A lot of that mindset comes from people who started gaming on consoles before moving over to PC. "Mods" on consoles almost always mean cheats of one kind or another. So some console players just can't wrap their head around the concept of mods being used to actually make a gamer harder, or simply adding more content.
Can't wrap their head around mods making a gamer harder? I think Skyrim's Nexus page is pretty infamous at this point.
Anyhow, to quote myself (a real wise guy) from a previous ramble:
In the pursuit of Realism™, the game should allow us to fill gas cans with water. And cup candy wrappers to hold water. And fill spent shell casings with water. And ammo magazines should be craftable, repackable, AND hold water. Bandages could be soaked in water. Medical kits, you can dump out those disinfectants and sutures, scoop some water into that box. Cans, duh, water. That syringe model? That's a good mouthful right there. Man, that 4x4? It's got a nice bed; could fit so much water in that bad boy. And for even more Realism™, every time I sprint over a loose stone with my camera angled above horizontal, I should have a 30% chance to stub a toe, which would give a movement speed debuff and make a loud exclamatory noise (chance perked down with Fortitude skills, obviously) that alerts every zombie nearby. In fact, for more Realism™, any loose stone or wood pile or concrete block or curb should have a chance to pop a vehicle's tire, that way it incentivizes carrying spare wheels, for Realism™. Hey, you know what? Wheels! That's several gallons of potential water each! For Realism™, we should be able to fill the wheels with water instead of air that we're clearly blowing into the tires by lungpower, because we aren't Realismistically(™) crafting air compressors... yet. Speaking of lungpower- Realism™! We have the option to fill our lungs with water in the game!
It doesn't matter how
Realistic(™) a game is or its players claim it to be, there will always be things not simulated or unable to be simulated for gameplay and enjoyment reasons, like random toe-stubbing. A game brandishing 100% Realism would be, frankly, a lousy game. Simulated balance when walking? A hotkey to blink or else your eyes dry out? Everyone's metric of "realistic gameplay" is going to be different unless you have some brand of mob mentality screaming one thing or another is a concrete symbol of Realism™
coughjarscough.
"Realism" as a metric is already hinged on suspension of disbelief, and each person's going to have a different (usually) opinion of what is an acceptable suspension of disbelief for their immersion into a game. Taking hostages or being taken hostage in Skyrim? Some people crave that kind of availability in choice. Maybe Joe Blockgame thinks that zombies are too unRealistic, so he turns off zombies with that toggle in 7DTD, and that's when he gets enjoyment out of his game. Monster Hunter is my all-time favorite franchise, but its premise is entirely centered on superhuman adrenaline junkie mercenary conservationists beating ancient legendary monsters into submission using a weapon that's another monster's skull on a stick that altogether would weigh a thousand or so pounds- but players complain about the lack of Realism with the monsters being shown on the map at all times. It's not Immersive, they claim, as they fall five hundred feet without any fall damage.
@Soulmonster raises I think the most important aspect I was trying to hint at as I went - consistency. Monster Hunter classically basked in absurdity and silliness, but its latest major releases have been trying to pour in more groundedness and Realism, and it's alienating a lot of older fans. Bethesda's inconsistent as all heck, and it's gradually turned away its diehards, too. I first played 7DTD in A15/A16, couple hundred hours, then stopped for years, only came back around 1.3/1.4 - and I don't remember A15/A16 well enough to get detailed about it, but 7DTD is,
to me, more enjoyable now than it was before, and I enjoyed the heck out of it in A15/A16. Has it lost a little bit of its fabled, mythological
Realism? Sure. Is it a better game for that? In my opinion, yes - but that's also come at the cost of the 7DTD playerbase getting jaded, because they feel as though 7DTD isn't holding consistent to the game it was... what, 10+ years ago, with changes in ideas and developer teams?
In my mind, the greatest thing a developer can do for Realism/Immersiveness is... not try too super-duper hard, and make the game as mod-friendly as possible. Bethesda kinda does that (most of the time), and Skyrim has endured longer than its vanilla quality should have enabled it; 7DTD is one of the most mod-friendly games I've played lately, and that attitude towards modding should give TFP a hell of a lot more credit than they get. Even just the options you get starting a new world inside the game, from customizing a seed's biome percentages/environmental feature frequency, daily quest limits, zombie block damage, and so on- the range of options you can have without a single mod, and yet they're the "Anti-Fun Pimps"?
The older I get, the more I disdain the 'Gamer Community.'
