51 replies to this topic

[Feanor]

Many people consider realism in games a good thing, but should there be a limit to it ? In DA forums, I encountered some very strange ideas :

1.aging: the age on characters should infect them if a human is at the age of i child in rl it should be a child, and if you are old it would have been fun if you got grey hair and died.
2.armor: a fullplate isn't a fullplate, it has to be iron steel bronze and so on, leather should be cowleather bearleather and so on. and if you find a plate on an orc you have to go to i smith with it to make it fit you for example.
3.crafting:then it would be much fun to craft the things that you need, and make food since its going to be a food system.
4. NPC: in cities alot of ncps LOT of them walking around and maybe have a purpose go to the bar or something.
5. cities: big houses in nwn the houses are to small.
maybe ill come up with some more ideas later.
if the is a topic with all that already please link me 
6. btw this is way out of D&D but it would be fun to have more that one xp "ladder" and several ways to get xp like hunt you get hunting xp.

Do you think is that too much ? I would think so, because making differences between types of leather or making fit an armor for you seems exaggerated.

[Archmage Silver]

Ooo. Not THAT much realism in any game, please.

[Schatten]

aging isnt hard to do and does give something to the game. look at might and magic.
to make a distinction in material of products is a bit too much. thats too much micromanaging. just another way of upgrading items.
food sucks. period. somehow. or, again, might and magic with the food spell was somehow good.
yeah, lots of npcs. at least hundreds on one map. yeah, i work fir echelon and have thus good computing resources. no seriously. somewhat crowded is okay but you must remember if you want to give them purposes that those eat a lot resources, too. iirc, bethesda wants to give their npcs real purposes and actions to perform.

[Archmage Silver]

And we should remember that the devs @ Bethesda prob have more experience with open ended large games with a lot of NPCs than BioTeam.

[Tom]

NPCs having schedules etc is cool, but only to a certain extent. The fact that time in game usually isnt real-time (one hour playing = one hour in game) means that walking down the road to the shop takes two hours in the game (IIRC in BG 1 minute real time was 2 hours in game wasnt it?). In this case the NPCs will be out of the house more often then not, and this is just irritating. A good balance between the two - they go to the shop maybe once a week, the males can often be found at the pub at night, and during the day they can be found in or around outside the house, this would be cool.
No food, definately not, people play RPGs because they can do things that they cant in real life. They arent restrained by things like food, skills which they probably dont have in real life, etc. And if you add in food, where does it stop? How about the need for sanitation? How about the actual effects of hitting someone with a sword?
Aging probably isnt a problem, the game isnt really likely to span hundreds of years is it? If by aging they mean you can select what age your character is, this is a little silly and reasonably unnecessary.
Crafting would be a cool idea, smithing your own weapons/armour, making your own arrows etc.

Edited by Tom, 29 December 2004 - 01:18 PM.

[khay]

Well I`d say everything okay until my character needs to go to the toilet.

[Archmage Silver]

Heh, some basic rules of what not to implement in CRPGs. Atlhough some sort of "realism" has always to be maintained i.e racial ability scores and such.

[Shed]

You have to ask yourself if making the game more realistic brings anything more to it. I don't think the game would be more fun by having this degree of realism.

Is getting old and dying fun? Is having a very limited inventory fun? I don't think so. Of course, added realism can bring a lot to a game (look at the physics of Half-Life 2, for example), but shouldn't be added for its own sake .

[Schatten]

You have to ask yourself if making the game more realistic brings anything more to it. I don't think the game would be more fun by having this degree of realism.

Is getting old and dying fun? Is having a very limited inventory fun? I don't think so. Of course, added realism can bring a lot to a game (look at the physics of Half-Life 2, for example), but shouldn't be added for its own sake .

its personal taste. i think aging is a good concept in compination with sleeping to recover. it adds another layer of difficulty. imagine nwn with the sleep all thingy and now put in aging. you wouldnt want to sleep after every fight with your mage or you risk after half through or so senility (??). you cant remember so much spells, you are becoming weak etc.. its not too bad. it adds some difficulty at the end of the game. you wont grow so much in power, if ever, later on. perhaps extensive use of sleep will result in weaking you. its a possibility to look at for those who wont want to fight super demons of godly angels later.

[Archmage Silver]

Well, as long as they implement such simple facts like different racial ability modifiers to different races i.e constitution bonus to dwarves but not to humans, it'll be okay.

[Gaias]

Microgaming... bad

Realistic phyics... good :thumb:

As long as the load screens have constant reminders that "I", as the real person, have to sleep, eat, work, and socially interact, then all is good!

Then again if I needed to be reminded of these facts... I shouldn't be playing games...

[Schatten]

quiet lurker: get an account here.

[Tom]

Theres a balance between realism and fantasy in a game. If you can make the game more realistic AND make it more fun then great, you've hit the mark. Realistic Physics are fun because it allows you to do stuff in the game that you cant do in real life, but have the outcome be what you would expect.

In an RPG food would just be tiresome. Age would be annoying, because first of all for it to be realistic the game would have to span years, and options of 'resting for 6 months' would be kind of silly. This would not add fun to the game, it would only make it restrictive (too restrictive.) The need for sanitation could be fun - I imagine many people would find it hilarious to be able to take a crap on the side of the road, and then to be chased by the guard for doing so, or the ability to piss on people, but you cant have one thing without the other - this would require food. And you then have to take into account how much people actually eat. Quiet Lurker outlined the problems with realistic armour/weapons/inventory, but failed to mention the fact that if you shoot someone with a bow and arrow they generally die, or at least slow down a lot (regardless of where you hit them, unless its in the leg or something) This would only serve to unbalance the game, because a party of 6 good archers could realistically kill about 20 or 30 men before they even reached them. How about realistic elemental effects? A burn is not something which heals overnight, and a severe burn is more often then not fatal or very debilitating, and frost 'damage' would realistically result in something similar to frostbite. How about loosing a limb or two every time someone casts cone of cold on you?

What Im getting at is that there are very few ways you can make RPGs more 'realistic' without worsening the gameplay and overall fun, because they arent SUPPOSED to be realistic!

Edited by Tom, 13 January 2005 - 02:08 AM.

[igi]

I think age in a RPG is good, it would definatly affect sleeping after every battle (a pet peeve of mine I guess).
I admit, it would be hard to implement without making the game dull though (unless spells could age people, or some such).

I also think that non-killing xp is a good, though it would probably mean a radical shift in the game-style, as someone who hunts rabbits for a year isnt going to save the world (the evil villain hears of a hunter who has killed 100 rabbits in 3 days, and drops dead of a heart-attack?).

[Archmage Silver]

I also think that non-killing xp is a good, though it would probably mean a radical shift in the game-style, as someone who hunts rabbits for a year isnt going to save the world (the evil villain hears of a hunter who has killed 100 rabbits in 3 days, and drops dead of a heart-attack?).

Heh, you have a point there.
XP for using skills like diplomacy would be ok in my book.

[Tom]

Things like XP for opening locks/disarming traps is fine, yeah, but dont go overboard. "You donned your armour correctly, 1000 XP!!"

[Shed]

Hehe... I think XP should be given out on the importance or difficulty of a problem overcome, regardless of whether it is earned through battle or otherwise.

[Stone Wolf]

I've always like the rule that you only get xp for using a skill if failure would have negative consequences and there's actually a valid reason to use the skill. Someone running around climbing every wall they see wouldn't get xp, and neither would someone sneaking around their own house.

As you might guess, I had some issues with the Daggerfall skill system.