Manual Plotting

[Steeltrap]

Originally Posted by Thomas Kenobi

The point I was initially trying to make was that being given an objective of the sort "sink xxxxx tons of shipping" detracts from realism and game immersion.

I view that as a consequence of appealing to 'casual' players.

They know bugger all about history unless it was last week.

They tend not to like games that don't lead them by the nose (they might have to, well, think...).

The fact that telling someone to sink x'000 tonnes is an absurdity won't bother them in the slightest, as they don't realise it IS an absurdity. To them, games have clear objectives with pretty pictures.

Empire Total War is another example in that people are perfectly willing to overlook its many, many failures as a claimant of a strategy game because it looks so nice. 'Professional' reviewers aided and abetted this.

So it doesn't surprise me at all. It's also one of the main things to which I attribute the fact that, for me, the overwhelming majority of games are linear, unimaginitive and very tedious from a long-term, replayability factor (which is why I hardly buy any games these days, despite building a fairly high-spec PC).

Cheers