A little opinion on realism

[ThomasCovenant]

I know that it somehow became a sacred cow to say that you can wear a full suit of iron or steel plate AND just walk down a dusty lane.

Except that you CAN'T.

You can't put it on all by yourself.

You can't just mount a horse, you need help from strong people and a winch.

It was extremely heavy.

Now you can also carry a large backpack with who-knows how many pounds of other things and food...well, no you can't.

Heavy armor is used to intimidate, not for actual fighting.

You can't swim while wearing anything heavier than cloth "armor".

 

ot. someone mentioned "what about frostbite?"

well, what about hypothermia? Realistically you would avoid getting wet in an area where it seems to snow all of the time.

 

I wrote this while tired. you wanna flame me...hey, it beats drowning and freezing to death in a lake while wearing full steel plate.

Now don't get me wrong ,as soon as I bought this game, I played it for a total of 43 hours.

[KarthGalin]

I know that it somehow became a sacred cow to say that you can wear a full suit of iron or steel plate AND just walk down a dusty lane.

Except that you CAN'T.

You can't put it on all by yourself.

You can't just mount a horse, you need help from strong people and a winch.

It was extremely heavy.

Now you can also carry a large backpack with who-knows how many pounds of other things and food...well, no you can't.

Heavy armor is used to intimidate, not for actual fighting.

You can't swim while wearing anything heavier than cloth "armor".

 

ot. someone mentioned "what about frostbite?"

well, what about hypothermia? Realistically you would avoid getting wet in an area where it seems to snow all of the time.

 

I wrote this while tired. you wanna flame me...hey, it beats drowning and freezing to death in a lake while wearing full steel plate.

Now don't get me wrong ,as soon as I bought this game, I played it for a total of 43 hours.

 

You should get some sleep before following my suggestion that you google around for videos of people moving around in working replicas of plate armor. I've seen a fella do cartwheels. Sure, they're moderately heavy and they're hot, but only a complete moron would go into battle in which you may be unhorsed or clobbered about in various ways wearing something that so completely restricted his movement as you describe. In the swords-and-bows era armor wasn't made to be an inch of steel between you and your foe, it was designed to deflect blows instead of stopping them outright. I saw a video not long ago in which an ARMA scholar refused to demonstrate thrusting techniques against a plate-armored compatriot for television cameras on account of the distinct possibility of putting a hole in his buddy.

 

Maybe, maybe some of what you say could be true when people were still trying to make full suits of armor thick enough to protect against the then-developing firearms or perhaps for jousting (I've never seen weight numbers on the jousting-specific armors), but not in the kind of setting Skyrim has.

 

Heavy armor was indeed used for actual fighting... it just wasn't as heavy as you think.

Edited February 4, 2012 by Karth Galin

[supafuzz]

it would be cool if it required special training kind of like Power Armour in the Fallout series

[Linsolv]

Plate armor was indeed historically used for fighting. In fact, it was plate armor that allowed the massive Zweihanders and similar that people are so fascinated by in modern times, because they were heavy enough that they allowed you not to use a shield.

 

With that said, Karth is essentially right. Deflection was the main goal of plate armor; absorption of blunt weapons was also a major element, and the reason it was used in preference to mail (which could block edges and to a certain extent thrusts, but would let blunted weapons hit at full force) to the best of my knowledge.

[Ferodaktyl]

man, i really love this topics about realism ( yeah, i'm kinda bored with the game, and trying to milk the last cents of it here on forum :tongue: )

i always wondered if someone would make a real life simulator game, how many would play it

'cause what i like most of this RPGs isn't the realism or the lack of it, but just how they're able to make me forget for a few moments that i can't breathe fire while wearing 100+ kilo of steel in a frozen arctic pond, surrounded by undead wizards and dragons

so yep, i fully believe that wearing cold iron on bare skin and using electricity is not only piece of cake, but strongly recommended.

and, for the lack of dragons in RL, i'd like to sneak on a Komodo Dragon and do x15 damage on it with my old kitchen knife.

so, don't quit bitching, or i'll have to quit ranting, and that would be a shame

:thumbsup:

[thesapien]

Just so you know, discussions like this about armor seem to come up a lot for those wanting to role-play. Same with eating, drinking, sleep requirements, luggage, weather, etc. Kudos to Beth for making a less stylized and more realistic game so that this stuff is considered more readily. No one probably thinks much of these things in an anime title.

 

I suggest debating it more on some good points made above by Karth above, then simply forcing your character via role-playing to follow what you think is about right.

 

Btw, my current Nord character with a natural resistance to frost along with some enchanting can take a point blank frost shout from a dragon and just laugh without taking any damage. So hypothermia isn't a problem in this one case. Depends on your character.

[Linsolv]

@Ferodaktyl: In my case, it's more about verisimilitude. I want the world to have internal consistency. I feel like this world lacks some internal consistency, but it doesn't need TONS of realism to fix that. Just a tiny amount. However I like discussing things.

[Tidus44]

The "realism" issues people have with Skyrim always make me laugh.

 

I don't get why one would be concerned about the "unrealism" of some minute aspect (armor in the game for example) but be totally unconcerned about everything else that is unreal.

 

My PC gets hit until there is the thinnest sliver of red on the health bar and all I need do is hit "inventory" (and everything stops) drink a potion and viola, I am 100% health again ready to keep fighting the 4 or 5 enemies trying to kill my PC.

 

Even more unreal is my PC gets killed and all I need do is start a previous game and lo and behold I am resurrected! Dead isn't dead, its just a chance to retry.

 

There are dragons flying about.

 

Entering a tomb and one finds zombies and/or ghosts and sometimes vampires.

 

My PC can shoot fire balls, frost spears or lightning bolts from a hand - out of nothing.

 

My PC has a sword that when it hits someone they get set on fire and a bow that when someone is hit with an arrow they are frozen.

 

Most people playing the game would likely only succeed in killing them self dual wielding orc axes enchanted with fire and frost, and many lack the strength to actually pick up and swing a iron long sword that is 5 feet long.

 

There are a thousand (tens of thousands) of things in the game that are entirely unreal, that defy the laws of physics and chemistry, that are wholly impossible in the real world. So why is anyone upset or concerned that their PC can swim wearing full plate steel armour exactly the same as if wearing a speedo?

 

If the game followed any of the rules of reality, no one would play it because they'd be so frustrated, bored to death, or killed and not allowed to ever play the game again (dead is dead) in the first 3 minutes.

 

Me, I do not want any realism in any aspect of Skyrim.

[katling]

I'm pretty sure the winch thing has been well and truly debunked. The old movies used to use a winch for comic effect or because they just didn't understand how armour was constructed. There's a video about it here - http://chivalrytoday.com/saddle-shakespeares-knights or directly at youtube here - http://youtu.be/NqC_squo6X4/

 

It is 47 minutes long but it's worth watching the whole thing as he's quite scathingly funny about faux armour but the important bit where he gets into talking about the weight of the armour and getting on horses in it and explains the origin of the myth is at about 23 minutes onwards and includes a video showing a man in armour just casually getting on his horse, a video of a man running in full armour, two men fighting with polearms in armour and two men jousting in full armour. As well as two clips from the 1920s showing the flexibility of armour.

Edited February 4, 2012 by katling

[Rennn]

There's a term for this in the fiction-writing world:

Believability versus Realism.

 

Realism, Skyrim lacks due to magic and dragons and whatnot, and would be very difficult to actually get.

 

Believability is what the role players, like me, generally want although we call it realism. Yes, dragons and magic remove Skyrim from the real world, but as long as everythng is presented in a weighted, detailed way, the world will be very believable.