Personally, I would have to say internal consistency is at the low end of the list on what makes video games fun for me. Video games are not novels, and they are not movies. I'm sure someone could go through Super Mario Bros. and change the whole game to make it logical, scientifically sound, evolutionarily correct, and internally consistent, including designing complex background psychologies for each character and monster encountered, but it would not be more fun. I want to stomp on the turtles and kick their shells around; I don't care that there's no plausible reason for a sentient turtle with wings and a detachable shell to be floating eternally up and down in a straight line over a bottomless pit.

Mario Bros is not an RPG, though. And besides, it is fairly internally consistent; jumping on monsters stuns or kills them, falling off the bottom kills you, and nothing breaks those rules. Self-consistency doesn't mean that you have to fill in the entire story, it means that the snippets you do tell must tally with each other; and nor does it mean a game must be "scientifically sound [and] evolutionarily correct".

Quote:Original post by Bob Janova
Mario Bros is not an RPG, though. And besides, it is fairly internally consistent; jumping on monsters stuns or kills them, falling off the bottom kills you, and nothing breaks those rules. Self-consistency doesn't mean that you have to fill in the entire story, it means that the snippets you do tell must tally with each other; and nor does it mean a game must be "scientifically sound [and] evolutionarily correct".

I guess it depends on your definition of consistency; I do agree that the gameplay and physical rules should generally be consistent, as you said, jumping on a turtle shouldn't randomly kill you, and falling off the bottom shouldn't sometimes randomly drop you out of the ceiling. I interpereted the original post as saying that games need to be consistent with the real world, and in the places where they aren't, a pseudo-scientific reason needs to be presented to the player. Sort of like Star Trek episodes; there, it would make sense that Geordi would have to walk on camera and explain to the audience that the rats can cast fireball because the warp core breach caused damage to the holodeck which teleported Q into the body of the rat. But lots of genres, especially in video games, don't need it, and work fine if the player just says "Oh look, a rat that casts fireball." It's not any stranger than a plumber that jumps on turtles and sentient mushrooms. I guess it all depends on how you interperet the original post, and honestly, I'm still not sure I understand what point he was trying to make in the "rats with spells" section.

Quote:Original post by makeshiftwings
I'm still not sure I understand what point he was trying to make in the "rats with spells" section.

Quote:Original post by Bob Janova

Quote:To increase "reality" in MMO's is something that doesnt quite make sense to me.

Reality, no; but self-consistency, yes. I think this is what the OP was getting at; you suspend reality but expect to suspend it for an internally consistent other set of rules.

I've quoted Bob, because I think that he stated it well. While suspending the rules is needed, there should be some "internally consistent". Maybe I'm being to picky or it is something that you don't notice right away (at least until you get bored or not that into the game to start with). This thought began with the poor/unrealistic AI and how it also effects belief (which I had in the beginning, but removed to keep it focused on theory/design). But as I thought about it more, I thought of the little detail things that can jump out. Most RPG draw from common myths/stories (dragons, unicorns, centaurs, etc) that have already been accepted as believable in a fantasy setting, I don't know of any myths that have rats as magically power creature and to me without some reasoning for it would be hard to believe.

While Mario Bros isn't what most would call a RPG, as Bob said it is fairly consistent. Also the setting is so completely non-realistic that it covers anything that isn't consistent (I wasted many hours playing Super Mario Bros & Donkey Kong Country and had fun at it). When I say RPG/MMORPG, I'm thinking more of UO, Guild Wars, Diablo, etc.