Survival Elements are Ruining RPGs

1. About survival and light sim aspects in RPG.
Great element fitting parfectly a RPG trying to setup a world not just a story. With story centric RPG it disappeared. With "modern old school come back" and efforts on making big wide open RPG, it comes back in RPG, I appreciate the efforts, not always the results, but it doesn't mean to stop the efforts.

2. About Survival games with some RPG aspect.
I can't even bear watch a let's play of any survival game, on Steam it's easy to skip, it has the Survival tag, I check quickly, clearl survival, skipped.

3. About sim games with some RpG aspect.
True Sim moving to RPG, I'm curious about it, but have yet to see a sim doing it and that stick me in to play it. The Sim game that tried it failed interest me. There's also the special case of Majesty. Again, curious and interested.

4. About survival and sim gameplay design
Not only add survival and sim light elements in a RpG is difficult, but also, it's been lost. Players aren't used to it, dev aren't used to design and implement it. I have no doubt it's just a learning phase, this can only progress in RPG, if not ten next years, then the ten years after.

For me it's 4 topics, one thread for all is too much.
 
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I bstill need to try out the SIMs.
 
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I love survival elements in my rpgs. Not the hardcore kind, but survival helps in getting a much better feeling of progressing through the game. Not many games have got that right though, evolves in too much grinding.

I'd love the early experience to have (light) survival elements, but at a certain point the survival mechanices and associated micro-managing should just disappear as you get strong enough.
 
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I think it depends on the rpg. From newer rpgs, for instance Kingdom come is a fantastic rpg and a game of my liking. I love that clothes are getting dirty and people dislike you for that. Or that Henry has to eat and sleep etc. Or that you can't read books unless you learn to read.

In general I like having that kind of stuff in these kind of open world single character games. When I'm running skyrim, I'm doing it with all kinds of survival mods. It makes the experience far more intresting and increases the challenge. Suddenly you don't just "quick travel" to the northest end of Skyrim landscape and be like whats next. No you plan your adventure, buy supplies such as food and medicine and make sure your gear is suitable for the harsh weathers etc.

Many games don't seem to have much of this. Gothic for instance allows player to cook food, but it doesn't really require your character to eat. When I'm playing gothic, I tend to roleplay that my character has to eat every now and then even though it is not required…
 
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Or that you can't read books unless you learn to read.

Just splicing this one out as it's not survival related, it's character-related. In regular games this would have been the equivalent of needing higher levels to read higher level spells, or learning a new language to solve a puzzle or being denied speech options due to low charisma or relevant stat etc. I assume you can choose to go the whole game without reading? But you can't choose to go the whole game without eating?
 
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To me role-playing games are a broad tent that can accept a lot of different playing styles, including survival elements. That is RPG at its bare essence; you just happen to be role-playing a character in a harsh setting where survival is one of the challenges.

What's ruining RPGs are immersion-breaking microtransactions and loot chests (&c.), plus non-RPGs trying to conflate themselves with true RPGs. I.e. non-RPGs claiming to possess RPG "elements" and trends toward a general reduction of player choice or agency.
 
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