I just wanted to get an opinion from some designers on the subject of realism in gameplay. I describe my style of game designing as ultra-realistic. Most of my ideas involve implementing things that simulate how things actually are as much as possible. What is the esteemed communities thought on the use of realism? In this case, realism means, say, in an RTS, your soldiers could still use their mind powers to make people's heads explode, but that they would have to eat, sleep, etc. Also, when you need a resource to do something, and you own a harvester, but it is surronded, it makes resources, but these are not available to the rest of your empire. Also, not really the feasability of it. Sometimes, if you try to make things real, it complicates the game to where it is not fun. But if it is properly managed, it can work. Like your soldiers must go somewhere and eat. It would be a pain to have to tell each soldier every day, "go eat here now". But if you could implement a global command, "This group shall eat here at this time every day" it would uncomplicate it and add a whole new dimension. So not really how it is implemented, just its use in gaming. Don't be afraid to say anything (I'm stupid, out of line, a genius). Thanks.

Too much realism can ruin a game. Instead of issuing orders to soldiers via any command you should just have like a cafeteria for them to go to when they are idle so they can eat without the player worrying about them. The more you have a player do, the less fun it is.

it could work but you want to avoid too much micro managment, you can add as many new abilitys and aspects to units as you want as long as you increse their ai so they can handle them without constant player attention, if they need to sleep make it so they will sleep when there are no batttles, maby gather into groups so 11 sleep and 1 keeps watch, defenitly not stair into space until they die of sleep deprivation just becouse you didnt order them to sleep

[Edited by - Kaze on March 19, 2005 1:59:18 PM]

My opinion is that realism should follow from gameplay, not vice versa. You shouldn't design a game from the ground up with realism in mind. You should first focus on solid, entertaining, engaging gameplay and then add in elements of realism to augment that.

In your example you seem to be focusing on RTS games, so I'll go with that. Perhaps in your gameplay you want some sort of upkeep or management phase to be taking place. As long as this doesn't become tedious or frustrating, and as long as it adds to the overall enjoyment or gameplay value of the game, then make it as true to life as you want. As another example, maybe you want the player to manage wounded soldiers. In this case, wounded soldiers are less effective than unwounded soldiers and wounded soldiers can be brought back to full strength via medical attention. This would be true to life, and (as the other posters mentioned) if it was handled correctly, it would add positive aspects to the gameplay.

Look at it in terms of scope. You could make a very fine-grained RTS where every single possible aspect of warfare is accounted for, but it wouldn't be very fun. On the other hand if you focus on JUST troop maintenance, movement, and formation; or just on micro-management within individual battles, then you have yourself a game.

feeding soldiers? it can be safly assumed they bring with themselves a days worth of rations. thus they could run low on supplies, but it would only be noticed in a campaign. most battles in rts games only last for a few hours of game time. It would be better to have to manage an entire armies supplies (food, ammo, gas, etc).

As for surrounding a harvestor to stop a supply? A better method would be like in blizzards games. Use an actual unit that will harvest resources. Since it is a unit, it will have to travel back and forth to transport the resources. Furthermore this means no one owns the resources. Plus the enemy can destroy the unit to stop your flow of resources. Its up to you (and enemy) whether they want to spare units to guard the harvest units or to guard the resources themselves (maybe even do both).

On sleep, soldiers again would not be sleeping during a battle. If they did, they probably would be compost. You can have a fatigue meter, so soldiers cant run forever. They would need to rest, and this could affect their combat. it is something that the player coudl easily deal with. It is also something that would be expected.

Rome: total war had fatigue, and it worked great. You should consider playing that game for an idea of how to do realistic combat without too much micro managment.

realize that no matter what features you discuss, implementation does matter. Having soldeirs eat is a feature. You can implement this by having to go thrugh the units to check their statis and send the hungry ones to the cafe. you could implement it with a time sechdule. you could implement it using ai that decided to eat if they are hungry, but only if its safe. you could just have overall base food that gets used up, but you never see the soldiers actually eat the food.

talking just feature ideas is not worth much, because unless there can be a decent implementation you have nothing. i think you should come up with the type of game you want to make, then further this discussion.

First of all, thanks to all for your input. Second, I really am not talking with a specific game in mind. Just the use of the econcept of realism (a lot of it) in any game(RTS games are just my favorite). And I realize in an actual game design, implementation does matter a lot. I agree with all of what y'all are saying as far as micromanagement goes.
I love RTW and I think it is one of the most real out there as far as simulating how actual soldiers behave. Thanks for the other ideas.

I'd suggest abstracting stuff like food. It was a horrible game, but that Three Kingdoms-period AOE knockoff a few years back (the name escapes me) required supply lines be maintained or else troops started to die/get fighting penalties/etc. I like realism, but ultra-realism feels too much like work to be fun.

I'm trying to work through this myself. I feel that the more realism is involved, the more strategic the game can get.

Units have to eat and sleep? Good! That means I can plan my ambush at a time more convenient, when the enemy is busy eating or sleeping. Or I can poison the food. Or stop the food from getting there in the first place. Or keep enemy soldiers awake all night by launching small, brief, harrassment attacks. Now that their fatigued, my main thrust will be more effective. Etc. etc...

By creating a world that acts and reacts in a realistic manner, I have a whole lot more strategy to explore.

That being said, I think that detailed realism like this may only really be effective in a couple of ways, otherwise the player may get bog downed with micro-management.

I'd suggest that the game would need to be turn-based, since this level of strategy inherently requires the player to be able to analyze the situation, figure out what their plan of attack is, and then figure out a way to implement it. This is impossible during a real-time combat scenario.

The game would also need to be built from a top-down approach - what I mean is that you should probably have no real idea when Beta Company has to return to the barracks and go to sleep. This is happening "behind the scenes" and is probably being monitored by a commander of some sort under you. You shouldn't really care when they're sleeping, as you've got a whole battle/war to take care of. The only time you should ever have to get down to that level is when you're planning something or something comes up that requires you to know.

The mayor of some big city probably doesn't keep much tabs on subway routes, minor delays, schedules, etc. even though they're running the whole time on their own. But, if he learns about a terrorist attack that might happen in the subways, he can certainly pick up the phone and find out whatever he needs. He can close them down, evacuate them, re-route their schedules, have police guard certain exits, etc.

The ability to drill down and access minor details should be the exception, not the rule, but in allowing them will permit players to create vastly more complicated strategies than before.

If you want to have the complexity of characters without the grinding monotonoy, try adding a little autonomy to their behavior. Back to the RTS, how about taking a page from Majesty's book? Have little Inns or mess halls or whatever in your base/town/etc., and when your soldiers get hungry (when off-duty, I am assuming), they stroll over there and get a cheeseburger or yeast ration or Soylent Green. You could also take care of sleeping this way, not to mention entertainment or shopping.

This way, the characters are deeper and more complex, but they pretty much take care of themselves, and the player doesn't have to deal with it unless there's an obesity problem, or they need to call up the off-duty troops for base defense and find them all drunk or showering. You'd be able to affect trends in behavior by organizing your town layout, but there'd be relatively little micromanagement.

you dont want stituations where the player plays baby sitter to the AI. Its just like micromanaging. Players dont want to worry about losing because the AI is doing stupid things. i know i dislike not knowing if i lost because of skill or because the AI happen to do enough stupid things (without me noticing so i could correct it) to cost me the match/round/game.