PC So was the point of A19 to get rid of "Realism"?

[Ralathar44]

We don't have those because we expect the game to be based at least on reality.

This sentence shows me you don't truly understand games, media, or other works of fiction.  You've painted yourself in your own box inside of the much larger box of gaming itself.  Octodad and Bennet Foddy's Getting Over It are both not based on reality.  One is a game about how cumbersome it is to do normal life things as an octopuss trying to pass himself off as human with a full long term family. (literally none of that makes sense)  Another is a guy in a pot climbing a mountain with a sledgehammer.  Katamari is a game where an intergalactic being rolls balls around that magically collect everything they roll over.  Donut County is a game where a racoon makes holes in the ground that suck everything up and grow as you suck more up.  Doki Doki Literature Club kills every "realistic" expectation the game sets up.

These are examples of games that require people breaking out of mental boxes of how things should work to create entirely new genres or unique/good experiences within a genre.  You can't create Aeon of Strife and DOTA from Warcraft 3 if you're limiting your own potential like that.  The only thing that matters is: is it interesting or fun?  Everything else is secondary.  It can be complete and total fever dream non-sense but if it's interesting and/or fun people will like it.  Breaking rules or reality =/= fun but breaking rules or reality also =/= not fun either .  The idea something needs to be based on reality is silly.  Especially when most of the games we play are based on fictional rules, characters, worlds, and etc and often drawing their "reality" from previously established fictions.  Opening a peanut butter jar and having a unicorn ridden by an angry beaver fly out is neither good or bad, only how it is used can be good or bad.  Realistic or not .  Hell, that sounds like the start of a rather amusing boss battle if framed properly in a game.

This is why when it comes to high performance (regardless of industry) the majority is always wrong.  Now that's not to say that you can't create very good games WITHIN that limiting box.  But you're basically just creating clones and remixes.  How many open world games have you basically played without ever needing to pick up your mouse or controller for example?  People feel bound by conventions, bound by reality, bound by rules, and because of that they kill their own ability to innovate.  So the people who reach new levels and create new things necessarily have to defy the "rules" or even "reality" to do so.

This is why Death Stranding excites me so much.  Not everyone will like it for sure, it's a very hot/cold game.  But without a doubt they broke new ground by creating an entirely new kind of traversal and gameplay mechanics oriented community interactions in a game that many people enjoy.  And if you don't find it fun, that's fine.  Ironically the walking and hiking in that game is very based on real life ideas/rules.  BUT the industry rules on what you can and can't do had to be broken to make that game.  Games are good at breaking rules, I consider it a strength of gaming because the gamer brings a set of assumptions in with them of "how things work" that can be used against the gamer rather effectively, as in the case of Doki Doki Literature Club, Pony Island, or the Magic Circle.

If you like more traditional stuff and prefer your world to stay within certain rules, that's fine.  But I and many others don't.  I want developers to swing for the stars and bring me not just the down to earth stuff I like but to continue to surprise me with cool new @%$*#! I'd never have dreamed of.  So long as it's fun or entertaining they can break any industry rule or real life rule they want.

Now technically everything will be based on reality to you if you choose to interpret it that way because YOU are interpreting it and you can only do so from the basis of your experiences in reality.  If you mental gymnastic hard enough anything can be turned into "reality based".  But in context of the conversation your sentence has a rather rigid and defined meaning and so that's what I addressed.  Not only that, but if you make the idea of "based on reality" that vague then you've undercut your own argument anyways haha.

 

[Raestloz]

This sentence shows me you don't truly understand games, media, or other works of fiction

What this sentence shows me, is that all you've done is stop right then and there and start talking about something that I've made painfully clear twice now doesn't matter, all the way from beginning to the end. At this point I have to admit I'm starting to wonder whether you're actually reading or not.

Twice I've explained what suspension of disbelief is. Twice I've elaborated on examples of that. Twice also, you've practically ignored all that and start attacking points I've never even made, and this time seems to proclaim victory over that for some reason? 

Your entire argument is basically "Nothing is real, everything is permitted, disregard world building, acquire currency", then you list all sorts of examples where such a thing does not hold true. Accusing me of limiting myself to earth based reality doesn't work when I never do that in the first place

I'm tempted to try to explain what suspension of disbelief is for the third time. They say third time's a charm, but I'm not sure what I can do to make it any clearer than I've already said

 

[JCrook1028]

1. For the same reason you expect canned lamb ration to have, I dunno, lamb ration in them? You cannot in fact craft a "Sealed" shipping crate.

Those kind of crates are "sealed" with nails. Have you ever worked around those heavy wooden shipping crates? Open em with a pry bar.. Damn easy to reseal them...

 

[Aldranon]

I say, if you try a little bit, you can come up with any narrative you like. 

This applies to everything.

Take, for example, the Solar grand minimum happening as we speak.

-One side says: We are doomed and most of the worlds population will die off from starvation in a few decades (our sun will be cooler for some time).

-I and others say the greenhouse gases we have generated should offset the cooling.  Like earth wearing a blanket.

-One could go so far as saying the money grabbing industrialists are heroes, saviors of humanity!  

So, just try to find a way to enjoy the game... while it lasts. 

 

[RestInPieces]

What this sentence shows me, is that all you've done is stop right then and there and start talking about something that I've made painfully clear twice now doesn't matter, all the way from beginning to the end. At this point I have to admit I'm starting to wonder whether you're actually reading or not.

Twice I've explained what suspension of disbelief is. Twice I've elaborated on examples of that. Twice also, you've practically ignored all that and start attacking points I've never even made, and this time seems to proclaim victory over that for some reason? 

Your entire argument is basically "Nothing is real, everything is permitted, disregard world building, acquire currency", then you list all sorts of examples where such a thing does not hold true. Accusing me of limiting myself to earth based reality doesn't work when I never do that in the first place

I'm tempted to try to explain what suspension of disbelief is for the third time. They say third time's a charm, but I'm not sure what I can do to make it any clearer than I've already said

I am afraid it's not just the third time -- just take a look a few posts back...

@Ralathar44 I honestly do not know where you got the idea that consistency/immersion and innovation/breaking rules are mutually exclusive. Every game, whether it has a conventional narrative or not, tells a story, and consistency is vital to any story.

 

[Xtrakicking]

What this sentence shows me, is that all you've done is stop right then and there and start talking about something that I've made painfully clear twice now doesn't matter, all the way from beginning to the end. At this point I have to admit I'm starting to wonder whether you're actually reading or not.

Twice I've explained what suspension of disbelief is. Twice I've elaborated on examples of that. Twice also, you've practically ignored all that and start attacking points I've never even made, and this time seems to proclaim victory over that for some reason? 

Your entire argument is basically "Nothing is real, everything is permitted, disregard world building, acquire currency", then you list all sorts of examples where such a thing does not hold true. Accusing me of limiting myself to earth based reality doesn't work when I never do that in the first place

I'm tempted to try to explain what suspension of disbelief is for the third time. They say third time's a charm, but I'm not sure what I can do to make it any clearer than I've already said

Based on older debates I've had with Ralathar44, I share your sentiment. I also tried explaining that suspension of disbelief is an important aspect of any media, be it movies, books or games. Many content creators work really hard to make sure the stories they tell make sense and are consistent. Disregarding suspension of disbelief as something that doesn't matter is equal to disregarding all the hard work those creators have put into their creations to guarantee immersion.

But alas, I figured explaining it isn't gonna cut it no matter how many times one does it if the other party isn't willing to listen.

That being said, the problem with the stone age thing now isn't just related to realism, it's a gameplay problem. If I enter a Shotgun Messiah risking my life fighting against ferals on day 1 and I manage to beat them, I deserve a reward as a player. Thus, finding primitive gear worse than the gear I already have in all the damn boxes is frustrating as hell, especially if you play without 30 day respawn loot, because it basically means that looting that Shotgun Messiah was an absolute waste in every sense possible, just because you decided to loot it too early. That right there is the problem, and a serious one at that.

 

[Raestloz]

I also tried explaining that suspension of disbelief is an important aspect of any media, be it movies, books or games

I personally think, suspension of disbelief is the most important aspect. One can look past say, ugly visuals or bad audio as long as they don't leave scratching their heads with "why are they doing that?" or "why does it work like that?", because once that happens, the illusion was shattered and what used to be a media to sit back and enjoy, with all the good and bad, becomes one where you realize this doesn't hold water. That is why authors painstakingly explain details whenever some fans ask about things, they want to preserve the magic, although sometimes it can go wrong (like that one time Pottermore blurted out about wizards crapping their pants)

As far as 7 days to die go, the problem in question is basically part of the never ending gameplay/story segregation issue. I won't deny the advantages of having stone tools in boxes, and I also acknowledge the problems with it. Personally I prefer that things go as you say: High level POI should have high level enemies guarding high level rewards. I think meganoth has stated that that situation is basically stage 4 of loot development. Right now they're at stage 1, developing a system to have high level enemies first

and as far as I am concerned, the situation is as good as resolved. Yes, it's still there, but the most important part is the devs have acknowledged this is not the result they envisioned, it's not here to stay in the long term. All that I wish to explain, is there's a logic behind the seemingly random "realistic" arguments. Or, at least, mine has

 

[Aldranon]

Going into one of the medium sized Shotgun Messiah should get you a Blunderbuss and enough ammo for a few days.

Once you get two or even three Blunderbuss's then you are golden against almost anything (assuming you know how to rapid fire them point blank).  Bears could still be a problem.

So, stone age is great, more great if you perked into shoguns!

 

[Xtrakicking]

Going into one of the medium sized Shotgun Messiah should get you a Blunderbuss and enough ammo for a few days.

Once you get two or even three Blunderbuss's then you are golden against almost anything (assuming you know how to rapid fire them point blank).  Bears could still be a problem.

So, stone age is great, more great if you perked into shoguns!

Clear as water: Looting a Shotgun Messiah and getting blunderbusses only isn't good. You can get a blunderbuss in any other place as well. Why would I loot the Shotgun Messiah full of ferals then?

 

[Aldranon]

Clear as water: Looting a Shotgun Messiah and getting blunderbusses only isn't good. You can get a blunderbuss in any other place as well. Why would I loot the Shotgun Messiah full of ferals then?

Because its not the Tier-5 one?

 

[Xtrakicking]

Because its not the Tier-5 one?

Ohhhh right right right. What could possibly be better than a T5 blunderbuss, ay? I'm certainly willing to waste all my resources and risk my life against high tier enemies for all those sweet blunderbusses that for some unknown cosmic power are all you can find stored away in a gun store in 2034.

 

[Aldranon]

Ohhhh right right right. What could possibly be better than a T5 blunderbuss, ay? I'm certainly willing to waste all my resources and risk my life against high tier enemies for all those sweet blunderbusses that for some unknown cosmic power are all you can find stored away in a gun store in 2034.

LOL we are on two wavelengths!

I meant a Tier-5 POI because in the 7D2D game I play, there are no ferals until I've usually found some level of pump shotgun or bought an auto shotgun.

Your game sounds interesting too.

 

[Xtrakicking]

LOL we are on two wavelengths!

I meant a Tier-5 POI because in the 7D2D game I play, there are no ferals until I've usually found some level of pump shotgun or bought an auto shotgun.

Your game sounds interesting too.

Ahh, my bad. Lol.

 

[Outlaw_187]

3 Questions:

1.  How do we know sealed crates are from pre-apocalypse?  I see nothing in game that confirms this.  Why would you assume any sealed crate is automagically a pre-apocalypse crate?  WE CAN MAKE THOSE CRATES OURSELVES lol.  So I'd call it a baseless assumption to say when those crates were filled and sealed.

2.  Isn't it actually super immersion breaking for there to be sealed crates everywhere with even middling value stuff in them, much less high value stuff?  We went 1 week into a pandemic and people bought out the grocery and gun stores.  We had some minor (compared to an apocalypse) bit of civil unrest and people were looting and burning stuff like crazy.  Now imagine both of those being 100 times worse.  And we're expecting there to be all these caches of high value loot in obvious locations that somehow nobody looted in decades?  Get real.  That's the definition of unrealistic.

3.  I notice nobody complains about our ability to defeat solid steel safe doors with basic lockpicks and a stone axe.  Isn't that Immersion breaking AF?  Realistically safes and safe doors and etc would require high amounts of knowledge, skills, and materials to defeat.  You shouldn't be getting into those before high power drills and explosives.

I utterly reject all this immersion/realism reasoning because it's so cherry picked it's stupid.  This has nothing to do with realism or immersion.   I could easily mention more things, this is just 3 highly relevant things off the top of my head.

100% agree and perfectly said. 

 

[HungryZombie]

I would assume it's because the crate is labeled as a "Sealed" shipping crate, has a company brand name on it.  Much like when people find sealed containers of the past from various manufacturing/packaging companies.  One expects to find things from that company and not it was a convenient box someone used to store stuff.

Are you implying that newer crates are not sealed?

 

[Ralathar44]

@Ralathar44 I honestly do not know where you got the idea that consistency/immersion and innovation/breaking rules are mutually exclusive. Every game, whether it has a conventional narrative or not, tells a story, and consistency is vital to any story. 

I said nothing of the sort, my stance was highly nuanced and you boiled it down into a binary to suit your own purposes.

Are you implying that newer crates are not sealed?

Yeah, it's super weird to assume that only old crates can be sealed and that opened crates cannot be resealed.  Just like it's super weird for any hundreds of post-apoc crates to be unlooted decades after the apoc.  Just like it's super weird that we hit a crate with an axe a few times and we destroy the crate completely and leave behind a cardboard box.  Plainly there is nothing realistic about the sealed nature of the crates we find but people are using that as the crux of their argument on why it'd be unrealistic to find non-awesome loot in there.

My "suspension of disbelief" is destroyed and my day is ruined /s.  It's obviously just a gameplay mechanic intended to show us we haven't looted a thing yet + signal the type of loot we're going to get and not based in any amount of realism.  But people are going through hypocritical mental gymnastics to try and twist it to serve their arguments of wanting better loot.  I don't even think they realize they are doing it honestly, it prolly makes sense to them.  We humans think in emotion, but love to believe we think in logic.  So folks have a hard time saying "I want X" instead they tend to say "x is the only correct thing so you must change things to be like x" even if it's all entirely subjective.  All they have to say is "I don't like having worse loot" and that's valid feedback, but they present it as if it's something else because they seem to realize that's a weaker argument and completely subjective so they try and twist it into something that they think isn't subjective.  I face this all the time as a QA tester, sometimes even from ourselves .  Nobody is perfect and QA testers suffer from this sot of emotional reasoning as well, the good ones are just better at recognizing it for what it is.  That's why we get articles like this.  And that's how I see this conversation.  Just replace "too many skags" with "mah realism".  The posters making the arguments have a genuine problem in their specific play experience, but what they expressed and the core problems are different things.  And sometimes it isn't even a problem, though I'd argue in this case some balancing is needed.  This is all super common in feedback, it's basically feedback 101 .

If we wanted to avoid hurting "immersion" and "suspension of disbelief" we'd be opening the crates with a pry bar and looting the crates directly, not destroying the crates perfectly with an axe, somehow without spilling or damaging their contents. 

Also the limited contents of boxes relative to their size shows that the boxes were not factory packed.  They were plainly packed by survivors who threw a fews odds and ends into them /s.  OR it's just a game mechanic lol .  Those boxes are pretty large and we've ALWAYS found very little in them relative to their size until very late gamestage.  Ironically the much smaller metal chests typically have more in them, and more than the metal chest could actually hold in many cases.  When I find a shamway box with 5 cans of food and a blueberry pie in it my first thought isn't "this was packed and sealed pre-apoc" because the box is like 10% filled.  Same story with the working stiff boxes. 
 

So I will continue to attack their poor argumentation while they continue to attack me as the other poster.  Points like the one I bolded above are numerous.  There are so many radical departures from realism and logic and "basing in reality" in even this narrow scope of conversation that it's quite simply illogical to try and apply realism/immersion or even consistency to it.  The arguments just fall apart under even cursory inspection.

 

[Xtrakicking]

Snip

It seems to me that the actual problem with loot in A19 has been shifted towards the strangely specific and weirdely controversial topic of sealed boxes. I think it's important to get something very clear: The problem with loot is in the gameplay itself, not just in the realism aspect. There's no incentive in looting when the game forbids you of getting anything else that's not made of stone for days. It's simply bad design.

While I'm at it, let me also say this: Realism and immersion MATTERS no matter how many walls of text anyone writes. Of course, things aren't black or white. You can't ever have any game that's 100% realistic in every aspect, of course some things won't ever make sense. That doesn't mean creators should forget about immersion, it's simply absurd to suggest so. Movies aren't 100% accurate to reality either. Should we stop making movies that make any sense then? Content creators should always try to make their games as immersive as possible, if it's within their possibilities. When they stop caring about that, they start deviating from their own game and begin adding frustrating nonesense.

Finding a spear and a T1 bow in a locked gunsafe in a gun store is simply nonesensical. It's a lazy system that forces the player to be weak because the game lacks what it needs to prevent players from getting too strong too soon in a way that's fun and makes sense. It breaks immersion and undermines gameplay, which makes the experience less enjoyable in return. Why? Because immersion matters. Saying stuff like the prying animation thing is just a strawman argument that tries to lessen the value of immersion in videogames.

 

[Boidster]

Your logic basically falls apart on its own. If we have to assume, as per your logic that "Nothing is real, everything is permitted", then why don't we already have Harry Spotter building a Hogwash castle to rule over the pitiful peasants? Casting down zombies with his wand, his castle protected by a giant green dragon, an army of Magickcian under his command, teleporting in and out wherever and whenever they please. Would've made a great Duke of Navezgane, now would it? Wingardium LEVIosha, not Wingardium LeviOSHA, as they say
 

Why don't we have the ability to loot a storage from 60 feet away? I mean we already can break a tree with our bare hands with barely a single scratch, there's no need to maintain "realism" now is there?

We don't have those because...

...that is not the game that The Fun Pimps have in mind. It has nothing to do being "based on reality" except to the extent that The Fun Pimps see "based on reality" as a design goal. Which is not for us to decide.

People are very hung up on the word "sealed". They put that into the game so you would know you need to beat the crate open with an axe. It was not meant to carry all of the meaning people are reading into it e.g. "pre-apocalypse modern tools!" They should find another description besides "sealed" so everyone can get past this.

 

[Dracula]

It seems to me that the actual problem with loot in A19 has been shifted towards the strangely specific and weirdely controversial topic of sealed boxes. I think it's important to get something very clear: The problem with loot is in the gameplay itself, not just in the realism aspect. There's no incentive in looting when the game forbids you of getting anything else that's not made of stone for days. It's simply bad design.

While I'm at it, let me also say this: Realism and immersion MATTERS no matter how many walls of text anyone writes. Of course, things aren't black or white. You can't ever have any game that's 100% realistic in every aspect, of course some things won't ever make sense. That doesn't mean creators should forget about immersion, it's simply absurd to suggest so. Movies aren't 100% accurate to reality either. Should we stop making movies that make any sense then? Content creators should always try to make their games as immersive as possible, if it's within their possibilities. When they stop caring about that, they start deviating from their own game and begin adding frustrating nonesense.

Finding a spear and a T1 bow in a locked gunsafe in a gun store is simply nonesensical. It's a lazy system that forces the player to be weak because the game lacks what it needs to prevent players from getting too strong too soon in a way that's fun and makes sense. It breaks immersion and undermines gameplay, which makes the experience less enjoyable in return. Why? Because immersion matters. Saying stuff like the prying animation thing is just a strawman argument that tries to lessen the value of immersion in videogames.

There is a real problem on this forum where, when people are losing an argument, they'll pivot and try to attack an insignificant aspect of it; in my complaints against the vultures bringing my vehicles to a halt, it was that the bow and arrow is still a competent late-game weapon and that I should be happy they were there because they provide feathers.

Arguing pointless semantics is simply a sign that they disagree with you but cannot articulate why, but want to keep letting you know that your opinion is not the same as theirs and that you should/shouldn't have a problem with it because they don't.  This, the "it's an alpha" defense, "get good scrub," and "just mod it" are the most annoying non-answers that you're going to get consistently to any complaint.

 

[Xtrakicking]

Snip

Exactly. I hate it whenever there's a discussion about immersion there's always someone that goes "well, this this and that isn't realistic either, why are you complaining?". It's such a poor way of reasoning, especially with something that affects more aspects than immersion.