The Realism Error

[CmdrChorusLindarr]

Nice original post, but for me it is nothing to do with realism or naturalism, but consistancy within the game lore.

Well, consistency isn't a fixed quantity.

Some consistency will be acceptable to players, whereas other consistency will be rejected. For example, the narrative that instant ship transfers can be facilitated by instant 3D printing. This can and was explained multiple times by many in a way that was both consistent with the game lore and believable as to why it was only exclusive to this application. The problem for most players however, was not the consistency, but the instant ship transfer mechanic itself; i.e. the delay simulating manual logistics was a more acceptable explanation, regardless of the fact that it was no more or less consistent with the game lore.

So yeah, not all consistency is made equal, apparently.

 

[Jex =TE=]

Until the story, plot and narrative of the game, together with its lore is presented in a more meaningful and engaging way, then I don't even care about consistency in the gameworld fiction.

You can purely file me under the category of "Gamist" as the OP so nicely puts it.

Elite just doesn't provide enough for me to be able to role-play. It would be like trying to immerse myself in a movie when every 5 mins I see the furry microphone dropping into the shot, passersby stopping and waving at the camera and the lead actor tripping up in his delivery and having to check a copy of the script to remember his lines.

As pretty as Elite Dangerous can be in place, the "production values" just aren't there to allow me to willingly suspend my disbelief. So I simply resign myself to the knowledge that its a game and I enjoy it on those merits alone.

This is a really good counter point. The OP is right too and uses an example of waiting for modules to be fitted as long as he could see them.

The immersion tfor me would be when u can walk around. So you install the module, it's going to take 2 minutes but you can get out the ship, watch it going on or head down to the bar to see what missions are available (get rid of that bulletin board).

So as you say, when the things are there then immersion can take a hold but so far, we're permanently stuck on a seat and have been for the last 3 years.

 

[BurnyBurns]

Moving goalposts - The thread.

I can agree with your conclusion OP, but 'naturalism' seems, just as much as the incorrectly used 'realism' or more recently 'consistency', just a term selectively applied by some people to argue their point.

There's pretty little consistency, naturalism or realism in Elite Dangerous. It's a game, with an abstract set of rules and some people want to some rules included or not. And some people make something of the ruleset, that doesn't let them cope with certain new rules Frontier adds.

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

Yes, well stated.

Personally, I'd rather they figure out all of these gameplay mechanics that they want first, then build whatever lore around them as necessary to satiate those who need such explanations.

It IS a game. Gameplay must be king.

 

[BurnyBurns]

Personally, I'd rather they figure out all of these gameplay mechanics that they want first, then build whatever lore around them as necessary to satiate those who need such explanations.

Very much this. But it's futile to wish for, as the ship has sailed. Elite is an expanded early access or 'game as a service' game. That means potentially severely unfinished release and expansion over years. It may even be the sole reason Elite Dangerous exists. But it also means there never is or was a chance of Elite being developed to completion and lore being only then written around the thing as a whole.

The problems start if people get completely attached to the status quo of the game and oppose change, even positive change.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

games should be fun. i dont even oppose some grind - i did the grind to my asp, did some CG in solo - i didnt know about farming nav points for example in a sidewinder to earn credits fast. i had to leave the bubble eventually due to the engineers update, because combat became no fun. not a dogfight with excitement and risk after being interdicted, but npcs in combat ship and way over my level, targetting subsystems as soon as shields down on me, and me with no way to escape (interdiction escape game was bugged) - maybe they upped the 'realism' or challenge for the jaded who dont like ganking each other but to me it wasnt FUN. and thats why i play games. FUN. if you are going to have to make a choice, then you have to choose what will be fun for the most players - or true realism, financial viability of the game in the real world, becomes an issue. then you have no game for anyone.

 

[Tataboj]

Here, have 1000 reputation points.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Well, consistency isn't a fixed quantity.

Some consistency will be acceptable to players, whereas other consistency will be rejected. For example, the narrative that instant ship transfers can be facilitated by instant 3D printing. This can and was explained multiple times by many in a way that was both consistent with the game lore and believable as to why it was only exclusive to this application. The problem for most players however, was not the consistency, but the instant ship transfer mechanic itself; i.e. the delay simulating manual logistics was a more acceptable explanation, regardless of the fact that it was no more or less consistent with the game lore.

So yeah, not all consistency is made equal, apparently.

Hmmm not so imo, lets take 3d printing of ships to cover ship transfer, if this is the case then surely all parts of ships inc computer components etc woukd be 3d printed as well..... Infact the only trade items would be the materials used in the makeup of the 3d printout.

The problem is true of the slfs as well of course why ismwhy personally i am not a fan of it there either personally. Far better for FD to have had modular construction of slfs on the fly imo as the explanation but that ship has sailed.

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games should be fun. i dont even oppose some grind - i did the grind to my asp, did some CG in solo - i didnt know about farming nav points for example in a sidewinder to earn credits fast. i had to leave the bubble eventually due to the engineers update, because combat became no fun. not a dogfight with excitement and risk after being interdicted, but npcs in combat ship and way over my level, targetting subsystems as soon as shields down on me, and me with no way to escape (interdiction escape game was bugged) - maybe they upped the 'realism' or challenge for the jaded who dont like ganking each other but to me it wasnt FUN. and thats why i play games. FUN. if you are going to have to make a choice, then you have to choose what will be fun for the most players - or true realism, financial viability of the game in the real world, becomes an issue. then you have no game for anyone.

One mans fun is another mans boredom tho, which is why subjective terms like that dont help imo.

Anyone who thinks this issue is cut and dry which ever side of the fence you site is being dishonest imo. Consistency and lore is important to me, and in some areas ED is weak..... This does not mean Fd should make it weaker. Others as have shown dont give 2 figs on lore or consistency. Neither view is inherantly wrong its just which is the more suitable fit for a game in the elite franchise

 

[Winterwalker]

I think we should look forward and remember that Einstein (Relativity) is not the end of ALL knowledge.
Anyone ever read Richard Feynman? Dark Energy (Unified Theory) are after all, STILL mysteries.

This doesn't mean you can 'magic' Rare Goods from Sol to Soothis (sorry)
But it also doesn't mean our current concepts of reality are all 100%

 

[davedf]

To be enjoyable, games like Elite require a suspension of disbelief on the part of the player in order to maintain the illusion of being a space pilot in some future civilisation.

As FD makes changes to the internal rules as to how the game universe functions, such as the latest example, galaxy wide teleportation/telepresence some players find that they are no longer able to suspend their disbelief, and therefore enjoy the game less. Others are able to ignore the logical inconsistencies and/or rationalise them.

If FD continues to break the internal logic of the game in pursuit of adding features in the easiest possible way, then the proportion of those players who's enjoyment of the game is affected will continue to grow.


Though I have been able to just "not think about" the problems so far, I am sure at some point I will be on the other side of the fence.

 

[Winterwalker]

Though I have been able to just "not think about" the problems so far, I am sure at some point I will be on the other side of the fence.

Frontier are in an inevitably tight spot here imho. I definitely don't think (especially after the Ship Transfer Poll) that they intend 'teleporting' to be a thing here .. but they're also not nearly ready to have your 3D FPS avatar, walk up to someone and shake hands. And also .. they don't like to talk about things before they're ready to release, in case of (good reason) technical problems etc.

I don't think 'gameplay reasons' was necessarily the best reason to give for insta-crew (partly because I don't think it remotely covers it) but probably all they could say, given good reasons above. They did though, introduce ship transfer, with delays, so I don't see it as a descent into arcade madness personally at all.

Though I am wary and keen that it should be handled pretty carefully, for the most part i'm thinking, "you are no longer your ship!" So, you'll be positioned and findable in 3D space, fighter .. you'll be positoned inside a thing that's moving in 3D space, crewed ship .. and you'll be able to TOUCH the crewed ship, to fire weapons etc. (translation; this, taken in the round, is awesome and actually a step towards having the physicality in the game, that anyone, including me, with 'immersion-fear' wants more than anything)

Arguably .. no pain no gain. FD in a tricky spot .. but my beer tastes AOK tonight.

 

[Jorun]

... all those NASA Photos of the Day with color adjustments to make them more appealing wallpapers - those are all naturalistic.

Great post, interesting discussion, thank you! A quick point--astronomers add color to photos taken with telescopes to reveal stuff that we are unable to detect with our human eyes. Objects in space can glow in a wide range of light, from radio waves to gamma waves, that our human eyes can't detect. The cameras on telescopes, however, use plates that can detect such light, and then astronomers add colors to those images so we can see the objects. These cameras are also more sensitive in ways than human eyes, and they can collect light over time, which the human eye doesn't do. This is done to learn about the universe, to see what we can't see with our naked eye. The great wallpaper for PCs is a secondary benefit. (Of course, there are all sorts of non-scientific images on the internet, and anything goes with those.)

Many of us have seen the great image of the Horsehead Nebula, with all those pink and purple colors. You think, OK, I want to see that with my actual eyes. So you jump in your Asp and fly 1,000 light years toward the nebula and look out through the windshield with your own eyes. What would you see in real life? The blackness of space with bright stars. Some of the stars may appear brighter than they did from Earth, but you won't see the amazing pink clouds of dust and gas. It's there, you just can't see it without the help of a camera.

At any rate, I'm not advocating that the colorful nebulas be removed from ED! No, that would be disappointing. We can pretend that our canopy is showing us light we couldn't otherwise detect with our eyes, or we can just not think too much on it and enjoy this game naturalistically.

btw, an amazing book on the topic of astronomer space pics and how and why they add color is called "Coloring the Universe," which is where I take the Horsehead example from.

 

[yodajedifishmaster]

Hmmm not so imo, lets take 3d printing of ships to cover ship transfer, if this is the case then surely all parts of ships inc computer components etc woukd be 3d printed as well..... Infact the only trade items would be the materials used in the makeup of the 3d printout.

The problem is true of the slfs as well of course why ismwhy personally i am not a fan of it there either personally. Far better for FD to have had modular construction of slfs on the fly imo as the explanation but that ship has sailed.

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One mans fun is another mans boredom tho, which is why subjective terms like that dont help imo.

Anyone who thinks this issue is cut and dry which ever side of the fence you site is being dishonest imo. Consistency and lore is important to me, and in some areas ED is weak..... This does not mean Fd should make it weaker. Others as have shown dont give 2 figs on lore or consistency. Neither view is inherantly wrong its just which is the more suitable fit for a game in the elite franchise

yes its subjective, fun. but so are peoples ideas of what the game should be - just the name is used to justify making it hardcore combat sim only (ignoring the sandbox elite always was and the options for other paths FD tries to provide tools for) 'its called elite DANGEROUS' etc etc. im sure we have all seen it. thats why i said fun for the most people. the combat rank mechanism is straigjht out of the original game almost unchanged. idk if they had had the hardware we do now back then, they would have made combat rank a one way steady accumulation of kills. they would have based it more dynamically, going both up and down, and tracked number of kills separately and by the rank of the npc/player killed and ship both the player and the enemy were in. (they could use those to tailor the npcs generated to those who need more challenge that way.

the lore issue, i think some things (combat rank for instance) you could make more fitting to the universe by changing from the original 1984 game. but elite was originally a single play game, and it shows when you try to add multi-player multicrew. the teleport breaks things lore wise for me. yet the instant respawn at a station i can believe - if im in induced stasis coma in the escape pod for the duration of the rescue.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Insisting on realism in a game where the most valuable commodity in the galaxy is poo.

 

[dukrous]

In sum, naturalism is what we're craving in ED, not realism. The challenge is for us, as a community, to understand that this what we say we want and help FDev by providing feedback about how their design is creating or could create more immersive and enjoyable gameplay.

I've long said that verisimilitude, not reality, is what people want, but you said way better than me. Bravo.

 

[Flavourless]

Insisting on realism in a game where the most valuable commodity in the galaxy is poo.

Agree that Elite's most valuable commodity is the model of the galaxy.
That is why treating it as a tiny corner of the room where everything is attainable and reachable in a few moments is poo. (no, not biowaste)

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I think we should look forward and remember that Einstein (Relativity) is not the end of ALL knowledge.
Anyone ever read Richard Feynman? Dark Energy (Unified Theory) are after all, STILL mysteries.

This doesn't mean you can 'magic' Rare Goods from Sol to Soothis (sorry)
But it also doesn't mean our current concepts of reality are all 100%

You could say the same about Newton
Relativity does not say that Newtonian physics is wrong. On the contrary, it shows that it is an exceeding good approximation.
You just need to understand the limits.

Relativity will still be valid in 3300, even if general/special/quantum are unified - giving better understanding of where its limits are.

The idea that technology in the future will be unrecognizable is pure bunkum.

 

[Toumal]

Good post, but I'd replace "naturalism" with "consistency". ED doesn't have to be completely realistic, but it should be consistent within its own world.

 

[Rakaposhi]

I agree that the word realism is misplaced when used in the context of the ED game. I think what most people really want is "believable", which sits well alongside your post about naturalism. The two are closely linked.

Part of that is creating a game that just looks and feels right, and the other half is writing plausible enough fluff to back up the game mechanics required for balanced gameplay.

Frontier have done a terrific job so far IMO.

 

[CmdrChorusLindarr]

Hmmm not so imo, lets take 3d printing of ships to cover ship transfer, if this is the case then surely all parts of ships inc computer components etc woukd be 3d printed as well..... Infact the only trade items would be the materials used in the makeup of the 3d printout.

The problem is true of the slfs as well of course why ismwhy personally i am not a fan of it there either personally. Far better for FD to have had modular construction of slfs on the fly imo as the explanation but that ship has sailed.

I guess my core point is that it wouldn't take you 5 mins (as you just demonstrated) to come up with an explanation for the instant ship transfer and instant SLF production mechanics, that was both consistent with the game lore and thus plausible. With the example of SLFs many of its detractors simply raged against the idea of it being instant. That was the part they had a problem with, in spite of any potential consistency of the fluff that tried to explain it.

I think the OP is right in this regard. Consistency with the lore alone is never really the issue for the vocal detractors of certain ideas within the playerbase. It's really about immersion for them, or the "extent to which the game allows them to suspend their disbelief".

Of course, consistency is a part of that, as a lack of consistency is invariably immersion-breaking. But it's only a part. I think many players have a dream for what they want Elite to ultimately become (i.e. a completely immersive space sim, combining ship and personal space legs gameplay), and any short-term QoL mechanics that stand opposed to that dream will get instantly rejected by this player group (e.g. instant ship transfers, multicrew via jump in-out galaxy-wide telepresence), regardless of the fact that the associated mechanics required to bring their dream into fruition don't exist yet and may not for a good amount of time to come.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

To be enjoyable, games like Elite require a suspension of disbelief on the part of the player in order to maintain the illusion of being a space pilot in some future civilisation.

As FD makes changes to the internal rules as to how the game universe functions, such as the latest example, galaxy wide teleportation/telepresence some players find that they are no longer able to suspend their disbelief, and therefore enjoy the game less. Others are able to ignore the logical inconsistencies and/or rationalise them.

If FD continues to break the internal logic of the game in pursuit of adding features in the easiest possible way, then the proportion of those players who's enjoyment of the game is affected will continue to grow.


Though I have been able to just "not think about" the problems so far, I am sure at some point I will be on the other side of the fence.

This is my issue as well. I have been glossing over the holes, but the more there are the more difficult it becomes, and when I can't do it anymore it will be time to uninstall the game.

I can live with the instant unlimited range telepresence, but I sure as hell don't like it.

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I guess my core point is that it wouldn't take you 5 mins (as you just demonstrated) to come up with an explanation for the instant ship transfer and instant SLF production mechanics, that was both consistent with the game lore and thus plausible. With the example of SLFs many of its detractors simply raged against the idea of it being instant. That was the part they had a problem with, in spite of any potential consistency of the fluff that tried to explain it.

I think the OP is right in this regard. Consistency with the lore alone is never really the issue for the vocal detractors of certain ideas within the playerbase. It's really about immersion for them, or the "extent to which the game allows them to suspend their disbelief".

Of course, consistency is a part of that, as a lack of consistency is invariably immersion-breaking. But it's only a part. I think many players have a dream for what they want Elite to ultimately become (i.e. a completely immersive space sim, combining ship and personal space legs gameplay), and any short-term QoL mechanics that stand opposed to that dream will get instantly rejected by this player group (e.g. instant ship transfers, multicrew via jump in-out galaxy-wide telepresence), regardless of the fact that the associated mechanics required to bring their dream into fruition don't exist yet and may not for a good amount of time to come.

But the lore, peoples ability to suspend their disbelief and immersion are all linked. To suspend your disbelief there need to be ways to do that within the existing lore of the game, and that helps with the immersion as well.

They are all connected. There are already holes in the lore, but I can gloss over them, but the more there are the more difficult it is to suspend my disbelief in a game, and the more difficult it is to get immersed.

If they wanted to make multicrew a minigame without any lore involved, there are far better and easier ways to do it.