19 replies to this topic

[Deathsani]

Why is it that people on every forum that I have ever been to insist on using real life battles as material for game mechanics? More specifically they like to use them to discredit the claim that a game is boring or unbalanced.

Real combat is either mindnumingly boring or absolutely terrifying. It involves inglorous acts made out of desperation for morally questionable reasons and strategies that insure victory at all costs. Why would anyone want to play something close to a real war? Who would ever willingly play a game where you are impossibly outclassed and completely incapable of winning?

War isn't fair, it isn't fun for people who have a normal concience, and it should not be used as a reference point for a game of imaginary robot wrestling. I know that we have to draw parralels between the fiction that spawned this game and real-world combat but the line we use to draw them should be thin.

Thoughts? Counter-points?

[Shae Starfyre]

Deathsani, on 26 February 2014 - 01:29 PM, said:

... Who would ever willingly play a game where you are impossibly outclassed and completely incapable of winning?

War isn't fair, it isn't fun for people who have a normal concience...

You mean like Teams versus New/Casual Players?

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

But, on topic, you have a point, but what specific other thread is this targetin, or are you being general?

[Sandpit]

Deathsani, on 26 February 2014 - 01:29 PM, said:

Why is it that people on every forum that I have ever been to insist on using real life battles as material for game mechanics? More specifically they like to use them to discredit the claim that a game is boring or unbalanced.

Real combat is either mindnumingly boring or absolutely terrifying. It involves inglorous acts made out of desperation for morally questionable reasons and strategies that insure victory at all costs. Why would anyone want to play something close to a real war? Who would ever willingly play a game where you are impossibly outclassed and completely incapable of winning?

War isn't fair, it isn't fun for people who have a normal concience, and it should not be used as a reference point for a game of imaginary robot wrestling. I know that we have to draw parralels between the fiction that spawned this game and real-world combat but the line we use to draw them should be thin.

Thoughts? Counter-points?

Because it suits their argument. It's really that simple. Haven't you ever noticed that they only pull that out when it suits whatever change or idea they're wanting implemented but are completely ok with never bringing up real world scenarios when it would completely counter the same idea? They do it out of convenience and to lend "credibility" to their opinion

[Deathsani]

You might have a point their sandpit.

As for other posts, I am sure there are a number of offenders but what set this off was a post on the srm proposal thread. The one that says they have all the answers.

[Supersmacky]

If the non-specific 'people' you are referring to are talking about tactics, communication, team-work, or the like, then they are spot on. Table-top gaming is much the same, although more abstracted. However, if they are talking about thoughts, feelings, destruction, killing, etc, they are just being ridiculous and self-serving.

Have served in the U.S. Army during times of conflict, you are spot on about the extremes. Having 'been there and done that' I have no real interest in a game that brings all the grit and nastiness into it. I am quite happy playing games where real people DON'T get hurt, killed or psychologically scared for life. Like you, I could not understand why anyone would want that from a game.

[Deathsani]

Strategy and tactics are fine and dandy, what I mean is when they are find with one team being unable to win or components of the game serving no purpose. I understand that some weapons or items in real life serve no purpose or are severely outclassed but I think the purpose of fiction is to provide a place where there is balance.

[Randalf Yorgen]

Deathsani, on 26 February 2014 - 01:29 PM, said:

Why is it that people on every forum that I have ever been to insist on using real life battles as material for game mechanics? More specifically they like to use them to discredit the claim that a game is boring or unbalanced.

Real combat is either mindnumingly boring or absolutely terrifying. It involves inglorous acts made out of desperation for morally questionable reasons and strategies that insure victory at all costs. Why would anyone want to play something close to a real war? Who would ever willingly play a game where you are impossibly outclassed and completely incapable of winning?

War isn't fair, it isn't fun for people who have a normal concience, and it should not be used as a reference point for a game of imaginary robot wrestling. I know that we have to draw parralels between the fiction that spawned this game and real-world combat but the line we use to draw them should be thin.

Thoughts? Counter-points?

I'm not sure I see how the post below fits with the post above. You came out swinging and hitting hard and were spot on the money and have my full support but with the post below you seem to have abandoned that position almost completely.

Deathsani, on 26 February 2014 - 01:50 PM, said:

Strategy and tactics are fine and dandy, what I mean is when they are find with one team being unable to win or components of the game serving no purpose. I understand that some weapons or items in real life serve no purpose or are severely outclassed but I think the purpose of fiction is to provide a place where there is balance.

Could you expand please because I would really like to understand your view, it seems very interesting and could spawn some good conversation.


*edit for glaring paragraph errors

Edited by Randalf Yorgen, 26 February 2014 - 02:20 PM.

[xhrit]

Deathsani, on 26 February 2014 - 01:29 PM, said:

Real combat is either mindnumingly boring or absolutely terrifying.  It involves inglorous acts made out of desperation for morally questionable reasons and strategies that insure victory at all costs.  Why would anyone want to play something close to a real war?  Who would ever willingly play a game where you are impossibly outclassed and completely incapable of winning?

GNS Theory holds that participants in games reinforce each other's behaviour towards ends which can be divided into three categories: Gamist, Narrativist and Simulationist. A game can be classified according to how strongly it encourages or facilitates players reinforcing behaviours matching each category. Game designers find it useful because it can be used to explain why players play certain games.

Gamist refers to decisions based on satisfying clear predefined goal conditions in the face of adversity: in other words, on the desire to win. Most common in games which pit characters against successively tougher challenges and opponents, and may not spend much time dwelling on why the characters are facing them in the first place. Gamist design tends to place a strong emphasis on parity in character effectiveness: that is, the idea that all player characters should be (at least when properly built or optimised over time) equally strong and capable of dealing with adversity. Combat is frequently heavily emphasised, as is a diversity in options for short-term problem solving (i.e., long lists of highly specific spells or combat techniques). Randomisation exist primarily to provide a gamble and allow players to risk more for higher stakes (for instance, attempting a more effective hit in combat requires a penalty on the dice roll), rather than modelling strict probability.

Narrativism relies heavily on outlining or developing motives for the characters, putting them into situations where those motives come into mutual conflict, and making their decisions in the face of such stress the main driving force behind events. Firstly, and in contrast to much Simulationist play, characters usually show considerable change and development over time. Secondly, any attempt at imposing a fixed storyline is either impossible or highly counterproductive. Moments of drama – which is to say, inner conflict on the part of the characters – inherently make player responses difficult to predict, and the consequences of such choices cannot be minimised. More than this, revisiting the characters' motives or underlying emotional themes over time often leads to a process of escalation: asking variations on the same "question", but at higher and higher levels of intensity, as exemplified through the situations and developments of play. The "answers" that the players supply, as exemplified through their characters' responses and their eventual repercussions, can then be taken as a kind of moral commentary on various human qualities or values under the circumstances. In short, it coaxes out an overall point or message, but as an after-effect or byproduct of play, rather than as an accessory to it.

Simulationism refers to a style of play where the main agenda is the recreation of, or inspiration by, the observed characteristics of a particular genre or set of source material. Physical reality might count as source material for these purposes, but so might superhero anthologies, or any other literary, cinematic or historical milieu. Its most frequent concerns are internal consistency, analysis or modeling of cause and effect, and informed speculation or even extrapolation. Often characterised by concern for the minutiae of physical interaction and details of setting, Simulationism shares with Narrativism a concern for character backgrounds, personality traits and motives, in an effort to model cause and effect within the intellectual realm as well as the physical.

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/GNS_Theory

Edited by xhrit, 26 February 2014 - 02:51 PM.

[xhrit]

Many common techniques can enhance the enjoyment of a particular GNS mode at the expense of others, but the fundamental incompatibilities between each are actually very high-level.

Gamist-Narrativist friction

Moments of drama (in the emotional sense) make clear goal conditions (i.e. a well-defined challenge in the Gamist sense) impossible. The Narrativist's very purpose is to focus on a conflict between two or more of a given character's values. 'Winning' is impossible under such circumstances, because there is no clear goal. Conversely, if a character is presented only with well-defined goal conditions during the entire 'story', this implies a lack of emotional ambivalence during decision-making which denies the possibility of input to theme.

Simulationist-Narrativist friction

Theme, by its nature, is a series of aesthetically pleasing but statistically unlikely coincidences. In order to reliably revisit the same emotional topic or human questions, in-world probability must be frequently distorted to present conflicts that visit those topics or questions.
Moments of drama (in the emotional sense) cannot, in the strictest sense, be consistently played. Their very purpose is to focus on a conflict between two or more of a given character's values, in which they are obliged to choose one over the other. In other words, to focus on a point where the character's internal consistency breaks down.

Gamist-Simulationist friction

Perfect 'Balance' (in the sense of parity in character effectiveness, or a level playing field) is rarely compatible with the full complexities of a self-consistent imagined world. That is, Life is Unfair. For example, realistic swordfighting leads to a high rate of wound-related mortality, while an unbiased presentation of Tolkien's Middle-Earth would make elves far more powerful than orcs or halflings. Resolving such imbalances requires either a manifestly artificial 'world', or metagame constructs such as hit points, level adjustments, etc. that distort a Simulationist aesthetic.

Edited by xhrit, 26 February 2014 - 02:53 PM.

[Deathsani]

Wow, that's some clearly meta stuff right there.

And in response to my seeming turn around Randolf, I meant that learning from real combat ala lanes of fire, covering fire, understanding cover, and the displacement of force is an obvious connection. But these proposed "others" like to argue that it is fine to be winning or losing based on a provided in game loadout or scenario. They think it is okay for there to be better and worse arbitrary circumstances for play.

I play games for the capacity to find and overcome obstacles, winning is fun but only in cases where there were considerable obstacles to achieve it. This is hampered by incongruities with balance, like in MWO when a certain loadout is clearly superior to others or certain spawn points favor one team over the other. This game is proposed as one that does not have better and worse, but different. I support the idea that ML's, and MPL's are distinct but equal weapons that have an equal capacity to carry out their given functions with differing operating mechanisms.

[Threat Doc]

Sandpit, on 26 February 2014 - 01:36 PM, said:

They do it out of convenience and to lend "credibility" to their opinion

Everyone does this, regardless of what side they are on, and it's a normal means of argumentative conversation, debate, that's all.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Kay Wolf, on 26 February 2014 - 04:26 PM, said:

Everyone does this

That statement bugs the crap out of me.....
It allows so much.... (no offense, cannot think of the word I want right now) stupidity

It allows for such statements (concepts?) as "Everyone lies, so lying is ok"
"Everyone drinks while driving, so as long as you don't get in an accident is fine"

"Everyone does it" has to be one of the worst defenses there is!
If it is a "right" thing - then you don't have to defend it with "Everyone does it" and if it is wrong, then it is all the more reason to rise above it and show yourself the better person.

(note: the above could and should be much much better phrased)

Edited by Shar Wolf, 26 February 2014 - 05:27 PM.

[slide]

I think it's contextual:

Strategy and tactics:
- can draw a lot of real world comparisons as well as from other games. These would be valid arguments.

Equipment and weapons:
-Any comparison to real life systems has absolutely no bearing on anything represented in the game. Anything represented in battle tech is a fictional extrapolation of 80's technology morphed through 1000 years of constant warfare where mankind has basically bombed itself back to the stone age.
-game mechanics have no real world physical properties, example there is no way you could fit 2700+ lrms inside the volume of a DDC Atlas, even if it was 30m tall
-artistic licence was used generously to create something that is appealing and hopefully balanced and fun, as the OP pointed out RL war is anything but fun.

Any argument that starts out with a real life comparisons (except tactics) is ultimately self defeating because you are comparing bananas to apples. They are both food, but one is a herb and the other is fruit.

Edited by slide, 26 February 2014 - 05:03 PM.

[xhrit]

Deathsani, on 26 February 2014 - 03:35 PM, said:

Wow, that's some clearly meta stuff right there.

I play games for the capacity to find and overcome obstacles, winning is fun but only in cases where there were considerable obstacles to achieve it. This is hampered by incongruities with balance, like in MWO when a certain loadout is clearly superior to others or certain spawn points favor one team over the other. This game is proposed as one that does not have better and worse, but different. I support the idea that ML's, and MPL's are distinct but equal weapons that have an equal capacity to carry out their given functions with differing operating mechanisms.

Yup. this is a clear example of Gamist-Simulationist friction. The gamist wants everything to be fair and balanced- the simulationist wants some things, like the clans, to be OP because that is how it is in lore, and they want MWO to be a simulation of the battletech universe.

You will see more Narritavist complaints arise when CW is launched, if it is focused too heavily on gamist design principals.

[Threat Doc]

Shar Wolf, on 26 February 2014 - 04:37 PM, said:

That statement bugs the crap out of me.....
It allows so much.... (no offense, cannot think of the word I want right now) stupidity

Okay, you need to stop that bullshit RIGHT THERE. If you want a statement to be so tight it squeaks, then you're on the wrong damn forum. Get used to it, and stop badgering me about it. You know it's the truth, EVERYONE USES THE STATEMENTS THEY WANT TO USE THAT WILL SUPPORT THEIR ARGUMENT, PERIOD!!! From the President of the United States and the President of Russia, on down to a street debater, use of arguments to support one's position has always been true, will always be true, and you're right, it allows so much leeway.

You want to throw a fit about OTHER people using generalized statements, have fun with that... but, please leave me out of your OCD? Thank you.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Kay Wolf, on 26 February 2014 - 06:00 PM, said:

If you want a statement to be so tight it squeaks, then you're on the wrong damn forum.

World of difference between a "statement so tight it squeaks" as you put it.
and
"but everyone else is doing it!"

One is someone being, as you said: OCD.
The other is one quoting the 5 year old boy wanting to know why he cannot do the stupid thing his 'friends' are doing.

You will notice I did not:
1) Yell
2) insult you directly (unless of course some of those comments hit to close to home?)

Thank you for as I put it:

Shar Wolf, on 26 February 2014 - 04:37 PM, said:

Showing yourself the better person.

Edited by Shar Wolf, 26 February 2014 - 06:05 PM.

[Threat Doc]

This is the second or third thread you've done this to me in.

Prove what I said was wrong?

Have YOU always been 100% spot on and accurate.

Also, what's this with being the better person? Do you know what the better person looks like? Well, I'll tell you... right now, you are the equivalent of a grammar {Godwin's Law}. I say again, knock it off. Last warning.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Kay Wolf, on 26 February 2014 - 06:14 PM, said:

Prove what I said was wrong?

Show me where I did that.

All I did say was that that phrase bothered me - and then listed the reasons it did so.

Now unless those reasons are "proof" that you are wrong - then I ask that you show me where I did "prove" you wrong.

If they are "proof" you are wrong - then either you are throwing a temper tantrum - or you are moving on.

Edit: other threads? What other threads have I shut you down in?
On the whole I support most of your posts. (as far as I recall anyways)
(admitting that I usually do not pay attention to who posted what I quote )

Edited Edit: The better person is the one who does not take offense when the other tries to give it.
The better person is the one who provides the example of what could be, or "should" be.


The better person, is the person who acts (or tries to act) in the manor that they wish others to act in.

Ask yourself this: which one way would you rather have the people around you act:
"everyone else is doing it!" (IE: eye for an eye)
or
"yes, other people are lousy - doesn't mean I have to be"
(IE do unto others as you would have others do unto you)

Edited by Shar Wolf, 26 February 2014 - 06:43 PM.

[Threat Doc]

Shar, I'm moving this to PM... we have managed to derail this conversation.

I apologize to those I've derailed.