Immersion breaking: vanity

George_Black

I look at most peoples replies to the official discussion. The vast majority touched upon the life inside the mmo world, or the systems and how things work.

For me by far the most immersion breaking point is how powerful and mystical players want to make their characters look like, with weird fullbody skins of a blue thing, with lightning coming out of the eyes, ridding a molten camel, holding a mechanical staff.

"I want to ride a wolf, because a horse it a basic bitch." Yeah? Everybody can ride a wolf. I guess in the world of Vera, wolves are submissive.

When there are too many feral options for mounts, it just ruins the value that ferocious beasts add to the world.

Then there are the lolies, that want a child like character, resembling a school girl to swing an axe.

Then there are those that want a skeletal character with green and purple auras going around town, deposetting iron ore in their bank, shopping leather and meals from other players, learning skills at the local npc instructor.

George_Black

Without control, hundreds of players will do just that.

Look at ESO. Full of powerful looking characters. Newsflash, if everyone is special, none really is.

Look at Tera Online. Full of little girl characters, jumping up and down with axes, killing left and right.

Look at mmos with cars and motorcycles and robots, wanting to cash into steampunk. If the theme isnt steampunk, why go there? It's immersion breaking.

Then we have games with tiny cute looking races, having the same classes as the other races. Tiny Paladins and Death Knights and Necromancers and Bishops and Archemages and what have you.

All these worlds end up looking anime like, in non anime based game visions.

George_Black

Immersion is very important, yet many studios sacrifice the creation of developers and vision of lead developers by introducing immersion breaking cosmetics. I understand that the games are products and money needs to be made, but there is 0 need for weird cosmetics.
I think that the following totally ruin immersion for many people:

1) Modern clothing cosmetics.

2) Mechanical features, even steampunk.
Cars motorcycles robots. They all beat the point of magic and mystery of the world.

3) Weird bright gear colours.

4) Character full body skins
Flaming
Ghostly
Magic infused
Lightning covered
Anything that supposedly makes you look like a 'rare and powerful force of nature', looks silly to me, when hundreds of players looking like that walking in towns, going to the bank, shopping, going mortal activities.
Less full body, more subtle 'symptoms' of hidden power or affliction.

5) Powerful looking mounts. Same as above.

6) Wedding dress for males, beards for females.
Most people doing that are trolling, in fact ridiculling peoples sexuality.
But those that genuinely want to look like that, due to their inrl sexuality, I find them to have terrible taste in style. And before I am "cancelled", my favourite characters from Dragon Age Inquisition were Dorian and Sera which were gay and lesbian.

7) Loly, childlike or cute miniature races.

George_Black

So without derailing the official topic on immersion breaking, I wanted to talk specifically about the player factor. Us.

DioTheHero

I agree with the point about godlike looking cosmetics everywhere, but that's it... and no one will convince me that my Lalafell Paladin isn't the most badass looking dude in Eorzea. Granted, I didn't dig Tarus in FF11 whatsoever. I feel like SE did a miniature race right with XIV.

Merek

Most of the godlike looking racial skins in ESO were and are freely available to all, the only ones like that in Ashes are for a handful of backers. I don't mind a handful of "celestial" looking players, but when it's every dick and harry, I agree, it's absurd. I would like to point out that Steven has said the cosmetic store won't need to follow the games theme and I'm against this completely. If they follow this route, we could see steampunk motorcycles in the future, I do not want that.

CaptnChuck

When it comes to feral mounts, I don't really care as long as each of them look different.

There will be NO **** in the game. Thank god for that.

I love playing an undead character, but I can understand it ruining immersion for some people.

Fuck steampunk. I hate machinery in video games. Maybe that's why I'm more interested in talking about the past than I'm about talking about the future.

As for gear colors, I disagree. I don't think that all gear has to look dull. Having bright colored gear can be cool looking as well.

When it comes to character auras/tattoos/runes etc, I agree. I prefer a less obvious style as well.

There's nothing wrong with having powerful looking mounts in the game as long as they are rare and they actually require a ton of effort/skill to obtain.

I really don't care if males wear wedding dresses or if females have beards. But I can understand it being an immersion-breaker for some people.

Only dwarves. No one else.