Practicality vs Immersion

I recently was speaking to @polartitan on discord about the recent stream and the changes they were doing to the ability effects. Ultimately it boiled down to practicality vs immersion, I enjoyed the changes mainly since they put in outlines for the effects. However, others thought that the outline ruined their immersion.

What do you guys think about the recent ability visual revamp? Do you enjoy practicality over immersion? Or vice versa?

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Comments

Wandering Mist

There is always a fine balance to be had between Immersion and Practicality, and is something every game dev struggles with. Too much immersion and you get a Red Dead Redemption 2 situation where caring for your horse, while very immersive, takes up most of your play time. But too much practicality and you start forgetting that you are playing an RPG at all (*cough* Retail WoW *cough*).

As for the latest visual updates, I think as long as you can reduce them or turn them off I am perfectly fine with that. One of the reasons why I stopped raiding in GW2 is because there is so much visual clutter that you physically can't see your character or distinguish between the boss abilities and your teammates' ones.

Wololo

Having a clear skill outline to see how big the AoE is a good thing imo, as long they dont become bright blue lines/templates xd

Damokles

As long as they show a skill outline for AoE's one second before they land I would be happy...
Another good thing would be an indicator that you are the target of a ranged skill tbh

Blackhearted

I think having a skill based visual could be amazing. Ground burning before a meteorite hits, 4 arrows landing as a square a millisecond before a rain of arrows smashes the ground

grisu

Didn't notice, so yeah that's that.

Hexcat

I'm of the idea that immersion comes from details, for example:
In the years when I started playing lineage 2 something that called my attention was when the magician actually doing some "choreography" during the cast of a spell or that a summon/companion not only just appearing when the spell was finished but coming out of the seal in the ground (obviously this with the graphics engine of that time)
I like what Steven says in the live stream about oversized weapons, taking away the immersion feeling, even in a high fantasy world and that's exactly what they're not gonna do.
I hope that the practicality applies more for the in-game life hacks, like looting, I really don't want to go back to the age where you have to click corpse by corpse individually in aims of a more immersive gaming experience or something like that...

ArgentDawn

All I ask is that I can disable the horrid screen shake.

seaber

Immersion and Practicality are not antonyms.

dphantomtv

Thanks for that fact @seaber I’m glad you know how to grammar!

Plateau

2 words: Spell circles. Immersive, practical, and awesome.

But yeah, it's tough to balance clear visuals and immersion for regular, physical attacks.

Kriddon

One of my biggest worries is that a 1000 man battle is going to be completely uncomprehensible due to the screen flashing constantly because of meteorite and purple tentacles everywhere. But maybe in practice its not really that bad.

dphantomtv

This is one of many obstacles that the team has to face. However, I’m confident that the crew at Intrepid will conquer these challenges mainly because during the stream earlier when they were talking about sharing the same vision as Steven. I think this is very important to have, especially when the changes the team is doing are subjective.

tiltowait

I fall squarely on the side of practicality. If it makes the gameplay better, then do it. Immersion is 100% in a beautiful picture, but we are talking a game here.

S3V3NTH

Obviously, Intrepid can not please every player; but immersion and practicality do become competitors when magic is in the mix. I think the one of the best ways to help balance the practical side of things to help with immersion (for a high fantasy "GAME" with magic and mythical beings,) is for the studio to do a great job explaining the limitations of magic and the world of Vera.

Damokles

@leonerdo
Spell Circles could fit really well with a Summoner or a Bard/Mage(/Summoner) in my opinion.
Ofc depending on the way how IS wants to implement the Summoner.

Karthos

The fact they said you can scale back the effects client side made me happy.

Not that my machine needs the help but the less clutter on my screen, the better.

dphantomtv

Same @karthos I play all my games on the lowest graphics. Even if my rig can run it, I just prefer less clutter.

Tyrodos

I got a thing about not to do with effects but mounts. I reckon having mounts in towns and cities are completely immersion breaking. You're in what feels like a small town and then you have 4 horses a dragon and whatever all in each others bodies, head poking through each other, asses through the wall. So loud that they're destroying the ambient feeling of the town itself.

georgeblack

Immersion.

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