What is so great about realism?

[Dalec]

Sashok: I am getting really tired of repeating my points. I have stated over and over that I think their should be realism in game, but for a fun factor, not just to make the game more realistic.

And if you have played a MMORPG before, you will know that if you are a smith, you will not sit around smithing all day. You will in fact go out hunting and spend more time fighting monsters than in the smith-it would be boring jsut to sit in a smith all day waiting for your fire to heat up. My point is this: Would you find it more fun making your weapons through a fairly simple to understand procedure that is fun, and not too repetetive? Or would you rather have to go buy the bucket of water, put salts in it, buy the material for heating the fire, etc etc etc. just to make one weapon? I think this would become extremely boring and repetetive, just like a real smiths job is. MAKE IT FUN! IF IT IS FUN BY BEING REAL, THEN GREAT! I am not arguing not to make anything realistic. I am tired of saying this!!!!

[sashok]

yes, I actually would prefer to be very close to real smith, this would garantee that people like you, no offence, would not be able to construct weapons as good as mine.  Do you see my point as well?  Of course it would be impossible to make the process of anything, not just smithing, like in the real world.  It takes years or months to make a good sword, but still I find the idea that if you are serious about smithing, you should dedicated your time just to that.   If you are serious about fighting, you should dedicate your time just to that, and so on.

[Dalec]

You havn\'t thought about my smith idea enough yet to really understand what I am talking about. That system might seem cool the first couple times you do it, but if your in a game and your a blacksmith, that is going to get really boring really fast. Yet another example of how realism would get in the way of fun. You think blacksmith\'s liked going to the forge every day and had fun doing it? Like any job, if you are passionate about it, it can be fun. But no job is always fun, and games should always be fun. Your point is broken. Find a better one.

[sashok]

ok, fun fun fun, all I hear is fun.  I want to have fun as well, but at the same time I will sacrifise some of my fun for the feeling that I\'m really good at something particular because I put in time and research in it.  Sure, it will not be fun to others because it would take them just as much as it took me for example, but at the end it\'s rewarding.  

We have different views that\'s all.  You think it\'s a game and there\'s absolutely no need to get fully involved, no strings attached.  Play one day, beat the whole game, that\'s it.  That works for single player rpgs, where you don\'t need to live in a community of players.  It does not work in mmorpg where thousands of players spend their time competing at something.  

You might be right, at some point smithing could become a bore, so that\'s when you can go on adventures, become a merchant, sell your months work, etc..

[Axsyrus]

Games are supposed to be fun, I agree with you there. However, I think doing something you\'re good at and standing out, being known by many people etc. is a LOT more fun then just aimlessly clearing out dungeons in the hope you\'ll just might level up 1 point that day..

And like sashok said, this is an MMORPG, you should interact with the community, this is online. you shouldn\'t just play it like any offline game with the only difference that there is a build in chat..

[Dalec]

Originally posted by sashok20
We have different views that\'s all.  You think it\'s a game and there\'s absolutely no need to get fully involved, no strings attached.  Play one day, beat the whole game, that\'s it.  That works for single player rpgs, where you don\'t need to live in a community of players.  It does not work in mmorpg where thousands of players spend their time competing at something.  

You might be right, at some point smithing could become a bore, so that\'s when you can go on adventures, become a merchant, sell your months work, etc..

Now you are telling me what I think? I never said you don\'t need to get involved. I never said you need to beat an rpg in a day. Again your arguments are invalid. I have years of experience with actual P2P commercial MMORPGs and I know what can be fun, and what is just over the line and boring. I am backing my points up with my personal knowledge and experience first hand. I understand how a MMORPG works, and it is nothing like a single player RPG. However, you do have to cater to EACH and EVERY player to try and give them all the same oppurtunity to have fun, or else you don\'t grow a very good community. Each player wants to feel special and recognized. The fact is, this is generally not something that happens. Just because one person has more time to dedicate to a game doesn\'t mean others should miss out.

I agree, community is very important in a MMORPG. In fact, it is the driving factor in a good one. What made EQ so popular? Surely not the gameplay. Nor argument here, it seems like you are making up points against me that don\'t really exist, and it is getting annoying.

And to say that when you get bored with smithing, you just pack it up and go adventuring, well that is my point exactly. There should be a balance of your merchant work and your adventuring. Just being a plain smith the whole game would be dull and repetetive.

[derwoodly]

sashok,
What MMORPG have you played?  Even the games with craftskills well thought out and somewhat fun, do not envolve months of research.  In general crafting is not as exciting as adventuring because no one ever dies while making something.

Dalec,
I get your point.  I do not like to hear the words \"it will make the game more realistic\" even when they are typed by my own hand.

[SnowWolf]

Realism isn\'t implemented to make a game like real life, it\'s implemented because it\'s the easiest way to increase a player\'s \"belief\" in a world - the more far fetched things get, the less plausable they become to the player, thus lowering the player\'s immersion in the world.

Less Immerison = Less Fun

Of course you can get away with completely turning reality upside down IF you explain why and how this is possible!

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Beware using personal experience as evidence in an arguement - it has it\'s weaknesses.

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Catering to everyone is the number one way to fail - it is impossible to please everyone.

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Devs are often forced to go by the fact that many players DON\'T know what they want in a game and that they DON\'T know why they\'re having fun. Some ideas that sound really cool in theory may actually make things less fun once implemented.....

[sashok]

Ok, Dalec  I must apologize, it\'s getting a little out of hand.  I have hard time explaining myself and you don\'t want to give in even a little lol.  Let\'s not go any further.

derwoodly, I\'ve plaed EQ(addictive like drugs with the withdrawal period after lol), that\'s when you realize you just killed months of your life.  I\'ve played Runes***ape,( I won\'t even go there)I\'ve played A tale in a desert, but only for the free period, that was the only game that had potential, but I didn\'t want to go any further because it didn\'t have no sort of combat and it was just a mess.  
Well, not a lot of games of course, you guys probably know a lot more about mmorpgs, but I have an idea of this stuff myself, I\'m sticking to my views.

[Syzerian]

games need to have a good basic realistic physics engine so that the game is believable allowing you to really feel like you are part of the game. or some barfetched story to make it seem believable
one of the best examples for this is halo. the most unrealistic game of the century. non of the physics were done right since you have personal shields but can still get killed in one hit, being hit with a rocket and dieing is acceptable but being hit with a shot gun and dieing in one hit is just plain wrong, a personal shield will block one shot from a bullet weapon no matter what since the main idea of most personal shields is to slow down particles coming towards you hence being hit by bullet weapons would just be like someone throwing really small stones at you. and another thing thats really stuffed up with it is that if you get hit in the back of the head by a punch of whatever you instantly die lol. also they have personal shields and big space ships with teleportation devices and they still use bullet weapons?!?!?!?
because of all these factors its harder to emerse yourself with halo since you just have to forget about all the stuffed up things and act like its some other copy of a fps like medal of honor or something except you are in funny space suits lol :rolleyes:

[Vengeance]

I agree with Fenrison--a very nice post in a sea of pointless argumentativeness.

Realism is fun when it adds to immersion, and not fun when it detracts from the pace, adrenaline or other factors in the game which contribute to fun besides immersion.

We are going for very immersive, which means very consistent.  We are also going for fun so don\'t listen to all these pointless posts about \"realism\" by sleeping 1/3rd of your online time because that is just stupid.

- Venge

[tallimar]

if i start sounding repetitive with the rest of the posts, then ingore me.

IMO, realism doesnt necessarily mean based on real life.  to me, realism in an rpg(mmo or otherwise) can more accurately be described as continuity.  if this realism runs along the same lines as in real life, then fine, if it doesnt, so what.  realism doesnt have to mean that you must go get a pail of salt water and and manually go through the entire process of making a weapon, but it can mean that if you make lots of swords then youre going to be able to make some high quality swords that are more durable and hold an edge longer than its\' generic counterparts.  one thing i have noticed is that there is some level of real life physics in every type of game.  fps games have gravity as do many 3d mmorpgs.  if one unit attacks another unit in an rts, its going to realize that the second unit is most likely going to have to take some kind of damage from the collision as do any game with some form of combat included in it.

since im losing my train of thought, thats where im going to end it for now, but nonetheless, it doesnt have to be like real life just to be \'realistic\', as been said before, they should just have some kind of sensical(at least mildly sensical) explanation.

[Seru]

RolePLAYing GAMES >>>>> PLAY = FUN, GAME = FUN.    
That all.