Immersion vs Realism (and also RNG/Difficulty)

Discussion in 'Games' started by Xylia, Mar 19, 2017.

  1. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Last night, a friend of mine told me that they were doing a multiplayer "thing" of Baldur's Gate Enhanced and asked me if I want to come along.

    I used to play that game, you know? A long, long time ago... I never finished it, never even got close because I would always get side-tracked but I had enough fond memories of the game so I figured "hey, why not?" so I started downloading it.

    Well, it isn't downloaded yet but friend and I got to talking about game mechanics, D&D rules, etc and today I was thinking about that conversation, and you know what? I'm... not sure if I'm looking forward to this whole thing or not. I'll try it, but eh. He wants to use "Core" difficulty (which is basically, everything according to 2nd Ed rules). I would prefer we used "Normal" (same as Core, except -25% damage).

    The reason being, is that your characters start out so utterly weak in that game, even if you min-max all the stats (and take hours doing it), your mages are only going to have a piddly 8HP, warriors will have 14HP and there's nothing you can do to make it any better.

    Now, I know what D&D people were going for when they made the rules, they were going for realism. IRL, if you take a good hit from a longsword you are most likely dead, no ifs ands or buts. You are either dead, or horribly wounded. Hence why a longsword does 1-8 damage, and your average person has no more than 8HP.

    However... Realism is not always good in videogames and this is one instance where I think trying to stick to the rules is actually a detriment. We play games for Immersion and Fun, we want to escape RL and have fun with a videogame to pass time. I can't say I'm having fun when I reload a save for the 500th time because the margin of error is so tiny that it just becomes too ridiculous, to the point I'm not having fun anymore.

    So, what's with the thread title? Well, the whole thing where some developers (not talking about Baldur's Gate specifically, I mean lots of people including people who post on gaming forums) seem to think that Realism = Immersion. That for a game to be Immersive, it has to be Realistic.

    To be honest, I do not believe this is the case. Realism can sometimes help, if done right and too many breaks from Realism can make it difficult to get yourself Immersed in a game, but yet all things in moderation is good.

    Immersion, for me, is when I get lost in a game and I tend to forget I'm playing a game and I can insert myself into the character's shoes. The best way to do this is a mix of making the game easy to play without reminding me constantly that I'm playing a game (such as having easy to use UI, a UI that doesn't clutter the viewing area up, etc), and presenting me with a good story or reason for doing what I'm doing.

    I don't need awesome graphics to be immersed -- I've played rather immersive games from 20+ years ago. I don't need realism to be immersed -- I've found immersion in games with magic, sci-fi, and people with ridiculous-looking armor and weapons killing dragons.

    What kills immersion? Too much time fiddling with behind-the-scenes crap like UIs, and.. *drumroll* saving, loading, and re-loading. Nothing kills immersion faster than having to re-load your last save after you died. You're in a zen, you're having fun and then BOOM. Some crappy RNG happens and now you gotta re-load. Then you're thinking "How long has it been since I saved? How much did I lose? How can I get around the crappy RNG? How can I ensure this doesn't happen again?"

    ......and that's when Immersion has been broken. You are no longer in that 'zen' where you're in your character's shoes. No, you're sitting on the chair, staring at the screen, and thinking about this computer program you're running. You're thinking about RNG. About game saves. Loading. Recovering what you lost.

    This is one of the reasons why I do not particularly like higher difficulty in games; I hate my immersion being broken by what usually boils down to cheap mechanics and low margins for error, especially when said challenge is presented by RNG.

    Nothing irritates me more than RNG in a game. The less of it I see, the better off I am. RNG is OK in something like terrain generation, or general behavior.. but when we start getting into success/fail on character actions and loot drops, that's when I start to hate it. RNG is very often unfair, and it rarely feels like it should (If you say I have an 80% chance to do something, it feels more like 30% when I fail several times in a row and that just brings on loads of irritation).

    The human brain is wired to see negatives more easily than positives, and I realize the whole RNG thing is because of that, but that's the very reason it should be used sparingly. We play games to have fun, not to experience another life just like our own. I'm not having fun when I'm cursing the stupid RNG for yet again making me fail an 80% or even 90% chance to do something, or when I yet again kill some (insert difficult or hard to find enemy here) and yet again he didn't drop what I needed.

    Thankfully Starbound has very little visible RNG... I wonder if that's one of the reasons why I've grown so fond of it? Terraria is another example (although the boss drops get annoying sometimes) of RNG-lite games, games that have little in the way of "visible" RNG.

    Baldur's Gate on the other hand... every. stinking. thing. you. do. is RNG, because that's how D&D was/is.

    That doesn't mean it was the right way to do things, or even good. I think BG would have been a better game if it had been done more like, I don't know, Dragon Age Origins. Take DA:O's combat system and use BG's areas and story. Would have improved the game 10x. Don't think I'm railing on D&D 2nd, or "It would have been better if it were 3.5!" .....because D&D 3.5 / d20 / Pathfinder has the same stupid flaws -- basing everything on RNG.
     
    Lodish likes this.
  2. ComatosePhoenix

    ComatosePhoenix Phantasmal Quasar

    I have mixed opinions on this, On one hand your right. Baldur's gate at early levels is stupid boring as you an the other level one nubs spend ages swinging at things hope against hope that you manage to roll above a 13 just so that you can kill this stupid goblin. Then I picked a wild mage for my starting class and just enjoyed using narhal's reckless dwemer to anhilate every encounter... and my party.

    The way that DND level and experience was originally written. It was expected characters would die. frequently. but the party as a whole would survive. It was planned that every 'session' would give roughly enough experience to get the party to the next level. DnD 2nd edition experience scaled in such a way that leveling up a character to the next level would also level up a level one character to the level before that. This would last until about player level 9. Where it was more feasible for characters to resurrect each other.

    Also in Advance DnD it was common for parties to have hirlings, mercenaries, minions. Etc. Heck the entire endgame for a normal fighter was the ability to recruit tons of lesser normal fighters to beat up dudes. I wouldn't call the approach realistic, rather I'd say it was set up in such a way so that loosing was also fun. A concept that is difficult to translate into a videogame.
     
  3. Arnust

    Arnust Big Damn Hero

    "Realism" has no place in video games that aren't specific simulations and the like.
    A game is a set of rules. A good game takes the most out of those rules, what you can do and can't, what is the goal if there is one, and so on.
    That's why the term "Cinematic" makes me puke. I don't find good games that are basically a movie that requires you to push some buttons now and then.

    The best embody video games as a medium. Zelda, Dark Souls, ICO/SotC, etcetera.

    On RNG difficulty? I love Nuclear Throne, FTL and Risk Of Rain. Hate TBOI and Enter The Gungeon.
    That's becouse the first, while RNG based, you can get to the end if you play smart. Yes, some runs are a death corridor, but then roughly the same amount of times you get an insane top score run. Skill, reflexes and know-how are rewarded. What RNG does is spice it up to make every playthrough different. One day you get a boarding crew with respirators, other you are a walking missile battery. Each time you fail, you are closer to winning next time, becouse you learn.

    But in TBOI and ETG, RNG controls how tedious the run will be. There is NO way that you can't win if you know your game. I can go and kick Delirium's teeth in, supposedly the hardest boss evah. But I won't get a key drop for the store with Void, D20 or Brimstone so I'll be stuck with Bob's Brain, the useless companions and starting stats. And by attrition I'll just die out at some point. What could I do to avoid that? ETG is a lot the same in those aspects.

    And the unlocks? In the first they are indicated somewhere, from a specific description on how to get it and what it does, to slightly criptic.
    The second are "???" Fuck you. For The Lost, a character that has some of the strongest unlocks tied in, you have to suicide as different characters at specific floors and to certain enemies, four times in a row. No explanation on what they do.
    "Fidelity": Play 30 dailies in a row. What does it unlock? A pill with the kamikaze effect. That is added to the pool with the actual useful stuff. Fuck you, player.
     
  4. HueHuey

    HueHuey Parsec Taste Tester

    I don't think realism or difficulty affect immersion.

    If the world is detailed and coherent with the story, and the gameplay is responsive, then i am immersed. If the world feels like a backdrop, and the game forces animations up your ass, no.
    Arma 3 is immersive, Call of Duty 4 is immersive, but Battlefield 3 isn't, because some mechanics are there just for the sake of being there.
    Beta Minecraft was pretty immersive, it had a strong atmosphere, then they added random stuff that goes in no particular direction and it became cluttered and boring.

    As for RNG difficulty, yeah it's bullshit; personally i can't stand it, but it's not because it makes the game harder, it's just inherently bullshit, and has no place outside of tabletop games.
     
  5. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    See, that's the very kind of RNG I absolutely despise.

    I don't know about Nuclear Throne or Risk of Rain, but in FTL.... the RNG decides if you win or lose. Seriously.

    It doesn't matter how good you are, if the game decides you are going to die, you WILL die no matter what. There's a brick wall boss at the end and if the game absolutely refused to allow you to have enough stuff to beat it, then all the skill in the world isn't going to help you when you've got a pea shooter, a missile or two, and no crew teleporter. The stupid flagship will blow you to bits before you can even get to Stage 2.

    Other times, the RNG says "OK, fine I'll let you win today." and you'll get so many weapons and crew that you don't know what to do with. You'll get insane luck up and down.

    But yet, there's always those times the CPU says "You die, now." and no matter what you can or can't do, you're gonna die. Because with a game like FTL, you can only take so much BS until you are irrevocably put in a bad position that there's no way out of.

    And I don't know why you talk about reflexes... in a game you can pause at any time and think about what you wanna do, and even pause between giving commands so you can give fine-tuned commands to each of your crew.

    And in FTL, failure only gets you closer to winning, only if you managed to unlock something during that run. Unlocking the Mantis Cruiser? Oh yes, that brings you MUCH closer. Getting to Sector 8 and unlocking nothing because they wouldn't give you enough? That won't do much at all for you unless you actually learned something on that run.

    And of course, there's RNG... let's say you want the Mantis Cruiser. Good luck finding an early-level Mantis Homeworld pop on the map (AND know which of the red dots are one, if one exists). Once you get there, HOPEFULLY you have the tools to actually do the quest (Teleporter or Lv3 Scanner, and Lv2 Med Bay, as well as weapons to kill the enemy crew without destroying their ship, which is NOT easy without boarding, the very thing you DON'T want to do to a mantis ship).

    Etc Etc Etc.

    Too much RNG. It took me 50+ runs to get the stupid thing unlocked. It wasn't fun, really, when most of those runs were "dry" and "empty" runs with nothing to show for it. At least with some sort of RPG game you have XP-based unlocks, and even failed runs give you XP towards unlocking junk.
     
  6. Arnust

    Arnust Big Damn Hero

    Well, I disagree for the most part. I'll adress what I can, but first: Due to playing in Hard for the most part, while I have 150 hours, I've beat it 6 times only. I also listen to podcasts or music while playing so I get distracted and fuck up way too often, heh. Also tampered a buch with the mods.

    My favourite ship is the Stealth Cruiser, better the B Layout. If you remember what it's about, you know that it ha quite the odds against it. A slow weapon, no Shields System (not even "weak" like the other shieldless ships), limited layout (venting issues, small medbay, big important systems), and standard engines in exchange of a lvl 2 Cloaking that needs to depower Oxigen to run it fully. I KNOW what's the RNG on this game. But I can manage it, and so can anyone. You see what are the encounters and what do they yield, value different sectors (ain't going to the Rock sector without Defense Drones that's for sure) try taking profits of different setups (almost every piece of gear class has a special Blue option), and get a kiss from godess Fortune and you're golden. Now it's up to you.

    What is a common problem is that people doesn't hold on the scrap. Every bit they get they spend it on system upgrades even when not neccesary (subsystems, really?), so they blow the BLII in the arms dealer next dooror a new System. If you get some of that groove, unless the RNG is VERY silly that day, you have a good shot.

    On the Flagship: If you are able to get to Sector 8 being able to hold your ground, whatever build, not even OP, you absolutely can cope with it. Hacking? get the Shield off to blast 'em, use their medbay and wreck the peopke there, . Boarding? Kill the gunners, overpowering if it's a 4-person TP or warping more via the trick, support by fire, use Lanius to suffocate them in small rooms, Minc Control the pilot for a distraction and to lower evasion drmatically... Unless they get in a stray hit through you when you still haven't disabled their rockets, you are quite safe. Fase 2 you need to tank and break enemy guns asap, unless you have Anti-Combat drones or similar counter measures. Phase three needs them engines upgradedand being able to cope with system damage, and that's kinda it. In Hard, its layout changes and make sit way harder.

    TBF, yeah, "Reflexes" isn't the word for it (for the others it kinda is). It's the mix of reaction time while having all brains on. You know that you can manipulate venting by opening neighnoring rooms? So if there are some Lanius in, you can open doors to slow their O2 drain, or fill in faster critical rooms, etc. Just the mix of experience you have in most games; why have people manning engines if you already broke the weapons? Use it to repair or man other system, long etc.

    Also, you really need to suck to not be able to get to Secor 8 at least once with the Zoltan Cruiser, be it A or B. That ship is great for Normal and it only needs the push of some other crew member, anothe rgun, whatever and a system to be fully operational. What is harder is getting the Mantis B, IMO. Not like it's that amazing though, I prefer The Shrieke (Lanius B for boarding purposes.

    And you said it already; for every unavoidable death, you get a double Halberd Beam setup. It's our brains' workings to think that it's what always happens.
     

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