Should Games be Games or Simulations?

[Faarbaute]

I would infact point to Pillars of Eternity as a clear example of what I'm talking about. Just look at the health and endurance + wound system. I liked HP. But HP wasn't good enough anymore, was it?

 

[Norfleet]

I would infact point to Pillars of Eternity as a clear example of what I'm talking about. Just look at the health and endurance + wound system. I liked HP. But HP wasn't good enough anymore, was it?

That's because hitpoints are an abstraction designed to improve the pace and flow of the game: In a tabletop environment, working out the exact details of how every given blow affects every actor would be absolutely unbearable, slowing the pace of the game to crawl and breaking the flow.

When there are hundreds of soldiers shooting and blasting at hundreds of others on the screen, working out the exact effects of each individual injury may be POSSIBLE for the computer to handle, but presenting this information to the player in any meaningful way would be nearly impossible and having the player have to deal with this personally would be a nightmare.

But everyone knows "hitpoints" as an abstraction is a gross oversimplification. We tolerate it where drilling down deeper would just bog down the game...but most of us would like to have more if we could.

 

[Faarbaute]

But everyone knows "hitpoints" as an abstraction is a gross oversimplification. We tolerate it where drilling down deeper would just bog down the game...but most of us would like to have more if we could.

This is the part I take issue with.

Will it really be a better game, or just a better simulation? Was Pillars of Eternity a better game because the idea of HP was made less abstract?

 

[Harthwain]

But everyone knows "hitpoints" as an abstraction is a gross oversimplification. We tolerate it where drilling down deeper would just bog down the game...but most of us would like to have more if we could.

I don't agree with that and JarlFrank 's mention of Rome: Total War is a good example of how the game can handle the mechanical side of things under the hood (such as calculations), while leaving only the interesting or informative bits to the player.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Funny, I find that there isn't enough simulationism in gaming. Especially when it comes to RPGs and anything mainstream.

The Total War series? It was reasonably simulationist in Rome and Medieval 2, Empire as well. Soldiers didn't have health as such, they had armor values and if a hit was successful there was a chance for armor penetration and death. Projectiles were simulated, shields added a rectangular hitbox in front of soldiers that protects them from missiles. In the modern TW games (Warhammer, 3 Kingdoms), parts of that simulationism have been abstracted. Shields no longer are a hitbox with a chance to completely negate damage, they merely add more armor/health; soldiers have different health values in addition to armor, which means elite units can just eat more damage for some reason despite being the same human soldiers as everyone else. Three Kingdoms has a ridiculous turtle formation that gives +100% missile defense, the effectiveness of which is independent of the shield's hitbox. Compare that to Rome 1, where forming a turtle formation meant that soldiers put their shields all around the formation which protects them from missiles due to the extended shield hitbox, but missiles that manages to get lucky and hit the area between two shields could still do damage. And it was so much better than the stupid abstracted %protection they do now.

Modern mainstream RPGs tend to be very abstract. Look at PoE: while it tries to "fix" a lot of D&D's problems, it feels way more artificial compared to D&D. While D&D has a ton of abstractions, they're supposed to represent something real. PoE has a lot of weird shit that's super complex but doesn't really make that much sense. Why is the ruleset like that? It's definitely not due to an attempt at simulation.

Then there's shit like modern Bethesda games and other big budget action RPGs that make your weapon skill increase damage, including the damage of bullets... because a bullet hits harder when your gun handling skill is better... wot? It's a complete abstraction and spits in the face of simulationist aspiration, as does the problem of HP bloat that plagues these games.

In the indie scene, roguelikes and roguelites are all the rage (I guess because level design is teh hard). Those also tend to have pretty simple and abstract rules.

Where is all that glorious simulationism? I don't see it, beyond a handful of hardcore strategy wargames like anything made in the Men of War engine, the Steel Division games (to some degree... that series still has a few too many abstractions for my taste, like why the fuck do you have to use "points" to "buy" reinforcements which are just within driving distance?), the Graviteam Tactics series, the Ultimate General and Ultimate Admiral games to some degree, and the Graviteam Tactics series.

But outside of niche wargames and tank/plane/submarine sims? I really want to play those simulationist games, so please tell me their names.

Kenshi is quite heavily in the simulationist side of games, I daresay.

 

[Ash]

But everyone knows "hitpoints" as an abstraction is a gross oversimplification. We tolerate it where drilling down deeper would just bog down the game...but most of us would like to have more if we could.

Nope. The simplification is convenient to the gamer too, in many ways. Take this online multiplayer example: "WTF I shot that dude in the head!

and he just walks in and kill me!" But no, it turns out that you merely shot him in the ear. Damage is minimal.
With video game damage modelling, anything above the shoulders is a headshot. Or there may not even be headshots at all because the design doesn't demand it (e.g Doom, Quake). Who the fuck cares to simulate human anatomy to an autistic degree. A ton of work with minimal returns. Even Fallout/Deus Ex style abstract health system is arguably over-complicating things (under-utilized in both games, but I still love it).
How about once we figure out how to make Fallout/Deus Ex health system fully cohesive game design we can move onto the next step...a health system with 8 body parts instead of 6. Much simulation!

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Simulations lead to shit like item durability and carry capacity and other gay shit I cheat engine or mod out.

 

[Ash]

Weapon durability and carry capacity is equal parts game design and simulation. If not more game design because designers rarely bother to simulate stuff that doesn't actually add anything to the game. Weapon durability to encourage using more than just the same weapon over and over (and balance especially powerful ones), and carry capacity so you can't carry 1000 healing potions and nukes, as well as make inventory management actually a thing of course

Cheating cuck! Somebody squish this silly spider.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

If you make a dungeon crawler/combat heavy game with item durability/carry capacity you deserve to be eviscerated in a ritualistic fashion.

 

[Ash]

Strongly disagree. What is your reasoning? And what dungeon crawler doesn't have at least one of those things? SHIT ones I shall assume
Vast majority of games have inventory limitations in particular, and for very good reasons.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

What is your reasoning?

It gets in the way of fun. There is not one time a situation arises where you go, "oh boy! can't wait to have to bounce out of this 9 levels in deep dungeon to go back to town and sell shit or repair shit!"

It's an annoying, unnecessary and exhausting system that lingers in the back of your mind at all times. And none of this even prevents hoarder mentality, especially if the game has some sort of personal stash thing or lets you simply drop things on the floor to come back and pick up later.

One of my favorite games in recent years is Dragon's Dogma and once I removed some of the goofy shit like carry weight the game became even better because I no longer had to teleport in and out to transfer things to my bank and could just keep playing the game and slaying monsters.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

It gets in the way of fun. There is not one time a situation arises where you go, "oh boy! can't wait to have to bounce out of this 9 levels in deep dungeon to go back to town and sell shit or repair shit!"

There are plenty of good reasons to have carry capacity. It legitimizes strength as a stat when it'd be otherwise useless. It drives the player to find more efficient and satisfying means of carrying items (horse and cart in Daggerfall, the Highwayman in Fallout 2). In a game like Ultima Underworld, having to stash items around the map makes you think more about your progress through the levels and make notes of what you left and where, adding a ton to the sort of investigative, inquisitive gameplay that makes the Ultima games good. And if you don't find managing your tetris inventory in Deus Ex and Resident Evil 4 to be fun as fuck, then you're just retarded.

One of my favorite games in recent years is Dragon's Dogma and once I removed some of the goofy shit like carry weight the game became even better because I no longer had to teleport in and out to transfer things to my bank and could just keep playing the game and slaying monsters.

What the hell are you doing in Dragon's Dogma to be carrying that amount? In my 40+ hours of playtime in that game, I never had to do that once. You do realize that your party members can carry stuff, right? And if you had to keep teleporting back to your bank, maybe you should use some of those potions and oil flasks you're carrying, you fucking cheating hoarder.

 

[Ash]

Decline enablers. You can try squish em but they just multiply

Spoiler

What is your reasoning?

It gets in the way of fun. There is not one time a situation arises where you go, "oh boy! can't wait to have to bounce out of this 9 levels in deep dungeon to go back to town and sell shit or repair shit!"

That's because you're not supposed to go back. That's an absolute last resort. Shit breaking forces you to get creative and use other stategies or resources. Inventory getting full forces you to weigh the value of each and make the touch decision of what shit to leave behind. This is the type of stuff that makes for peak gameplay. You game incorrectly.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Simulations lead to shit like item durability and carry capacity and other gay shit I cheat engine or mod out.

Item durability and carrying capacity are only two of a number of ways in which exploration can be enhanced via logistics; a non-exhaustive list:

• Encumbrance and its effects
• Inventory limitations in terms of weight/volume/slots
• Food/hunger
• Water/thirst
• Sleep/fatigue/stamina
• Weapon/armor durability & repair
• Vancian magical spell memorization
  
• Day/night cycle
• Lighting and the impact of darkness

Of course, the logistical elements included in any CRPG should correspond with the other game mechanics, with each game possessing an intelligent selection of elements. For example, it wouldn't make sense for weapons & armor to deteriorate in games similar to Dungeon Master, where the party is confined to a dungeon with a finite quantity of equipment (at least not unless there was a relatively easy means of repair).

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Simulations lead to shit like item durability and carry capacity and other gay shit I cheat engine or mod out.

Lmao 8 fucking limbs and this jack can't even apply them for logistics.

 

[Ash]

I think he should lose the privilege to identify as a spider. Those fuckers are smart.

He shall henceforth be referred to as "Generic NPC"

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Those fuckers are smart.

Nix. If they were smart they would have banned newspapers by now.

 

[Ash]

Maybe they will. Maybe the next letter to be added to LGBTQXYZ+ will be the letter S. The will of the spider will be imposed upon society and if you don't like it you're arachnophobe scum.

Maybe it will not be such a bad thing. We are lacking adequate representation of spiders in video games these days. They used to be a staple enemy in the 90s, and there was even a game where you played as one.
Now they have been excluded as they scare off the pussies I suppose. Not optimal mass market appeal to scare off a notable portion of potential players.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

It legitimizes strength as a stat when it'd be otherwise useless.

Strength should be the stat that governs how HARD you hit things with big manly weapons and what you can equip on your actual character. That should always be the primary appeal of Strength. It is a melee stat, you gormless motherfucker you.

In a game like Ultima Underworld, having to stash items around the map makes you think more about your progress through the levels and make notes of what you left and where,

Oh lordy, the amazing gameplay strats of, "which random ass chest did I put this random item in?" Needless, intensely retarded busywork when you could just let the player skip the ten minutes of backtracking to pop it out of the inventory. There is nothing worse than wasting time and despising it vs. wasting time and enjoying it. Son if you wanna do chores come over and do my dishes or sumshit.

And if you don't find managing your tetris inventory in Deus Ex and Resident Evil 4 to be fun as fuck, then you're just retarded.

This nigga probably books trips just so he has an excuse to pack luggage. Nigga probably takes ten minutes minimum to set up his Battleship board juuust right. spits tobacco

Also I'm not denouncing inventory management as a whole, but carry limits that tend to have some sort of encumbrance mechanic in play. If I knew the next section in a Resident Evil game had Lickers that are in a narrow corridor but also had a boss fight after that, yet if I tried to carry a Rocket Launcher and a Shotgun with shells on Jill and because she's like 110 lbs becomes more sluggish so I'd have to equip only the shotgun, run out to clear the whole area, go all the way back to the item box, get the boss fight weapons, and then proceed, how is that anything but tiresome? Luckily RE games aren't designed like this but I can tell you if they were they'd suck dick to play because the flow would constantly be getting interrupted.

What the hell are you doing in Dragon's Dogma to be carrying that amount?

Using the augment Autonomy.

You do realize that your party members can carry stuff, right?

Playing Dragon's Dogma with a party is for pussies. You also need to play menulord way too often to make sure none of the other pawns have any good materials/ore on them before you send them packing. It's slow, momentum-breaking, and appeals to people that may have oil drums full of dead children.

That's because you're not supposed to go back. That's an absolute last resort. Shit breaking forces you to get creative and use other stategies or resources. Inventory getting full forces you to weigh the value of each and make the touch decision of what shit to leave behind. This is the type of stuff that makes for peak gameplay.

You do realize that as long as there exists a blacksmith with a "repair" option you are meant to go back, right? Nobody is going to "get creative" because the creativity is in your build itself in which things like weapons/armor selection is what is carrying you through the dungeon and when those begin breaking you stop your brave quest and tell all the monsters "BRB." What you're then going to propose is bringing a back-up set of weapons which only further compounds the issue because you're going in with half your carry weight already maxed out and that becomes even more annoying.

I can tell you this with complete, soul-to-soul honesty, I have never played a single game that has ever made weight limit and item repair engaging or fun or enjoyable or even amusing. If I see the words "sturdiness" or "durability" in a combat heavy RPG I actually begin to projectile vomit uncontrollably. It is archaic, dogshit design that actively rapes your time because the blockheads who made it couldn't think of a better gold sink.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

It legitimizes strength as a stat when it'd be otherwise useless.

Strength should be the stat that governs how HARD you hit things with big manly weapons and what you can equip on your actual character. That should always be the primary appeal of Strength. It is a melee stat, you gormless motherfucker you.

In a game like Ultima Underworld, having to stash items around the map makes you think more about your progress through the levels and make notes of what you left and where,

Oh lordy, the amazing gameplay strats of, "which random ass chest did I put this random item in?" Needless, intensely retarded busywork when you could just let the player skip the ten minutes of backtracking to pop it out of the inventory. There is nothing worse than wasting time and despising it vs. wasting time and enjoying it. Son if you wanna do chores come over and do my dishes or sumshit.

And if you don't find managing your tetris inventory in Deus Ex and Resident Evil 4 to be fun as fuck, then you're just retarded.

This nigga probably books trips just so he has an excuse to pack luggage. Nigga probably takes ten minutes minimum to set up his Battleship board juuust right. spits tobacco

What the hell are you doing in Dragon's Dogma to be carrying that amount?

Using the augment Autonomy.

You do realize that your party members can carry stuff, right?

Playing Dragon's Dogma with a party is for pussies. You also need to play menulord way too often to make sure none of the other pawns have any good materials/ore on them before you send them packing. It's slow, momentum-breaking, and appeals to people that may have oil drums full of dead children.

That's because you're not supposed to go back. That's an absolute last resort. Shit breaking forces you to get creative and use other stategies or resources. Inventory getting full forces you to weigh the value of each and make the touch decision of what shit to leave behind. This is the type of stuff that makes for peak gameplay.

You do realize that as long as there exists a blacksmith with a "repair" option you are meant to go back, right? Nobody is going to "get creative" because the creativity is in your build itself in which things like weapons/armor selection is what is carrying you through the dungeon and when those begin breaking you stop your brave quest and tell all the monsters "BRB." What you're then going to propose is bringing a back-up set of weapons which only further compounds the issue because you're going in with half your carry weight already maxed out and that becomes even more annoying.

I can tell you this with complete, soul-to-soul honesty, I have never played a single game that has ever made weight limit and item repair engaging or fun or enjoyable or even amusing. If I see the words "sturdiness" or "durability" in a combat heavy RPG I actually begin to projectile vomit uncontrollably. It is archaic, dogshit design that actively rapes your time because the blockheads who made it couldn't think of a better gold sink.

I'd tell you to plan ahead, but you'll probably just go have more kids or something.

 

[what am i doing]

I think simulation is good if it contributes positively to the game or at least doesn't make the game worse. In most cases, if you can represent something better by simulation compared to alternatives like RNG, abstraction, or elision, it typically improves the game. The example of combat efficacy decreasing with injuries, for example - it's generally a good move because it often adds some tactical depth, where players might, for example, move party members or units who are injured away from the front line of combat until they're healed; it also decreases incentives to (and RTS games are bad for this) focus fire very hard on one target specifically because the faster you eliminate enemy units the faster you decrease their overall damage output - since it goes down only on death. If their overall combat effectiveness goes down more gradually on taking damage, then there's less incentive to focus fire and less silly cases of 50 units firing at one out of a crowd.

But there are cases where simulation might not be ideal. Aiming comes to mind - I think most party-based RPGs should not have manual player-directed aiming, because the combat mostly revolves around choice of which abilities to use and when; introducing a hand-eye coordination skill for certain classes but not for others means that the game's balance is going to be weirdly skewed, and I don't think it ever contributes positively in those cases. This is one reason why I'm not a fan of MMOs that go halfway between more traditional activate-skills-on-target gameplay and more modern aiming & strafing gameplay. I don't think it ends up well and it's an example of where more simulation isn't necessarily better.

I think in most genres simulation is a good thing, but there are cases where it's not. In more traditional, party-based RPGs in particular I think it's better to focus on more abstracted game mechanics.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Games are by nature an abstraction or exaggeration of reality.
Therefore: Games!=Simulations.

Now, the degree to which games should "stray" from reality is entirely up to the discernment of the developers and the "needs"/"intent" of the gameplay experience.
As such, games can present simulationist elements along with the abstractions/hyperboles in an satisfying manner that enchances the game's quality.
But those are design choices that need to be carefully made, because if the developers objective isn't to make something wholly simulationist, then they run the danger of overburdening the player and creating dissonance in the game's core design.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

With increased hardware capabilities there's been a move away from abstraction in favor of more direct simulation.

Players have become accustomed to this and if your systems are not up to the latest standards, your game is considered janky and shit.

Take all the butthurt surrounding the missed 95% shots in XCOM:EU for example or the endless discussions about HP, wounds and so on. How come you can still fight with full efficiency at 1 HP? Is it the character's blood or what? AC?
How about taking a swing at someone in Morrowind and missing but the target's right there and I saw the sword hit! What gives?

People cannot into abstractions anymore. They are thought of as having been stepping stones to something better or necessary evils due to limitations of the medium.

Systems are no longer translated with varying degrees of success to the screen but the opposite, systems have become secondary to the simulation and abstraction has been eschewed in favor of realism.

ARPG's have simply become the more popular and successful subgenre of RPG's among the masses, as opposed to CRPG's
But I think you're falsely assuming ARPG's are meant to be simulations, just because they aren't inherently as heavy on abstractions as CRPG's are
Besides, despite being replaced as the kings of the genre, CRPG's still sell well - proving that even nowadays there's a significant audience that likes more abstract experiences

Oh and because of it's cult status, people that play Morrowind or are going to play Morrowind, already know that it isn't an ARPG so they don't mind the "dice roll" combat

 

[Alex]

Games are by nature an abstraction or exaggeration of reality.

No. Chess, for instance, isn't an abstraction or an exaggeration of anything. Anything non abstract associated with chess is done so only for "colour", to make the game easier to grasp and more interesting to play. But it doesn't abstract away anything. What you just described is a...

Therefore: Games!=Simulations.

But that is what simulations are! Simulations are always abstractions. Every single type of simulation uses abstractions, whether mathematical ones or not, to try to represent how something "in reality" would look, behave or otherwise be. When you calculate in physics class how many minutes it will take for two trains collide, you are using an abstraction. You abstract away matter, people riding the train, hundreds of thousands of wooden boards laid across a train track, kilometers of hills, grass, houses, trees and what not; all that into a simple linear equation that abstracts away the movement of the two trains into an average speed.

Simulations are always abstractions, because using imagination or numbers is always a representation of reality; that is, imagining a warrior cleaves a skeleton in half; or even trying to do a simulation of the physical forces involved, doesn't cause it to happen; doesn't make it reality. Moreover, since we aren't privy to the true nature of anything in reality; any such representation always ignores aspects of what it represents.

 

[JarlFrank]

But everyone knows "hitpoints" as an abstraction is a gross oversimplification. We tolerate it where drilling down deeper would just bog down the game...but most of us would like to have more if we could.

This is the part I take issue with.

Will it really be a better game, or just a better simulation? Was Pillars of Eternity a better game because the idea of HP was made less abstract?

Was it less abstract though? It still had HP, and IIRC you received wounds if you got knocked down to 0 HP. That's not very simulationist, is it? PoE merely pretends to be more realistic, while it actually just uses different forms of abstraction, which is why many people have problems understanding its systems since they aren't very intuitive. Simulationist systems are always intuitive because they work like you'd expect them to IRL.