmg up a straight road, pinning down 20 guys and we all knew we were being flanked too, lmgs are almost the kings of realistic games
BF3 suppression was great. It discouraged camping and encouraged flanking. If you cant see anything under suppresion you have to move to a new position. If you dont the enemy team has a chance to flank you while you sit there blinded.
yep, a 200 rounds belt feed MG with bipod fired from cover was a quite formidable defensive asset in bf3 as far as snipers wont get involved, i think was one of the most accurate use of lmg from a mass multiplayer online shooter videogame
@@Tonyx.yt. BF3 also had the immersive gunplay imo The feeling to shoot or get shot at was so nicely done with this mechanics Even if you get shot at from an Vipers 30mm gun you felt the power from the itself 😌 i miss the game so much but it was so much fun and i'm happy i played it
I was a gunner/assistant gunner for most of my 8 years in uniform. My last two years I carried the M249 SAW and I loved it. I named her Lilian, after the daughter I was going to have and never met. She had a short barrel and a solid stock. She also had a Picatinny rail system in place of a hand guard. She was light enough that with some modification to the sling and a bit of 550 cord, I was able to click her on my IBA via carabiners and let her hang there to be hands free. If needed, I could shoulder her and fire on the move or quickly unclip to go prone. She carried me through some of the hairiest times I spent in the Middle East. A small part of me cried when I had to give her up when I was Medevac'd out. I prayed that whoever got her after me treated her well and kept him safe.
13:45 really good point there Semi related, Halo ODST is an absolute joke of a stealth game from a mechanical perspective, but the incredible atmosphere provided by the music and map design had me moving slowly and panicking whenever the enemy spotted me anyway
Just treat any LMG like the support weapons they are. Spray an area and let your team flank them or deny an area for the enemy team. Kills are optional, unfortunately you don’t get participation points for basically giving your team free kills.
Ghost Recon Future Soldier had a suppresion mechanic for LMGs as well, the shooter's reticle would change to a square to show the suppression zone, and if you were the one getting shot at, you would be able to passively look over cover, and the character model would actually duck even lower for cover, overall it was a very immersive experience even if it was a near future game
Ghost recon did a great job of making weapons and movement always feel meaningful. You could truly feel the power of both friendly and enemy MGs of all sizes.
I absolutely loved that game and want it to come back or do a remaster also bringing the servers back. Sunk so many hours in it, it's truly underrated.
One of my all time favorite memories playing Insurgency (2014) was a match on contact where my team was trying to get across the main street that crosses the map, so I set up in a window with an m249 and started firing bursts into all the windows where I saw gunshots coming from. The suppression actually worked and kept the enemies heads down long enough for my team to cross and cap the objective. Times like that make me wish other games had a suppression counter on the score board like Insurgency does.
The Black Ops 1 LMGs were so interesting to me because 3 of the 4 LMGs were magazine fed, and had a relative small magazine, yet they still managed to feel like LMGs, and not just Assault Rifles
Unfortunately, the BEST suppression tactic will always be Tarkov: because losing your gear and your quest progress? Yeah, that's the ULTIMATE incentive to not peak your head to see if you can get a lucky shot or counter-fire against someone who has you pinned. Thanks for that life lesson, Killa!
The main difference between real life and games is that in real life, those you shoot at are afraid to die and hit the dirt immediately, while in games you can empty 2 belts of bullets around a group and they would just keep doing what they were doing.
I remember the first time I played pubg on a team. My play style had always been to hide and scavange and avoid contact until the end game. Even from my first match, I rarely did worse than top 10. But when I played with a team, they wanted to just run right into the thick of it, often all of us dying within 5 minutes. The time between dying and getting back into another game made me want to play it cool. Getting killed meant you were out for quite a while.
I feel like Darktide nailed suppression. I like that it messes with your accuracy without ruining your view/hearing. A slightly toned down version would be incredible in more grounded shooters
Lmg’s works great on realistic games like he’ll let loose or post sciptum. You always get to cover when you’re suppressed in those games even because respawning takes time and because pushing the enemy front can be hard without many players
Destiny's 2 heir apparent is the only machine gun in a game that I've really felt like a power fantasy with. When you fire it it slows you down considerably but it also provides you with an overshield.
Anyone who's served knows that LMG weight is no joke. The M249 is about 22 pounds loaded, and, unlike rifles that can be slung from the shoulder, you have to carry it in your arms. That's why I always appreciate games that have cover mounting and/or bipod mechanics.
Kinda sad they didn't mention the madsen lmg, as it was the first truely mass produced lmg. It was in use since 1902 and still in use as late as the 2010s
I saw a brazilian police officer using a Madsen LMG on RUclips :-) This is because they are allowed to use any weapons they seize from criminals, hence why they have so many different weapons.
I'm a little disappointed that the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) wasn't mentioned. In the conversation of the difference between a light machine gun and an assault rifle, this weapon is very important as it was designed to be an infantry automatic rifle filling a similar role to the semi-automatic rifles that preceded it only for it to end up in more of a low-capacity light machine gun role. It shows how in real life there has not always been a clear distinction between automatic rifles and light machine guns, especially in the early days of their development.
@@somebawldy3789 Well, I hadn't asked a question. But it was never really treated as an assault rifle, even if that was its original intention. It very quickly got slotted into an LMG role because of its weight and large round. It straddles the line and is often considered to be both. Which, as I said, shows the ambiguity of the term in its early days.
Battlefield I feel has done them pretty well over the years with their suppression system lowering player move speed,accuracy and increasing recoil and flinch. This is especially when your in a flag to flag position just keep firing and eventually you'll catch someone moving. (Also you can help counter snipe giving the enemy much more sway even while holding there breath)
Indie game Running With Rifles is a really interesting take on this - lmgs can't be fired from standing. Instead the player can only fire them from cover (resting the weapon on sandbags etc.) otherwise the character will automatically go prone in order to try and fire it. Not strictly accurate, but a good compromise on firepower and manoeuvrability
I daresay Dave is having too much fun with this series. Just living the best of both worlds. Probably Jonathan as well, as he seems to also play games a ton.
Best episode of Loadout yet. I’d love to see a discussion of the firearms of different eras, like how powder muskets, lever actions, and early bolt actions are depicted. I feel that a lot of WWII bolt action rifles are misunderstood, influencing the balance of the game for the sake of one shot kills
I wish there were more games depicting earlier wars tbh. WW2 is an excellent setting, but it is overused to hell and back. There arent many mainstream games that go for ww1 or earlier. I can think of only a couple ww1 games
Thank you! As someone looking more and more into firearms I've been wondering about the differences between ARs and LMGs in real life and this was such a better answer than anything else I was finding online!
I think Red Orchestra 2 (and Rising Storm 2? Idk, haven't played it) is one of the only games that gets machine guns right. They're extremely powerful and accurate when properly set up. Charging an area a machine gunner is covering is genuinely suicidal. But they're almost unusable on the move because you have no ability to aim and the recoil is immense. Basically, if you're not defending an objective or covering an attack you're doing it wrong. (Oh forgot to mention, Red Orchestra 2 does actually have suppression as a mechanic, which affects vision and accuracy when your character is under fire. Near misses with any gun will do it but obviously machine guns are very good at it.)
I want to mention that the "correct" way to use the chauchat shown early in the video is ironically resembling to the whole rambo thing, but this didn't work out very well in reality which is also the reason for a lot of the gun's flaws.
Have a family friend who owns a transferable pre-86 full auto M1919, it's an absolute joy to shoot. He has two John Basilone style carry handles for the barrel. Hip firing it would be beyond silly past 30 yards, but if you're trying to be mobile and fight within dense jungles in Pacific Islands it actually makes a ton of sense. This is especially true when you can't see the enemy in said jungles and simply need to put down rapid suppressing fire in the general direction that you're taking fire from.
Sound design is a underused component of suppression - in the Stalker games, or at least the modern mods for them, there's a supersonic crack to incoming bullets that really make you want to take cover.
The Sig 338 does that really well in MW19, the sound that thing omits is rather brutal. Wish they played with that more though. Most in the franchise really didn't capitalize on that concussive effect that pure sound had like someone shooting the explosive rounds from an AA-12 was always disorienting.
What a lot of games get wrong about SAWs is how different the recoil is while ADS and hip firing. I was a SAW operator for 3 years and they’re amazingly accurate while hip firing and have little recoil while doing so, it’s very easy to hit targets up to 50m with one, while ADS the weight of the gun is incredibly noticeable and recoil becomes much harder to manage.
@@rvanhees89 I was in the IDF so I used the Negev (NG 5 SF) and it’s a brutally sufficient machine. It never ever jams no matter what (one time I shoot over 2,000 rounds without cleaning it in very rough conditions) the way you’re supposed to shoot it is either while holding the handguard or use a special angled foregrip, I didn’t like the foregrip so I used the handguard, The bipod on the Negev can be folded to both lay below the handguard and fold forward below the barrel, the former option will cause you’re grip to slip and will be unpractical and the latter is very useful in a lot of situations (like putting your gun on a wall) pulling the sling all the way is not recommended because when you change firing position you won’t be able to hold the gun and changing it mid combat will take too long to be functional. This was a bit rumbling but I hope I got all my points across
Folding the bipod below the handguard is what we called administrative position because it makes the gun more compact and easier to transport. It is still a very useful feature but just not in combat
I'd say the most annoying thing about LMGs in games is when they reduce the damage for the sake of "balance" despite the gun using the very same ammo as another weapon with much higher damage.
I am surprised by the work you guys did. Well done. I like the old days of CS where you stand and shoot right through the walls to a choke point. No one with other guys could really shoot back.
I feel like the Red Orchestra series of games really got the machine gun right. That is one game where you have to play it like intended, with finding a good choke point with cover to set up with the tripod, and riflemen replenishing their machine-gunners with ammunition, in order to win. Red Orchestra 2 in Realism or Classic modes with two large and competent teams (not players who choose the team leader or commander class just to run around with the submachine gun, as that sabotages the entire team) Team leaders spot artillery locations and send them back to the commander at the radio. Team leaders also serve as a kind of mobile spawn point to help get your riflemen into the capture zone to take the territory. After some 800 hours in this game, every other multiplayer FPS feels silly and uninteresting. Its a mature mans war game, which in my opinion strikes the perfect balance between realism and fun to be truly engaging, and at the same time really communicates the horrors of war, rushing with a bolt action rifle from the cover of one gully to the next, with horror hearing the roar of incoming artillery, and diving blindly into an old artillery crater for cover. It's such a shame it is mostly dead at this point.
It's squad leaders, not team leaders that spot artillery/act as a spawn point for their squads. There is only one team leader per team. Agree with your comment though.
@@RustyShackleford My bad, it's been a while since I played it. Most servers I enjoyed eventually died out. There is only one big well populated server left from what I can tell, but it is in Europe, with pretty high pings for me, and seems to be dead during the hours when I can usually get on. it is a shame. So indeed. Squad Leaders are the mobile spawn points/art spotters, and Team lead (we usually called him commander) calls in arty, etc. It's really a shame the game is so dead. It is probably my favorite multiplayer game of all time. Gritty eastern front, more realistic than most games I've ever seen, yet at the same time, not so realistic that it takes all of the fun out of it (ARMA I'm looking at you)
Ghost recon Future Soldier had one of the best suppression mechanics I'd played. As a cover based 3rd person shooter, suppression effects would force the camera lower and lower, and dull out sound and color until all you can see is your character completely pinned. This allowed teammates to flank fairly safely and made attacking or defending objectives feel much more rewarding.
I think suppression is perfect for the Battlefield franchise. Battlefield is not a competitive game, it's supposed to be the perfect middle ground between arcade-like and realistic, and I think suppression plays a huge role in making you feel like you're in a large battle
For sure, another reason for me why 2042 doesn't really feel like I'm in a big battle, just some weird kind of skirmish or smaller fights dotted around. The feeling of teamwork and support and coherency is one of the things that makes those games feel larger and deeper imo
@@bimss7969 yeah but that's the point. It's not counter strike where something annoying you on screen is a huge negative. The objective of Battlefield has always been to make you feel like you're in a massive battle, and the suppression 100% contributed to that
So, the interesting thing about strength in the context of heavy weapons is interesting as lugging around heavier weapons requires both absolute strength being how big of a weight you can lift in order to even handle the weapon, and endurance strength being how long can you lift that weight. It might even be worth considering giving light machine guns to smaller individuals who excess in stamina, and have just enough strength the lug the thing around.
A little add-on for the Squad mention, being suppressed practically triples weapon sway. This essentially forces you to prone if you want to land even a half decent shot on your opponents which punishes you for ignoring the suppressing fire even if the shots are no where near you.
Suppression as a concept is cool and so is having drawbacks to LMGs but ultimately in a video game it's about what is fun but more importantly what is fun for the target audience you are aiming for. Most people don't enjoy overly long reloads or moving slower than other players because they're using an LMG. I feel like for LMGs to be more accurate to their real life counterparts you have to have a game that is more "war-like" in its gameplay pacing. A game like COD can't make an LMG accurate to what it is because the gameplay pacing is far too fast to have guys with LMGs holding down corridors or pinning people down in a building.
Squad IMO has the greatest depiction of suppression effects on a player. When I first got into squad, being shot at & my vision tunnelling with the cracks of bullets going by had me ducking in my seat lol. Theres been multiple times where my SL would request for suppressive fire, or fire for effect, on an enemy position so they’d put their heads down and my team could push forward.
whenever a game lets me customize an lgm, i go all in for making it even heavier, often trying to increase hipfire accuracy over anything else, to try and reduce the pray part of spray and pray
Saw a lot of the US M249 Squad Automatic Weapon in the video. Per doctrine, that weapon is capable of being employed in both The LMG and Auto-Rifle role. I loved the weapon system because it was so versatile. While the M4 was only about 7 LBS unloaded, The M249 was about 19 LBS unloaded. While not easy, shoulder firing it was completely doable. That said, I'm fairly large so I had an advantage there.
Battlefield's suppression mechanic is honestly really cool in my opinion. having played 3, 4 and " 1 ", I can honestly say I never noticed too much of a difference between them, but hearing that 2042 removed it is.... disheartening, but unsurprising considering how much that game's been complained about. It always felt good to get some points even if you didn't get a hit, and it was very useful in some games as a way to tell if there were enemies in an area. "suppression assist", "oh there was a guy there, maybe there are more, I should carefully push"
I think ranges of different games are also a important part. In Squad or Arma you often have fights 300+ meters, while you're average CoD-Fight is within 10 - 20 meters. Reaction is everything in close quarter combat, so a slowmoving machine gun usually has disadvantages. On a long range fight it's usually not that important who shoots first. MG-gunners can find their time to position their heavy weapons to shoot back with a setup bipod leading to good accuracy to lay down fire
Its the most important factor and that is the biggest hurdle of most FPS games. In reality many 7.56 rifles shoot above 600-800+ meters but usually 600m, the 5.56 shoot around 100 meters less and the mp5 shoots at 200 meters. And obviously the LMGs dominate in the close ranges. So you see even in Arma where its the most realistic one the ranges are shorter than real life and obviously CoD or Rainbow Six is very unrealistic. They even had many balance problems with an LMG operator in Rainbow Six, there are whole RUclips articles.
While it isn't a shooter, Xcom has a suppression skill that the lmg wielding support soldiers could do. It gave the targeted enemy unit a MAJOR aim penalty and forced that unit to stay put or risk getting shot by the lmg. Many a battles won because of that mechanic.
I like what DICE did with LMGs in Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2. They get more precise the longer you shoot. Which is counter-intuitive in a way but it immediately makes players fire longer bursts like LMGs should instead of just using them like assault rifles with more ammo.
This is nitpicking, but there's a pretty common misuse of the term "assault rifle" in games, real life, etc... It's a proper term and requires a weapon that is select-fire, chambered in an intermediate cartridge, and has a detachable magazine. If it doesn't check those 3 boxes then by definition it's not an assault rifle.
My favorite video game LGM experience is Onward. LMGs feel so powerful in that game, and experiencing suppressing fire in VR is a lot more intense than it is on a screen.
I think Squad does lmgs really well. They have huge recoil if you try to fire without a bipod, making them worse than assault rifles at those scenarios but when you do use a bipod the recoil goes away and you can light up anyone you see with huge firepower
Another thing that's hard to represent in most games that's huge IRL is range. Most games just don't have maps big enough for it to be a factor. We had plenty of machine gun duals in Afghanistan that were beyond AK/M4 range.
Games should give a penalty of speed for the amount of equipment players carry and a penalty of agility for what they have in hand. Reasoning is simple: more weight means more inertia, for example: pick up your phone and point it at random directions. Pretty straightforward. Now try doing it with a 10kg dumbell. You won't be able to move nearly as fast from one position to the other. Vehicular milsims like War Thunder implemented it to account for the low rotation speed of tank turrets, FPSes should too to not allow players to be waving M60s around like they were water pistols.
I remember playing battlefield 3 on PS3 and one match on the train station map, a group of us just posted up with our LMG's and laid waste from the windows of the coffee shop outside the station! aah good times ☺
Warhammer 40k Darktide has an interesting suppression mechanic that also feels sensible: you have normal HP and a toughness bar that tanks damage until empty then your HP go down. If ranged enemies shoot at you while your toughness is down your aim flinches with every hit similar to flinching in pain or just pulling your head in until you run for cover and your toughness replenishes, there are specialist machine gunner enemies just for that. you can suppress enemies on the other hand and force them to duck or run away by shooting at them in general and using "scary" guns like a bolter, flamethrower or certain types of automatic rifles geared towards suppression
I was an M249 SAW gunner in 2003, and chose the M249 whenever I went outside the wire in 2005. The big things I think video games get wrong about LMG's is the weight, and bullet spread. Just because a weapon is an ⅕ it just as fast as a rifle. In the EIB, Expert Infantry Badge, you had to load, fire full auto till malfunction, clean and clear a malfunction, within seconds. You definitely could keep pace with rifles. The bullet spread on a 249 is wild when you just pull the trigger and don't shoulder it, but if you hold it to your shoulder, and provide some control, it will be tight enough for close quarters for sure. In video games an M249 will fire just like an RPK, or an M240B,. Those machine guns fire a completely different round, and are built completely different. I will say that in VR a lot of military games get the M249 correct. The only down side is the reload.
Remember when playing Battlefield 3 and for the first time in a game instinctively ducked when I came under fire - the suppression effects were pretty astonishing, the bullets impacting around you felt harrowing in a way I hadn't experienced before.
I would argue, when it comes to suppression in a multiplayer medium, a longer, more brutal respawn timer might help. You’re less likely to jump into the spray of bullets if you can’t hop right back in 10 seconds later.
VR captures the idea of supression really well, especially games like Onward. Since you are much mor immersed and practically in the environment, having your screen turn gray and having you field of view shrink can force you to instinctually dive or drop behind cover.
People will probably disagree with me on this, but I think Battlefield 5 had one of the freshest takes on the suppression role of the machine gun in a multiplayer game, by linking the spotting mechanic directly to it. By laying down fire on enemy positions, you reveal them to your teammates, making it easier for them to pinpoint and respond to threats. Additionally, the machine guns were no slouches at taking down targets at medium to long ranges (perhaps a little too good as range increases) if people were foolish enough not to keep their heads down.
I did enjoy the suppression in battlefield, LMGs/support was my role in my friends squads and it felt good to pin down other squads and provide covering fire to help with objectives
I really wish Seige would implement slower movement when having an LMG equipped. Otherwise the LMG's in that game are pretty much belt fed assault rifles.
This reminded me of how absolutely busted the Type 99 was in CODWAW. If I remember correctly the setup I used was Bayonet, Bandolier, Sleight of Hand, and Steady Aim, assuming the last two don't occupy the same slot. You ended up with a close-quarters monster that could also take speculative shots across the map. AFAIK I was the only one who thought of it, but it worked. I liked the bayonet in that game, it's a shame no other COD title through BO2 had them
Ghost Recon Future Soldier had a pretty great suppression mechanic. If a person behind cover was suppressed, then the suppressed person's camera would zoom in a little bit and shake heavily, making it next to impossible to aim down sight over cover. The M60 was amazing in that game as an LMG. Perfect combination of damage and accuracy (for an LMG) and the fire rate was just right for suppressing - fast enough to consistently suppress, but not fast enough to be wasting bullets like the M249 or RPK.
It was 2019 Rainbow Six Siege, or around that time. I think the most recent operators were Wamai and Kali. It was Oregon, but I don't remember which version. Me, my friend and a random were stuck in that back hallway near the stairs exchanging shots and explosives with Valkyrie and 1 other operator. I had been using my pistol up to this point, but then i remembered. I coordinated with my friend to have them empty their mag and then me lay down a torrent of lead. And so I did, once the fire ceased, I held down the trigger and slowly advanced. Once my gun went click, I laid down and let my friends take the defenders down once they peeked. Instead, I was met with C4 and the situation was reset -1 attacker.
Speaking for the canadian forces, LMGs are not treated as single person weapons. They are usually crewed by two, or three members, dividing the weight of the spare barrels and ammo among them, helping making reloading and barrel swaps smoother and faster and are able to take over firing the weapon if the main gunner goes down. Furthermore, LMG and GPMG are considered platoon weapons, meaning whole groups of soldiers for every one LMG.
pretty cool that suppression/support is properly portrayed in video games. i was a SAW gunner in the Army and my job wasn't to hit you but keep your head down while my squad pushed up and hit you from the side.
How did we solve that in ArmA 3? My unit added a recoil multiplier mod, making automatic fire impossible without mounting the MG, and still hard to control while mounted. This mod isn't joking, sights go 30 degrees up almost instantly. This also forced more use of semi automatic fire with assault rifles which would also be more realistic.
Absolutely love this series and also expert reacts because well Jonathan is a legend, however the comments never seem to give enough props to Dave for being a great presenter and top nerd
In game called 'Red Orchestra 2" LMG's are depicted very well, you can barely shoot it on the stand posistion so you need to crawl, it can actually pin the enemy and can be very game-changing.
Should’ve mentioned stoppages. My C9 was pretty notorious for getting jammed, and an aspect of a proficient machine gunner was how quickly he could get the gun up and running. I wish more games would include the reality of stoppages in their mechanics
As former military myself I have to say that in real life lmg's and mortars account for far more kills that'll rifles. Another thing to keep in mind is that while lmg's can be used by a single soldier, in reality they are often deployed in teams of 2 or 3 with another soldier dedicated to loading and changing barrels and usually a team leader spotting for the MG. This makes lmg's far more effective in real life than, however it's really hard to get across in a video game. Even in games like Arma and He'll Let loose they don't have a dedicated loader class.
As a hard-core cod player I gotta acknowledge Battlefield cz when you assist in bf you still get the kill, and you get points for putting down suppressing fire .
The best way I have seen to do Machine Guns in game, if not all weapons: Disconnect the reticule from the center of the screen, let it float a bit. When it comes to machine guns, and all other long barreled weapon, this allow you to add a little bit of drag to show all that barrel weight. The heavier the weapon the longer it takes to bring about to target, not an issue if your set up defensively but really felt when your running between points. It is surprising how little of this effect you need before the guns begin to feel as if the have bulk and weight.
I mostly play csgo, and ever since the update that turned it into a laser beam I feel like (at least in low elo) it can actually be used for suppression. While it isn't very suppressing psychologically, it does force you to adapt in response to it. It can also buy a decent amount of time in a game where the clock can be a significant factor.
I know I am a bit late to the party, but I feel like day of defeat had a great representation of LMG. With the game mechanic and map design, you really felt that suppressive fire you were talking about. I would like to see more games like it!
It feels weird seeing Jonathon firing a gun, I'm so used to him just holding and describing them.
Haha he's a pro in all aspects - what better way to know how best to describe them.. 👀
I remember in the early Gamespot videos, there were Americans in the comments accusing him of never having fired a gun and being a «fake» expert, on account of him being British… 😂
@@IrregularDave Imagine he made a cameo in the new John Wick movie
@@Nai_101 ....I need to send some emails...
@@SvenElven well yeah, he's british. 9 times out of 10 I'd rather listen to the mechanic than the engineer when it comes to a car.
I'm convinced Jonathan has the coolest job on earth
He have. Ian McCollum too. In reality, everyone who makes a living around firearms.
Gotta push back on that a little. Tho you’re correct it’s important to point out that he MADE it the coolest job on Earth
He does seem like he genuinely likes what he does for a living - which makes it really fun to watch him
For real! He's so knowledgeable and easy to listen to as well
There is a guys in Australia that his job was (and mybe still is) to try Attractions in his country
LMG’s are often very precise weapons irl.
In the danish infantry regiments I saw very experienced lmg users trigger-control the german mg3 (m/62 in Denmark) , making single- precision shots on half-torso sized targets out to 600-800 m.
Not what you’d normally expect from the mg3😂
The first round absolutely is. The rest though? Not so much
Minimi with 1,5 magnified scope will similarly land consistent hits on half and full silhuets. I would definitely not be standing around to find out at that distance....
I often turned the 240b into a marksman rifle irl
I remember test-firing LMGs in Battlefield 4 on the test range, and it works the same way - the first shot is accurate so you can tap the trigger for greater accuracy, but sustained fire becomes harder to maintain precision.
The same principle works for assault rifles too, so I only use full auto at short and medium ranges but switch to semi-auto mode for targets at a distance.
It's a genuinely joyful experience in HLL to meaningfully impact a large 100 player match by deploying an LMG in just the right position to either suppress a contested point for your allies advance, or to hold off key avenues of enemy advances through chokepoints and killzones, all whilst being rewarded for using the LMG properly with xp and score.
The suppression effects in that game can be terrifying as well.
HLL?
What's HLL?
I love unwarranted use of acronyms
@@triparadox.c it’s a game,a great game,on xbox,pc,and I believe on PlayStation
Insurgency has a unique approach to balancing LMGs, most LMGs, and all open bolt guns for that matter, have a slight trigger delay and aim shift with that. Not to mention their awful ADS time and recoil when off the bipod
Squad is very similar. An LMG is a hopeless weapon when going from building to building. It's slow and heavy and has zero accuracy. But when mounted in a bipod, it will easily take out a whole squad and pin another squad down. The game really plays in to their advantages and disadvantages and makes you think about where you need to set it up
Huh, I never noticed this. Played a 1K+ hours of PvE Sandstorm. Another thing is long guns are long, especially the MG3 less useful for room clearing. Long barrels will make them longer. The recoil is beastly. You can easily end up pointing at the sky without short controlled burst in a crouch posture or better. I never use auto bipod as it throws off your aim at the worse times. Dumping a belt is sick. I am one of the few players who actually use their pistol aggressively and pairs really well if you know what you are doing.
I've noticed COD has also brought the open bolt system into the recent Modern Warfare games. Adding an additional 72ms before the gun can shoot after the trigger is pulled
Dont ADS, just fire all 200 and deafen your enemy.
in payday 2 you dont even get ADS with LMGs
you only get the bipod and a small zoom when trying to ADS
Rising Storm 2 has a pretty intense suppression mechanic that lends itself well to the LMG, it's personally one of the better depictions I know. No matter how under represented or difficult they are to use, I'll always love the LMG!
Feel like the fear of death has to be in the game to feel the suppression or some other mechanics
Foxhole has pretty good LMGS
I've only really played Squad when it comes to good suppression mechanics and as much as I'm aware experienced players shrug it off and mostly just double tap any machine gunners trying to suppress with direct line of fire, i still find that the majority will get scared shitless and hit the dirt.
Edit: oh shoot i somehow misread rising storm 2 for insurgency sandstorm lol but yeah Rs2 has that classic feeling of "oh god oh Jesus they're in the trees man, they're mowing us down man!"
The first thing i do in an FPS when i can, is to check and see if an LMG's belt shrinks as it runs out of ammo
@@armintor2826 the absolute must for good taste lol
You mean Red Orchestra. That whole series of games started with Red Orchestra and that's where the whole LMG suppression mechanic began in multiplayer FPSes. One good gunner who knew how to deploy well to the back and keyhole himself could take down entire waves of enemy spawns on defense, or shut down all reinforcement routes to an objective on offense. I loved learning how to be a good gunner, and hated enemy gunners with a passion.
I think ARMA 3 needs a special mention here, specially in pvp and no respawn. Another player with good cover/concealment will pin you down and limit your options drastically, and if we only have 1 enemy with an LMG, when the player is reloading is the only moment to peek your head out and try to find him or asses your tactical option and come with a plan.
when playing milsim PvP nothing was worse than a lmg up a straight road, pinning down 20 guys and we all knew we were being flanked too, lmgs are almost the kings of realistic games
Name some good arma pvp streamers to watch on RUclips. 3rd person or first
@@basedgodstrugglin Karmakut, Nano, OperatorDrewski, FriendlyNikolai
@@basedgodstrugglin Come join the 29th ID if you want some solid single-life PVP gameplay. Look up "Friday Night Fights" - we go every week.
@@WhopperJrNoCheese salute, thank you
BF3 suppression was great. It discouraged camping and encouraged flanking. If you cant see anything under suppresion you have to move to a new position. If you dont the enemy team has a chance to flank you while you sit there blinded.
yep, a 200 rounds belt feed MG with bipod fired from cover was a quite formidable defensive asset in bf3 as far as snipers wont get involved, i think was one of the most accurate use of lmg from a mass multiplayer online shooter videogame
@@Tonyx.yt. BF3 also had the immersive gunplay imo
The feeling to shoot or get shot at was so nicely done with this mechanics
Even if you get shot at from an Vipers 30mm gun you felt the power from the itself 😌 i miss the game so much but it was so much fun and i'm happy i played it
Hell Let Loose does a fantastic job with the LMG. It really is intended to be an area suppression weapon role, and as a player, it certainly feels so.
I was a gunner/assistant gunner for most of my 8 years in uniform. My last two years I carried the M249 SAW and I loved it. I named her Lilian, after the daughter I was going to have and never met. She had a short barrel and a solid stock. She also had a Picatinny rail system in place of a hand guard. She was light enough that with some modification to the sling and a bit of 550 cord, I was able to click her on my IBA via carabiners and let her hang there to be hands free. If needed, I could shoulder her and fire on the move or quickly unclip to go prone. She carried me through some of the hairiest times I spent in the Middle East. A small part of me cried when I had to give her up when I was Medevac'd out. I prayed that whoever got her after me treated her well and kept him safe.
I don’t care if this is true… that’s beautifully written
13:45 really good point there
Semi related, Halo ODST is an absolute joke of a stealth game from a mechanical perspective, but the incredible atmosphere provided by the music and map design had me moving slowly and panicking whenever the enemy spotted me anyway
They really only shine in single player games and games with 1 shot kills. MG42 was a beast in Red Orchestra.
No dude if you play them right they are good in pretty much every game. Just be a support gunner.
Just treat any LMG like the support weapons they are. Spray an area and let your team flank them or deny an area for the enemy team. Kills are optional, unfortunately you don’t get participation points for basically giving your team free kills.
@@joshwist556 yep, it does its job in most cases if you use it as intended, but you don't get rewarded for it.
Most LMG’s are beasts in Rising Storm 2 aswell, although they’re less good for surpressing but better for wallbanging the objective
I loved getting headshots with the MG 34's single shot trigger
Ghost Recon Future Soldier had a suppresion mechanic for LMGs as well, the shooter's reticle would change to a square to show the suppression zone, and if you were the one getting shot at, you would be able to passively look over cover, and the character model would actually duck even lower for cover, overall it was a very immersive experience even if it was a near future game
i loved that game, i still have thw disc for it, and i always felt like the cover was about to break even though it wouldnt
Ghost recon did a great job of making weapons and movement always feel meaningful. You could truly feel the power of both friendly and enemy MGs of all sizes.
It's a shame that you can't really use LMGs on Elite, you're lucky if you get more than 3 seconds on the Bipod before being killed.
Loved that game, just left a comment about it, then I found yours.
I absolutely loved that game and want it to come back or do a remaster also bringing the servers back.
Sunk so many hours in it, it's truly underrated.
One of my all time favorite memories playing Insurgency (2014) was a match on contact where my team was trying to get across the main street that crosses the map, so I set up in a window with an m249 and started firing bursts into all the windows where I saw gunshots coming from. The suppression actually worked and kept the enemies heads down long enough for my team to cross and cap the objective. Times like that make me wish other games had a suppression counter on the score board like Insurgency does.
The Black Ops 1 LMGs were so interesting to me because 3 of the 4 LMGs were magazine fed, and had a relative small magazine, yet they still managed to feel like LMGs, and not just Assault Rifles
Unfortunately, the BEST suppression tactic will always be Tarkov: because losing your gear and your quest progress? Yeah, that's the ULTIMATE incentive to not peak your head to see if you can get a lucky shot or counter-fire against someone who has you pinned. Thanks for that life lesson, Killa!
The main difference between real life and games is that in real life, those you shoot at are afraid to die and hit the dirt immediately, while in games you can empty 2 belts of bullets around a group and they would just keep doing what they were doing.
I remember the first time I played pubg on a team. My play style had always been to hide and scavange and avoid contact until the end game. Even from my first match, I rarely did worse than top 10. But when I played with a team, they wanted to just run right into the thick of it, often all of us dying within 5 minutes.
The time between dying and getting back into another game made me want to play it cool. Getting killed meant you were out for quite a while.
I feel like Darktide nailed suppression. I like that it messes with your accuracy without ruining your view/hearing. A slightly toned down version would be incredible in more grounded shooters
Lmg’s works great on realistic games like he’ll let loose or post sciptum. You always get to cover when you’re suppressed in those games even because respawning takes time and because pushing the enemy front can be hard without many players
Destiny's 2 heir apparent is the only machine gun in a game that I've really felt like a power fantasy with. When you fire it it slows you down considerably but it also provides you with an overshield.
Heir is probably the best machine gun I've ever used.
An overshield that was nerfed 😂 don’t know why bungie bothers with machine guns anymore, they will never be a viable option again
@@MumboJumboZXC *Laughs in Xeno, Thunderlord, Corrective Measure, Grand Overture and the new Void 900RPM with Target Lock
@@commentingchannel9776 🤓
@@commentingchannel9776 also the sweet business
Anyone who's served knows that LMG weight is no joke. The M249 is about 22 pounds loaded, and, unlike rifles that can be slung from the shoulder, you have to carry it in your arms. That's why I always appreciate games that have cover mounting and/or bipod mechanics.
Thats 2lbs more than the new much beefier MG338
I have carried the FN Minimi (Dutch M249) on a sling many times.....
Bit of a shame that Ghost Recon: Future Soldier wasn't ever mentioned. The LMGs and their suppression mechanic were done really well.
Kinda sad they didn't mention the madsen lmg, as it was the first truely mass produced lmg. It was in use since 1902 and still in use as late as the 2010s
And it was the Danes of all people to make it.
I saw a brazilian police officer using a Madsen LMG on RUclips :-) This is because they are allowed to use any weapons they seize from criminals, hence why they have so many different weapons.
I'm a little disappointed that the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) wasn't mentioned. In the conversation of the difference between a light machine gun and an assault rifle, this weapon is very important as it was designed to be an infantry automatic rifle filling a similar role to the semi-automatic rifles that preceded it only for it to end up in more of a low-capacity light machine gun role. It shows how in real life there has not always been a clear distinction between automatic rifles and light machine guns, especially in the early days of their development.
You've answered your own question
The BAR wasn't an LMG it was an assault rifle
@@somebawldy3789 Well, I hadn't asked a question. But it was never really treated as an assault rifle, even if that was its original intention. It very quickly got slotted into an LMG role because of its weight and large round. It straddles the line and is often considered to be both. Which, as I said, shows the ambiguity of the term in its early days.
@@somebawldy3789 Big Assault Rifle-BAR
@@walttholomew the bar stands for browning automatic rifle
@@augustuslunasol10thapostle Yes. I know. I mentioned that in the comment you replied to. What is your point?
Battlefield I feel has done them pretty well over the years with their suppression system lowering player move speed,accuracy and increasing recoil and flinch.
This is especially when your in a flag to flag position just keep firing and eventually you'll catch someone moving.
(Also you can help counter snipe giving the enemy much more sway even while holding there breath)
Indie game Running With Rifles is a really interesting take on this - lmgs can't be fired from standing. Instead the player can only fire them from cover (resting the weapon on sandbags etc.) otherwise the character will automatically go prone in order to try and fire it. Not strictly accurate, but a good compromise on firepower and manoeuvrability
I daresay Dave is having too much fun with this series. Just living the best of both worlds. Probably Jonathan as well, as he seems to also play games a ton.
Best episode of Loadout yet. I’d love to see a discussion of the firearms of different eras, like how powder muskets, lever actions, and early bolt actions are depicted. I feel that a lot of WWII bolt action rifles are misunderstood, influencing the balance of the game for the sake of one shot kills
I wish there were more games depicting earlier wars tbh.
WW2 is an excellent setting, but it is overused to hell and back. There arent many mainstream games that go for ww1 or earlier. I can think of only a couple ww1 games
Thank you! As someone looking more and more into firearms I've been wondering about the differences between ARs and LMGs in real life and this was such a better answer than anything else I was finding online!
The suppression they had in Battlefield 4 though 👌🏻
I think Red Orchestra 2 (and Rising Storm 2? Idk, haven't played it) is one of the only games that gets machine guns right. They're extremely powerful and accurate when properly set up. Charging an area a machine gunner is covering is genuinely suicidal. But they're almost unusable on the move because you have no ability to aim and the recoil is immense. Basically, if you're not defending an objective or covering an attack you're doing it wrong.
(Oh forgot to mention, Red Orchestra 2 does actually have suppression as a mechanic, which affects vision and accuracy when your character is under fire. Near misses with any gun will do it but obviously machine guns are very good at it.)
Shoutout to Day of Defeat where if you didn't use bipod with LMG your crosshair was in sky after first 5 seconds in burst
Haha, bringing me back memories of DoD:S... Aiming at the ground before firing if I bumped into an enemy whilst changing positions.
Ghost Recon Future Soldier is a mostly forgotten shooter from 10 years ago but it had some pretty great suppression mechanics
Yes that game is the greatest third person shooter in terms of gameplay mechanics.
I love that game, needs a rerelease for sure!!
I want to mention that the "correct" way to use the chauchat shown early in the video is ironically resembling to the whole rambo thing, but this didn't work out very well in reality which is also the reason for a lot of the gun's flaws.
Did no one play the "Army of Two" series? That had one of the best Suppression systems that really let LMGs shine.
I really like this Loadout series, it's a nice companion to the other one with Jonathan. Well done, GameSpot!👍
Have a family friend who owns a transferable pre-86 full auto M1919, it's an absolute joy to shoot. He has two John Basilone style carry handles for the barrel. Hip firing it would be beyond silly past 30 yards, but if you're trying to be mobile and fight within dense jungles in Pacific Islands it actually makes a ton of sense. This is especially true when you can't see the enemy in said jungles and simply need to put down rapid suppressing fire in the general direction that you're taking fire from.
Sound design is a underused component of suppression - in the Stalker games, or at least the modern mods for them, there's a supersonic crack to incoming bullets that really make you want to take cover.
The Sig 338 does that really well in MW19, the sound that thing omits is rather brutal. Wish they played with that more though. Most in the franchise really didn't capitalize on that concussive effect that pure sound had like someone shooting the explosive rounds from an AA-12 was always disorienting.
What a lot of games get wrong about SAWs is how different the recoil is while ADS and hip firing. I was a SAW operator for 3 years and they’re amazingly accurate while hip firing and have little recoil while doing so, it’s very easy to hit targets up to 50m with one, while ADS the weight of the gun is incredibly noticeable and recoil becomes much harder to manage.
Which SAW did you use? Did you have a lot of jams with hipfiring? or did you brace it with either the bipod folded or the sling pulled tight?
@@rvanhees89 I was in the IDF so I used the Negev (NG 5 SF) and it’s a brutally sufficient machine. It never ever jams no matter what (one time I shoot over 2,000 rounds without cleaning it in very rough conditions) the way you’re supposed to shoot it is either while holding the handguard or use a special angled foregrip, I didn’t like the foregrip so I used the handguard, The bipod on the Negev can be folded to both lay below the handguard and fold forward below the barrel, the former option will cause you’re grip to slip and will be unpractical and the latter is very useful in a lot of situations (like putting your gun on a wall) pulling the sling all the way is not recommended because when you change firing position you won’t be able to hold the gun and changing it mid combat will take too long to be functional. This was a bit rumbling but I hope I got all my points across
Folding the bipod below the handguard is what we called administrative position because it makes the gun more compact and easier to transport. It is still a very useful feature but just not in combat
I'd say the most annoying thing about LMGs in games is when they reduce the damage for the sake of "balance" despite the gun using the very same ammo as another weapon with much higher damage.
I am surprised by the work you guys did.
Well done.
I like the old days of CS where you stand and shoot right through the walls to a choke point.
No one with other guys could really shoot back.
I feel like the Red Orchestra series of games really got the machine gun right. That is one game where you have to play it like intended, with finding a good choke point with cover to set up with the tripod, and riflemen replenishing their machine-gunners with ammunition, in order to win.
Red Orchestra 2 in Realism or Classic modes with two large and competent teams (not players who choose the team leader or commander class just to run around with the submachine gun, as that sabotages the entire team)
Team leaders spot artillery locations and send them back to the commander at the radio. Team leaders also serve as a kind of mobile spawn point to help get your riflemen into the capture zone to take the territory.
After some 800 hours in this game, every other multiplayer FPS feels silly and uninteresting. Its a mature mans war game, which in my opinion strikes the perfect balance between realism and fun to be truly engaging, and at the same time really communicates the horrors of war, rushing with a bolt action rifle from the cover of one gully to the next, with horror hearing the roar of incoming artillery, and diving blindly into an old artillery crater for cover.
It's such a shame it is mostly dead at this point.
It's squad leaders, not team leaders that spot artillery/act as a spawn point for their squads. There is only one team leader per team. Agree with your comment though.
@@RustyShackleford My bad, it's been a while since I played it. Most servers I enjoyed eventually died out. There is only one big well populated server left from what I can tell, but it is in Europe, with pretty high pings for me, and seems to be dead during the hours when I can usually get on. it is a shame.
So indeed. Squad Leaders are the mobile spawn points/art spotters, and Team lead (we usually called him commander) calls in arty, etc.
It's really a shame the game is so dead. It is probably my favorite multiplayer game of all time. Gritty eastern front, more realistic than most games I've ever seen, yet at the same time, not so realistic that it takes all of the fun out of it (ARMA I'm looking at you)
Ah, the man behind all the gameplay Johnathan watches! Great video. As a warzone LMG stan, I can appreciate this.
0:08 that was insanely satisfying :D .
Ghost recon Future Soldier had one of the best suppression mechanics I'd played. As a cover based 3rd person shooter, suppression effects would force the camera lower and lower, and dull out sound and color until all you can see is your character completely pinned. This allowed teammates to flank fairly safely and made attacking or defending objectives feel much more rewarding.
I think suppression is perfect for the Battlefield franchise. Battlefield is not a competitive game, it's supposed to be the perfect middle ground between arcade-like and realistic, and I think suppression plays a huge role in making you feel like you're in a large battle
For sure, another reason for me why 2042 doesn't really feel like I'm in a big battle, just some weird kind of skirmish or smaller fights dotted around.
The feeling of teamwork and support and coherency is one of the things that makes those games feel larger and deeper imo
Ok but it’s annoying so
@@bimss7969 yeah but that's the point. It's not counter strike where something annoying you on screen is a huge negative. The objective of Battlefield has always been to make you feel like you're in a massive battle, and the suppression 100% contributed to that
@@bimss7969 Thats the point. Youre not supposed to feel good being supressed
@@Tatwinus And you’re supposed to hit your shots
So, the interesting thing about strength in the context of heavy weapons is interesting as lugging around heavier weapons requires both absolute strength being how big of a weight you can lift in order to even handle the weapon, and endurance strength being how long can you lift that weight. It might even be worth considering giving light machine guns to smaller individuals who excess in stamina, and have just enough strength the lug the thing around.
A little add-on for the Squad mention, being suppressed practically triples weapon sway. This essentially forces you to prone if you want to land even a half decent shot on your opponents which punishes you for ignoring the suppressing fire even if the shots are no where near you.
Yo is that Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries in the UK?
they didn't tell us in the beginning, so we can't be sure
I'll double check for you
Suppression as a concept is cool and so is having drawbacks to LMGs but ultimately in a video game it's about what is fun but more importantly what is fun for the target audience you are aiming for. Most people don't enjoy overly long reloads or moving slower than other players because they're using an LMG. I feel like for LMGs to be more accurate to their real life counterparts you have to have a game that is more "war-like" in its gameplay pacing. A game like COD can't make an LMG accurate to what it is because the gameplay pacing is far too fast to have guys with LMGs holding down corridors or pinning people down in a building.
I love when I run into smart chopper pilots who know how to give a good angle
Oh yeah baby, dem verticale envelopment techniques
Squad IMO has the greatest depiction of suppression effects on a player. When I first got into squad, being shot at & my vision tunnelling with the cracks of bullets going by had me ducking in my seat lol. Theres been multiple times where my SL would request for suppressive fire, or fire for effect, on an enemy position so they’d put their heads down and my team could push forward.
whenever a game lets me customize an lgm, i go all in for making it even heavier, often trying to increase hipfire accuracy over anything else, to try and reduce the pray part of spray and pray
Saw a lot of the US M249 Squad Automatic Weapon in the video. Per doctrine, that weapon is capable of being employed in both The LMG and Auto-Rifle role. I loved the weapon system because it was so versatile. While the M4 was only about 7 LBS unloaded, The M249 was about 19 LBS unloaded. While not easy, shoulder firing it was completely doable. That said, I'm fairly large so I had an advantage there.
Battlefield's suppression mechanic is honestly really cool in my opinion.
having played 3, 4 and " 1 ", I can honestly say I never noticed too much of a difference between them, but hearing that 2042 removed it is.... disheartening, but unsurprising considering how much that game's been complained about.
It always felt good to get some points even if you didn't get a hit, and it was very useful in some games as a way to tell if there were enemies in an area.
"suppression assist", "oh there was a guy there, maybe there are more, I should carefully push"
I think ranges of different games are also a important part. In Squad or Arma you often have fights 300+ meters, while you're average CoD-Fight is within 10 - 20 meters. Reaction is everything in close quarter combat, so a slowmoving machine gun usually has disadvantages.
On a long range fight it's usually not that important who shoots first. MG-gunners can find their time to position their heavy weapons to shoot back with a setup bipod leading to good accuracy to lay down fire
Its the most important factor and that is the biggest hurdle of most FPS games.
In reality many 7.56 rifles shoot above 600-800+ meters but usually 600m, the 5.56 shoot around 100 meters less and the mp5 shoots at 200 meters. And obviously the LMGs dominate in the close ranges. So you see even in Arma where its the most realistic one the ranges are shorter than real life and obviously CoD or Rainbow Six is very unrealistic. They even had many balance problems with an LMG operator in Rainbow Six, there are whole RUclips articles.
Gotta say I'm enjoying this series as much as the weapon focus one's!
While it isn't a shooter, Xcom has a suppression skill that the lmg wielding support soldiers could do. It gave the targeted enemy unit a MAJOR aim penalty and forced that unit to stay put or risk getting shot by the lmg. Many a battles won because of that mechanic.
Battlefield 3 and the suppression mechanic (pre-patch) was by far the best stage I have ever seen LMGs shine.
I like what DICE did with LMGs in Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2. They get more precise the longer you shoot. Which is counter-intuitive in a way but it immediately makes players fire longer bursts like LMGs should instead of just using them like assault rifles with more ammo.
This is nitpicking, but there's a pretty common misuse of the term "assault rifle" in games, real life, etc... It's a proper term and requires a weapon that is select-fire, chambered in an intermediate cartridge, and has a detachable magazine. If it doesn't check those 3 boxes then by definition it's not an assault rifle.
My favorite video game LGM experience is Onward. LMGs feel so powerful in that game, and experiencing suppressing fire in VR is a lot more intense than it is on a screen.
I think Squad does lmgs really well. They have huge recoil if you try to fire without a bipod, making them worse than assault rifles at those scenarios but when you do use a bipod the recoil goes away and you can light up anyone you see with huge firepower
Another thing that's hard to represent in most games that's huge IRL is range. Most games just don't have maps big enough for it to be a factor. We had plenty of machine gun duals in Afghanistan that were beyond AK/M4 range.
Games should give a penalty of speed for the amount of equipment players carry and a penalty of agility for what they have in hand. Reasoning is simple: more weight means more inertia, for example: pick up your phone and point it at random directions. Pretty straightforward. Now try doing it with a 10kg dumbell. You won't be able to move nearly as fast from one position to the other. Vehicular milsims like War Thunder implemented it to account for the low rotation speed of tank turrets, FPSes should too to not allow players to be waving M60s around like they were water pistols.
I remember playing battlefield 3 on PS3 and one match on the train station map, a group of us just posted up with our LMG's and laid waste from the windows of the coffee shop outside the station! aah good times ☺
Warhammer 40k Darktide has an interesting suppression mechanic that also feels sensible: you have normal HP and a toughness bar that tanks damage until empty then your HP go down. If ranged enemies shoot at you while your toughness is down your aim flinches with every hit similar to flinching in pain or just pulling your head in until you run for cover and your toughness replenishes, there are specialist machine gunner enemies just for that. you can suppress enemies on the other hand and force them to duck or run away by shooting at them in general and using "scary" guns like a bolter, flamethrower or certain types of automatic rifles geared towards suppression
Because the 08/15 was so common, in German saying "This is 08/15" still is common and means that something is very common and just standard.
I was an M249 SAW gunner in 2003, and chose the M249 whenever I went outside the wire in 2005. The big things I think video games get wrong about LMG's is the weight, and bullet spread. Just because a weapon is an ⅕ it just as fast as a rifle. In the EIB, Expert Infantry Badge, you had to load, fire full auto till malfunction, clean and clear a malfunction, within seconds. You definitely could keep pace with rifles.
The bullet spread on a 249 is wild when you just pull the trigger and don't shoulder it, but if you hold it to your shoulder, and provide some control, it will be tight enough for close quarters for sure. In video games an M249 will fire just like an RPK, or an M240B,. Those machine guns fire a completely different round, and are built completely different. I will say that in VR a lot of military games get the M249 correct. The only down side is the reload.
11:33 talking about authentic gameplay as the feed tray thing clips through the weapon scope
Remember when playing Battlefield 3 and for the first time in a game instinctively ducked when I came under fire - the suppression effects were pretty astonishing, the bullets impacting around you felt harrowing in a way I hadn't experienced before.
The suppression effect on battlefield was awesome
At least the RPK is shining in MW2 right now;and I guess I’m redownloading BF 1 again thanks loadout lol
Just did that like a month ago. I've prolly put 150hrs in since then. Forgot how good bf1 is
I would argue, when it comes to suppression in a multiplayer medium, a longer, more brutal respawn timer might help. You’re less likely to jump into the spray of bullets if you can’t hop right back in 10 seconds later.
VR captures the idea of supression really well, especially games like Onward. Since you are much mor immersed and practically in the environment, having your screen turn gray and having you field of view shrink can force you to instinctually dive or drop behind cover.
People will probably disagree with me on this, but I think Battlefield 5 had one of the freshest takes on the suppression role of the machine gun in a multiplayer game, by linking the spotting mechanic directly to it. By laying down fire on enemy positions, you reveal them to your teammates, making it easier for them to pinpoint and respond to threats. Additionally, the machine guns were no slouches at taking down targets at medium to long ranges (perhaps a little too good as range increases) if people were foolish enough not to keep their heads down.
I did enjoy the suppression in battlefield, LMGs/support was my role in my friends squads and it felt good to pin down other squads and provide covering fire to help with objectives
I really wish Seige would implement slower movement when having an LMG equipped. Otherwise the LMG's in that game are pretty much belt fed assault rifles.
This reminded me of how absolutely busted the Type 99 was in CODWAW. If I remember correctly the setup I used was Bayonet, Bandolier, Sleight of Hand, and Steady Aim, assuming the last two don't occupy the same slot. You ended up with a close-quarters monster that could also take speculative shots across the map. AFAIK I was the only one who thought of it, but it worked.
I liked the bayonet in that game, it's a shame no other COD title through BO2 had them
Ghost Recon Future Soldier had a pretty great suppression mechanic. If a person behind cover was suppressed, then the suppressed person's camera would zoom in a little bit and shake heavily, making it next to impossible to aim down sight over cover. The M60 was amazing in that game as an LMG. Perfect combination of damage and accuracy (for an LMG) and the fire rate was just right for suppressing - fast enough to consistently suppress, but not fast enough to be wasting bullets like the M249 or RPK.
The Bren has a 30 round magazine, commonly loaded with 28 rounds, rather than a 20 round magazine.
It had both similar with how a AR mag could be fitted to a "minime"
It was 2019 Rainbow Six Siege, or around that time. I think the most recent operators were Wamai and Kali.
It was Oregon, but I don't remember which version. Me, my friend and a random were stuck in that back hallway near the stairs exchanging shots and explosives with Valkyrie and 1 other operator. I had been using my pistol up to this point, but then i remembered.
I coordinated with my friend to have them empty their mag and then me lay down a torrent of lead. And so I did, once the fire ceased, I held down the trigger and slowly advanced. Once my gun went click, I laid down and let my friends take the defenders down once they peeked.
Instead, I was met with C4 and the situation was reset -1 attacker.
Speaking for the canadian forces, LMGs are not treated as single person weapons. They are usually crewed by two, or three members, dividing the weight of the spare barrels and ammo among them, helping making reloading and barrel swaps smoother and faster and are able to take over firing the weapon if the main gunner goes down. Furthermore, LMG and GPMG are considered platoon weapons, meaning whole groups of soldiers for every one LMG.
pretty cool that suppression/support is properly portrayed in video games. i was a SAW gunner in the Army and my job wasn't to hit you but keep your head down while my squad pushed up and hit you from the side.
Hitting you is only a bonus
Games get LMGs wrong by forgetting they fire the same rounds as regular rifles, and tend to nerf fast firing guns for the same reason.
How did we solve that in ArmA 3? My unit added a recoil multiplier mod, making automatic fire impossible without mounting the MG, and still hard to control while mounted. This mod isn't joking, sights go 30 degrees up almost instantly. This also forced more use of semi automatic fire with assault rifles which would also be more realistic.
Try it in real life with a 7.62 GPMG shoulder mounted .... letting off more than 3 rounds results in shooting the ISS down
@@somebawldy3789 we shot down the virtual ISS then
Absolutely love this series and also expert reacts because well Jonathan is a legend, however the comments never seem to give enough props to Dave for being a great presenter and top nerd
Oh you ❤
In game called 'Red Orchestra 2" LMG's are depicted very well, you can barely shoot it on the stand posistion so you need to crawl, it can actually pin the enemy and can be very game-changing.
Should’ve mentioned stoppages. My C9 was pretty notorious for getting jammed, and an aspect of a proficient machine gunner was how quickly he could get the gun up and running. I wish more games would include the reality of stoppages in their mechanics
As former military myself I have to say that in real life lmg's and mortars account for far more kills that'll rifles. Another thing to keep in mind is that while lmg's can be used by a single soldier, in reality they are often deployed in teams of 2 or 3 with another soldier dedicated to loading and changing barrels and usually a team leader spotting for the MG. This makes lmg's far more effective in real life than, however it's really hard to get across in a video game. Even in games like Arma and He'll Let loose they don't have a dedicated loader class.
As a hard-core cod player
I gotta acknowledge Battlefield cz when you assist in bf you still get the kill, and you get points for putting down suppressing fire .
Payday 2 has a suppression mechanic. Take muscle perk deck and LMG, spray towards enemies and watch them take cover.
The best way I have seen to do Machine Guns in game, if not all weapons:
Disconnect the reticule from the center of the screen, let it float a bit.
When it comes to machine guns, and all other long barreled weapon, this allow you to add a little bit of drag to show all that barrel weight. The heavier the weapon the longer it takes to bring about to target, not an issue if your set up defensively but really felt when your running between points. It is surprising how little of this effect you need before the guns begin to feel as if the have bulk and weight.
Love that H3vr is included at 3:30
i will forever love the M60
Found Rambo’s RUclips account
I mostly play csgo, and ever since the update that turned it into a laser beam I feel like (at least in low elo) it can actually be used for suppression. While it isn't very suppressing psychologically, it does force you to adapt in response to it. It can also buy a decent amount of time in a game where the clock can be a significant factor.
I know I am a bit late to the party, but I feel like day of defeat had a great representation of LMG. With the game mechanic and map design, you really felt that suppressive fire you were talking about. I would like to see more games like it!
Cool thing about the M249 SAW, Not only can it take belt fed 5.56 ammo. It also has a mag well that you can fit a regular STANMAG 5.56 into.
I feel like Red orchestra/rising storm have gotten LMGs the most right.
The knights armament LAMG is incredible watching it be fired from the shoulder. Worth looking up