Poll: The fantasy RPG genre needs more practical equipment
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I dunno, that's a pretty badass looking dude and image. Your opinion on which images look more badass is just that, an opinion. I disagree with some of the examples you gave personally, since we are using the "badass" meter. Quite frankly, some of your examples look boring and lame. So...yeah, not really convinced.ninja666 said:looks better and more badass than this
I do agree that they can get ridiculous though, but honestly, I just don't care. It's an aesthetic choice, one which you don't like. That's cool, but sometimes I don't mind the ridiculous stuff.
Yea, I, too, think I kinda screwed up with that statement. I think a better one would be that there's an equal demand of both "types" of armor and not everybody likes having Warhammer shoved down their throat when they want to play a fantasy RPG.Happyninja42 said:I dunno, that's a pretty badass looking dude and image. Your opinion on which images look more badass is just that, an opinion. I disagree with some of the examples you gave personally, since we are using the "badass" meter. Quite frankly, some of your examples look boring and lame. So...yeah, not really convinced.ninja666 said:looks better and more badass than this
Four points:ninja666 said:
1. In a high fantasy setting practical armor makes little to no sense in universe and virtually no sense in terms of design. In a low fantasy setting this sort of thing flies better. Skyrim, for example, is not the place to put practical armors. It doesn't fit the setting at all. When you have giants and dragons and magic and all these fantastic hugely unrealistic but highly stylistic elements, shoehorning in realistic full plate is just dumb. It doesn't work from a design stand point to have something so mundane mixed in to the extremely fantastic world.
2. In fantasy, practical armor just isn't practical. It would provide virtually no protection against the kinds of threats people in Skyrim deal with. Honestly, a good "practical" armor is probably the least practical thing a person could wear in Skyrim. It would slow you down too much and then a single smash from a giant and you are dead. Or you would get cooked alive by fire mages. A chainmail bikini would be much more practical, at least it gives you the mobility needed to dodge and run if needed. I mean, literally any one in this world can learn to shoot lightning out of their finger tips. Do you really think full plate is going to provide any real protection in a world like this?
So if all armor designs would be completely impractical in universe, why no have fun with it?
3. Truly practical armor designs, frankly, lack interesting design. They are designed to work, not look good. That makes them look generic and bland, made to do a job, not to impress. And while that can itself be a good design aesthetic (Dark souls does pretty well with this) it is a very difficult thing to apply to video games, especially the RPG genre where so much of the game is about upgrading equipment. There are only so many practical armor designs that look good. Again, Dark Souls gets away with using fairly practical designs, but only because very few games use practical designs. If it was common it would just look super generic and therefore boring.
4. Most people don't care for practical armor design. Sorry, but you belong to a very niche group. Most people don't like bland, function over form design in their fantasy armor. Practical armor hurts sales, unless the product is specifically tailored to your niche.
Practical armor is completely impractical for use in fantasy RPG's on almost every level, from actual in universe practicality to game design practicality to financial practicality. "Practical" armor is just to impractical to ever become common in the fantasy RPG genre.
Yeah it seems ever since warcraft, "cartoony" fantasy can only mean pants on head retarded and ever since final fantasy 7/berserk, there needs to be a dude with some manner of gigantic weapon because copying it instead of coming up with original shit makes us all just as iconic as guts and cloud, right? Right?
Case in point:
This. This looks just dumb.
Like some teenager designing a lame action figure to "look cool" and no, of course there's no explanation why basko has all this glowy shit on him or why the "lower class rebel" has those expensive looking... weapon thingies.
I mean there's no iconic armor in there because it's all so practical, right?
Oh wait no, it's actually really popular to the point of being the lord of the rings of mangas and you're talking out of your ass.
The reason why it isn't widespread is because it takes effort, not because it's "impractical".
Case in point:
This. This looks just dumb.
Like some teenager designing a lame action figure to "look cool" and no, of course there's no explanation why basko has all this glowy shit on him or why the "lower class rebel" has those expensive looking... weapon thingies.
Yeah that armor design in berserk that really shows how kentaro miura walked the extra mile to research how that stuff actually worked and respected that really hurt the sales of the manga.DrOswald said:
I mean there's no iconic armor in there because it's all so practical, right?
Oh wait no, it's actually really popular to the point of being the lord of the rings of mangas and you're talking out of your ass.
The reason why it isn't widespread is because it takes effort, not because it's "impractical".
DrOswald said:
Practical armor works in a highly fantastic world with dragons and shit. And it works well. Just one thing is needed for it to work well - consistency. I bet you wouldn't even say something like you just said if Skyrim introduced you to a practical armor set from the very beginning and then continued to have other armor sets made in the same fashion. You'd just suck it up and deal with it.
What was that? You want some harder proof? Morrowind - also an Elder Scrolls game, had some practical sets from the very beginning.
While the game world looked like this
I think these armors didn't really stand out from the highly stylized world of Morrowind.
According to whom? You? Please... Even my poll shows that this isn't a niche. Roughly 40% of people who answered it want practical equipment design in games.DrOswald said:
For my opinion, it would depend on the tone of the game you're playing. If the tone is meant to be more grounded in reality, then yeah, it would make sense for the equipment to be more realistic, practical, and believable. But if the tone is meant to be much more fantastic, exaggerated, and much less grounded in reality, running on Rule of Cool and such, then I think the equipment ought to be allowed to reflect that as well. Personally, I've grown tired of the "realistic" games, especially with everyone talking about wanting "realism" in games, to where my attention has been more drawn to games that have that more cartoony design; I prefer the more absurd, exaggerated designs of things.
Overall, I guess I agree. Over saturation is almost always a good reason to call for a change, and so many things are over saturated in the fantasy genre. As a result, I haven't been playing too many fantasy games lately, so I guess I never noticed how common impractical armor has become.
As some people have said already, I certainly wouldn't want such changes made for a game that tries to run on the rule of cool rather than realism, but you've already mentioned you just want more games that shoot for practicality.
I suppose it comes down to the reason behind having such armors, from the creator's standpoint. If the creators want that for their setting, I certainly would not try to stop them, but not if this is simply the result of companies saying "Gamers want big armor. Bigger is better."
As some people have said already, I certainly wouldn't want such changes made for a game that tries to run on the rule of cool rather than realism, but you've already mentioned you just want more games that shoot for practicality.
I suppose it comes down to the reason behind having such armors, from the creator's standpoint. If the creators want that for their setting, I certainly would not try to stop them, but not if this is simply the result of companies saying "Gamers want big armor. Bigger is better."
I hate the fact that when 'practical' armours in games do turn up, they look so fucking boring half the time.
Historical armour was often insanely gorgeous, with a huge amount of attention to detail. For example, look at the fine detail on the first helmet on that page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_helmet - it's so purdy. Even without that kind of detail, historical armour wasn't boring looking, it often had interesting banding and stuff going on.
Also, there are examples of reasonably practical looking armour that looks interesting in fantasy. The LOTR films did that quite well, as does the GOT series. Why games tend to have such dull looking armour is beyond me.
One thing I do really dislike are swords that have the proportions of an ironing board. It looks ridiculous. Even two-handed swords were supposed to be fairly agile weapons, not clumsy meat cleavers.
EDIT: I'm also not a fan of chainmail bikinis. I don't mind male or female fanservice, but scoop it in when it makes sense in the plot, not because the blacksmith forgot that women have vital organs that need protecting. It looks silly.
Historical armour was often insanely gorgeous, with a huge amount of attention to detail. For example, look at the fine detail on the first helmet on that page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_helmet - it's so purdy. Even without that kind of detail, historical armour wasn't boring looking, it often had interesting banding and stuff going on.
Also, there are examples of reasonably practical looking armour that looks interesting in fantasy. The LOTR films did that quite well, as does the GOT series. Why games tend to have such dull looking armour is beyond me.
One thing I do really dislike are swords that have the proportions of an ironing board. It looks ridiculous. Even two-handed swords were supposed to be fairly agile weapons, not clumsy meat cleavers.
EDIT: I'm also not a fan of chainmail bikinis. I don't mind male or female fanservice, but scoop it in when it makes sense in the plot, not because the blacksmith forgot that women have vital organs that need protecting. It looks silly.
well that depends...
key word is "fantasy" here though, I love it when artists go wild and have wings made out of flames attached to steel platemail..
why?
CUZ WE FUCKING CAN.
as long as it goes along kind of consistently, it's never bothered me.
That said, practical armor can look pretty good, it's just more often then not..it looks like crap in games, and why would I use armor that looked like crap? I almost always use the armor that is second tier if it looks better than the best, most rpg's don't need you to max/min everything in terms of practicality, and if they did, then it probably wouldn't be a game I would like to play.
key word is "fantasy" here though, I love it when artists go wild and have wings made out of flames attached to steel platemail..
why?
CUZ WE FUCKING CAN.
as long as it goes along kind of consistently, it's never bothered me.
That said, practical armor can look pretty good, it's just more often then not..it looks like crap in games, and why would I use armor that looked like crap? I almost always use the armor that is second tier if it looks better than the best, most rpg's don't need you to max/min everything in terms of practicality, and if they did, then it probably wouldn't be a game I would like to play.
I honestly don't get some people here. Why do all the practical armor haters (and slight dislikers) in this thread argue that all the armor of that type in RPGs is too plain, boring, and lacking fantasy elements when there are examples in this thread showing that it's not true and the armor can be both practical and fantastical at the same time? Honestly, is this [http://www.wall321.com/thumbnails/detail/20120319/warhammer%20chaos%20armor%20nurgle%20warriors%20detailed%201500x2016%20wallpaper_www.wallpaperto.com_70.jpg] really your only definition of "not boring"?
If that's the case then looks like we won't be seeing many RPGs for fans of believable and useful design for a long, long time because as we can see even from my small poll - the majority of people really prefer "not boring" armors as opposed to slightly more grounded "boring and plain" design.
If that's the case then looks like we won't be seeing many RPGs for fans of believable and useful design for a long, long time because as we can see even from my small poll - the majority of people really prefer "not boring" armors as opposed to slightly more grounded "boring and plain" design.
You want fantasy games to be realistic...
Well then I demand racing games become driving learners simulations in the slowest car possible, or better yet you actually "drive" on foot.
I will say that fantasy games would be far better served with a contrast in gear, i.e. all the newbies get realistic gear and high rollers get the cool extravagant shit. Because if your baseline is extravagant shit things don't really go anywhere better from there.
Well then I demand racing games become driving learners simulations in the slowest car possible, or better yet you actually "drive" on foot.
I will say that fantasy games would be far better served with a contrast in gear, i.e. all the newbies get realistic gear and high rollers get the cool extravagant shit. Because if your baseline is extravagant shit things don't really go anywhere better from there.
Learn comprehensive reading, bro. It's a very useful skill, trust me. I don't want fantasy games to be realistic. I want fantasy weapons and armor to look less absurd and more practical, believable, and grounded in reality. More specifically, I want more games with such weapons and armor, as there's a clear overabundance of "rule of cool" games, as opposed to games that try to aim for a more realistic artstyle, and we need more of the latter.Smooth Operator said: