So you want realism in your games, huh?

[Nitro Vordex]

Bullshit. Having realism in a game takes the fun out of it, because no matter how real it looks, you still know it's a video game. I understand having good graphics are great, hell, I won't lie, I need graphics too. Now, let's see what's severely wrong with this.

Genre: Shooters/wargames.
There is little to no realism in these games when it comes down to it. Guns can/may/will KILL YOU IN ONE HIT, or critically disable you. you may get the lucky time, but it's not often you can take a bullet from a freaking rifle in the back, and just turn around and start shooting. And then keep going, and get shot again. Please. The jumping, now some of these are truly ridiculous. An army dude, for example, has to carry at least 50 lbs. (Correct me if I'm wrong) of extra equipment on their person. Now, either they got really buff legs, or they're using moon gravity. They would have to wear the equipment constantly just for them to be able to push them AND the extra weight off of the ground like they would if they weren't weighted down. The ridiculous aiming of AI is sometimes horrible too. I've seen games where you could stand still for a while and not get hit. If some person has a weapon, they had to have been trained to use that weapon. Sometimes military games do this, and they can't aim worth shit.

Fantasy/Sci-fi(Also including RPG's):
There's a reason for that "fi" suffix, it stands for FICTION(Obvious). It's not storyline's that I'm here for, it's for "realism". Starting with weapons. Now, we've seen many shows, games, and even movies, where the main character starts off with a certain weapon. A lot of the time, they're only used to that weapon. When the game/show/movie progresses, however, they can go though many weapons, and know how to use them all. In a sense, that's hard to believe, since many games have variations in shape, size, aerodynamics, and other things for weapons, even if that's not implemented. Evey weapon must have some kind of practice involved, even if it's similar. The jumping. Oh my god. If you watch the way they jump, they for some reason, can jump 5 feet high...minimum. You want it to be realistic? Have them jump, maybe 2-3 feet. Real enough for ya? Going to the sci-fi part of it. You know what? That speaks for itself. As mentioned earlier, it's fiction, so naturally, it'll be more difficult to believe.

Action/adventure(General):
Well, what can I say about this? This might be the closest you'll get to realism, unless it's tied in with the others above. Although, in many games, you're seen wandering around WIDE open places, with the ability to travel them by walking, in a couple minutes. Now obvioulsy, it would have taken longer, but that would lose interest, now wouldn't it? So, convience, or realism?

As there are multitudes of other game genres, I won't bother pointing out all of their flaws, as I'm really not that peeved, just pointing out *coughPSfanboyscough* what people want, "realism" and great graphics. Graphics are great, but limit it. Having too much realism, will in fact, make you realize it's not real much easier. Gameplay may save this, but it may ruin this too.

Too long; didn't read version: Don't bother posting if you didn't read.

Side note: Prolly my longest post ever. *Whew*

[MetaZedlen]

For your shooter genre, try playing Counter Strike: Source, that is one of the most UNrealistic games out there, and even if it is supposed to be realistic, it is in all of the WRONG ways.

For example, getting shot in the torso about 7 or 8 times with a rifle (not the AWP), and still live?
Also, how about after 4 shots it looks like you shot a circle with a 20 foot radius? Add that to the military trained guys...

But the odd thing is, even if this stupid crap exists in the game, it is still one of my fav FPSs...

[Solstis]

Think you're misinterpreting the concept of realism when applied to games.

Things are logical in reference to each game world.

[Syl]

What I always think whenever I play a fantasy/sci-fi game is it has it's own world, its own "realism". What doesn't make sense in our world doesn't have to make any in the game and vice versa.

You obviously aren't supposed to "believe" it or it wouldn't be fantasy right? But how can people get into such games? Fantasy games have (usually) deep roots in its universe. They create their own form of realism, the realism that goes throughout the game. But it's because of that unique realism that people can get so into the fantasy world.

I've never heard anyone say "OMG DIS RPG IZ 2 FAKE!!!1!1!111one"

I can't really explain it, but maybe I read your post wrong. It seemed rather contradicting to me.

[Dre_o]

Now, I could add my cynical, 2 cents into this post and call it good, but I'll actually make it meaningful.

*coughRainbow6(mostly)cough*

Anyway, no, videogame players don't want realism. Why? Halo is one of the most popular games in existence (I despise it by the way) and the closest thing it has to reality is that you have to reload your either tremendously over powered or under powered weapon. Not to mention that a super armored, super soldier can die from one hit to the back but now I'm just nitpicking.

[rogue_robot]

Mmf. I have very mixed feelings on this subject.

I positively loathe the *headshot* mentality in shooters. Yeah, so a head-shot is generally lethal. So is a heart shot, and lung shots typically leave you drowning in your own blood. A knife in the eye is a knife in the eye. Anything else it's quite possible for a human to come back from, but even then, unless it's out on the arms or legs, not likely.

Oh, and as for the soldiers: they typically wear around 75 lbs, 50 lbs is closer to a medieval armored soldier, and yes, they do have to jump with all that gear on - just not very often.



On the other hand, I generally detest when developers and story writers spontaneously attribute "magical" properties to what we know in real life to be rather mundane and scientifically well-explained (especially in supposedly scientifically advanced societies - PSU's "photons," anyone?). When I say I want "realism," I generally mean keep the damn *magic* off by itself, separate from (though equal to) technology - that, and if they're going to implement some kind of alternate physics / metaphysics, they should at least be consistent. No, I don't like it when some process or item spontaneously provides new abilities it never did before (without the process or item itself changing in any way). Maybe if you would stop writing your stories into corners like so many ancient Greek plays, you wouldn't have to pull the deus-ex-machina card.

When I say "realistic," I'm not asking for everything to work just as it does in real life, I'm just asking for everything to work in a logical, consistent way, preferably with some attempt to explain why it works that way rather than some other possible way - as in, what separates item A with mystical properties from item B without, etc.




EDIT: A little restructuring of my rant for coherence...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rogue_robot on 2008-03-09 08:31 ]</font>



EDIT 2:

As much fun as the game is to play with friends, I've gotta say that I hate how little damage bullets do in Halo. A melee attack (non-back hit, regardless of weapon [except sword/hammer R-trigger]) does about 70 damage. Each assault rifle bullet does about 7 damage (non-headshot). That's out of 115 Hp (combined shields / body). (I don't remember if these are the exact numbers, but if you watch a game of Halo 3 in progress, they fit almost too perfectly).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rogue_robot on 2008-03-09 09:40 ]</font>



EDIT 3:

As for horrible accuracy:

Soldiers in real life don't actually hit their targets in real combat very often (at least, not compared to the number of bullets they expend). Hitting a stationary target and hitting a moving one (especially one making use of cover, and shooting back) are two very different tasks in difficulty - that's the only reason any firefight has ever lasted longer than 2 seconds. Well, and the fact that firearms are actually a step down for ranged precision from bows - they replaced bows because of their effectiveness against armored targets of the times, not because of their range or precision (both of which are still worse than a bow, though not by as much as they used to be).


Therefore, it makes sense for the AI to have crappy aim - at least, against a moving target. However, making something's accuracy against a stationary target and a moving target differ takes effort, and most game developers (I say most, not all) want to get their games out faster, not better. This leaves them either choosing to implement god-bots or fail-bots, but rarely realistic bots - and since few people want to play against god-bots, as they make the game far too frustrating, fail-bots become the logical choice for the lazy developer.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rogue_robot on 2008-03-09 11:36 ]</font>

[Scejntjynahl]

Realism is meant in ther confines of the realm of that particular genre. Not to be confused with "in real life" realism. Every game has its set rules of the way it works, and keeping within those rules is what gives it a sense of realism.

Example. Street Fighter 2. Can anyone in real life actually shoot chi from their hands? No. But in the world of Street Fighter it is accepte and thus becomes "real" in that genre. Hence why so many people complained about MvC1 and 2, they took those set of rules and broke away from the tradtional realism that Street Fighter had originally installed. Instead we have massive 40 + hit combos, everyone practically shooting lasers that cover about 1/5 of the screen etc etc. Now this would be real if the game was, say, Dragon Ball >..>

And there are games that are realistic to our irl circumstances, but those are called "simulators" and really don't quite fit into the whole gaming experience.

[XCOPY]

cheh, I just hate "true to life" realism in a game because it's boring. This is why something like Unreal Championship, Halo, Quake 3, Phantasy Star, etc. etc. will always be far more interesting to me than the latest Madden or NBA Live. Perhaps a better way of saying that....give me an NBA Jam over NBA Live anyday. Why stick to reality in a virtual game world? Why not have the basketball players literally getting "on fire" and jumping 50 feet in the air to dunk? To me, it is pointless and not fun to simulate reality when there's really no need to adhere to our lame real-world "rules" in a virtual world. The real world kinda sucks, and it's usually depressing and actually boring when you compare it to the unlimited possibilities of fiction and a good imagination.

Fiction gives us awesome things only limited by imagination. Reality? = the human male can get hurt simply from sitting down the wrong way, and nobody can double-jump or have a super-powerful transformation to unleash during a fight. Yeah, reality isn't really that appealing or entertaining, at least not in comparison.

[Nitro Vordex]

On 2008-03-09 11:35, Scejntjynahl wrote:
...Can anyone in real life actually shoot chi from their hands? No...


Not that we know of anyways. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

Anyway, when I say realism, it looks like you guys understand what I meant which is great. For the Sci-Fi part of my rant, example:
Making a unicorn with "breath taking graphics".
Oh come on, that's just redundant. We know it's fake, we know it looks good, and we know it's just data rendered onto *screen of choice* by gases. Or LCD, not sure how those work yet. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

[rogue_robot]

Liquid Crystal Display - as the name implies, liquid crystals (though there's actually a bit more to it than that). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCD

I hate the graphics emphasis. Because, even with a GPU, graphics compete with other game mechanics for CPU time, all those pretty graphics are mutually exclusive with interesting, complex, and fun game mechanics. So take your pick: a really "pretty" game that plays just like any other, or a graphically "ugly" game with interesting gameplay twists. I prefer the latter to the former - bad graphics don't make a game less fun as much as bad gameplay, IMO. Hence, I don't own a PS3, and, unless their RPG library actually catches up to the 360's (the fact that an American console is outdoing a Japanese one at all in that area gives me a bad feeling about the future of said Japanese console, even if it hasn't been out quite as long), I don't plan on buying one. Ever.


Yeah, one of the biggest problems with the word "realism" is how many different ways it can be taken. Some people mean "exactly as everything is in real life." Others mean "exactly as in real life except where the developer specifies otherwise, however they care to specify it." I personally prefer something in between - something which still plays into fantasy and imagination, but doesn't misrepresent well-documented scientific data in real life. While PSU's "magical photons" are a more innocent infraction, Doom's "chromosome 24" casts genetic and chromosomal engineering, a field which is already providing massive benefits to mankind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice), in a rather ingratefully disrespectful light.

[Sord]

*walks outside, sees ads on trucks, poster boards, stores, everywhere this is products*

*gets on games, see signs, adds, product placement*

fucking reality in mah games http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

[rogue_robot]

Hey, if such product-placement advertising would make games like WoW or the online portion of PSU free of charge, I wouldn't mind.

[raikomaru40]

VR is still fun

[Seority]

Taking off Solstis's statment,
Graphics make even crappy games fun to play.
Then again, it doesn't work the other way around. (Pacman anyone?)
The fact that it's unrealistic, but looks so real on the pretty LCD screens make it more amusing to all.
It's almost commonsense to know games will never be like real life. (Unless you are talking about PS3 Home. Then that's just sweet, but it's not 100% real either. Still amazing to me :3 )

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Seority on 2008-03-10 12:18 ]</font>