The Shrine

If you've played a PvP in WoW or whatever, you'll be aware of people who apparently can do a 180 degree turn while running at full speed and jumping. This, along with focus fire, is one of the least realistic mechanism I've ever seen in a video game. Not even Jedis fight like that and they're supposed to be guys who have access to ability that defies the law of physics. If you tried doing that in real life you'd probably just hurt yourself. If you look at a boxing match or a MMA fight the guy don't go around hoping like madman for no reason, because it'd be pretty easy to punch someone really hard while they're moving around like they're having spasms. Yet this apparently is one of the cornerstone of gameplay in one of the biggest industry in video game.

We always hear about how games nowaday have realistic physics engine or whatever, but apparently it is too hard to model the fact that the faster you're moving the less likely you're able to turn, or that players have mass (trying to jump around crazy should just bump you into another player and then you fall flat on your face, or at least get bumped back). It's not realistic. It's not even how fights are depicted in purely fictional worlds!

I know what you mean, this even applies to games like Counter Strike where the crouch jumping spazz's who mouse spin like crazy get tons of kills and are hard to hit. I guess humans are too slow for it to be fun if that aspect of the game was realistic. Instead, developers focus on the imagery, weapons, and other stuff to be 'realistic'.

It doesn't have to be anything too complicated. If you're jumping around at full speed spinning in mid air your aim should be much worse. I remember reading one year of Madden saying that now they actually make passes thrown while running less accurate compared to being still. There should be all kinds of performance penalty for doing things on the move that scales with speed.

Again even in fictional depictation of a gunfight, you don't see two guys hopping around crouching in midair. They're usually standing in relatively still in covered positions. You don't have to be so realistic that when you try to do that you hurt your back and fall flat on your face, but gaming really shouldn't award spastic movements that have no semblance to even fiction.

Then again I think it took at least 10 years before Madden decided to account for the part that running should decrease your accuracy while throwing a football, so maybe it's not something that's obvious at all!