Please say that you dont try to model a *whole* city.

[Malekith]

 

Realist is way overrated in games. If someone makes a game with a realistic city, with thousands of NPCs and thousand houses, most of them non importand and most NPCs bland and not part of quests, it will be realistic and very immersive. But also very boring.

BG2 approach is the best of both worlds. It provides a way to suspent your disbelief  having the rest of the city in backround, and doesn't waste your time by allowing you to visit only the importand parts of the city.

"Boring", "important", and "waste of time" are just subjective opinions, I will simply point out. Whether the NPCs are part of quests or not is another issue, but their actual IG existence doesn't suddenly make a game boring in any logical way. No one is arguing that PE or any game should have pointless and empty areas, so that is a straw man argument; rather people such as myself feel that there's a lot of potential content that gets left out when you explore 10% of a city. In a true role-playing mentality we'd only stand to gain from a more fleshed out city, but if we're talking about players with low attention spans who are obsessed with combat and want their character to be at the center of some supernatural spectacle, that's another thing entirely. The latter to me is more of an action/adventure mindset than a role-playing mindset in my humble opinion. But that's the route that most IE games and most modern "RPG's" take, and I expect PE to do the same. The sad fact is that RPG's aren't actually RPGs because the playerbase wants what I've mentioned above more than a world actually conducive to authentically role-playing. I simply ask you to consider whether what you're truly after is a role-playing game or action and adventure. It certainly seems to me that most of the people in this thread are more concerned with the latter than the former. Again, that's fine because we all know what we're going to get with PE to some extent, but let's not put it under the guise of a "more immersive" or otherwise better "RPG".

 

RPG means nothing. I have seen people define "RPG" based on: how can you roleplay your character's personality, how much stats affect everything, how the game is strictly a dungeon crawl without dialog like the old "pure" RPGs, how "open" the game is even if it means the absence of story, how strong the story is,what C&C the game has or a mix of the above.

Who is right? I have seen "What is an RPG" discusions and there is no answer.

Having the player restricted in certain areas or free to roam the land has nothing to do with roleplaying mechanics or a better RPG. It's strictly about more immersion and a better game. And that is where people differ. For some people is importand to have the freedom to roam the land, fight random encounters everywhere and explore huge areas to find the few importand things in there. The whole "Skyrim approach". I have seen people say, even reviewers, that thay have played the game for two months and they have done... pretty much nothing actually (their words). They just explore in random directions seeing the vistas and killing things. And the have fun doing that. Thats why there are people out there having spent 800 hours on Skyrim in a single playthrough.

The other approach is people who (for whatever reason) they don't want the game to waste their time. They like games and don't have problem to spent a lot of time(if they have) playing, as long as they doing something interesting. They want a map with defined areas (the importand parts of the world), with the filler in the backround for immersion purpose.

Those people prefer Athkatla with the importand districts there and chokefull of quests, and the painted area in the map as "and here are the rest of the city but there is no reason to travel there". Or the houses in Athkatle that you couldn't enter because the game said in a message that "this is a fruit shop and there in nothing of inerest in there".

What is more immersive and better design between the two approaches is a matter of preference. But none of the two affects how much "RPG" is a game.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Malekith

[Lephys]

I'd just like to add that, regarding the whole "Who's to say how big cities should be?" debate, Fallout is set in a friggin' post-apocalyptic world in which the vast majority of people died, and it still sometimes had more structures and people in its cities than some other games in which there are supposed to be thousands of people living in a given region.

 

Like, how does the King of Skyrim have an army to fight against these takeover attempts and whatnot if its main city has 30 people in it? Then, you go attack Whiterun, and like 50 guards try to stop you. Where were those guards?! Did they live in burrows underground? Are they mole-people? Where were their wives and children? Even then, that's STILL not enough people to support the idea that this isn't a post-nuclear world. If the population of Skyrim is like 1,000, how do they have enough infrastructure to actually have armies and fight other regions? I mean, the Imperial city in Oblivion was about the size of all of Skyrim's "cities," combined.

 

If you show me that the populous of your cities seems to fit a post-apocalyptic world like Fallout, then you suggest that these are supposed to actually be major cities and not just makeshift towns with a few farmers in them (even if they're smaller than other cities), then it becomes difficult to believe that the world is as populous as you say it is.

[Ffordesoon]

Skyrim had loading screens.

[Kjaamor]

Thankfully, tonight I've had a drink and can therefore skip the wonderful discussions and dive in with perceived reality:

 

So here it is. If you're defending the Skyrim approach to city/map planning, on a forum for a game inspired by the infinity engine in an era where latter day-elder scrolls games dictate the pace....then you're trolling. You might troll well, or you might troll badly, but you're evidently trolling.

 

If you want more Skyrim, then you have a million and one other places to be. This is not Skyrim, and that's precisely why so many people have put their collective money into it.

[mcmanusaur]

Thankfully, tonight I've had a drink and can therefore skip the wonderful discussions and dive in with perceived reality:

 

So here it is. If you're defending the Skyrim approach to city/map planning, on a forum for a game inspired by the infinity engine in an era where latter day-elder scrolls games dictate the pace....then you're trolling. You might troll well, or you might troll badly, but you're evidently trolling.

 

If you want more Skyrim, then you have a million and one other places to be. This is not Skyrim, and that's precisely why so many people have put their collective money into it.

Someone else used Skyrim as a negative exemplum for a certain aspect (namely, immersive sense of scale) of RPGs, and I disagreed that Skyrim did that aspect poorly (rather I think having an immersive sense of scale is one of the few things Skyrim did well). There are many other things that Skyrim did poorly (some but not all of which PE will also do poorly in all likelihood), and no one is asking for or expects a game like Skyrim. In many ways the discussion regarding Skyrim is way off-topic to this forum because we already know a lot about what we're going to get in this respect, but nevertheless I reserve the right to defend another game if someone else decides to bring it up in comparison. I still feel that the premise of this thread (that most of a setting being left up to the imagination by means of artificial restrictions could possibly help immersion) is somewhat ridiculous and aiming to take RPGs in the wrong direction. But seeing as your post has nothing to do with actual specifics of what Skyrim has done wrong in this respect, I don't expect you to provide much evidence.

 

"It's too small!", "Where do all the people come from?", "There's not enough houses!", etc. Having another blocked off part of the city that exists only on an in-game minimap and can't be explored is really a solution to the problem? What's the precedent set by this? Anytime the in-game representation of something can't be perfect it's best off only referenced indirectly? We really want less of the world represented in-game? Why don't we just stick to boss fights and cut out everything else entirely at that rate?

 

A problem I see here is that most of the people here are stuck on conceptions of "old school" vs. "new school", without acknowledging that in many ways the old school games set the example for the new school games; furthermore, there are aspects that each groups excels in over the other. It's the same thing you see in every video game forum, and such a close-minded mentality is never going to bring a genre forward. I- like everyone else here0 want an IE-style game since there isn't a current one on the market, but I think that blindly clinging to everything that RPGs used to do because they used to do a few things better misses some of the point. And that point is to make a new and innovative game as much as it is to hearken back to old classics, last time I checked. The latter part of that is pretty well-established already, but if people are going to just cling to old IE games like they were perfect (not just good for their time) then there's not going to be any innovation. If we're concerned about the state of the RPG genre at large here, there's a need to bring the genre forward and out of the mediocre present, and just going back in time won't achieve that.

 

Assuming a zero-sum situation, PE has somewhat more capacity than an old IE game (since technology progresses), and while the graphics look impressive so far, it certainly seems the case that this extra room won't be used for flashy gimmicks like many modern games. What should it be used for then, just more of what's already there? Or might PE simply broaden the scope a bit with things like tradeskills or a more open and interactive world?

Edited May 3, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[Sensuki]

We are not going to see an attempt at modelling an *entire* city, unless it's like Baldur's Gate 1. Main reason being if they did it wouldn't feel like an IE game would it ?

[jamoecw]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppidum

in other words the elder scrolls games (which tend toward iron age romanticism and mythos, compared to other fantasy genres), would have riften populated by probably 1,000 people.  in game it had about 50 named npcs, or about 5%.  skyrim according to lore is somewhere around 3.8 million hectares, in game it was instead about 3800 hectares, or about .1%.

 

for the most part it kept the end product people, and removed the work force behind the end product.  thus there were more nobles to non nobles than in real life, more merchants to craftsmen, more innkeepers to peasants, so on and so forth.  this creates a skewed view of the world, which fits with its romanticized nature, after all if you were playing a king arthur game would you want to be a peasant or a knight?  most romanticized literature does this, less desirable people are removed from sight, but all they provide stays.

 

the concept that a condensed scope leads to glimpsing how the society works is false, unless you see a more accurate view of the society.  i'm not saying everyone has to be a peasant, but if a game only has the top 1% of our society running around and a handful of the people they interact with would you say that you are getting a glimpse in how your life actually is?

 

if riften had say 50 less desirable people around in addition to the 50 others wouldn't that be more accurate and still be quite condensed?  though it would help to undermine the nobility that skyrim is trying to portray due to the fact that we have different values today than back then, slaves and near slaves seem evil by todays standards.

 

a game that is properly condensed can give the feeling of what the society is supposed to be like, but so can only showing choice sections and making it obvious that they are doing so.  the OP gave two examples of this (though he didn't know it at the time).

 

the only other option is to accurately portray the society in scope, you can then either include a mechanic to make operating in this environment less dull, or not.  this uses much more in the way of development resources to do (without factoring in the less dull mechanics).

 

so to recap:

1) condensed is viable

2) chosen spots is viable <- confirmed chosen method

3) fully fleshed out is viable but costly

 

 

about the discussion as to whether or not easter eggs punish or reward, isn't this pretty much a method of controlling difficulty?  and thus more of an option that people may not know they have rather than either a punishment or a reward?

[JFSOCC]

 

You dont get it :/

 

Some 10 to 20 huts with a few not-moving people standing around and without any involving, dynamic quests can neither be a big city nor a small one. Not even a very, very, very small one. I cant get over the fact, and i think thats a totally understandable thing to criticize on games like Skyrim.

 

The size is not a bad thing just because its small, its bad because it should not be small. A place which is called "major city" and is supposed to be the center of a kingdom or something like that, than this place has to be big to some extend. If its supposed to be a tiny remote mountain village than its perfectly ok.

 

But places like Riften, Whitehall or the Imperial City (Oblivion) are not supposed to be tiny remote villages. Yet they are. Thats the point..

Who says they're supposed to be anything more than what they are? Feudalism is fractal in nature, large cities exist at the center of large areas, and the scale decreases as you progressively look at smaller and smaller areas. The problem is the assumption that these towns are supposed to be something more than they are, not the fact that you can explore them completely, which is by most people's standards a good thing, I believe (though most people evidently aren't into a game like PE). It's a fantasy game, and if you can't accommodate a decrease in scale in your suspension of disbelief then I'm surprised you can accommodate many other more glaring discrepancies, such as... oh right, the fact that you can't actually explore 90% of some cities because of artificial restrictions, for example.

 

Feudalism is fractal in nature. I'm going to remember that one, that's a very expensive bull**** sentence.

 

You have nothing against smaller settlements, to each his own. However, I paid into this game hoping to push "Big Big City 2" because I am a lover of the big cities. I get bored in the wilderness. Athkatla was one such because it had a large density of content. Big and empty is false scaling. I don't care much HOW it is done, although I suspect that having a city span several maps is the easiest way to provide content dense areas AND the feeling of a large city. (and has infinite potential for modders to "fill in" parts of the map which are as of yet unused)

But, I suppose if the developers could create an actual city on a map, realistically and it'd would be entirely seamless, that would be just amazing. However I think that would require a tremendous amount of extra work to fill in completely.

I thought The Strip in New Vegas was particularly empty, I hope there will be much more to do in BBC1 and BBC2. (and no, not the broadcasting corporation)

That said, big seamless cities have been done, and successfully. Assassins Creed games, pretty much all the Grand Theft Auto games, I thought Guild Wars 2 had a pretty good approximation of a metropolis. Of course these are not isometric games. I don't know what the options would be for P:E.

 

It felt like a huge sprawling city because of one image on a map, and the fact that you were artificially restricted to rather small areas didn't impact that feel at all? Well, alright. I've got nothing. This is of course the default for PE since it's based on IE games, but still... well, agree to disagree I suppose.

It felt like a huge sprawling city because it was dense in optional content. Edited May 3, 2013 by JFSOCC

[mcmanusaur]

 

 

You dont get it :/

 

Some 10 to 20 huts with a few not-moving people standing around and without any involving, dynamic quests can neither be a big city nor a small one. Not even a very, very, very small one. I cant get over the fact, and i think thats a totally understandable thing to criticize on games like Skyrim.

 

The size is not a bad thing just because its small, its bad because it should not be small. A place which is called "major city" and is supposed to be the center of a kingdom or something like that, than this place has to be big to some extend. If its supposed to be a tiny remote mountain village than its perfectly ok.

 

But places like Riften, Whitehall or the Imperial City (Oblivion) are not supposed to be tiny remote villages. Yet they are. Thats the point..

Who says they're supposed to be anything more than what they are? Feudalism is fractal in nature, large cities exist at the center of large areas, and the scale decreases as you progressively look at smaller and smaller areas. The problem is the assumption that these towns are supposed to be something more than they are, not the fact that you can explore them completely, which is by most people's standards a good thing, I believe (though most people evidently aren't into a game like PE). It's a fantasy game, and if you can't accommodate a decrease in scale in your suspension of disbelief then I'm surprised you can accommodate many other more glaring discrepancies, such as... oh right, the fact that you can't actually explore 90% of some cities because of artificial restrictions, for example.

 

Feudalism is fractal in nature. I'm going to remember that one, that's a very expensive bull**** sentence.

 

You have nothing against smaller settlements, to each his own. However, I paid into this game hoping to push "Big Big City 2" because I am a lover of the big cities. I get bored in the wilderness. Athkatla was one such because it had a large density of content. Big and empty is false scaling. I don't care much HOW it is done, although I suspect that having a city span several maps is the easiest way to provide content dense areas AND the feeling of a large city. (and has infinite potential for modders to "fill in" parts of the map which are as of yet unused)

But, I suppose if the developers could create an actual city on a map, realistically and it'd would be entirely seamless, that would be just amazing. However I think that would require a tremendous amount of extra work to fill in completely.

I thought The Strip in New Vegas was particularly empty, I hope there will be much more to do in BBC1 and BBC2. (and no, not the broadcasting corporation)

That said, big seamless cities have been done, and successfully. Assassins Creed games, pretty much all the Grand Theft Auto games, I thought Guild Wars 2 had a pretty good approximation of a metropolis. Of course these are not isometric games. I don't know what the options would be for P:E.

 

It felt like a huge sprawling city because of one image on a map, and the fact that you were artificially restricted to rather small areas didn't impact that feel at all? Well, alright. I've got nothing. This is of course the default for PE since it's based on IE games, but still... well, agree to disagree I suppose.

It felt like a huge sprawling city because it was dense in optional content.

 

Not that your calling it bull**** without citing reasons threatens the statement's validity in any way, but It's somewhat true. With such a stratified patron-client relations-centered social structure, you get a similar setup at varying scales as you switch between levels of the system. A baron might own a manor and village in the countryside, and he owes fealty to a count residing in a small town, who in turn owes fealty to a duke at a large town, who owes fealty to a prince in a small city, to king, and even to emperor, etc. If the land is too small and the cities are too small, who's to say something like Skyrim isn't just the equivalent of a duchy? Historically kings were many and kingdoms were rather small before they were amalgamated during the High Middle Ages. The extreme is in Bronze Age Greece, where even a small place like Attica in Greece would have had dozens of different kings. Once again we have assumptions about how in-game empires should directly correspond with real historical empires in scale that kills immersion, not any "unrealism" of having a smaller scale society.

 

You're not just a fan of big cities though. You're also a fan of little closed-off areas within supposedly large cities. I understand that we use our imaginations in RPGs, but I just think that it's both incredibly funny and sad that people are actually asking to be restricted to small parts of a city for immersion's sake. We all but know that PE will have zones just like the other IE games, so even seamless or not is not the question here. The question is whether a "big, big city" constitutes a couple of zones widely scattered across a minimap, or whether it constitutes a bunch of densely packed zones. For me, the former is hardly anything to advertise, as it's the same as a small city only with wider spread between its constituent zones. And furthermore, you are likely to have immersion problems if there's a huge sprawling city on the map that transitions directly into wilderness outside of its walls; medieval cities may not have had suburbs, but they weren't islands in wilderness. Thus a medium-sized city that's mostly explorable is preferable than a "large" city that's mostly not. Finally, content density is a completely separate issue from how a city is mapped. And the fact is that those of you who want to frame this as an argument about content density rather than city mapping are just operating under biased, close-minded, and unimaginative conceptions of what content entails. While maybe if we were talking about wilderness it'd be true that a large part of it would be empty and devoid of content, there's really no excuse to have any part of a city whether the central palace or an outlying slum be devoid of content. There's always people living there, and each district should have its own character (if it starts getting into the issue of "Slums Zone 1" and "Slums Zone 2" being redundant to each other, then the issue is obviously the creative design).

[Lephys]

It's not that the areas are supposed to be "closed off," as in you cannot access them. It's that they're unimportant, so you, the player, are prevented from forcing your characters to access them, the same as you're prevented from telling your characters to cut off their own arms with their weapons.

 

Basically, the point being made against tiny Skyrim-style "cities" is that you can present a bustling city with the appropriate amount of people-traffic without being about to follow each of those people back home and see all the toilets, etc. If you leave the market area, and there's nothing of note between there and the palace, then it "skips" the area in between. But, it's still represented in the game, because it's there. Just because you can't explore it doesn't mean it isn't there. There are plenty of mountainous areas devoid of passable terrain, yet you still know the mountains are there. You still say "wow, this is a huge, mountainous region."

 

So, yes, you can essentially exclude specific areas within a city from your game's playable area and yet still represent the full size of that city, non-explorable areas and all. That isn't to say I think we should follow the exact equation used by previous games. Just that zone-structuring huge cities in RPGs is not an inherent evil.

[Ffordesoon]

For what it's worth, I am always vaguely annoyed by talk of "immersion." It's not that I don't think it's a real thing; I just find it so tediously subjective that it's not a useful thing to ask for. You might as well ask for "fun" or "emotions."

 

I also think way too much value is placed on it. One time, I heard some dummy on Kotaku say that he was glad "turn-based combat" (by which he meant the menu-based combat in JRPGs) was "dead," because "nothing kill[ed his] immersion like walking up to an enemy and seeing a bunch of menus pop up." That made me so unreasonably angry that I almost signed up for a Kotaku account just to tell him off. I didn't, of course, because it's Kotaku. But man, did I want to. It wasn't that he didn't like turn-based combat; that's fair enough. My issue was his attempt to justify it by saying "immersion!" Like it was some hard truth that everyone hated menus.

 

The point of my anecdote is this: you can argue that any vaguely game-y abstraction is an immersion-breaker, because all it means is that it takes you out of the game.

 

However, I can see how it's become more of a concern for people as graphics have gotten more realistic. It's a less obvious consequence of the Uncanny Valley effect; as graphics inch closer to photorealism, we notice the abridgments of logic games often employ more easily. The problem with Skyrim's cities is not that they don't make perfect sense as cities; no fictional city does, especially not the ones in games. The problem is that our brains aren't processing the cities as abstractions of cities anymore. The graphics are realistic enough that we look at them and only see what's there, but what's there is inevitably absurd. It has to be; real city planners don't have to create reasonably convincing simulacra of people who walk around in their cities and say stuff and do stuff and look reasonably convincing and have unique voiced lines and blah, nor do they have to plan around one actual person who will come to the numerous cities full of simulacra and interact with them meaningfully.

 

All of which is to say that it's a very difficult problem to solve, and certainly won't be solved to Amarok's satisfaction anytime soon.

 

...I feel like I had some larger point when I started this ramble. Oh, well.

[Lephys]

For what it's worth, I am always vaguely annoyed by talk of "immersion." It's not that I don't think it's a real thing; I just find it so tediously subjective that it's not a useful thing to ask for. You might as well ask for "fun" or "emotions."

I understand. For what it's worth, I firmly believe there are both subjective AND objective aspects to immersion. I try my best to completely ignore the subjective (even trying to rule out my own preferences as best I can) when discussing such things like this, because it is rather pointless. To converse and share subjective views? Not pointless. To debate subjective views? Quite pointless. Who can say whether or not blue is prettier than red? I have no idea.

 

With the graphics thing, that is true. But, you've gotta look at it this way, too: They don't HAVE to do the graphics they way they did the graphics. Wii graphics suck, right? Relative to all other systems? Yup. But Metroid Prime 3 was pretty amazing-looking. You could even see a quite-detailed reflection of Samus's face on the inside of her helmet visor. And the game made you feel like you were running around in this awesome Chozo suit, being Samus. So, I look at games like that, and I think "If they did that on a Wii, why do other people act like graphics have to take up 90% of a 40-million-dollar budget in most games?"

 

If your graphics aren't supporting the artistry of the game's design, then you need to do them differently. It's really as simple as that, as far as a decision. Doing the graphics, not so simple. 8P

 

But, basically, immersion is more about not breaking it than it is about building it up. Shopkeeper just stands at his stall all day long, 24/7: Not very immersive. I can't believe that that's in any way feasible (granted, it's a very minor issue, but an example nonetheless). Shopkeeper SOMETIMES leaves and goes home to sleep? That's better. I don't even need to see where he goes. But, if I never see him leave, ever, and he's just always there, at all hours of the day, then I can't even believe he ever goes anywhere, much less to his home, which is somewhere in the city, where his family lives.

 

And yeah, there are certain things that people talk about (like menus) that are ridiculous to even bring up. That's like saying "My own brain prevents me from being immersed, since I can see the edges of my computer monitor, and the stuff on my desk, and things around me, and I feel the need to pee sometimes, etc.".

 

"Immersion" does not automatically = "true to life simulation." It simply means "coherence," for the most part. You establish a world, and then you support that world. You establish characters that the player can control and experience things via, and you support that. That's all.

[mcmanusaur]

It's not that the areas are supposed to be "closed off," as in you cannot access them. It's that they're unimportant, so you, the player, are prevented from forcing your characters to access them, the same as you're prevented from telling your characters to cut off their own arms with their weapons.

Basically, the point being made against tiny Skyrim-style "cities" is that you can present a bustling city with the appropriate amount of people-traffic without being about to follow each of those people back home and see all the toilets, etc. If you leave the market area, and there's nothing of note between there and the palace, then it "skips" the area in between. But, it's still represented in the game, because it's there. Just because you can't explore it doesn't mean it isn't there. There are plenty of mountainous areas devoid of passable terrain, yet you still know the mountains are there. You still say "wow, this is a huge, mountainous region."

 

So, yes, you can essentially exclude specific areas within a city from your game's playable area and yet still represent the full size of that city, non-explorable areas and all. That isn't to say I think we should follow the exact equation used by previous games. Just that zone-structuring huge cities in RPGs is not an inherent evil.

Cut off their arms? That's the worst metaphor I've ever heard. The fact that certain parts of the setting are unimportant is something I'd rather choose as the player to focus my efforts on other areas, rather than have the developers choose for me by restricting me to a linear path.

 

Once again, zone-structuring is not the question here as we know virtually 100% that PE will do that. It's question of whether those zones represent 70% of the city, or only 10% with the vast majority of the city existing as unrepresented space between the zones. The mountain metaphor is also a rather poor metaphor, as that is physically impassable by definition, whereas in a town it constitutes creating artificial cages out of buildings where a mostly contiguous network of roads should exist.

 

And forgive me, by "represent IG" I meant "represent in some form other than indirectly telling the player of its supposed existence". It seems many people are perfectly fine with that, but I find that "representation" rather inauthentic personally. And once again, it's all dependent on this conception of "nothing of note", which is as subjective as it gets. That's a terribly slippery slope, similar to the mentality behind features like free fast travel, which is truly what ruins the Elder Scrolls games IMHO. Why don't we just cut out the entire wilderness between cities and dungeons then? I guess it simply comes down to one's broader philosophy on what RPG's are; some people view the quests as "get from point A to point B" as quick as possible, but for me it's what's in between that's most interesting. And I would personally characterize the former mantra as being more at home in action-adventure games than in RPGs, but we can agree to disagree I suppose.

Edited May 4, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[mcmanusaur]

For what it's worth, I am always vaguely annoyed by talk of "immersion." It's not that I don't think it's a real thing; I just find it so tediously subjective that it's not a useful thing to ask for. You might as well ask for "fun" or "emotions."

 

I also think way too much value is placed on it. One time, I heard some dummy on Kotaku say that he was glad "turn-based combat" (by which he meant the menu-based combat in JRPGs) was "dead," because "nothing kill[ed his] immersion like walking up to an enemy and seeing a bunch of menus pop up." That made me so unreasonably angry that I almost signed up for a Kotaku account just to tell him off. I didn't, of course, because it's Kotaku. But man, did I want to. It wasn't that he didn't like turn-based combat; that's fair enough. My issue was his attempt to justify it by saying "immersion!" Like it was some hard truth that everyone hated menus.

 

The point of my anecdote is this: you can argue that any vaguely game-y abstraction is an immersion-breaker, because all it means is that it takes you out of the game.

 

However, I can see how it's become more of a concern for people as graphics have gotten more realistic. It's a less obvious consequence of the Uncanny Valley effect; as graphics inch closer to photorealism, we notice the abridgments of logic games often employ more easily. The problem with Skyrim's cities is not that they don't make perfect sense as cities; no fictional city does, especially not the ones in games. The problem is that our brains aren't processing the cities as abstractions of cities anymore. The graphics are realistic enough that we look at them and only see what's there, but what's there is inevitably absurd. It has to be; real city planners don't have to create reasonably convincing simulacra of people who walk around in their cities and say stuff and do stuff and look reasonably convincing and have unique voiced lines and blah, nor do they have to plan around one actual person who will come to the numerous cities full of simulacra and interact with them meaningfully.

 

All of which is to say that it's a very difficult problem to solve, and certainly won't be solved to Amarok's satisfaction anytime soon.

 

...I feel like I had some larger point when I started this ramble. Oh, well.

Well, I suppose this is where we will disagree then. I know what you mean about the uncanny valley, but for me that is not an objectively valid tendency, and thus we should try to overcome its influence on our judgments. I personally have no problem processing pseudo-realistic settings as abstractions and thus I prefer them to settings that don't even try with the realism, but I'm not sure who's in the minority on that. Though that does raise an interesting question about whether the developers are beholden to players who cannot regulate their brain's inability to entertain abstractions. And for me, I don't like settings too artificially centered around the PC personally, but that's another discussion entirely.

[mcmanusaur]

 

For what it's worth, I am always vaguely annoyed by talk of "immersion." It's not that I don't think it's a real thing; I just find it so tediously subjective that it's not a useful thing to ask for. You might as well ask for "fun" or "emotions."

I understand. For what it's worth, I firmly believe there are both subjective AND objective aspects to immersion. I try my best to completely ignore the subjective (even trying to rule out my own preferences as best I can) when discussing such things like this, because it is rather pointless. To converse and share subjective views? Not pointless. To debate subjective views? Quite pointless. Who can say whether or not blue is prettier than red? I have no idea.

 

With the graphics thing, that is true. But, you've gotta look at it this way, too: They don't HAVE to do the graphics they way they did the graphics. Wii graphics suck, right? Relative to all other systems? Yup. But Metroid Prime 3 was pretty amazing-looking. You could even see a quite-detailed reflection of Samus's face on the inside of her helmet visor. And the game made you feel like you were running around in this awesome Chozo suit, being Samus. So, I look at games like that, and I think "If they did that on a Wii, why do other people act like graphics have to take up 90% of a 40-million-dollar budget in most games?"

 

If your graphics aren't supporting the artistry of the game's design, then you need to do them differently. It's really as simple as that, as far as a decision. Doing the graphics, not so simple. 8P

 

But, basically, immersion is more about not breaking it than it is about building it up. Shopkeeper just stands at his stall all day long, 24/7: Not very immersive. I can't believe that that's in any way feasible (granted, it's a very minor issue, but an example nonetheless). Shopkeeper SOMETIMES leaves and goes home to sleep? That's better. I don't even need to see where he goes. But, if I never see him leave, ever, and he's just always there, at all hours of the day, then I can't even believe he ever goes anywhere, much less to his home, which is somewhere in the city, where his family lives.

 

And yeah, there are certain things that people talk about (like menus) that are ridiculous to even bring up. That's like saying "My own brain prevents me from being immersed, since I can see the edges of my computer monitor, and the stuff on my desk, and things around me, and I feel the need to pee sometimes, etc.".

 

"Immersion" does not automatically = "true to life simulation." It simply means "coherence," for the most part. You establish a world, and then you support that world. You establish characters that the player can control and experience things via, and you support that. That's all.

 

Well, technically only seeing the shopkeeper while he's at work, and not being able to see him outside of that, supports the notion of shopkeepers as a generic form of NPC rather than a unique character in and of themselves, which should be the ultimate goal with any character, even if it's completely far-off and impractical. If the resources of PE are such that something can't be given adequate depth to be interesting, by all means do not devote attention to it, but before we as the players tell the developers to not devote their attention to stuff (as in the example of this thread), let's let them make the decisions about what they have the resources for. Since if we go about in such a way we might just be asking for less than we could have gotten otherwise, just because some guy with a strong agenda decided to make an anti-suggestion thread (not specifically directed toward the OP).

Edited May 4, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[Lephys]

Cut off their arms? That's the worst metaphor I've ever heard. The fact that certain parts of the setting are unimportant is something I'd rather choose as the player to focus my efforts on other areas, rather than have the developers choose for me by restricting me to a linear path.

 

Once again, zone-structuring is not the question here as we know virtually 100% that PE will do that. It's question of whether those zones represent 70% of the city, or only 10% with the vast majority of the city existing as unrepresented space between the zones. The mountain metaphor is also a rather poor metaphor, as that is physically impassable by definition, whereas in a town it constitutes creating artificial cages out of buildings where a mostly contiguous network of roads should exist.

Methinks you're not quite up to speed on what a metaphor is.

 

Also, the point was that, even though you COULD physically climb and traverse the mountain, you don't need to do so, because there's nothing important there. Not that a city strictly resembled a mountain. Just like the cutting off your arms thing. The point was that the game has no need to provide you with the opportunity to cut off your own arms.

 

Arguing that it is some kind of crime or appalling that the developers of the game force you into a linear path simply by preventing you from traveling to every square inch of a city is akin to saying "They didn't put fishing boats in, so I can't paddle out to the middle of this lake and fish! But there's a lake right there! I should be able to do that! They're forcing me to decide that's unimportant!"

 

No, what they're doing is building a finite world, from scratch, and they can either build a tiny world, or build an appropriately-sized world and understand that you're not going to go literally every place in the entire world, since this isn't Cartography Quest VIII.

Edited May 4, 2013 by Lephys

[Lephys]

Well, technically only seeing the shopkeeper while he's at work, and not being able to see him outside of that, supports the notion of shopkeepers as a generic form of NPC rather than a unique character in and of themselves, which should be the ultimate goal with any character, even if it's completely far-off and impractical.

Exactly. And only seeing commonfolk housing districts from a distance and not being able to see them outside of that supports the notion of commonfolk housing districts as a generic form of non-significant city area rather than a unique city area in and of itself.

[JFSOCC]

It's not that the areas are supposed to be "closed off," as in you cannot access them. It's that they're unimportant, so you, the player, are prevented from forcing your characters to access them, the same as you're prevented from telling your characters to cut off their own arms with their weapons.

 

Basically, the point being made against tiny Skyrim-style "cities" is that you can present a bustling city with the appropriate amount of people-traffic without being about to follow each of those people back home and see all the toilets, etc. If you leave the market area, and there's nothing of note between there and the palace, then it "skips" the area in between. But, it's still represented in the game, because it's there. Just because you can't explore it doesn't mean it isn't there. There are plenty of mountainous areas devoid of passable terrain, yet you still know the mountains are there. You still say "wow, this is a huge, mountainous region."

 

So, yes, you can essentially exclude specific areas within a city from your game's playable area and yet still represent the full size of that city, non-explorable areas and all. That isn't to say I think we should follow the exact equation used by previous games. Just that zone-structuring huge cities in RPGs is not an inherent evil.

I think we can all agree that while we may differ on how we'd do it, if it's in the game, it better had content worth exploring.

[Ineth]

The fact that certain parts of the setting are unimportant is something I'd rather choose as the player to focus my efforts on other areas, rather than have the developers choose for me by restricting me to a linear path.

 

The devs can only make a certain amount of game content within their budget and time constraints, so I'd like them to make all of it "count".

 

Fleshing out big city districts full of commoner's homes with nothing interesting or useful to explore whatsoever, just so you can have your open-world sandbox feeling, would be a waste of resources in my opinion.

 

PS: Who said anything about restricting you to a "linear path"? Did Athkatla feel "linear" to you?

[mcmanusaur]

 

The fact that certain parts of the setting are unimportant is something I'd rather choose as the player to focus my efforts on other areas, rather than have the developers choose for me by restricting me to a linear path.

 

The devs can only make a certain amount of game content within their budget and time constraints, so I'd like them to make all of it "count".

 

Fleshing out big city districts full of commoner's homes with nothing interesting or useful to explore whatsoever, just so you can have your open-world sandbox feeling, would be a waste of resources in my opinion.

 

PS: Who said anything about restricting you to a "linear path"? Did Athkatla feel "linear" to you?

 

Have you guys ever actually walked through a city built during the Middle Ages? It's not as if you can just say, "this is where the interesting stuff ends, and the boring stuff begins". That's the most artificial and stupid thing. If the part that they would be including would be uninteresting, all that says is that whoever has conceived the city in the first place did a bad job. Every part of a big city is interesting, and it's not just a question of certain sections of town containing a bunch of peasant hovels (which are out in the countryside). The idea that you can separate interesting and boring stuff within a city is ludicrous.

Edited May 4, 2013 by mcmanusaur

[Archmage Silver]

Athkathla-sized cities would be alright by me, if feasible. That's for the major cities obviously, so you could easily have very small settlements around the map without disrupting the flow of the game.

[mcmanusaur]

 

Cut off their arms? That's the worst metaphor I've ever heard. The fact that certain parts of the setting are unimportant is something I'd rather choose as the player to focus my efforts on other areas, rather than have the developers choose for me by restricting me to a linear path.

 

Once again, zone-structuring is not the question here as we know virtually 100% that PE will do that. It's question of whether those zones represent 70% of the city, or only 10% with the vast majority of the city existing as unrepresented space between the zones. The mountain metaphor is also a rather poor metaphor, as that is physically impassable by definition, whereas in a town it constitutes creating artificial cages out of buildings where a mostly contiguous network of roads should exist.

Methinks you're not quite up to speed on what a metaphor is.

 

Also, the point was that, even though you COULD physically climb and traverse the mountain, you don't need to do so, because there's nothing important there. Not that a city strictly resembled a mountain. Just like the cutting off your arms thing. The point was that the game has no need to provide you with the opportunity to cut off your own arms.

 

Arguing that it is some kind of crime or appalling that the developers of the game force you into a linear path simply by preventing you from traveling to every square inch of a city is akin to saying "They didn't put fishing boats in, so I can't paddle out to the middle of this lake and fish! But there's a lake right there! I should be able to do that! They're forcing me to decide that's unimportant!"

 

No, what they're doing is building a finite world, from scratch, and they can either build a tiny world, or build an appropriately-sized world and understand that you're not going to go literally every place in the entire world, since this isn't Cartography Quest VIII.

 

Then please enlighten me as to what a metaphor is.

 

We're not talking about fishing or mountain-climbing here, we're talking about one the two supposedly "big" cities. If you're a creative designer and you have to cut out 70% of a city because you don't have any ideas to make interesting content for it, maybe you should reevaluate your career. The idea that you can isolate the "interesting" parts of a city apart from the "boring" areas is complete lunacy, and the fact is that in the case of different areas of a city the one's left out can contribute as much content as what's included.

[mcmanusaur]

 

Well, technically only seeing the shopkeeper while he's at work, and not being able to see him outside of that, supports the notion of shopkeepers as a generic form of NPC rather than a unique character in and of themselves, which should be the ultimate goal with any character, even if it's completely far-off and impractical.

Exactly. And only seeing commonfolk housing districts from a distance and not being able to see them outside of that supports the notion of commonfolk housing districts as a generic form of non-significant city area rather than a unique city area in and of itself.

 

So you admit that what you're arguing is rationalized by the close-minded stereotypes that RPG players have adapted due to the biases of past RPGs?

[mcmanusaur]

 

It's not that the areas are supposed to be "closed off," as in you cannot access them. It's that they're unimportant, so you, the player, are prevented from forcing your characters to access them, the same as you're prevented from telling your characters to cut off their own arms with their weapons.

 

Basically, the point being made against tiny Skyrim-style "cities" is that you can present a bustling city with the appropriate amount of people-traffic without being about to follow each of those people back home and see all the toilets, etc. If you leave the market area, and there's nothing of note between there and the palace, then it "skips" the area in between. But, it's still represented in the game, because it's there. Just because you can't explore it doesn't mean it isn't there. There are plenty of mountainous areas devoid of passable terrain, yet you still know the mountains are there. You still say "wow, this is a huge, mountainous region."

 

So, yes, you can essentially exclude specific areas within a city from your game's playable area and yet still represent the full size of that city, non-explorable areas and all. That isn't to say I think we should follow the exact equation used by previous games. Just that zone-structuring huge cities in RPGs is not an inherent evil.

I think we can all agree that while we may differ on how we'd do it, if it's in the game, it better had content worth exploring.

 

Yes, we can agree, as much as the people arguing against me love to frame my position as "he wants a bunch of areas with a bunch of empty and identical huts!". My point is that there's no reason one part of a city should have content and another part shouldn't, since it's all city with people running around. And if we don't want to have to deal with a big city, why do we want one in the game? To be able to say "my characters traveled all through the big city and met all the people, but my attention span was too short to follow along"?

[Malekith]

 

 

Well, technically only seeing the shopkeeper while he's at work, and not being able to see him outside of that, supports the notion of shopkeepers as a generic form of NPC rather than a unique character in and of themselves, which should be the ultimate goal with any character, even if it's completely far-off and impractical.

Exactly. And only seeing commonfolk housing districts from a distance and not being able to see them outside of that supports the notion of commonfolk housing districts as a generic form of non-significant city area rather than a unique city area in and of itself.

 

So you admit that what you're arguing is rationalized by the close-minded stereotypes that RPG players have adapted due to the biases of past RPGs?

 

I wouldn't say that it is close-minded. I have played both IE games and Fallout/Arcanum/TES games. I prefered IE cities by far. (Fallout cities were ok actually, because they made sense in the setting)