Remember a 70's TV show called Bonanza, it was a show about the wild west. Every thing was clean and nice, even the dirt roads were nice. And everyone had a shiny Perl handled revolver. And everyone had their very own horse
Speaking of the wild west, Another show was called the Wild Wild West... Same thing.
To much TV
There is a certain charm in that as well. We tend to get trends giving us a lot of the same and not much different though and therin lies the problem.
In most MMOs case we basically get the same world (borrowed from Forgotten realms but usually wioth lless charm), the same mechanics and the same quests. Having a few more realistic alternative with good production values would be a benefit for the genre s ince diversity will attract more players.
A few semi realistic good low fantasy MMOs would be a huge help, it is the type of fantasy most popular in movies, TV shows and books right now so there is certainly an audience for them.
The super realistic ones and for that matter the totally weird ones with zero realism tend to get far less audiience though (but a great game can pull anything off).
I do think there can be too much concern over realism, this is a game after all, not re-enactment.
That is certainly true but some realism makes the game feel more real. Too much and it certainly would become rather boring but you could turn the realism buttom up rather much before that happens since there is almost zero realism right now.
Think like this: GoT have more realism then Wheel of time. Conan have more realism then Lord of the rings. That doesn't make the more realistic IPs less good, just different. And I don't think a bit of different gameplay would hurt the genre right now.
I do think there can be too much concern over realism, this is a game after all, not re-enactment.
Is there? Aside from a few here wants to chop wood or what-not, i don't see the general gaming public complaining.
In fact, look at the popular games. PUBG has no realism at all (really .. an area that magically shrinks). LoL has no realism at all (really ... you have to fight in 3 lanes).
I do think there can be too much concern over realism, this is a game after all, not re-enactment.
Is there? Aside from a few here wants to chop wood or what-not, i don't see the general gaming public complaining.
In fact, look at the popular games. PUBG has no realism at all (really .. an area that magically shrinks). LoL has no realism at all (really ... you have to fight in 3 lanes).
Realism comes on many levels, from what the graphics looks like, to how accurate the combat is, to what methodology is used to prioritise gameplay.
You always like to look to what the largest denominator is saying Nari, nothing else matters. Well would hazard that the only thing that will stop WoW from still being the king in another ten years is the majority have issues with the graphics. Realism matters.
if you decided to have a crafting system that in itself is a nod to realism, it is not all or nothing.
I think the ideals pertaining to realism are basically for greater game play. Anything that expands the world with worldly interaction in it is better. Realism is about involving players into that game world, for greater immersion and entertainment.
I don't see anything wrong with chopping wood for hours to get the resources. If a player doesn't want to do it, they don't have to. However, there is an issue of bots. That's why I like the idea of NPC hirelings. Let them do the work while you're offline. Built in bots, at an in-game cost of course. But just for this sort of manual labor of time consuming nature, at the bottom end of the crafting production. There should be a system for more elaborate crafting that removes bots from it.
Well would hazard that the only thing that will stop WoW from still being the king in another ten years is the majority have issues with the graphics. Realism matters.
wait .. what? Fantasy game has "realistic" graphics? You mean how a ogre looks is "real"? I bet you mean "visual fidelity" .. which is how complex, detailed and nice something looks.
There is no such thing as a realistic looking dragon, because there is no dragon. But the dragon on GOT certainly looks life-like, detailed, and fierce. *Not* real.
I think the ideals pertaining to realism are basically for greater game play. Anything that expands the world with worldly interaction in it is better. Realism is about involving players into that game world, for greater immersion and entertainment.
I don't see anything wrong with chopping wood for hours to get the resources. If a player doesn't want to do it, they don't have to. However, there is an issue of bots. That's why I like the idea of NPC hirelings. Let them do the work while you're offline. Built in bots, at an in-game cost of course. But just for this sort of manual labor of time consuming nature, at the bottom end of the crafting production. There should be a system for more elaborate crafting that removes bots from it.
I think chopping wood for hours might be a bit too much realism and the hireling idea makes you wonder why we just shouldn't buy the timer at the lumber yard.
Now, if you and your guildies make a pallisade, a wooden fort or a taven I can still buy chopping for hours though. For making a couple of longbows on the other hand You are getting into the silly part of the pond.
Consider this: 24 hours in a MMO is usually 4 hours IRL, 3 in some cases. Even with the most primitive means an experiences fletcher can get wood enough to make ratther many bows in that time if he just can find the right wood and he certainly wouldn't cut down tons of firewood while doing that.
So spending hours and hours chopping wood doesn't neccesarily make the game more realistic, unless you are building something large it can be the opposite. The whole cut down 2-4 trees to make a plank and use 4 planks to make a bow doesn't exactly makes much sense.
Now, spending a long time to find just the right tree to cut down for your bow is another matter, I can buy that.
But for the hireling system it would just be more sensible to buy your wood from the woodcutter directly in the amount you need if there isn't a timberyard. If you own a town as a noble you certainly could send out some people to cut wood of course but that is best in a rather specific game.
There is also the question if spending hours cutting wood is fun. Spending some time doing it can be fun but not too much time, we want a MMO, not a lumberjack simulator. In best case you use a bit of realism to create something that is fun to do but don't overdo the realism in cases where it makes the game a boring grind.
I think the ideals pertaining to realism are basically for greater game play. Anything that expands the world with worldly interaction in it is better. Realism is about involving players into that game world, for greater immersion and entertainment.
I don't see anything wrong with chopping wood for hours to get the resources. If a player doesn't want to do it, they don't have to. However, there is an issue of bots. That's why I like the idea of NPC hirelings. Let them do the work while you're offline. Built in bots, at an in-game cost of course. But just for this sort of manual labor of time consuming nature, at the bottom end of the crafting production. There should be a system for more elaborate crafting that removes bots from it.
I think chopping wood for hours might be a bit too much realism and the hireling idea makes you wonder why we just shouldn't buy the timer at the lumber yard.
Now, if you and your guildies make a pallisade, a wooden fort or a taven I can still buy chopping for hours though. For making a couple of longbows on the other hand You are getting into the silly part of the pond.
Consider this: 24 hours in a MMO is usually 4 hours IRL, 3 in some cases. Even with the most primitive means an experiences fletcher can get wood enough to make ratther many bows in that time if he just can find the right wood and he certainly wouldn't cut down tons of firewood while doing that.
So spending hours and hours chopping wood doesn't neccesarily make the game more realistic, unless you are building something large it can be the opposite. The whole cut down 2-4 trees to make a plank and use 4 planks to make a bow doesn't exactly makes much sense.
Now, spending a long time to find just the right tree to cut down for your bow is another matter, I can buy that.
But for the hireling system it would just be more sensible to buy your wood from the woodcutter directly in the amount you need if there isn't a timberyard. If you own a town as a noble you certainly could send out some people to cut wood of course but that is best in a rather specific game.
There is also the question if spending hours cutting wood is fun. Spending some time doing it can be fun but not too much time, we want a MMO, not a lumberjack simulator. In best case you use a bit of realism to create something that is fun to do but don't overdo the realism in cases where it makes the game a boring grind.
We agree on most of that. My comment about NPC hirelings is exactly about large numbers of logs in a world building simulation. But here's a question for you. If the lumber yard can sell the lumber, where's it come from? Why not have NPC hirelings, "owned" by a player tradesman, do the labor? And for those few players who do enjoy such things, the option is open to them, and at a slightly increased profit.
Why not? It's more game play for players who enjoy trades. lol
Edit: Yes, something has to be done as far as time and production rates. Cranking out a hundred bows or swords in 15 minutes of play is rather bad for supply and demand. Making crafting a sub-game is one answer, if it can be entertaining enough. But most players do it for the money too. I also have ideas on that, but it's a different subject. But basically, why can't you soak your bow wood in potion infused water to see what it does for the bow? And why can't you experiment with metal alloys to see what that can do for your swords?
My comment about NPC hirelings is exactly about large numbers of logs in a world building simulation. But here's a question for you. If the lumber yard can sell the lumber, where's it come from? Why not have NPC hirelings, "owned" by a player tradesman, do the labor?
Because that is silly and a waste of resources to code such things.
In fact, boredom is a realistic facts of life. If you want realism, put that in. Work (like cutting lumber) is boring. People do it for the money, not for fun (well, may be i should say not for most people ... for the 3 people in the world who find cutting lumber fun, i apologize) in real world.
We agree on most of that. My comment about NPC hirelings is exactly about large numbers of logs in a world building simulation. But here's a question for you. If the lumber yard can sell the lumber, where's it come from? Why not have NPC hirelings, "owned" by a player tradesman, do the labor? And for those few players who do enjoy such things, the option is open to them, and at a slightly increased profit.
Why not? It's more game play for players who enjoy trades. lol
Edit: Yes, something has to be done as far as time and production rates. Cranking out a hundred bows or swords in 15 minutes of play is rather bad for supply and demand. Making crafting a sub-game is one answer, if it can be entertaining enough. But most players do it for the money too. I also have ideas on that, but it's a different subject. But basically, why can't you soak your bow wood in potion infused water to see what it does for the bow? And why can't you experiment with metal alloys to see what that can do for your swords?
Well, I live basically in the woods myself, why don't I go out and chop trees if I need planks or firewood? Because I am a toolmaker, not a lumberjack, and a few hours overtime would give me more of it then going out in the woods with an axe or a chainsaw for the same time.
An adventurer is a high risk highly paid work, spending time managing hirelings for projects like that takes a lot of time that would be far more profitable spent adventuring. In a sandbox game you can have player run lumbermills and that is fine, not different from owning a tavern or smithy. In a themepark though it seems a bit pointless, save the work to get mats to the harder to find materials instead.
I like your idea of making crafting a subgame though, I don't think it will be easy to make it fun and still taking more work then the standard MMO model though. You don't want players to crank out tons of vendortrash before they can do anything worthwhile (EQ2 already did that, who the h#ll wants 100 tin greatswords?) but neither do you want players to run an advanced minigame everytime someone wants to craft food or arrows. That get boring fast.
My suggestion would be to have a simplified system for simple stuff. Want a basic lvl 10 longsword? Should be fast and easy to craft. Then you have a more advanced system for the really cool stuff and there is a minigame fine since you probably wont craft many of those things each day.
The other hard thing is to figure out how people should improve in crafting. You seems to suggest experimentation as one way of doing that which is fine but I don't think it is enough in itself. Grinding tons of junk is like I said before not a great idea and it have already been done many times.
A possibility would be to learn new things to craft from a master (PC or NPC), some of those can demand that you do certain tasks before you are proven worthy to learn their craft. Here you also could have the players race open up options, a dwarvish smith could maybe learn how to craft a dwarven chainmail while an elf might learn to craft elven bows...
A third thing to consider is how much you want your player to design the appearence of what she makes. Can they name a really cool sword and decide how it should look and maybe even put particle effects on it?
There is a lot of possibilities with crafting that few MMOs tried to explore much, it is usually just treated as a time and money sink which is sad.
We agree on most of that. My comment about NPC hirelings is exactly about large numbers of logs in a world building simulation. But here's a question for you. If the lumber yard can sell the lumber, where's it come from? Why not have NPC hirelings, "owned" by a player tradesman, do the labor? And for those few players who do enjoy such things, the option is open to them, and at a slightly increased profit.
Why not? It's more game play for players who enjoy trades. lol
Edit: Yes, something has to be done as far as time and production rates. Cranking out a hundred bows or swords in 15 minutes of play is rather bad for supply and demand. Making crafting a sub-game is one answer, if it can be entertaining enough. But most players do it for the money too. I also have ideas on that, but it's a different subject. But basically, why can't you soak your bow wood in potion infused water to see what it does for the bow? And why can't you experiment with metal alloys to see what that can do for your swords?
Well, I live basically in the woods myself, why don't I go out and chop trees if I need planks or firewood? Because I am a toolmaker, not a lumberjack, and a few hours overtime would give me more of it then going out in the woods with an axe or a chainsaw for the same time.
An adventurer is a high risk highly paid work, spending time managing hirelings for projects like that takes a lot of time that would be far more profitable spent adventuring. In a sandbox game you can have player run lumbermills and that is fine, not different from owning a tavern or smithy. In a themepark though it seems a bit pointless, save the work to get mats to the harder to find materials instead.
I like your idea of making crafting a subgame though, I don't think it will be easy to make it fun and still taking more work then the standard MMO model though. You don't want players to crank out tons of vendortrash before they can do anything worthwhile (EQ2 already did that, who the h#ll wants 100 tin greatswords?) but neither do you want players to run an advanced minigame everytime someone wants to craft food or arrows. That get boring fast.
My suggestion would be to have a simplified system for simple stuff. Want a basic lvl 10 longsword? Should be fast and easy to craft. Then you have a more advanced system for the really cool stuff and there is a minigame fine since you probably wont craft many of those things each day.
The other hard thing is to figure out how people should improve in crafting. You seems to suggest experimentation as one way of doing that which is fine but I don't think it is enough in itself. Grinding tons of junk is like I said before not a great idea and it have already been done many times.
A possibility would be to learn new things to craft from a master (PC or NPC), some of those can demand that you do certain tasks before you are proven worthy to learn their craft. Here you also could have the players race open up options, a dwarvish smith could maybe learn how to craft a dwarven chainmail while an elf might learn to craft elven bows...
A third thing to consider is how much you want your player to design the appearence of what she makes. Can they name a really cool sword and decide how it should look and maybe even put particle effects on it?
There is a lot of possibilities with crafting that few MMOs tried to explore much, it is usually just treated as a time and money sink which is sad.
I want to get away from "grinding tons of junk". Tons of stuff to sell ruins the economy, and I want to see thriving economies. So in my ideal, time spent equals less production, which in turn equals greater profits because the prices aren't hammered down by over supply. The thing is that so many gamers are honed in on the Themepark thinking that a game needs to be purely focused on one type of gamer. But they are the gamers that are left, and little input from those who have lost interest.
You don't like to chop wood. But lots of people do. It's exercise and relaxing for those people. The same applies to many gamers if you exchange the physical exercise for a mental "interlude", if you will. This stuff didn't hurt the many games like Farmville.
I hope you see my point. It's good for a game to offer multiple play styles. The more the better.
Edit to add: In my vision of experimenting in crafting, I don't want to see "grinding junk" either. I want to see costs and supply availability involved, to slow it down. I also want to see thought involved as a result. Thinking through: "if this does that, and that does this, maybe those two things combined will do this brand new thing." And I want to see lost knowledge discovered that offer clues to this stuff.
I really don't like "grinding junk" in any aspect of a game. Any grinding at all, I'd like to see replaced with NPC hirelings as a management system of game play to free up the player from the grind. Make it entertaining time spent for the player, and then let that player move on to other game play. Meanwhile, the NPC's do the time consuming work, which slows down production to make the economy viable.
So the player sets up the job, directs the NPCs, and can then go away. Checking back to make sure things are running efficiently, supplies are available, etc. A large production job could take days real time. Basically a stream of production into a warehouse that the player can pull from as they wish. So instead of 100 swords in half an hour, it's 10 swords today, 10 more tomorrow, etc., that the player can sell as they become available. And the player puts in 15 minutes to set it in motion, then 5 minutes each time he checks on the efficiency over the next number of days.
That's for the basic, mass production stuff. Special stuff is where the player would put in his real game play time. Higher end stuff and experimenting, sales, delivery, the scope of running a business.
What if Atlantis had internet and their sci-fi MMORPG consisted of driving around in cars and going to work for 8 plus hours a day? On spreadsheets. And they all bitched about how their fantasy games were on rails and not everyone can be a Nebuchadnezzar or Hammurabi. And how most player characters really should live and die digging irrigation ditches and ziggurats. And they had created a systematic medical system, but bandages are way OP and some people should still be exorcised for curses. d20 saving throw. "We're already working with copper and we still can't get past RNG? BS..."
And we lost all that because they failed the initiative roll and we can't find the ruins of the damned place. So here we are.
Think like this: GoT have more realism then Wheel of time.
Game of Thrones (GoT) is a great illustration. Many say they don't know why they like GoT because it kills off all their favorite characters.
Many don't know that GoT is a collection of events copied from English history (hundred years war) with fantasy elements added, and some minor to major adjustments. Aegon the Conqueror was William the Conqueror. The Red Wedding really happened. People really died like that. It could really be that cruel the way people were treated.
The point is, there is an underlying realism to the events that people don't know but respond to. You get a real sense of time elapsing for war movements and battles for example, because they are based on real events.
I'm not sure how the real events took place in Game of Thrones, but I'm fairly certain the last part of the TV series is a lot different than the final books will be if they ever come out. Everything seems to be going as you would hope in terms of the good guys staying alive, coming together, and winning. I think I enjoyed reading the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and the various D&D novels more even though the later would probably be considered campy B novels. Then again I always seem to be in the minority when it comes to entertainment. I do like Game of Thrones better than things like Twilight and other teen fantasy movies where everything seems a bit too perfect and modern. It's not that it is realistic or unrealistic. It just isn't very interesting to me. At least in the teen B movies when I was growing up the kids did some stupid things to and fought with each other to spice things up a bit. Also, the male characters also had a lot more character. They weren't so submissive.
I'm not sure how the real events took place in Game of Thrones, but I'm fairly certain the last part of the TV series is a lot different than the final books will be if they ever come out. Everything seems to be going as you would hope in terms of the good guys staying alive, coming together, and winning. I think I enjoyed reading the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and the various D&D novels more even though the later would probably be considered campy B novels. Then again I always seem to be in the minority when it comes to entertainment. I do like Game of Thrones better than things like Twilight and other teen fantasy movies where everything seems a bit too perfect and modern. It's not that it is realistic or unrealistic. It just isn't very interesting to me. At least in the teen B movies when I was growing up the kids did some stupid things to and fought with each other to spice things up a bit. Also, the male characters also had a lot more character. They weren't so submissive.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying unrealistic high fantasy books even if the current trend have gone towards more realism. Heck, Tolkien based his work on Norse mythology but also some (loosely) on actual events, like the battle of helms deep.
The problem with MMOs is just that they tend to all go for the same high fantasy setting and varying things up between low fantasy Vs high fantasy & just a game Vs more realism can only make the genre more diverse which is good.
I read my share of Forgotten realms and Dragonlance books as well, enjoy them as much as GoT, The name of the wind and the night angel books.
I still think some MMORPGs with more realism in would be a good thing, but making all MMORPGs that way would be a bad idea, just like basing all MMORPGs on Forgotten realms is a bad idea.
In Wurm Online it involves a lot of grind. I don't know whether I hate it or just am ok with it. Sometimes I think you can't have mmo worlds without some grind because people will always push the limits to compete. When they push the limits htey do things which're painful or difficult or not fun for most. The result is you have to fix the economy so people who push it aren't rewarded.
I don't consider everyting to be grind. I like slow travel, for example. I like the corpse runs. I like the lack of gps on the map. I like no radar. I like having to search for things--like a place to build a house. The combat is fine--even though some people say it's grindy. What's grindy--in my mind--is when you're killing things ONLY for skill gain. But my point here is to say many things I like are considered grind by others.
There're many games where I like hte combat but it's considered grindy by others. To make a long story short, the term is used too authoritively. Even when you say it's "repetitive gameplay," it's still chockfull of personal opinion because almost anything can be manipulated to seem repetitive, especially if you cherry pick.
As for realism in games, it's a thorny discussion. It's impossible to win if another disagrees. So mainly don't argue. Just play what you like.
Comments
In most MMOs case we basically get the same world (borrowed from Forgotten realms but usually wioth lless charm), the same mechanics and the same quests. Having a few more realistic alternative with good production values would be a benefit for the genre s ince diversity will attract more players.
A few semi realistic good low fantasy MMOs would be a huge help, it is the type of fantasy most popular in movies, TV shows and books right now so there is certainly an audience for them.
The super realistic ones and for that matter the totally weird ones with zero realism tend to get far less audiience though (but a great game can pull anything off).
Think like this: GoT have more realism then Wheel of time. Conan have more realism then Lord of the rings. That doesn't make the more realistic IPs less good, just different. And I don't think a bit of different gameplay would hurt the genre right now.
Is there? Aside from a few here wants to chop wood or what-not, i don't see the general gaming public complaining.
In fact, look at the popular games. PUBG has no realism at all (really .. an area that magically shrinks). LoL has no realism at all (really ... you have to fight in 3 lanes).
Realism comes on many levels, from what the graphics looks like, to how accurate the combat is, to what methodology is used to prioritise gameplay.
You always like to look to what the largest denominator is saying Nari, nothing else matters. Well would hazard that the only thing that will stop WoW from still being the king in another ten years is the majority have issues with the graphics. Realism matters.
if you decided to have a crafting system that in itself is a nod to realism, it is not all or nothing.
Realism is about involving players into that game world, for greater immersion and entertainment.
I don't see anything wrong with chopping wood for hours to get the resources. If a player doesn't want to do it, they don't have to.
However, there is an issue of bots. That's why I like the idea of NPC hirelings. Let them do the work while you're offline. Built in bots, at an in-game cost of course. But just for this sort of manual labor of time consuming nature, at the bottom end of the crafting production.
There should be a system for more elaborate crafting that removes bots from it.
Once upon a time....
There is no such thing as a realistic looking dragon, because there is no dragon. But the dragon on GOT certainly looks life-like, detailed, and fierce. *Not* real.
Now, if you and your guildies make a pallisade, a wooden fort or a taven I can still buy chopping for hours though. For making a couple of longbows on the other hand You are getting into the silly part of the pond.
Consider this: 24 hours in a MMO is usually 4 hours IRL, 3 in some cases. Even with the most primitive means an experiences fletcher can get wood enough to make ratther many bows in that time if he just can find the right wood and he certainly wouldn't cut down tons of firewood while doing that.
So spending hours and hours chopping wood doesn't neccesarily make the game more realistic, unless you are building something large it can be the opposite. The whole cut down 2-4 trees to make a plank and use 4 planks to make a bow doesn't exactly makes much sense.
Now, spending a long time to find just the right tree to cut down for your bow is another matter, I can buy that.
But for the hireling system it would just be more sensible to buy your wood from the woodcutter directly in the amount you need if there isn't a timberyard. If you own a town as a noble you certainly could send out some people to cut wood of course but that is best in a rather specific game.
There is also the question if spending hours cutting wood is fun. Spending some time doing it can be fun but not too much time, we want a MMO, not a lumberjack simulator. In best case you use a bit of realism to create something that is fun to do but don't overdo the realism in cases where it makes the game a boring grind.
My comment about NPC hirelings is exactly about large numbers of logs in a world building simulation. But here's a question for you.
If the lumber yard can sell the lumber, where's it come from? Why not have NPC hirelings, "owned" by a player tradesman, do the labor?
And for those few players who do enjoy such things, the option is open to them, and at a slightly increased profit.
Why not? It's more game play for players who enjoy trades. lol
Edit: Yes, something has to be done as far as time and production rates. Cranking out a hundred bows or swords in 15 minutes of play is rather bad for supply and demand. Making crafting a sub-game is one answer, if it can be entertaining enough. But most players do it for the money too.
I also have ideas on that, but it's a different subject. But basically, why can't you soak your bow wood in potion infused water to see what it does for the bow?
And why can't you experiment with metal alloys to see what that can do for your swords?
Once upon a time....
An adventurer is a high risk highly paid work, spending time managing hirelings for projects like that takes a lot of time that would be far more profitable spent adventuring. In a sandbox game you can have player run lumbermills and that is fine, not different from owning a tavern or smithy. In a themepark though it seems a bit pointless, save the work to get mats to the harder to find materials instead.
I like your idea of making crafting a subgame though, I don't think it will be easy to make it fun and still taking more work then the standard MMO model though. You don't want players to crank out tons of vendortrash before they can do anything worthwhile (EQ2 already did that, who the h#ll wants 100 tin greatswords?) but neither do you want players to run an advanced minigame everytime someone wants to craft food or arrows. That get boring fast.
My suggestion would be to have a simplified system for simple stuff. Want a basic lvl 10 longsword? Should be fast and easy to craft. Then you have a more advanced system for the really cool stuff and there is a minigame fine since you probably wont craft many of those things each day.
The other hard thing is to figure out how people should improve in crafting. You seems to suggest experimentation as one way of doing that which is fine but I don't think it is enough in itself. Grinding tons of junk is like I said before not a great idea and it have already been done many times.
A possibility would be to learn new things to craft from a master (PC or NPC), some of those can demand that you do certain tasks before you are proven worthy to learn their craft. Here you also could have the players race open up options, a dwarvish smith could maybe learn how to craft a dwarven chainmail while an elf might learn to craft elven bows...
A third thing to consider is how much you want your player to design the appearence of what she makes. Can they name a really cool sword and decide how it should look and maybe even put particle effects on it?
There is a lot of possibilities with crafting that few MMOs tried to explore much, it is usually just treated as a time and money sink which is sad.
So in my ideal, time spent equals less production, which in turn equals greater profits because the prices aren't hammered down by over supply.
The thing is that so many gamers are honed in on the Themepark thinking that a game needs to be purely focused on one type of gamer.
But they are the gamers that are left, and little input from those who have lost interest.
You don't like to chop wood. But lots of people do. It's exercise and relaxing for those people.
The same applies to many gamers if you exchange the physical exercise for a mental "interlude", if you will.
This stuff didn't hurt the many games like Farmville.
I hope you see my point.
It's good for a game to offer multiple play styles. The more the better.
Edit to add:
In my vision of experimenting in crafting, I don't want to see "grinding junk" either.
I want to see costs and supply availability involved, to slow it down.
I also want to see thought involved as a result. Thinking through:
"if this does that, and that does this, maybe those two things combined will do this brand new thing."
And I want to see lost knowledge discovered that offer clues to this stuff.
I really don't like "grinding junk" in any aspect of a game.
Any grinding at all, I'd like to see replaced with NPC hirelings as a management system of game play to free up the player from the grind. Make it entertaining time spent for the player, and then let that player move on to other game play. Meanwhile, the NPC's do the time consuming work, which slows down production to make the economy viable.
So the player sets up the job, directs the NPCs, and can then go away. Checking back to make sure things are running efficiently, supplies are available, etc.
A large production job could take days real time. Basically a stream of production into a warehouse that the player can pull from as they wish.
So instead of 100 swords in half an hour, it's 10 swords today, 10 more tomorrow, etc., that the player can sell as they become available.
And the player puts in 15 minutes to set it in motion, then 5 minutes each time he checks on the efficiency over the next number of days.
That's for the basic, mass production stuff.
Special stuff is where the player would put in his real game play time. Higher end stuff and experimenting, sales, delivery, the scope of running a business.
Once upon a time....
And we lost all that because they failed the initiative roll and we can't find the ruins of the damned place. So here we are.
Many don't know that GoT is a collection of events copied from English history (hundred years war) with fantasy elements added, and some minor to major adjustments. Aegon the Conqueror was William the Conqueror. The Red Wedding really happened. People really died like that. It could really be that cruel the way people were treated.
The point is, there is an underlying realism to the events that people don't know but respond to. You get a real sense of time elapsing for war movements and battles for example, because they are based on real events.
The problem with MMOs is just that they tend to all go for the same high fantasy setting and varying things up between low fantasy Vs high fantasy & just a game Vs more realism can only make the genre more diverse which is good.
I read my share of Forgotten realms and Dragonlance books as well, enjoy them as much as GoT, The name of the wind and the night angel books.
I still think some MMORPGs with more realism in would be a good thing, but making all MMORPGs that way would be a bad idea, just like basing all MMORPGs on Forgotten realms is a bad idea.
I don't consider everyting to be grind. I like slow travel, for example. I like the corpse runs. I like the lack of gps on the map. I like no radar. I like having to search for things--like a place to build a house. The combat is fine--even though some people say it's grindy. What's grindy--in my mind--is when you're killing things ONLY for skill gain. But my point here is to say many things I like are considered grind by others.
There're many games where I like hte combat but it's considered grindy by others. To make a long story short, the term is used too authoritively. Even when you say it's "repetitive gameplay," it's still chockfull of personal opinion because almost anything can be manipulated to seem repetitive, especially if you cherry pick.
As for realism in games, it's a thorny discussion. It's impossible to win if another disagrees. So mainly don't argue. Just play what you like.