For me both gameplay and realism are related to the "enjoyability" of the game, which is subjective for each player. Key factor of the enjoyability is giving choices for the player:
- Choices about historic missions and the actual technologies
- Choices for the tonnage king firing Falke in nub escorts in 1940 blowing one after the other, plus deck gun duels with Armed Trawles, or playing "chicken" with V&W's :/\x:
- Choices about changing history with your sub
- Choices to play Dead is Dead by (x1) connecting SH3 with a home-made electric chair
- Choices to wait for 10 days as a Milk Cow in the middle of the Atlantic or lay some mines that you will never see exploding
The developer gave a lot of choices, and the modding community added 300% more choices. Every SH3 installation has become almost unique once you start messing with mods. Offering a lot of choices would probably be a good message for the devs of SHIV...
Personally, I'm all in for gameplay. I wouldn't even twich by throwing
a salvo to the batleships that sunk the Bismarck, or by commanding the Surcouf (or even a XI U-cruiser, which was never boult) and nailing the escorts with my 203 mm deck gun). But...
When I changed the "dud torpedos" in realism settings, the game was not the same anymore, I couldn't alert the dumb destroyers (with some activity -in flank speed-) and then play head-to-head, cause I was not sure that the torpedo would detonate. It is true that realism sometime adds gameplay
