Poll: Realism vs player's convenience.

[CaitSeith]

Just for curiosity sake I want to know if you prefer game mechanics that are convenient or those that would make sense in the real world. There are some comparisons that come to my mind:

In BF3 multiplayer, each kind of bullet has a different speed and they drop to the ground at different ratio. Meanwhile in singleplayer, all the bullets travel instantaneously and always hit to where you're aiming.

In Uncharted, Nathan can climb and hang from vertical surfaces indefinitely; while in other games, the time the main characters can keep climbing is limited by their stamina.

Allies just are KO in Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced when defeated at battle; but they die permanently in Fire Emblem (if you have permadeath on).

So, which do you prefer?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Depends on the game doesn't it? Nathan's infinite stamina suits Uncharted, Wander's limited stamina suits SotC.

 

[Sonmi]

I personally prefer a more difficult game, limitations need to be for the sake of game design as well as realism though.

Sign me up for realism.

 

[FillerDmon]

There really should be a "depends on the game" viewpoint. Not all games require as much realism, and some games are designed to be entirely against the player.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

It depends.

However, 9/10 times, I will pick "convenience" over "realism".

Because when things are convenient, I can file them under "auto-pilot" and focus more on immersion. It's why hotkeys are so important to me. I HATE having to go through a bunch of menus to get stuff done in an action game.

 

[MysticSlayer]

It depends on the game. Stamina works for Dark Souls's slower, more methodical combat mechanics. I wouldn't say that stamina works as well in faster games (e.g. Lords of Shadow) or more relaxed games (e.g. Zelda).

Likewise, more realistic bullet physics work well for Battlefield and ArmA due to balancing for larger maps (both), an emphasis on realism (ArmA), and a team-oriented nature (both). On the flip side, CoD tends to emphasize a faster play on smaller maps with a greater individual focus, so the more arcade-y nature of the guns fits that series.

But if I had to go with what I'd prefer, I would tend to lean towards convenience over realism, especially when realism starts moving into the realm of time wasting. Besides, realism isn't necessary for engagement or immersion, and any game that relies on that will always break down sooner or later. And it's a lot easier to care about characters when their AI and dialogue isn't constantly reminding me that I'm in a fictional world trying too hard to emulate real-life. At least with convenience, I can either ignore it if I don't care for it (e.g. fast travel), or it avoids getting me so annoyed at the game I stop caring about the characters, story, world, and/or fun gameplay. Because when I spend two hours looking for a cave that I had poor directions to, nothing the game does to draw me in matters anymore. I'm just pissed off at that cave!

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Convenience. I can't drive a stick (that well), I don't know how to load a gun, I can't make twenty foot jumps and land without smashing some bone in my body, and I don't know any fighting style whatsoever. I want to push a button and it happens, not play a minigame every time I want to do an action.

Realism is fun for a good coat of paint on a game. Modern Warfare and the like. But even those lean heavily on convenience. I like the illusion of realism in games sometimes, but let's be real here: if a game ever went full realism, it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable. That massive sword you're swinging around like it's made of tissue? Good luck getting it off the ground, much less being able to do a flip with it. An enemy just smacked you with a weapon three times your size? How's it feel to be a blood paste on the floor? One or two guys against an entire private army? See if you can at least hit double digits before they take your head off.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Actually. In the original final fantasy tactics, if your ally died, and wasn't revived within 3 tyrns he was perminately dead. Kind of a kin to getting a medic to an injured soldier. In the future tactics games they lowered the difficulty considerably. It's kind of why the ps1 game is one of my favorite games.

OT: Anything that adds a challenge is good in my book. So realism?

Edit: i didn't realise you said tactics advance. My bad, carry on.

 

[Something Amyss]

Player convenience almost every time.

"Realism" is one of those thing rarely really taken into account. It's more often an excuse for why you like a mechanic everyone else thinks is shitty.

I really don't want mini games where I have to clean and maintain my firearm so it doesn't jam or outright break in a firefight. I don't want to be limited to the ammo I can feasibly carry. I don't want to have to roll for athletes foot because my boots have been on too long. I don't want to have to clean my scope. I don't want to have to stitch up wounds and routinely care for them in order to get better over the course of weeks so I can get back into shooutouts. I don't want to risk my fake guitar's strings snapping, or stop to tune every few songs to not sound awful.

I play games to have fun. Certain conventions are not necessary for that, and sometimes even antithetical. I consider this to be one.

 

[Something Amyss]

It depends on the game. Stamina works for Dark Souls's slower, more methodical combat mechanics. I wouldn't say that stamina works as well in faster games (e.g. Lords of Shadow) or more relaxed games (e.g. Zelda).

I wouldn't call anything about Dark Souls particularly realistic, though.

 

[Maximum Bert]

If you are making a hard core sim then realism is most important since the idea is to train you in what actually would happen or how to do something.

For a game the choice should always be what is best for the game. That does not always mean player convenience but is equally likely to not be totally realistic either. However depending on the game its likely to side toward one side of the spectrum more than the other.

I have no preference as long as it fits what they are trying to create.

 

[JustAnotherAardvark]

Depends.

I used to joke with a friend of mine "does it have a jump button?" to differentiate between, say, SWAT 3 and Duke Nukem.

I *want* my sims to be sims, and my cinematics to be cinematics ... I play SWAT for reasons I love that are different for the reasons I love playing Mass Effect.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

It was realism vs convenience that made me quit Harvest Moon (oh I'm sorry, Story of Seasons).

I will go through some staples of the series and what the game "improved on" with realism. going by the last one I've played A Tale of Two Towns.
In Harvest Moon you can marry if you gather enough friendship, Tale of Two Towns introduced jealousy, which increases every time you give a rival candidate a gift and lowers their frienship, making said relationships much harder to achieve. This one is made specially confusing given the rivalry of the two towns you go back and forth and they are okay with you making friends there, but if I give a gift away from all chacters, everyone get jealous.
In Harvest Moon items will last indefinitely, in ToTT they have expiration dates, which screw over any kind of "save it just in case" strategy for gifts or errands.
Every item has a ranking, from half a star to 5 stars, except items with different rankings cannot be stacked up, meaning the backpack gets full of items with slight variations of rankings and becomes a problem when you want an item.
There were other positives the game introduced, but dragged down by the incoveniences.

Stardew Valley won me over because of its simplicity, how it did not aim for realism, yet it was a great experience. Moral: Realism is indeed good, but it shouldn't be used in every case, and specially in series that do not aim for it in the first place.

 

[MysticSlayer]

It depends on the game. Stamina works for Dark Souls's slower, more methodical combat mechanics. I wouldn't say that stamina works as well in faster games (e.g. Lords of Shadow) or more relaxed games (e.g. Zelda).

I wouldn't call anything about Dark Souls particularly realistic, though.

I wasn't saying Dark Souls is realistic. It was an example of how inserting elements of realism can work.

 

[Seishisha]

i am a very mechanics focused gamer so that probably gives me some bias, but i always feel that a game should never inconvenience the player for any reason, if it does do then it is simply badly designed.

A great example of realism vs convenience is space travel in games, if said game has the scope and scale that you 'could' literally spend years traveling from one planet to another, a very realistic thing, then i would expect inturn a faster than light travel mechanic (or similar) to eliminate that travel time, which is obviously a very convenient thing.

A rather infamous example of realism taken to the stupid extreme is desert bus, anyone who knows that game knows what im talking about. A game with 'good' design such as euro truck simulator uses scaled down map sizes and a sped up time scale, that way your not spending actual hours on a virtual motorway, atleast not for a single delivery at anyrate.

Long and short of it, realism is nice so long as it does not interfere with the gameplay.

Personaly i think authenicity is more important than realism, and yes there is a difference between the two terms, but that is another discussion.

 

[Seishisha]

I wasn't saying Dark Souls is realistic. It was an example of how inserting elements of realism can work.

What are you talking about, dark souls is definatly the most realistic experiance in gaming, i can praise the sun right now behind my keyboard, an action i might add that is in the game.

Joking aside i do agree with your sentiment, the context of the gameplay is very important when deciding if somthing should have a realistic feeling or not.

 

[Something Amyss]

I wasn't saying Dark Souls is realistic. It was an example of how inserting elements of realism can work.

Okay...but stamina meters aren't an element of realism, they're an element of resource management. If we want to go that route, use of swords in the game is also technically an element of realism, but not for any practical sense of the word.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I wasn't saying Dark Souls is realistic. It was an example of how inserting elements of realism can work.

Okay...but stamina meters aren't an element of realism, they're an element of resource management. If we want to go that route, use of swords in the game is also technically an element of realism, but not for any practical sense of the word.

Compared to games without any stamina meter, though, it is an element of realism. It's an element that has more purpose than "REALISM!!!!!!", but it's an element regardless.