Why do RPGs, even indie ones, not make use of more immersive sim elements?

[behold_a_man]

Like what?

From Original Sin 1:
a) Pyramids that allow you to circumvent the entire 'profane' part of the game - if you have characters strong enough to throw them. Generalizing, the ability to move items around the world.
b) The ability to utilize the weather (albeit in a limited fashion)
c) The teleport spell, and more generally, the ability to use spells for exploration.
d) Some aspects of character development: I remember, for example, the ability to heal from fire - which I'm not sure the developers intended and is a consequence of their wacky perk system.
I seldom felt confined by the mechanics and 'intended solutions' in this game.

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

Interacting with the world is fun, and rpgs should always strive to give the player more options in how to do it.

I agree, thats why I made this thread because it's weird most RPGs DON'T do this.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

TES games started as life-sims and are more immersive simmy these days

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

soulash

Too bad it's a roguelike. Roguelikes have a lot of cool mechanics like i'd expect from a "2D RPG Immersive sim" but their level design sucks by nature of being procgen.

handsome fella in here wrote a review. tldr its not procgen

Even if it isn't the game doesn't have a very well thought out level design from what I have seen of it.

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

Like what?

From Original Sin 1:
a) Pyramids that allow you to circumvent the entire 'profane' part of the game - if you have characters strong enough to throw them. Generalizing, the ability to move items around the world.
b) The ability to utilize the weather (albeit in a limited fashion)
c) The teleport spell, and more generally, the ability to use spells for exploration.
d) Some aspects of character development: I remember, for example, the ability to heal from fire - which I'm not sure the developers intended and is a consequence of their wacky perk system.
I seldom felt confined by the mechanics and 'intended solutions' in this game.

Yea and then there's also telekinesis. Oh and pickpocketing, being able to kill all npcs, etc.

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

TES games started as life-sims and are more immersive simmy these days

Ehhh they have some immersive sim esque mechanics but they really don't utilize it. They did a little in morrowind but in skyrim you don't even have an "unlock door" spell anymore.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

TES games started as life-sims and are more immersive simmy these days

Ehhh they have some immersive sim esque mechanics but they really don't utilize it. They did a little in morrowind but in skyrim you don't even have an "unlock door" spell anymore.

Admittedly, i haven't played Skyrim without mods since 2011, and my go-to magic mod has unlock spells and i assumed they were part of the base game.

 

[agris]

Like what?

From Original Sin 1:
a) Pyramids that allow you to circumvent the entire 'profane' part of the game - if you have characters strong enough to throw them. Generalizing, the ability to move items around the world.
b) The ability to utilize the weather (albeit in a limited fashion)
c) The teleport spell, and more generally, the ability to use spells for exploration.
d) Some aspects of character development: I remember, for example, the ability to heal from fire - which I'm not sure the developers intended and is a consequence of their wacky perk system.
I seldom felt confined by the mechanics and 'intended solutions' in this game.

Yea and then there's also telekinesis. Oh and pickpocketing, being able to kill all npcs, etc.

...those aren't "immersive simulation" features though. or rather, maybe (b) could be but there's not enough detail to know.

is imsim like the inverse of fascist, it means whatever things you like?

 

[Tyranicon]

RPGs with imsim elements can and have worked before. However, consider the following: Imsim design philosophy sort of requires a game to be built around it, not just having elements of it. This is often too much work for RPG devs.

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

Like what?

From Original Sin 1:
a) Pyramids that allow you to circumvent the entire 'profane' part of the game - if you have characters strong enough to throw them. Generalizing, the ability to move items around the world.
b) The ability to utilize the weather (albeit in a limited fashion)
c) The teleport spell, and more generally, the ability to use spells for exploration.
d) Some aspects of character development: I remember, for example, the ability to heal from fire - which I'm not sure the developers intended and is a consequence of their wacky perk system.
I seldom felt confined by the mechanics and 'intended solutions' in this game.

Yea and then there's also telekinesis. Oh and pickpocketing, being able to kill all npcs, etc.

...those aren't "immersive simulation" features though. or rather, maybe (b) could be but there's not enough detail to know.

is imsim like the inverse of fascist, it means whatever things you like?

Immersive sim is a design philosophy that emphasizes player choice and lets them solve issues in a multitude of ways. If you have a quest for exampe, where you need to get a certain item from an npc, being able to either pickpocket them, kill them, or convince them to give it to you would be in the line of immersive sim philosophy. Extra plus points if there's ways to solve the quest that the designers did not even think of.

Part of your confusion comes from the fact that a lot of "immersive sim elements" have in the years since 2000 been incorporated into non-immersive sim games. Also being able to kill npcs/pickpocket them on its own is not enough to be an imsim. It's about the broader design philosophy behind the game.

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

RPGs with imsim elements can and have worked before. However, consider the following: Imsim design philosophy sort of requires a game to be built around it, not just having elements of it. This is often too much work for RPG devs.

I understand that. It is a shame more indies don't do that though.

 

[behold_a_man]

...those aren't "immersive simulation" features though. or rather, maybe (b) could be but there's not enough detail to know.

is imsim like the inverse of fascist, it means whatever things you like?

Do you know any elegant, cohesive definition of an immersive sim? The best I can think of is: 'Knowing fully the game's mechanics, the harder it is to predict their implications resulting from the player's choices, the closer the game is to an immersive sim'. Surely, it does not make sense always (for example, in a completely indeterministic game), but it should most of the time.

 

[agris]

...those aren't "immersive simulation" features though. or rather, maybe (b) could be but there's not enough detail to know.

is imsim like the inverse of fascist, it means whatever things you like?

Do you know any elegant, cohesive definition of an immersive sim? The best I can think of is: 'Knowing fully the game's mechanics, the harder it is to predict their implications resulting from the player's choices, the closer the game is to an immersive sim'. Surely, it does not make sense always (for example, in a completely indeterministic game), but it should most of the time.

no, not really. i've seen sperging about it in Prey (2017)'s thread, but I think of it as emergent solutions to problems that arise out of the mechanics of the game, rather than "designer placed key ring on bailiff" so you can (a) buy, (b) steal, or (c) loot it from him. the other side is emergent _problems_ that arise from mechanical complexity, the solutions to which could not be anticipated by the designers as the problem itself was not.

i recognize these aren't great definitions, but i'm not really into imsims either. i do know that the posts I quoted could be describing fallout 1 (aside from the weather comment), and that's not an imsim, it's a cRPG.

 

[std::namespace]

You'd think it's not that hard to implement being able to destroy walls, move objects, etc. especially if the game is a 2D rpg?

a single dev is 200k a year
your walls dont sell

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I think Larian's inspiration comes mostly from Ultima VII, which you could call "immersive sim" just as well, although the possibilities that game offers in terms of interaction with the world don't have much bearing in what you're supposed to be doing in terms of progress, which iirc is supposed to be the motto of immersive sims. It's more of a demonstration of technical ability and inherent possibilities in the genre. A lot of its features have been copied by Bethesda, Larian, Piranha Bytes and others. Dragging and dropping objects, NPC schedules, dynamic stealth and crime, crafting from objects in the map, destroying tiles, etc. With varying degrees of success, to say the least.

It's pretty clear that implementing these features is still a huge challenge technically. Bethesda still manages to embarrass itself with their derpy NPCs 30 years after U7 and UU. In conceptual terms, one can't say they've innovated much in this regard either. They're the biggest RPG studio and they're the self-proclaimed champions of immersion, so I guess they set a bad example. The common wisdom nowadays is that if you want a lot of systems gameplay, you should mess around with roguelikes.

I haven't played BG3, but I played D:OS. It did have some interesting world interaction, particularly in combat, even if it felt somewhat gimmicky and crude by relying on stuff like oil barrels, which obviously have no other purpose than being set on fire during combat. There's a difference between world interaction as part of tactical combat and true systems gameplay. But maybe their success will inspire others to develop these ideas further.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Part of your confusion comes from the fact that a lot of "immersive sim elements" have in the years since 2000 been incorporated into non-immersive sim games. Also being able to kill npcs/pickpocket them on its own is not enough to be an imsim. It's about the broader design philosophy behind the game.

Maybe it's because I don't like the genre especially but to me immersive sim is having vents to crawl around in, some kind of heavy object to move if I have a high enough stat and random junk to litter my inventory. Being able to steal, kill or talk to get what you want is now standard RPG. But having enough strength to move a dumpster so you can jump a fence and enter the police HQ via the vent system is an IS game IMO. It allows emergent game play rather than having specific solutions.

Bit off topic but it actually annoyed me when Human revolution added ways to talk down the bosses. I liked the idea that the game said "some people can't be reasoned with no matter what." I felt like giving you a way to talk around it removed a problem players should have been forced to solve themselves if they wanted to do a talky-build. Same way I think there should be things you absolutely should not fuck with as they will just gun you down and the murder hobo has to find a way to deal with Ed-209 counting down knowing violence doesn't work. Immersive sims shouldn't allow you to make "the charisma build" "The gun build" or "The melee build". It should present a variety of challenges where solutions are up to the player and some times the only solution is to break your 'no violence, speech check only' or accept you can't get past/enter that area.

 

[Dave the Druid]

1. You have to build a lot of immersive sim systems in right from the start. You can't just bolt them onto an RPG midway through development (well, you can try but it's gonna cause problems.) Look at something like Thief's Act/React system for a good example of this
2. 2D games generally aren't immersive sims (not saying they can't be but the whole reason why Looking Glass called Ultima Underworld a dungeon simulator in the first place was because it was in 3D... and a dungeon)
3. No one know wtf an immersive sim is anymore because the wikipedia article is hot garbage that cites shit youtube video essays and really bad opinion pieces (many of which are citing the wikipedia article too) and that's poisoned the well as far as what immersive sim actually means. Which is funny since Looking Glass themselves were really clear about what it actually means back in the day and it was unironically more well defined than a term like 'role-playing game' right from the start.

Here's just 2 random examples from the wikipedia page and somehow it's not even the worst bit of writing about immersive sims on the internet, it's just the most influential and widely spread bit of bad information on the net:

 

[Butter]

Bethesda have never made an immersive sim, and I'm tired of retarded normies parroting this garbage.

 

[Dave the Druid]

Bethesda have never made an immersive sim, and I'm tired of retarded normies parroting this garbage.

You can actually find quotes from both Looking Glass and Ion Storm in 1997 using Daggerfall as an example of WHAT NOT TO DO
Looking Glass:

Deus Ex design document

(It's worth noting that they praise the Ultima series elsewhere in the doc)

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

The best immersive sim feature I have yet seen in a RPG is in Might and Magic 3,4,5.
It's a viable exploit called Nepotism.
1) Money in a bank earns interest.
2) Characters can grow old and die.
3) You can spend a week of game time doing manual labor for paltry amounts, earning interest.

Combine these 3 features and after having found your first decent sum of gold in a dungeon or from a reward, you can work your initial party to old age, then create a 2nd fresh young party to inherit that money. Rinse and repeat as you feel. Your final heroes will start with a huge advantage with the accumulated wealth of their dead relatives and be able to train to level 250 come the end of the game (Training is the money sink in those games).

Nepotism.

Just like real life.

 

[Roguey]

The thing about any given philosophy: not everyone will agree with it.

 

[Butter]

The thing about any given philosophy: not everyone will agree with it.

That's what mass graves are for.

 

[Old Hans]

Bethesda have never made an immersive sim, and I'm tired of retarded normies parroting this garbage.

You can actually find quotes from both Looking Glass and Ion Storm in 1997 using Daggerfall as an example of WHAT NOT TO DO
Looking Glass:

Deus Ex design document

(It's worth noting that they praise the Ultima series elsewhere in the doc)

I love how they keep shitting on daggerfall

 

[OttoQuitmarck]

Bethesda have never made an immersive sim, and I'm tired of retarded normies parroting this garbage.

You can actually find quotes from both Looking Glass and Ion Storm in 1997 using Daggerfall as an example of WHAT NOT TO DO
Looking Glass:

Deus Ex design document

(It's worth noting that they praise the Ultima series elsewhere in the doc)

I love how they keep shitting on daggerfall

Even though its the GOAT. Smh my head.

 

[Dave the Druid]

Oh you can like Daggerfall all you want, but it ain't an immersive sim. Play the Ultima Underworlds and you'll see the difference.

Also, and I know this is pedantic but, Smh means 'shaking my head' so you just said "shaking my head my head"