> We always had loads of cool ideas, like enemies running out of ammo and throwing clips to each other. But the reality is, the player will never see it.
Sounds like a problem with the particular constraints of the PvE genres you were working in, rather than with games generally.
Imagine an RTS where the player has to work their way up from grunt to strategist, and thus "plays every role" along the way. In that case, the enemy AI is the ally AI; the player experiences the allied side of it, and can use that to understand the enemy side of it, and thus make plans.
I don't think this is an issue with the game type, just a limit on what they could afford to do. Messaging this to the player could be accomplished w/ a voice line & animation, but that costs money or disk space (remember, Playstation game).
This same problem would exist in a RTS, since the player still needs to know that the random ammo appearing is from squadmates passing it off. Otherwise, the player would be just as confused, possibly thinking they were picking up ammo off the ground.
Like most things in life, this is a tradeoff between cost to implement VS value.
Sounds like a problem with the particular constraints of the PvE genres you were working in, rather than with games generally.
Imagine an RTS where the player has to work their way up from grunt to strategist, and thus "plays every role" along the way. In that case, the enemy AI is the ally AI; the player experiences the allied side of it, and can use that to understand the enemy side of it, and thus make plans.