I support this, but only if shaving is character skill based, not player skill based.

They should make it a mini-game like lock picking, only you break razors when you don't do it right.

hardcoe mode never added realism. Makes no sense that you can stab a guy in the chest or shoot him in the head and have him still walk around yet you get hit in the hand and you die.

I like a core mode where they don't help you, but they don't hurt you everyone is on even footing.

So, how can there be realism if I put up a shield spell and shoot lighting?

This is the only hardcoe mode that I prefer. Not a dressed up hard difficulty setting.

Or you end up with new scars! And damage with a slight chance of infection.

Worse so, you need to leave home with paper to svck in the bleeding, looking foolish to your enemies

better than toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your boot after you 'dragon shout' on the 'john'

Hehe, I can imagine fighting ogres with little squares of toilet paper speckling my face. That frigid Norse air would be hell.

yeah! an arrow hit to your chest should make you gasping and fall to the ground
or a slash right to the stomach could make you bleed to death and your organs will split open
or a deadly hammer blow to your arms could cripple you and you are doomed forever because you can't even wield a fork

that's going to be fun!

wait... no

If your have the PC version, you should try my http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1198083-relz-arwens-nv-realism-tweaks-thread-7/ (all 4 main modules, with all my options enabled), if you want to experience what I call "hardcoe."

Having to take care of your Needs (eat/drink/sleep) CAN make the game a LOT more challenging . . . but not in the way they were done in Fallout NV.

The food/water/sleep thing never did much for me, but forcing you to use Doctor's Bags to heal your limbs instead of just using stimpaks to heal instantaneously (instead of over time) was enough to get me to do it. Not fond of companions dying on me, though. I would if they didn't act like absolute morons in combat but it's [censored] tedious to babysit them.

In my case, if I request "realistic" things such as starvation, fatigue, dehydration, or receiving damage from bumping into walls or from randomly tripping and falling, I request them as improvements to the tactical and strategic dimensions of the game. I don't believe in adding starvation just to force someone to stop and eat once in a while. A realism element has to have a strong gameplay reason for existing. A hardcoe element should strive to be as fun and as useful as stealth attacks, damage-over-time fire effects, dragons, and branching quests, or it isn't worth considering.

Fatal mistake of not increasing Acrobatics, and never prays at altars/use anything to cure diseases, so he has major endurance loss? Lol, that's just me.

Perhaps he eyeballed a baby wrong, so an angry mob formed to kill him. That's Pedophilia in the original days. Or I think it was... O_O

I'm not going to argue hardcoe was perfect but I loved the hell out of it. It added a bit of depth not a lot but enough that if you didn't prepare correctly you would end up screwed. Though after awhile you just learned to carry the proper amount of food and water with you and it was pretty easy to acquire that stuff but it was a nice foray into realism. I was nervous at first when I first started playing and couldn't decide whether I should turn it on or not but I reasoned if it ruined the game I could just turn it off and I never turned it off and I'm on a second play through now and the thought of going another fallout experience without some form of hardcoe mode there just seems lame.

I like your idea of making it realistic. I think I remember playing something like that once but I can't remember what it was but it was fun. I think they could do hardcoe mode better next time and hope that it is indeed in Skyrim. Thought I don't think it would be Elder Scrolls. Something more serious would work for Fallout but elder scrolls realism mode might be pushing it. Though it would add some fun. Anyway I am just hoping for some hardcoe mode and an actual reward for finishing it.

And now is when you think twice the things and realize that this is a SP game, and that hardcoe mode, if implemented, would be OPTIONAL.

Seriously, I'm getting tired of people who's like "THAT IS BAD, DON'T INCLUDE IT" with things that you can simply deactivate (or directly don't activate).

Locational damage is very interesting, but too much realism isn't suitable for an rpg. Sure, it might be fun, but it takes more away than it's providing.

Optional does not mean feasible. If it did, then Skyrim could have spears, extravagantly-branching storylines, and anything else we want just by making them optional. It is not unreasonable to object to Bethesda working on features we dislike at the expense of features we do.

I don't think spears are precisely "disliked", seeing how many people have claimed for their return. So Bethesda must have their own reason for a certain content to be included or not.

I want the game to be immersive not nightmarish.

I have Fallout 3... and I didnt like it. I found the gaming experience rather flat and got bored with it.

The assassination quests in Oblivion were a highlight for me, so was the magic even if the animations and special effects looked cheap. They had some innovative spells like that of the Staff of Worms, the Staff of Corruption, and even Sheogorath's Staff power which was kinda pointless since you couldnt harm anything while the effect lasted. Neverthless, Sheogorath's Staff did make me feel like a mage with power, able to use magic almost with impunity.

I would prefer that the game just have really good storylines and sub-plots that make it a real adventure.

For many people like me, if you couldn't tell, it makes it more fun. You feel more accomplished.

I disagree id prefer a type of slider system hardcoe mode that allows for a custom hardcoe mode and would prefer that to being able to get married but if i dont get it .It doesnt mean its because they put in marriage or that i think it shouldnt have been put in They work on features they like .By that rational you could say screw dragons they took to long i want my spear,screw everything but what i like most .

Seriously? You want running away from the guards to be easy? Resisting arrest was just ridiculous in Morrowind and Oblivion. They need to give me an incentive to actually go to jail (like, I'd get my ass handed to me if I don't, unless I'm experienced).

I think there Should be a hardcoe Mode and a Realism Mode.

Realism Mode handles the likes of eating, sleeping, etc. whereas hardcoe handles things that would make the game harder. Lack of fast travel, non regenerating magic, etc.

The "Realism Mode" aspect of hardcoe always seems to be the major divide in a hardcoe Mode. This way everyone is happy as larry.

See, the idea behind realism isn't "challenge", or enjoying tasks like eating or sleeping.

The idea behind realism (unsited word really, as it's not supposed to be like the real world; it's supposed to be like Tamriel would be if it wasn't designed as a game, but rather as an actual world - i.e. not the "real" world, but one that works and has no logical flaws; the usual RPG terminology calls this simulation, as opposed to the 'game' and 'story' aspects; look up the Threefold model for details, very simple model that sums stuff up quite nicely; you have gamism which includes all the "fun" aspects designed mainly for that purpose, narrativism/dramatism for what makes a story interesting, and simulationism which is what makes the world you play in seem logically consistent and functional on its own) is that the world makes sense and thus, it is easier for the audience to willingly suspend their disbelief.

The more the audience cares about logic, the more simulation/realism is required in order to make it possible to suspend the disbelief. Also, the mindset of the audience plays a major role. Going with the threefold model again, we generally have audiences who are mainly interested in "fun", mainly interested in "story", or mainly interested in "logic". Of course, every player is interested in every one of these aspects. Including you.

Just imagine a game that was lacking either one of these aspects.

Let's take Morrowind and remove all of the "fun" aspects of it. We now have a logical world with an excellent story - but the player character doesn't do anything but hearing about it or reading about it. He isn't actually involved, nothing 'fun' is going on. The story is still great and everything is logical, but it's still boring because you aren't the hero of the story.

Let's now put the fun back in and take out the story. We now have a believable, realistic world in which the player has complete freedom of what to do. Sadly, nothing interesting happens in that world. There's no Dagoth Ur, no Tribunal, nothing. Just a default fantasy world with nothing going on whatsoever. You wouldn't want to play that, either.

Let's now keep fun and story, but take out realism. We now have a world in which magical unicorns float around through many dimensions (the exact number of which actually varies, though, depending on nothing whatsoever), who have great stories to tell and with the player character unicorn having full freedom. Sadly, nothing makes sense. Pressing W makes you go sideways or backwards at random, because the dimensions randomly shifted or something. Or actually, there's no explanation whatsoever, this dimension model might already bear a certain logic. Nothing that happens has any reason or any consequences, and all these stories make no sense at all, either. You have a completely illogical, inconsistent world that is completely useless and might only be fun for a short while until you realize that nothing you do has any impact on anything, because there is no such thing as a cause-effect correlation.

You can't do without fun, without story, or without 'realism'. Now, this thread is about increasing the 'realism' aspect in Skyrim. Which mainly happens at the expense of the 'fun' aspect. Have a realistic health system, and you'll have to lose the more 'fun' health bar system that gives the player character more health than the average enemy has and prevents one-hit kills happening to the player character. Have a realistic travel system, the requirement to eat and sleep, and you'll have to get rid of the fast and convenient fast travel system and will have to start worrying about finding a bed and food every day, as a player.


Now, why would one want that? Certainly not because it is more fun. And only few people want it for the extra 'challenge' (adding challenge is actually a gamistic aspect and can be done in very unrealistic ways, such as giving enemies more health without explaining why).

No, the reason this is wanted is because people feel not immersed enough into the game world. We have to remember this is a role playing game. In the classical sense, that means the players goal is to forget about the real world and, for a little while, become someone else in a different universe.

Now, if you have health bars floating before your head, or see lots of food lying around everywhere but noone ever eating it in order to survive, you'll stop and think "Wait, something isn't right here", and you're reminded of the fact that it's all just a game.
This is the lack of suspension of disbelief. This is disbelief. This is thinking on a meta-level, about the game, not within the game. This results in the player making decisions that the character wouldn't.

You see two swords. One is better than the other. So you pick the better one.
For some people, this might work. But others are more logically thinking and wish to be immersed. And those have a problem. They suddenly stop and realise: Wait, why the hell did I know which one was better even though the only difference is in the magic effects of these swords which I couldn't possibly have known by just looking at them?
And at this point the thinking player thinks ABOUT the game. And as soon as he does that, he isn't WITHIN the game anymore.


What we, who want more realism, actually ask for is not extra challenge or the joys of going to toilet. We want the game to work in a way that leaves as little opportunities as possible to realise that it is a game. We don't want to be constantly thrown out of our immersion by realising that something's wrong. You play for a day, go to the tavern, and think about getting a bed - then you realize you don't actually need to sleep because it is a game - and boom, your immersion is gone.

Let me take one game as an example for great immersion: Amnesia. There's very few HUD elements, you can do almost nothing but running or hiding, and the damage model is realistic in the sense that you're easily killed. Of course, there's monsters and [censored], but that's part of the game world and explained by lore (which is why the term realism is unsuited to describe this). This game is immensely immersive because you completely forget that it's just a game. Many players get so scared that they have to stop playing because it gets too real. That is excellent game design. Imagine Amnesia with health bars floating around, a minimap to show where the next 'quest item' is, or [censored] like that. That just takes away from the immersion, even if it'd make the game more easily playable. Now, the events in that game all happen in a very short time span. That game doesn't simulate a world that has to work for months. It doesn't matter that the candles never burn down, because for them to do so it'd take hours which you never spend in a room anyway. It doesn't matter that you don't need to eat, because your character wouldn't think of eating and there isn't a situation in which eating would make much sense.

But in an open world RPG, you will inevitably come to think about these things. You'll see an apple on a table and you'll come to think of how you haven't eaten in 10 game days. And at that point, your immersion is gone and you're out of the game. That is, if you're someone who actually cares about immersion to a large degree. Like me, or others demanding a realistic mode.

Which means the best option for Bethesda (assuming the customer is their main interest, not profit, which is obviously wrong): Have as many options in the settings as possible for all of these aspects so the player can decide whether he wants a game that's fun, or just a well told story without much of a challenge, or a believable, although more dangerous and perhaps annoying (need to sleep etc) world.

Realism is just great when implemented properly. I've tried mods that force you to eat every now and then, but that basically meant you had to open your inventory, click on a couple ingredients and you're done. That's not so much fun IMO. However, I believe combat shouldn't be as plain as it was on vanilla Oblivion. It was all about damage vs HP: a bandit could hit you several times with a warhammer, and you'd be just fine, because you had the HP to tank it. If the enemy was weaker than you, you'd ALWAYS win, simply because your HP would cover any mistakes made. The only challenge was fighting stronger foes, but not even that was too hard if you had enough potions with you.
IMO it should be more about the player's skill, if you made a mistake (failed to block an attack for instance) your chances of winning were greatly reduced, and the same for your enemies. If battles didn't last too long, the chances of the weaker fighter winning would be better, and this would make fighting weaker foes interesting as well. Also, you'd have a better chance of beating foes stronger than you (and since we'll be fighting dragons in Skyrim this could make things easier, and more realistic at the same time). I do realize the hero is supposed to have supernatural strength etc, but seriously... killing dragons should require a great deal of player skill and luck. I really hope they make it so that no matter your level, there's always a decent chance the dragon is the one standing in the end of the battle.
If you think of how things are in the real world, winning any fight is always about mistakes: experienced people make less mistakes, but when they fail bad enough, there's nothing to be done. Superior strength, stamina do help, but they can't do miracles.

EDIT: Holy cow, the post above (not mine) is perfect.

actually I installed a mod for FO NV to "enhance" hardcoe mod, cause it was not so hardcoe for me


adn fix time scales so that I don't have to eat or drink every 5 seconds