CiderMuffin wrote:Yea I do agree with you but...it's a game, you know? Sometimes, especially if it's minor, a game doesn't have to be accurate.
I know it's a poor argument to make and just seems lazy but a long lasting can opener wouldn't be fun, my family is still using a can opener we've had when I was a kid. Those things are meant to be durable as hell.
Sure, there's always got to be a limit to realism. What bugs me about the degrading tools model of survival games is that I also think it's a suboptimal gameplay model. Long lasting can opener wouldn't be unfun, they'd be a lessening of busywork.
Survival gameplay is something that I'm quite interested in but I'm interested in the game rewarding careful decision making not putting you on a treadmill so you have to constantly outrace equipment failures so small rewards remain exciting.
Things like rewarding taking the time to hug the tree line instead of blithely walking through open areas or avoiding running over icy slopes are good (though I'd have to actually play the game to see how reasonable the sprained ankle chance is) while stuff like Alex's new expensive scopes in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. constantly becoming irreparably moisture filled because he took them out into the rain are bad.
I'm not complaining about the game considering popping a pill to just fix sprained ankles even though that's silly because becoming injured and having to use limited medical supplies is something that corresponds to actual survival situations in general if not in details.
A players thoughts upon seeing a high quality ski jacket though should not be "that'll tide me over for a good time until it inevitably breaks" but "I'm one step closer to defeating the clothing problem". Resource management has it's place but a lot of parts of survival situations are a lot closer to Nethack's focus on defeating the very game mechanics themselves rather than monsters than traditional resource management.