First person on a computer monitor is NOT "immersive". Its very unnaturally limited.
The natural view of a human being is almost 180 degree in front of us. And if we, thanks to directional hearing, notice something behind us, we can turn the head in a split second.
This is much closer to what third person view offers. Which is thus more realistic, unless you have a 360 degree montior (including up and down) and directional sound.
<snip>.
I think you've got First person and Third Person a bit backwards. Basically, if you are seeing your back, you are in a third person view. I personally find First person to be the most immersive, but that's a subjective opinion. Others may find a third person more immersive.
That isn't really subjective. Immersion is the result of realism and other factors that connect someone to a fantasy game, movie, etc. Seeing it from their perspective is always more realistic.
Whether one thinks its best or "better", is subjective.
Theres no doubt, first person is limited, but its better for connecting the player to their character. Its one of the reasons people have such fond memories of early EQ. Thats all there was originally.
Yep, it is a subjective matter in terms of what is better, but I find staring at the character I am playing to be completely immersion breaking. Also, I prefer the game play element of a limited view in that it creates tension and the fear of something sneaking up or not being able to see everything while you are running or fighting, etc.... it creates a nice sense of anxiety in play.
I think of aspects like kiting mobs in a game. With first person, you can't see your surrounding area all at once. You have the mob chasing you so you constantly have to look around and keep checking the area as you kite the mob. Often, this can easily result in you running into another mob which creates issues. With a 3rd person view, that game play element is completely lost and kiting becomes some boring mind numbing job. It is funny how a simple perspective change can completely trivialize a certain game play element.
Looks are very important to me. I like a robust system implemented to style the character the way I want. I'd spend hours in CoH creating a specific toon that I wanted to play. The Sims 4 has quite a nice system for developing a character. Getting that right cheekbone arch, or the right symmetry of the nose and face, are things I like to do when creating a character. Especially, if I have to look at them for long periods of time.
There is nothing wrong with spending time on your characters look. Its an RPG. Long before there were any SIMs, there were people roleplaying and creating a particular look to better play the role.
It was a sub culture in PnP games, never the main focus of the game aside from basic descriptions. Nothing like what we see today in games. Heck, even cRPGs didn't put much effort into it. The 80's games (gold box) had character dolls, but the "visual" look of items were merely to give a basic difference in appearance to segregate items. Even games like Baldur's gate which had actually different appearance gear didn't have that much variation in look.
The point is, the "look" of your character became much more of a thing with MMOs, especially when they went 3rd person and people started obsessing about how they looked because they sat looking at their character 24/7.
My points aren't to say that people should disregard their looks, or that anyone who likes to spend time on such is wrong. The point is for those who think that it is the entire point, well... they are defeating the entire point of a game.
Roleplay goes well beyond video games. Sounds like you just don't want it, so you are reaching to find collaborating evidence. Obviously older games lacked customization, they were older games. Its become increasingly common because of the visual fidelity of modern games and the availability of art assets.
I appreciate that you want them to focus on the important things like gameplay over the cosmetics and we are on the same page when it comes to worn armor being visible, not hidden behind "wardrobe gear." But I just can't get behind putting aside aesthetics completely in an RPG.
Just as you argue in favor of facilitating the role of traders, so should they facilitate roleplay in general.
Roleplay goes well beyond video games. Sounds like you just don't want it, so you are reaching to find collaborating evidence. Obviously older games lacked customization, they were older games. Its become increasingly common because of the visual fidelity of modern games and the availability of art assets.
I appreciate that you want them to focus on the important things like gameplay over the cosmetics and we are on the same page when it comes to worn armor being visible, not hidden behind "wardrobe gear." But I just can't get behind putting aside aesthetics completely in an RPG.
Just as you argue in favor of facilitating the role of traders, so should they facilitate roleplay in general.
Well, I view role play as a game element, not a non-game one. I never said I wanted to put them aside completely, that was some of straw mans some where implying. Game play should be the priority first and just like the trader example, aesthetics should also be a form of game play.
I am all for role play, providing role play is actually playing a role and not an exercise in improvisation where rules are bent or dismissed because someone wants the freedom to make up what they like. You could fancy yourself a flying bird all of a sudden in D&D, but it wouldn't dismiss the rules of gravity nor have any effect on your ability to change the rate of your decent. My point is, role play should not dismiss game play as without the game play, there is no point in this game. It is a supplemental, an accent, not a driver which was my point to the poster I questioned concerning it.
Ok here is a hypothetical; You are playing a game you love. The race you like the looks of best is at a disadvantage of 2 mana regen - not world changing, but also not insignificant. Would you give up the 2 mana regen for the better look? Or are looks only important so far as you dont have to give up anything for them?
Ok here is a hypothetical; You are playing a game you love. The race you like the looks of best is at a disadvantage of 2 man regen - not world changing, but also not insignificant. Would you give up the 2 mana regen for the better look? Or are looks only important so far as you dont have to give up anything for them?
Me personally? No. I pick the best race for the class focus I am going. If I am playing a wizard designed around intelligence, I pick a race that does better at such with intelligence bonus. That is me though, to each their own.
Here is where I draw the line though. When a person makes a selection that hampers their game play (ie picking a race that is at odds with a class choice) and then complains that the game play elements is infringing on their "role play". They then make arguments like "Why can't I play the dumbest race and be a brilliant powerful wizard of special and unique power!" which want to disregard game play for the sake of "role play".
This I have a problem with. You see, I see true role play as someone playing a role within a game, who sees the role play as a challenge, not an excuse to justify bending rules to get what they want.
Let me give you an example. I GMd one early version of a D&D session with a guy who wanted to role play a Dwarf who fancied themselves as a magician. Well, back then dwarfs were highly resistant to magic and so the base rules disallowed such a focus. I allowed it, but his fail rate of casting a spell was beyond ridiculous. That is, most of the spells he cast failed. He accepted this, even made it this whole focus of his story progression. Needless to say, there where many encounters where he was entirely useless, often spending his time fumbling about his books and assuring his party it would work this time for sure.
My point is, his role play was rooted in reality of the system. He didn't expect to play the role as he chose which was counter to every game play mechanic and have it all thrown on its head to cater to him. He accepted the limitations of his choice and played his role.
This is what I expect people who are truly interested in "role play" to do. To accept the system and the limitations of their choice and play with accordingly. Unfortunately, role play is all too often used as a trump card to justify any sort of "I want" breech of game play or design.
I spend more time on my character looks, whether it be armor or dyes or weapons, than any other aspect of my game time.
Logically, you have stated you do not care about anything other than your appearance, that how you look is what you spend most of your time in game playing.
Not only did i not say i didn't care about anything else, but i went on to explain in more depth in the very post you're quoting.
There are no games out there with great game play (ie EQ style MMOs with proper risk/reward, etc..) so there is nothing for me to play. On the other side, there are tons of games out there with lots of attention to flashy graphics and hours upon hours of customization to looks, clothing, and many tools for such.
Every game I have enjoyed, that focused on game play was eventually destroyed to cater to those who wanted not a game, but were more interested in entertaining gimmicks such as playing dress up, spending hours emoting and playing with toys. Game play was made secondary to focus on such and so many people like me have nothing.
So while I understand people wanting a given look or certain options in play, if they yet again cater to that, spending time appealing to non-game play aspects it will be at the cost of game play systems because this team is not a huge one and every second of development time is choice of priority and value.
To say correlation does not make causation does not begin to explain this. This is more like non-correlation does not make causation.
As Raph Koster once pointed out: vanilla WoW, with every zones packed with quests leading you from one area to the next, was far more expensive than any previous MMORPG. That's right. All that hand holding and the loss of risk/reward was actually far more expensive to develop than the old games.
The idea that the loss of risk/reward was because the developers were spending all their resources on visuals makes no sense when high risk/reward systems are much cheaper to implement than modern hand-holding systems. These modern games that you claim are neglecting game play to develop visuals and toys are actually spending vastly more on game play than the old games you liked.
Ok here is a hypothetical; You are playing a game you love.
The race you like the looks of best is at a disadvantage of 2 mana regen
- not world changing, but also not insignificant. Would you give up
the 2 mana regen for the better look? Or are looks only important so
far as you dont have to give up anything for them?
Err ... thats TOO hypothetical, actually. You're simply
describing an unbalanced race. If a race has a disadvantage, it needs an
advantage, too.
What I asked about in the poll question was targeted for example at a Vanguard player that would play a Highelf Monk.
In
Vanguard, Human races could spent 14 points for each level on stats,
with a maximum of 5 in any stat, while non-human races like Highelf got a
fixed bonus of 4 points, depending upon race, and could spent 10 more
points, up to 4 in any stat. Specifically the fixed bonus of 4 points
could be of the form 3 points in one stat, 1 in another. This was true
for Lesser Giant (+3 Strength, +1 Constitution), Halfling (+3 Dexterity,
+1 Wisdom), Dwarf (+3 Constitution, +1 Wisdom), Goblin (+3 Vitality, +1
Intelligence), Highelf (+3 Wisdom, +1 Intelligence) and Gnome (+3
Intelligence, +1 Constitution). With the +4 you could spent from the 10
other points, you could get to +7 in this stat.
Now the WIS rating in Vanguard gave your character mana and critical spell hits. NOTHING ELSE.
And
the Vanguard Monk class ... did not use mana at all, and didnt cast
offensive spells, ever, either. So that would be a really weak combo to
play, you waste 3 points on Wis for absolutely zip, nada, nothing. Would
still be pretty though. After all, Highelves have been quite pretty in
Vanguard.
And yes, thats the kind of trade many people did in Vanguard.
For
example when I started as Darkelf, I accepted +2 Intelligence, +1
Wisdom, +1 Dexterity for my Cleric. Neither Intelligence nor Dexterity
did me much good. Well, in the beginning they gave me +10% to healing
spells as a buff from my summon, so that was OK. Soon after they bugged
that - the 10% to healing would no longer apply to my healing over time
spells, which was the main means I healed. Even later they bugged that
even more - the summon wouldnt stay, it would just appear, buff me, and
be gone again. Eww.
Well, they quickly introduced Affinities for
Clerics, so I ended up choosing Death, which gave me a lot of necromancy
themed spells, and put my +2 Int racial into doing anything.
My
second character choice was being an Arab (Qaliathari Human), for their
uber racial, a 10 sec invul on a 30 min recast timer. Obviously, as a human race, I could choose
my stats in a quite optimal way for my class (+5 Strength, +5
Constitution, +4 Intelligence for a Dread Knight). So I didnt compromise
with that character at all, and it certainly showed.
I love how everybody loves to complain about the skimpiness of female armor, but nobody ever complains about massively oversize shoulder armor that would have you impale your own face, or boot so large you wouldn't realistically be able to bend your knees, or helmets that would be impossible to see out of.
I you.
While we're sniping at realism, how about the three tons of metal ore you're carrying around in your backpack (while swimming)? That 200 pound, seven-foot sword?
"Realism" is an all-or-nothing switch. But games that are too realistic aren't necessarily a lot of fun. You took a sword wound to the chest? If you survive, several months of recovery time, minimum. As you age, you don't grow stronger, you slow down...arthritis, accumulating scars. Disease. Malnutrition. Simple weariness, food and drink, bandages don't 'fix' wounds.
What? Magic gets you around those? What's this magic stuff, is it realistic?
"Critical Hits," another "realistic" system that's horrific bad to actually play with in an MMO setting. Death by Dice, yay!
For me, graphics/looks are a "is it good enough", once its past "good enough" I don't really care about the extras. So what's "good enough", well as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, "I know it when I see it"
WoW took a LONG time for me to get over the graphics, and frankly i only played it because literally all of my friends from EQ went to WoW (or went to EQ2 for a couple months, then went to WoW).
If a game does look terrible enough, i won't play it based simply on that. As someone above said, its a matter of immersion. If i can't get invested in the world and my character, i can't get invested into the game.
All that being said, just from the current few screenshots they have released. I am more than happy with where Pantheon stands graphically. Would i be happy if it looked better? Sure. Would i not play it because the graphics weren't good enough? No.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I love how everybody loves to complain about the skimpiness of female armor, but nobody ever complains about massively oversize shoulder armor that would have you impale your own face, or boot so large you wouldn't realistically be able to bend your knees, or helmets that would be impossible to see out of.
I you.
While we're sniping at realism, how about the three tons of metal ore you're carrying around in your backpack (while swimming)? That 200 pound, seven-foot sword?
"Realism" is an all-or-nothing switch. But games that are too realistic aren't necessarily a lot of fun. You took a sword wound to the chest? If you survive, several months of recovery time, minimum. As you age, you don't grow stronger, you slow down...arthritis, accumulating scars. Disease. Malnutrition. Simple weariness, food and drink, bandages.
What? Magic gets you around those? What's this magic stuff, is it realistic?
"Critical Hits," another "realistic" system that's horrific bad to actually play with in an MMO setting. Death by Dice, yay!
Realism is absolutely NOT an all or nothing switch. There is absolutely a break point. For some people, like me and the guy i quoted. Having shoulders and weapons and armor that are so massive that they're clipping into each other, your face, the ground, etc, is the height of stupidity. Its the same reason a lot of us can't get into anime. People jumping 8 billion feet into the air, and massive robots and swords that are 4 times the size of the person carrying them. It just gets too a point where suspension of disbelief isn't enough. It also depends on the person. For example, because i am a firearms enthusiast, if a movie or tv show does the gun "stuff" badly enough, i can't get past it, its literally impossible for me not to constantly focus on it and then i can't enjoy it. Or like a buddy of mine who is a physicist, its difficult for him to watch almost any scifi show because he is constantly face palming.
However as you said, it can go the other way. Part of it being a fantasy game is, you guessed it, fantasy. Star Wars for example was way more popular than Star Trek for a number of reasons, and in my opinion, one of them was that they weren't constantly trying to use techno babble mumbo jumbo to "explain" why things were what they were. They were internally consistent, and thats all that mattered.
And no, critical hits are actually cool. They add excitement to the combat. As you said, RNG can be a huge issue, but nobody wants to play a game where every time you swing and hit you do EXACTLY the same range of damage. The issue is when the game goes too apeshit, and you are critting more than you aren't. See any Blizzard game for examples.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I spend more time on my character looks, whether it be armor or dyes or weapons, than any other aspect of my game time.
Logically, you have stated you do not care about anything other than your appearance, that how you look is what you spend most of your time in game playing.
Not only did i not say i didn't care about anything else, but i went on to explain in more depth in the very post you're quoting.
You claimed it your primary focus, that you spend more time on it than anything else. I asked you specifically why you would play a game that doesn't focus on that if that is your main goal.
There are no games out there with great game play (ie EQ style MMOs with proper risk/reward, etc..) so there is nothing for me to play. On the other side, there are tons of games out there with lots of attention to flashy graphics and hours upon hours of customization to looks, clothing, and many tools for such.
Every game I have enjoyed, that focused on game play was eventually destroyed to cater to those who wanted not a game, but were more interested in entertaining gimmicks such as playing dress up, spending hours emoting and playing with toys. Game play was made secondary to focus on such and so many people like me have nothing.
So while I understand people wanting a given look or certain options in play, if they yet again cater to that, spending time appealing to non-game play aspects it will be at the cost of game play systems because this team is not a huge one and every second of development time is choice of priority and value.
To say correlation does not make causation does not begin to explain this. This is more like non-correlation does not make causation.
As Raph Koster once pointed out: vanilla WoW, with every zones packed with quests leading you from one area to the next, was far more expensive than any previous MMORPG. That's right. All that hand holding and the loss of risk/reward was actually far more expensive to develop than the old games.
The idea that the loss of risk/reward was because the developers were spending all their resources on visuals makes no sense when high risk/reward systems are much cheaper to implement than modern hand-holding systems. These modern games that you claim are neglecting game play to develop visuals and toys are actually spending vastly more on game play than the old games you liked.
They are spending much more money to cater to the "entertainment" crowd, not game play. All that hand holding, follow the bouncing ball, easy instant level quest exp, pointless eye candy pets, and dress up gadgets are not game play, they are entertainment gimmicks.
The cost to implement all of those aspects are expensive, as you said, but they aren't game play, they are gimmicks. Game play are systems that the player is set up against to overcome, the focus of a game is to provide obstacles and challenges for the player to compete against be it intellectual, physical, or a combination of both. It is systems which require choices in character progression, processes of betterment to the character so it can be applied to overcome various difficulties in the game. That is game play, not little pets chasing you around, systems that allow you to move one items look to the next, or the close your eyes and roll your face over the keyboard techniques to win any given encounter.
Games today are nothing more than fad gimmicks, the boy bands of the game industry designed for the lowest common denominator to attend to an audience that doesn't like games as much as they like watching hand puppets making fart jokes.
My entire point though was that if they spend time on those things, it takes away from the actual systems that are actually game play and not just entertainment gimmicks.
"Critical Hits," another "realistic" system that's horrific bad to actually play with in an MMO setting. Death by Dice, yay!
I don't see a problem with them. Critical hits and Critical failures are designed to simulate situations where regardless of a given design, plan, or attention, nothing is ever fully in your control.
It depends on the person though. Some people hate statistic games and want to have complete control while they play (ie arcade style) while others like the idea of character development and then testing that attention to development within a given encounter. It really comes down to the type of game someone is seeking.
Hrimnir said:Realism is absolutely NOT an all or nothing switch.
It is for people avoiding hypocrisy.
Let a game without sin cast that particular stone. Since there's no such thing in the mmorpg universe, perhaps we need to suspend our disbelief and keep the realism in the holster.
Playing an mmo, at all, requires us to regularly accept dozens of ridiculously unrealistic premises every time we log in.
Ok here is a hypothetical; You are playing a game you love.
The race you like the looks of best is at a disadvantage of 2 mana regen
- not world changing, but also not insignificant. Would you give up
the 2 mana regen for the better look? Or are looks only important so
far as you dont have to give up anything for them?
Err ... thats TOO hypothetical, actually. You're simply
describing an unbalanced race. If a race has a disadvantage, it needs an
advantage, too.
I think we are talking about the same thing. The fact that I didnt mention any advantage the race gains doesnt imply there isnt one. Im just talking about choosing a pretty race that isnt ideal for your chosen class. If you play a mage then a lesser mana regen is a disadvantage, and I dont think its relevant to mention that the race also has +2 melee attack power to counterbalance. The mage doesnt care about that.
Now its true that a few might go with a nice looking race that isnt ideal, but I think if people are honest with themselves VERY few actually care about looks enough to do it.
Hrimnir said:Realism is absolutely NOT an all or nothing switch.
It is for people avoiding hypocrisy.
Let a game without sin cast that particular stone. Since there's no such thing in the mmorpg universe, perhaps we need to suspend our disbelief and keep the realism in the holster.
Playing an mmo, at all, requires us to regularly accept dozens of ridiculously unrealistic premises every time we log in.
So you contend realism plays no part in suspending your disbelief? Obviously one has to look past the fact that any movie, game or tv show is being viewed through a screen (even if you wear it on your face). After that, anything that is able to smooth that transition between fantasy and reality stands to increase immersion. That means characters, abilities, plots and settings that a person can associate with known reality or a previously established reality (books, movies, cultural historical etc).
I contend that those dwelling on realism (as a method to dismiss games they don't want to like) are deluding themselves, if they claim to embrace "realism" and "MMORPG" concurrently.
Fantasy. A markedly different genre from Non-Fiction.
I contend that those dwelling on realism (as a method to dismiss games they don't want to like) are deluding themselves, if they claim to embrace "realism" and "MMORPG" concurrently.
Fantasy. A markedly different genre from Non-Fiction.
And I think you are deluding yourself if you really think things that constantly remind players they are playing a game isn't an honest distraction and an excuse worthy of discontinuing their play.
Perhaps you should look into "breaking the fourth wall" and why its something of a cardinal sin in the entertainment industry. Here's also some reading to help you better understand the way normal people think about immersion.
And I think you are deluding yourself if you really think things that constantly remind players they are playing a game isn't an honest distraction and an excuse worthy of discontinuing their play.
Good that I don't think that then, isn't it?
But it serves to remind them, occasionally, that playing any of these games at all requires you to routinely accept six impossible things before breakfast. Why quibble over shoulder armor?
(Were it made by anyone other than Blizzard, do you honestly think they'd still bring it up every other day? The way "Big Giant Swords" always evokes Final Fantasy, I suppose. From a graphic design POV, that's a great success; having an art style firmly associated with your company.)
Sorry folks, done. Back to our discussion of art stylistic symmetry.
Comments
I think of aspects like kiting mobs in a game. With first person, you can't see your surrounding area all at once. You have the mob chasing you so you constantly have to look around and keep checking the area as you kite the mob. Often, this can easily result in you running into another mob which creates issues. With a 3rd person view, that game play element is completely lost and kiting becomes some boring mind numbing job. It is funny how a simple perspective change can completely trivialize a certain game play element.
I appreciate that you want them to focus on the important things like gameplay over the cosmetics and we are on the same page when it comes to worn armor being visible, not hidden behind "wardrobe gear." But I just can't get behind putting aside aesthetics completely in an RPG.
Just as you argue in favor of facilitating the role of traders, so should they facilitate roleplay in general.
I am all for role play, providing role play is actually playing a role and not an exercise in improvisation where rules are bent or dismissed because someone wants the freedom to make up what they like. You could fancy yourself a flying bird all of a sudden in D&D, but it wouldn't dismiss the rules of gravity nor have any effect on your ability to change the rate of your decent. My point is, role play should not dismiss game play as without the game play, there is no point in this game. It is a supplemental, an accent, not a driver which was my point to the poster I questioned concerning it.
You are playing a game you love. The race you like the looks of best is at a disadvantage of 2 mana regen - not world changing, but also not insignificant. Would you give up the 2 mana regen for the better look? Or are looks only important so far as you dont have to give up anything for them?
Here is where I draw the line though. When a person makes a selection that hampers their game play (ie picking a race that is at odds with a class choice) and then complains that the game play elements is infringing on their "role play". They then make arguments like "Why can't I play the dumbest race and be a brilliant powerful wizard of special and unique power!" which want to disregard game play for the sake of "role play".
This I have a problem with. You see, I see true role play as someone playing a role within a game, who sees the role play as a challenge, not an excuse to justify bending rules to get what they want.
Let me give you an example. I GMd one early version of a D&D session with a guy who wanted to role play a Dwarf who fancied themselves as a magician. Well, back then dwarfs were highly resistant to magic and so the base rules disallowed such a focus. I allowed it, but his fail rate of casting a spell was beyond ridiculous. That is, most of the spells he cast failed. He accepted this, even made it this whole focus of his story progression. Needless to say, there where many encounters where he was entirely useless, often spending his time fumbling about his books and assuring his party it would work this time for sure.
My point is, his role play was rooted in reality of the system. He didn't expect to play the role as he chose which was counter to every game play mechanic and have it all thrown on its head to cater to him. He accepted the limitations of his choice and played his role.
This is what I expect people who are truly interested in "role play" to do. To accept the system and the limitations of their choice and play with accordingly. Unfortunately, role play is all too often used as a trump card to justify any sort of "I want" breech of game play or design.
Not only did i not say i didn't care about anything else, but i went on to explain in more depth in the very post you're quoting.
As Raph Koster once pointed out: vanilla WoW, with every zones packed with quests leading you from one area to the next, was far more expensive than any previous MMORPG. That's right. All that hand holding and the loss of risk/reward was actually far more expensive to develop than the old games.
The idea that the loss of risk/reward was because the developers were spending all their resources on visuals makes no sense when high risk/reward systems are much cheaper to implement than modern hand-holding systems. These modern games that you claim are neglecting game play to develop visuals and toys are actually spending vastly more on game play than the old games you liked.
But I don't need a slider to change the size of my nose either.
As long as there's some choices for race for every class, and maybe change the color of my hair, I'm fine. I don't need a plethora of options.
What I asked about in the poll question was targeted for example at a Vanguard player that would play a Highelf Monk.
In Vanguard, Human races could spent 14 points for each level on stats, with a maximum of 5 in any stat, while non-human races like Highelf got a fixed bonus of 4 points, depending upon race, and could spent 10 more points, up to 4 in any stat. Specifically the fixed bonus of 4 points could be of the form 3 points in one stat, 1 in another. This was true for Lesser Giant (+3 Strength, +1 Constitution), Halfling (+3 Dexterity, +1 Wisdom), Dwarf (+3 Constitution, +1 Wisdom), Goblin (+3 Vitality, +1 Intelligence), Highelf (+3 Wisdom, +1 Intelligence) and Gnome (+3 Intelligence, +1 Constitution). With the +4 you could spent from the 10 other points, you could get to +7 in this stat.
Now the WIS rating in Vanguard gave your character mana and critical spell hits. NOTHING ELSE.
And the Vanguard Monk class ... did not use mana at all, and didnt cast offensive spells, ever, either. So that would be a really weak combo to play, you waste 3 points on Wis for absolutely zip, nada, nothing. Would still be pretty though. After all, Highelves have been quite pretty in Vanguard.
And yes, thats the kind of trade many people did in Vanguard.
For example when I started as Darkelf, I accepted +2 Intelligence, +1 Wisdom, +1 Dexterity for my Cleric. Neither Intelligence nor Dexterity did me much good. Well, in the beginning they gave me +10% to healing spells as a buff from my summon, so that was OK. Soon after they bugged that - the 10% to healing would no longer apply to my healing over time spells, which was the main means I healed. Even later they bugged that even more - the summon wouldnt stay, it would just appear, buff me, and be gone again. Eww.
Well, they quickly introduced Affinities for Clerics, so I ended up choosing Death, which gave me a lot of necromancy themed spells, and put my +2 Int racial into doing anything.
My second character choice was being an Arab (Qaliathari Human), for their uber racial, a 10 sec invul on a 30 min recast timer. Obviously, as a human race, I could choose my stats in a quite optimal way for my class (+5 Strength, +5 Constitution, +4 Intelligence for a Dread Knight). So I didnt compromise with that character at all, and it certainly showed.
I sure hope race balance in Pantheon will look better than in Vanguard, but theres a thread about that already.
"Realism" is an all-or-nothing switch. But games that are too realistic aren't necessarily a lot of fun. You took a sword wound to the chest? If you survive, several months of recovery time, minimum. As you age, you don't grow stronger, you slow down...arthritis, accumulating scars. Disease. Malnutrition. Simple weariness, food and drink, bandages don't 'fix' wounds.
What? Magic gets you around those? What's this magic stuff, is it realistic?
"Critical Hits," another "realistic" system that's horrific bad to actually play with in an MMO setting. Death by Dice, yay!
WoW took a LONG time for me to get over the graphics, and frankly i only played it because literally all of my friends from EQ went to WoW (or went to EQ2 for a couple months, then went to WoW).
If a game does look terrible enough, i won't play it based simply on that. As someone above said, its a matter of immersion. If i can't get invested in the world and my character, i can't get invested into the game.
All that being said, just from the current few screenshots they have released. I am more than happy with where Pantheon stands graphically. Would i be happy if it looked better? Sure. Would i not play it because the graphics weren't good enough? No.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
However as you said, it can go the other way. Part of it being a fantasy game is, you guessed it, fantasy. Star Wars for example was way more popular than Star Trek for a number of reasons, and in my opinion, one of them was that they weren't constantly trying to use techno babble mumbo jumbo to "explain" why things were what they were. They were internally consistent, and thats all that mattered.
And no, critical hits are actually cool. They add excitement to the combat. As you said, RNG can be a huge issue, but nobody wants to play a game where every time you swing and hit you do EXACTLY the same range of damage. The issue is when the game goes too apeshit, and you are critting more than you aren't. See any Blizzard game for examples.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
So where are we again?
The cost to implement all of those aspects are expensive, as you said, but they aren't game play, they are gimmicks. Game play are systems that the player is set up against to overcome, the focus of a game is to provide obstacles and challenges for the player to compete against be it intellectual, physical, or a combination of both. It is systems which require choices in character progression, processes of betterment to the character so it can be applied to overcome various difficulties in the game. That is game play, not little pets chasing you around, systems that allow you to move one items look to the next, or the close your eyes and roll your face over the keyboard techniques to win any given encounter.
Games today are nothing more than fad gimmicks, the boy bands of the game industry designed for the lowest common denominator to attend to an audience that doesn't like games as much as they like watching hand puppets making fart jokes.
My entire point though was that if they spend time on those things, it takes away from the actual systems that are actually game play and not just entertainment gimmicks.
It depends on the person though. Some people hate statistic games and want to have complete control while they play (ie arcade style) while others like the idea of character development and then testing that attention to development within a given encounter. It really comes down to the type of game someone is seeking.
Let a game without sin cast that particular stone. Since there's no such thing in the mmorpg universe, perhaps we need to suspend our disbelief and keep the realism in the holster.
Playing an mmo, at all, requires us to regularly accept dozens of ridiculously unrealistic premises every time we log in.
I self identify as a monkey.
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
Now its true that a few might go with a nice looking race that isnt ideal, but I think if people are honest with themselves VERY few actually care about looks enough to do it.
Fantasy. A markedly different genre from Non-Fiction.
Perhaps you should look into "breaking the fourth wall" and why its something of a cardinal sin in the entertainment industry. Here's also some reading to help you better understand the way normal people think about immersion.
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/five-films-that-every-mmo-designer-should-watch/
But it serves to remind them, occasionally, that playing any of these games at all requires you to routinely accept six impossible things before breakfast. Why quibble over shoulder armor?
(Were it made by anyone other than Blizzard, do you honestly think they'd still bring it up every other day? The way "Big Giant Swords" always evokes Final Fantasy, I suppose. From a graphic design POV, that's a great success; having an art style firmly associated with your company.)
Sorry folks, done. Back to our discussion of art stylistic symmetry.