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The real concern is not realism, but consistency. If the player can learn the rules of the game world quickly and easily, and those basic rules don't change significantly, then you have just as much basis for "belief". The benefit of "realism" is that it has a pre-learnt system to draw on. The disadvantage is that departures from outright realism are more jarring.

If you created a world that had nothing in common with reality, no one would care. Consistency is not all there is. You have to have familiarity for anything other than the simplest games. Unless, of course, you want to create a brank spanking new reality from scratch and make your players as familiar with it as they are with reality. Of course, it's impossible to be more familiar with an alternate reality than our own reality - parts of it are hardwired into your brain, regardless of your experiences.

Hmmm...

[Sarcasm]In my new 'game world' there are two opposing sides: the Sproggs and the Troggs. The Sproggs want more squibbles from the Troggs and the Troggs want to decombobulate the squizzle squazzle of ratchet. How will the Sproggs fizzle this attempt of decombobulation of ratchet?[/sarcasm]

There's more to it than internal consistency. That ^ is complete gibberish. But it's internally consistent. Problem is, unless you translate that into somewhat understandable terms, it means nothing. There are assumptions encoded into that statement, however. Sproggs and Troggs are apparently sentient creatures who can want things and dislike things. It is assumed that the Sproggs want more squibbles, and that the Troggs do not want to give them up - otherwise there would be no conflict involving said squibbles. Now, I can gauruntee that 95% of the people who read that passage, asside from thinking it's absolute gibberish, will make similar assumptions - regardless of whether or not they are conscious of them. These assumptions are all based on the backdrop of reality, and they come into play because of the way the Sproggs and Troggs are described. They have feelings, needs, and they are apparently engaged in a human-like conflict. These are all cues towards reality - and this is a very vague and abstract example.

Now, take a game that has humanoid/human characters running around in a game world. This assumes so many things from reality that the list would take forever to compile. If you're going to pick and choose pieces and create an internally consistent world with any level of familiarity and usefulness, you are going to have to worry about how closely the world follows the logic of reality. Otherwise, it's like speaking another language. Japanese is interally consistent (for all intents and purposes...it's a language). But, if you don't speak Japanese, the fact that it makes sense inside the microcosm of Japanese language really has no impact on you - the same way that an internally consistent but completely unfamiliar world would have no impact.

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That said, the item system pisses me off in most RPG's. In Diablo II, the system worked great, however. It's counter intuitive and unrealistic to limit someone's armor based on class. Why is it that these two characters who look physically exactly the same will have such vastly differing strength? In Diablo II, sorceresses wore less armor than Barbarians because sorceresses had to invest more in mana than strength. They *could* use heavy armor, but it would require a large investment that would be outweighed by the losses in mana. Sure, the current system works. But this one was better. I'd like someone to please explain to me how you can randomly find a piece of armor that fits you perfectly (Real armor has to be customized for its wearer. I find it hard to believe that you could find the exact same magical item as someone else and have it fit both people in reality) - but you can't wear a piece of armor because "You're a mage." Am I physically incapable of PUTTING THIS HELM ON MY HEAD? That is such a lazy, half assed design mechanism. Instead of developing a better more complicated system, they cut corners and put in this lazy system instead. Bah.

Most modern pnpRPGs let magic users use armour and weaponry at horrendous penalties (typically inability to cast spells and reduced effectiveness of the equipment)

As far as mages wearing hats goes, a chunk of cold iron closely associated with the brain of someone trying to manipulate mystical energies is liable to short out their spellcasting.

And, the magically fitting armour is an obvious abstraction to avoid having to find a blacksmith and spend months having it resized and fitted. It's still possible to wear unfitted armour (though it's less effective) and, unless the player characters are prepared to spend the time getting the armour custom fitted, the chances are that their armour is a patchwork of unmatched pieces by the time they've upgraded a few times.

How plausible is all that? Why is it that wearing mail makes you unable to cast spells? Why does having iron on your head stop you from casting spells? Why is it that you have a system where you randomly find armor, and to avoid the fact that this in itself is unrealistic and to avoid players looking rather stupid while running around with mismatched armor, you create another system to mask the ilogical nature of the first one? It seems to me that you start with a limited system, and then try to fix it later. Burn the house down, and build something that works instead of clinging to a system designed before the age of computers, when better, more realistic technologies were impossible? It's inefficient and lazy, but probably quite cost effective. That's a given.

But, why is it in a fantasy world the designers of the game never explain why, according to the rules of the world, it is physically impossible to wear a piece of equipment, or you will incur stat reductions (No, I'm not talking about keeping parts of the world unexplained to the player to maintain mystery. I'm talking about times when developers limit your ability to use an item for the sake of 'gameplay balance'. It's not that they're hiding the reason from the player - there just is no reason). Add to this the fact that you can randomly find a piece of equipment that DOES FIT - while you are incapable of wearing another piece of equipment for a reason that isn't even internally consistent with the game world. It works. But that's not a reason to not make it better. It's still pretty illogical - and there are better ways to handle this than the current method.

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Original post by Nytehauq
I find it hard to believe that you could find the exact same magical item as someone else and have it fit both people in reality.

Dude, I think you're confused. In "reality", that is "in real life", I don't think I've ever seen a "magical" item. If we're agreed that this is a "magical" item, then I fail to see any reason it shouldn't fit. I've never heard anyone seriously complain that the one ring fit both Sauron's polish sausage finger and Frodo's pencil finger.

What it comes down to is that this armor thing is fun. Not realistic, but still fun.

Also, I already know where to find a good implementation of reality. I mean, God said "It is good", who am I to disagree?

Even if you've never seen a magical item in real life - you've seen one in the game world. Now, in the game world, where does it say that magical items have a one size fit all aspect? And if it does say this somewhere, where's the plausible explanation for it? It's not internally consistent - and since the game world is constructed from real world assumptions with slight tweakings, it really starts to fall out of place.

You can have fun and realism. One does not have to break the other. Games bend reality so that you can have more fun than you would in a normal day. But you don't want to throw in things that start to make the game illogical and incoherent. People don't like negative suprises, the fun things are those that exceed your expectations of either the game world or reality - not the ones that fall out of place.

Now, even though the current system might work, a better system will still be BETTER. And better == money (all other things being equal).

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3.)D&D rules? Great for a boardgame.

I've played many hours of D&D without ever seeing a board. Whatever other things it may be, D&D is most emphatically not a boardgame.

And it's not a videogame either. At least not the D&D you're talking about. (Although you actually can play with a board).

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5.) Seeing as a certain amount and type of realism is good, and pushing the status quo is an oppurtunity to both chase down creativity and sell a blockbuster game, it logically follows that new ideas should be welcomed, not shunned.

What does realism have to do with new ideas?

Logically, new ideas involving realism should be welcomed (not shunned as they often are in these forums) because they offer benefits to both the creative and economically driven individual. Best of both worlds, so stop counting 'realism' out without precedent.

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The more suspension of disbelief without incumbering irritating limitations (It'd suck if you died from gunfire realistically in Max Payne - that would be going overboard. But if you could fly and were invulnerable to bullets, the game would suck just as much.) the better. Therein, to settle that argument, whether or not realism is needed needs to be decided in a logical fashion on a CASE BY CASE BASIS. When someone speaks of increasing realism in a game, the counter argument should not be, "Realism is bad and makes games boring," just as the argument should not be, "Realism is good and suspends disbelief." It's a case by case thing. However, in most cases, it seems that people oppose realism for a silly reason and people pupport realism for an ill-defined while probably good one.

As far as I can see, the major benefits of "realism" are:
1) It's a selling point for the back of the game box.
2) It saves developers from straining their imaginations to come up with an original system instead.
3) It presents the player with an immediately familiar setting.
4) We're fairly sure that the universe's rules are pretty well balanced, and tend not to break down in interesting ways, so copying from reality gives a better chance of a good starting balance.

Hmmm...

1) Yeah, just like everything else, the publisher wants it on the box as a gimic.
2) Craft me a new reality, complete with billions of years of evolution and equally complex scientific laws and properties of particles and matter, complete with human civilization. Then move on the the rest of the planets and existence. And, of course, make sure this world is unique from our reality but simultaneously familiar and worthwhile. Oh, and while you're at it, invent time travel and cure world hunger. Ok, I know I'm a rude little bastard but developers are thinking inside the box enough as things are now. Their games aren't realistic, and they don't use realism. The problem isn't that my theory is impossible to implement, the problem is that they're either trying to do the impossible and pointless (create a new reality that is differnt but the same), or they're not trying at all. In fact, it takes more to mimic reality than to create your own internally consistent world. This world will not be unique from reality in any case, but you can get away with it by not explaning as much as you would have to to recreate an entirely new reality. And then you end up with a world full of Troggs and Sproggs.
3) Well, most people have seen an infinitely tiny part of the universe. There's lots of unfamiliar stuff on Earth alone for alot of people. The environment in a game might not be familiar, but the rules that govern the world may be.
4) Rules don't break down in interesting ways (At least rules that govern the universe). When rules break down, what you get is nonsensical gibberish. You know what humans find intrinsically interesting? Patterns and order. That's what the brain runs on. When things don't follow the expected pattern, people get confused and angry. Well, universal rules, at least. If you expect a rocket to fly into an enemy bunker but instead it explodes in your hands, you'd probably be pretty pissed (presuming you survived). But, if someone accidentally mispronounces a word in a humourous fashion, they'd probably feel embarrased while everyone else was laughing. But it would still be out of place. Universal rules don't tend to break down in humourous ways - they tend to break down in irritating ways (In the game world, of course). Grammar might be funny. The sun spontaneously exploding...not so much. Now, if there was some conflic were the sun was going to explode in a game for an unknown reason, but that reason still existed and the player had to find a way to survive, that would be cool. But if the player is about to beat a level and they suddenly die with the error message: "The sun has exploded for some reason. You loose." They'd be pretty pissed.

Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Ever watch a movie with a theatre major? Ever listen to music with a music major? They just can't shut up about all the inconsistancies in any movie or where some song isn't technically correct. I say "Shut up, it's still a good movie/song".

Shut up, it's still a good game.

You see, if you'd read the earlier parts of my post, you would realize this is a moot argument. A better game is still going to be better. You know, life is good now. We should halt medical research and keep everything as is.

Oh wait. That doesn't make sense. Assuming that everyone agrees that games as they are are good (Which no one agrees upon, mind you) - you should still try and make them better. I've already explained this.

Quote: As to mages wearing armor, I think there's a very simple reason that it's in there that all of you are ignoring: most players like it when mages don't wear armor. The classic archetypes are wizard in robes, thief in leather, and fighter in plate. Most people want to have a game-based reason to make a character that looks like Gandalf or Merlin or whatever. Ultima Online originally had no penalty for wearing armor while a mage, and everyone in the game ended up being a mage in full plate. A lot of people said they didn't really like this; they wanted a reason for mages to wear robes. So the devs added in a meditation skill that made your magic better if you weren't wearing armor. The players asked for it; it wasn't the devs being stuck in an old system. As a player, I also like for there to be valid reasons to be a mage in robes or a thief in leather; I don't want the best gameplay option for a wizard to be wearing full plate, because then I'd have to wear full plate to keep up with the challenge of the game. Either that, or the devs have to make the game easy enough that people who purposely make sub-par characters (like a mage in robes) would still be able to beat it, which also annoys me, because I hate easy games as well.

Exactly. They gave the players a REASON to CHOOSE to wear robes instead of mail. As I said with the Diablo II analogy, this is what should be done. People don't get pissed off as readily when the game doesn't force them to do things that seem illogical. They don't have to wear cloth - but they CHOOSE to. Arbritrary limitations involving armor are unrealistic and effectively inexplicable - and now, it's been shown that they are uneccesary. I think you're making some uneccesary assumptions here, as well, though. The best gameplay option for a wizard (Given a world wear wizards are expected to wear cloth) should be wearing cloth, not plate. If mages are supposed to rely on their magic skills and not physical strength, then the world should be crafted so that mages will choose cloth over plate mail. Plate != superior to cloth. In fact, without qualifying the jurisdiction of such terms, they have no meaning. In the real world, Kevlar, a cloth based material, is more effective at stopping bullets than a suit of armor from the 1400's. However, it's common fantasy doctrine that cloth gives you poor armor when compared to mail and plate. Assuming that doctrine, a Mage with cloth would be disadvantaged to a mage with plate. But what if you had a world where cloth was more useful for magical abilities for a plausible reason - plate would become useless to mages. Therein, the rules that have been used in previous games do not have to determine the magical properties of new items in your own fiction. You craft the world, you can make whatever you want true. But your world will be better if it is rational. But still, rational does not mean 'conforms to stereotypical RPG standards'. In fact, I think I want to have cloth armor as the heaviest kind :)

Quote:Original post by Nytehauq
In the real world, Kevlar, a cloth based material, is more effective at stopping bullets than a suit of armor from the 1400's. However, it's common fantasy doctrine that cloth gives you poor armor when compared to mail and plate.

Let me see if I can understand your point. If what I think you're saying is what you're saying, then you'd have no problem with a mage getting fried in platemail (or spells fizzing out) so long as that sort of thing always happens whether he's in platemail, or the metal hold of a ship, or next to a metal construct. IOW, it's not the specific rule that you're arguing about, it's that the rule should derive from some fundamental property of the world design and be applied across the board. (Is that close?)

If this is your point, I want to say that I sympathize with it and try to strive for this myself because it creates a uniform set of expectations that a player can rely on. That's one reason why I like most SF more than fantasy, because magic is often employed as an arbitrary "rabbit out of the hat" to get the world-builder out of a corner (I don't care if the rules are fantastic, I just want them to be dependable-- or to be told that they're not dependable).

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Quote:Original post by Wavinator

Quote:Original post by Nytehauq
In the real world, Kevlar, a cloth based material, is more effective at stopping bullets than a suit of armor from the 1400's. However, it's common fantasy doctrine that cloth gives you poor armor when compared to mail and plate.

Let me see if I can understand your point. If what I think you're saying is what you're saying, then you'd have no problem with a mage getting fried in platemail (or spells fizzing out) so long as that sort of thing always happens whether he's in platemail, or the metal hold of a ship, or next to a metal construct. IOW, it's not the specific rule that you're arguing about, it's that the rule should derive from some fundamental property of the world design and be applied across the board. (Is that close?)

If this is your point, I want to say that I sympathize with it and try to strive for this myself because it creates a uniform set of expectations that a player can rely on. That's one reason why I like most SF more than fantasy, because magic is often employed as an arbitrary "rabbit out of the hat" to get the world-builder out of a corner (I don't care if the rules are fantastic, I just want them to be dependable-- or to be told that they're not dependable).

I don't necessarily think having the metal-rule apply accross the board would make a fun game though. It would mostly only serve to stop sticklers from having holes to poke in your theory of magic-armor dynamics (which, we must admit, no one has any actual facts for). The goal is "mages should feel compelled to wear robes instead of plate mail", not "mages should constantly have to deal with penalties whenever they're standing near metal, or in a metal object, or the iron count in their blood is too high, or someone throws a metal hoop over them, etc." Putting hours and hours of game development time into covering every aspect of how metal interacts with one of your twelve classes in an RPG is a huge waste that will probably annoy 99% of the mage players, and leave the other 1% saying at best "Heh, that's cool that they agree with the stupidity of the metal armor rule", not "Wow, what a great game".

I agree with both Wavinator and Makeshiftwings. Consistency, but not with that particular analogy. It's kinda semantics. The average user won't consciouly notice realism - but that's the point. It makes the game subtlely better. The average user doesn't consciously note that the physics system in Halo was detailed enough to allow you to throw a grenade and pinpoint its tragectory as if you were throwing a tenis ball in real life. You know it works when no one has to think about it. This ties into another one of my theories about unification in games. Even if the player doesn't control their character's accuracy by hand as they do in Halo, the AI should still go through the realistic method. This results in dynamic situations. Random numbers, stats, and armor ratings are really the results of rounding off and averaging dynamic situations. If you compared a system with polygon accurate collision detection and one using the method that most RPG's use, and conducted tests given subjects of the same strength in the same type of situation (E.g, if you compared the hit % of the Halo Masterchief with a mediocre player and a mediocre AI, all other things being equal) the two would probably end up being the same. Over time, the statistics in RPG's equal those in Dynamic systems...most of the time. However, this makes combat dull and boring and does not account for human error, luck, and lots of other things that throw off statistics. Realistic things are dynamic and the best you can get are estimations of reality. But reality doesn't have to follow those estimations at all and frequently breaks the mold. RPG's tend to round everything off. This makes things simple, but makes the gameplay sterile, limited, and not very dynamic. Don't use an equation that calculates generic damage reduction given a player's total armor rating - while it may turn out that you take as much damage over time as you would if you checked for collisions based on physics and what part of which piece of armor was struck, the outliers in the data really define the data. It's human instinct to simplify things - this helps us comprehend them - but at the price of sarcrificing realism. The computer isn't limited by our consciousness (We can only think of about two to four different things as once consciously. This means that we can't possibly simulate a combat scenario realistically and consciously. However, a computer can keep track of all of the variables simultaneously. We shouldn't use a system meant to accomodate for our conscious limitations on a computer that doesn't share our plight :)

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Disonnected post written without knowledge of Makeshiftwings' post:

Basically - although the rules should always be dependable. Otherwise, they aren't rules - they're escape routes for faulty or lazy logic. I don't agree with the mage/plate analogy. Mages should opt for cloth because cloth should be more beneficial. I think people foolishly look at fantasy worlds and think "Hey, mages wear cloth. In our game, mages will only be able to wear cloth."

But that's not how it really works. It's logically wrong. People should think that mages in their game will only CHOOSE to wear cloth. Giving people the choice, illusionary or otherwise, to self determination is an important factor. Mages wear cloth for many reasons. The point isn't the reasons that they wear cloth, the point is that THERE ARE REASONS. The fact that mages are wearing cloth is the end result of a set of circumstances. Forcing players playing as mages to wear cloth is usings an end as a means. There is no reason to wear cloth over mail - you just don't have a choice. What does the material that armor is made of have to do with anything? It's a bad gameplay mechanic. I'm not against limiting characters from doing certain things on a whole (Boundaries define games AND reality), but having players pick from limited armor choices is like placing invisible walls in games. "You can't go over there!" "Why not!?" "Because."

If someone seriously gave you "Because" as an answer to a question, you'd be pretty pissed, wouldn't you? That's the kind of thing I'm getting at. It's not really about the mage or the cloth armor - it's about arbritrary and UNREALISTIC (Realism, yet again) limitations that break the world. Having metal absorb mage skills would be a poor way to justify mages being unable to wear plate, by the way. It's not realistic, and therein incurrs many other problems. Generally, if you pick something rational, you'll have to worry about less screw ups in other parts of the game. If mages couldn't cast through metals, they would be useless. So, the solution is to allow mages to cast through metals and wear plate mail, and give them a positive reason to NOT wear plate mail and prefer cloth.

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Well, are you just against games that don't let mages wear armor, or are you against games that let you do it, but give you a penalty? Because really, there's no difference between giving you a penalty for wearing armor, vs not giving you a bonus for wearing armor. It's just a glass half full / glass half empty sort of thing.

I think it depends on the game. D&D lets any class wear any armor; I think it works there. World of Warcraft limits certain classes to certain armors, and I think it works there as well. Because D&D is more a "realistic" simulation-based RPG, while WoW is a PvP strategy game.

D&D might be more realistic than WoW stat wise-but it's still a very vague aproximation of realism. There is no game today that should be accurately paired with 'realistic'...at least not yet.

Hmmm. World of Warcraft certainly is not strategy oriented. Ever player as a rogue? CS BS TT BS wait Gouge BS KS BS BS Gouge SS SS Evis. If you know what that means, you'll know that there is no strategy involved...just knowing the repetetive combos.

But, back on topic, if you had points that you allocated to stats in WoW, similar to Diablo II, people could wear whatever armors they wanted, 'theorhetically', but I will bet you that 99% of mages would still opt for cloth (Assuming the system was designed so that players choose the logical path instead of having the game limit the players.). Game developers are often either too dumb or too lazy to create a system in which player choices shape the world. Diablo II worked great - you had stat points that you could allocate as you saw fit.

You also brought up the glass half full/empty analogy. But, this is a tad out of place. Here's an equation:

Player hapiness = Exceeding expectations - letdowns

Balance = Bonuses/Norm

Giving bonuses adds to exceeding expectations (and is more realistic than causing armor to weaken someone by putting it on. That's just a less powerful 'invisible wall' effect, and is just as arbritrary) while taking away adds to letdowns. If you give bonuses to all classes for wearing the preffered armor, players will generally be happier and the balance will be preserved. With negative reinforcement, the balance is still preserved, but you're essentially hurting everyone. When compared to the next guy, they might feel fine...but when comparing themselves to their own standards, they will feel inadequate. If you increase the Bonuses and the Norm porportionally, you will keep the balance but your players will be happier. If you decrease both porportionally, you will keep the balance but your players will feel disenfranchised.

[Edited by - Nytehauq on July 6, 2005 3:45:56 AM]