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What does immersion mean to you?
CROW3
Member
Merriam Webster wrote:im·mer·sion | \i-ˈmər-zhən,-shən\
: the act of immersing or the state of being immersed: such as
(a) absorbing involvement
'Immersion' comes up frequently in our discussions as a loaded way to try to influence an argument one way or another. A few examples, adding streamer tags 'breaks immersion,' proximity chat increases immersion for some and breaks it for others, the minimap, quest icons, and sparkly particles on gathering nodes impact immersion for some. The funny
thing is that immersion is a completely subjective experience for players, and may even be different for the same player in different contexts (e.g. when I'm soloing in the wild versus in the arena with my pvp team).
For me, immersion hinges on the world environment. Does it feel alive? Do I feel like the world is dangerous? Am I at the center of the game-world, or will it just shrug if I die?
There are a handful of games I felt just *nailed it* for my sense of immersion. Number one (by far) is Red Dead Redemption 2/RD Online, that game-world feels completely organic the animals, the flora, the weather, the NPCs everything just flows whether I'm there or not. Witcher 3 is a close second, just spend 5 minutes in Novigrad and you'll understand what I mean. Third I can basically sum up as 'Bethesda' the top recent being FO4/Skyrim. I completely bought into a nuked Boston at night with night-vision carefully searching through rubble and trying not to get killed. My baseline goes waay back to Ultima VII: Black Gate - which introduced a world that moved on it's own accord. NPCs had schedules, guards has paths, there was a flow (rough by today's standards but amazing in 1992).
So, I thought I would engage this discussion directly, since it's something I think (maybe) we all care about, but in our own way. Some questions:
- What does immersion mean to you?
- Do you have favorite memories when you have felt the most immersed?
- Are there specific games that exemplify 'an immersive experience'?
Super curious to hear your thoughts...
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I have found it difficult the older I grow. I used to skip school and college and be immersed for 12 to 16 hours a day in my youth (from the age of 12). However, I have not found the urge, the immersion or the adrenaline substantial enough in older years (35 now). I'm not sure if this is due to the nature of the current games (Child-like, simplistic, dumbed down, more restrictive) or the fact that I haven't played a decent MMO for some years.
Edit: Spelling mistakes.
I prefer player skill over data.
I dont like weird costumes and weird mounts
I dont like child-like or loly races
I dont like over realism with armors or weapons (banner lord, life is feudal etc etc). I also dont like steampunk and advanced technology bullshiet if we are going for swords and bows and wizards.
Curious, are early guns/muskets immersion breaking as well?
My first rpg game was Baldurs Gate and was pretty much my gateway drug to Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect, as well as some great MMOs.
I think its the world, the characters, the classes, the gear and so on. Basically how the whole game holds together in lore and gameplay.
I want to be able to make the character I want, enjoy the gameplay of the class I picked as well as play it as one would expect of that specific combo.
I think that's the best I can explain my point of view
Yeah, well said. I loved the Baldur's Gate series (I probably still have the original 6 discs somewhere in my house). That faerie elf whose wings were cut off in BG2 made me want to kill that main baddie so much.
It's interesting, cause thinking back - much of the environmental immersion was defined by the soundscape. I didn't see chipmunks and birds, but I heard chittering and chirping among the trees and therefore believed they were part of the world.
Well yeah if you are playing a game with necromancers paladins warriors dragons and swords.
You know that the world and story are not real, but you are willing to go along with it.
Usually, what breaks immersions is that the world or the story breaks the internal cohesion or logic that you agreed to go along with, and that fulfilled your need for escaping reality in a world that stimulated your fantasy and gave enjoyment.
Its is an unwritten contract between game and player that creates an expectation that may be challenged but not broken.
When a world is burning and there is chaos pain misser destruction, fears of the unknown and whether the future will be death, I HATE IT when the npcs dont reflect that.
Take Witcher 3 for example. The comic relief of that game was peasants struggling with alchoholism, ignorance intolorance and fear.
Nobody was acting like "we are a cool gang of thieves/assassins but we are a lovely, likable bunch that makes cherry pies and cupcakes"
Now look at ESO. Every npc is a kind-hearted cool smartass, while at the same time 3 alliances are slaughtering each other, an empire is crumpling and demons are invading the planet.
80% of the interactions with npcs in eso is gamebreaking.
Also..american accents are immersion breaking.
I'd rather the npcs have a mix of english scottish and irish accents.
I am playing Spellforce 3 right now and I cant stand they accent. I love the game and the characters are good enough. But man I just picture California every time they talk.
I was born and raised in L.A. - and totally agree with this (in fantasy settings). My one exception, is Val Kilmer's Mad Martigan.
Hey we finally agree on anything. \o/
I don't percieve Ashes will /always/ be burning and war torn etc, but yes a dynamic mix of npc behaviors that actually fit the situation is great.
People who are super cheery in war situations should be portrayed as crazies or cracking under pressure. Humor has a place in the bleak, but it should be modest and a ray in the dark or sombre.
I also agree on the American accents thing. It's not tat they don't have a place in a fantasy setting.... It just better be only Kaelar and not even the majority of Kaelar. Or maybe Tulnar only lol.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Funny how the community of Baldurs Gate 2 is always in a fight of who's the best love interest. Tbh, I think all the female LI are great but varying by who you prefer, you like that person more. Like in my case I always pick Jaheira 😅
Kinda role play my character as him having a crush on her before inevitably taking that chance to "win" her. Works out just as one would imagine it
Badass and like the nanny big sis of the group.
As for Morrigan, yes she made DAO more immersive, and honestly I think she's a way better love interest than Leliana. She turns from a goth... kinda bitch to a lovey dive wife. Can't say no. And in DAI (even if I hate that shit game) Morrigan looks like an 11/10.
They sure did. I always pick Triss tho because she is hot af in games
I think Immersion is the full and total attempt to emulate a realistic, believable world within the limitations of current technology.
This could be up to and including things like a literal version of the matrix, or the fact that this may all be a simulation.
I would like to add to the conversation:
I think a more interesting question is: How Immersive should and MMORPG be?
For me, the answer is that I want a fantasy setting to explore and play in, but I don't want immersion to take priority over fun.
It is more immersive for me to feed and water my mount to keep it from dying. Hunting for food and purifying water over and over to keep my mount alive is great in a game like ARK, but it is not why I play MMORPGs. I normally play a game like Ark for a few weeks with friends until we burn out and have to take a break for a while.
MMORPGs, on the other hand, I tend to upkeep for years at a time, only take small few week breaks to play games like Ark. If I had to be fully immersed in an alternate reality every time I played an MMORPG, the genre would not appeal to me as much.
I am not saying I would not try an MMORPG that focuses on Immersion. I am just saying that I would not want to play it for as long. What I like about MMORPGs is that I can have three monitors up. One with the game, one with YouTube, and one with discord friends. I am able to spend hours watching YouTube, grinding and running dungeons while talking to friends, all without having my focus monopolized by immersion.
When it comes time to raid or PvP shift my focus to just the game and discord for a few hours, but I normally want to divide my attention on many things. Which is something Immersion inhibits. Immersion asks for my full attention, and I only want to do that for so long. I love it is short bursts, but I can only play something like Elite in VR for so long before the full Immersion starts to be taxing.
I hope this extra bit I added is valuable to the discussion in some way.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Immersion means I feel like my character is living in the virtual world and I'm not thinking about real world stuff. Mostly that I am experiencing the life of my character as much as possible.
Streamer tags break immersion because that has us thinking about a real world service that is outside of the game setting.
Proximity chat breaks immersion because there's too much random real world noise bleeding into the game setting - more real world noise and chatter than anything associated with the game.
Mini-map is a tool that helps with navigation in a world with restricted senses. We miss quite a few navigation cues that we use to help orient with 5+ senses. The draw distance in Ashes helps with navigation, making a mini-map less crucial. I prefer the NW compass over mini-map, though.
Quest icons are quality-of-life. Without them, it just wastes a ton of time trying to find a quest.
Sparkly particles on gathering nodes can also be quality of life. It's kind of like quest icons:
If you can harvest any gathering node you can recognize, and the nodes are reasonably easy to recognize, it's fine not have sparklies. But, in an RPG, what your character can notice may be different than what you as player can notice. Doesn't necessarily have to be sparklies, though.
First thing I loved about EQ immersion was orienting by sound on Kobold Pups.
Playing in an RPG where you can hunt by sound blew me away.
In some ways, I might say I don't care about danger - it's kind of like risk v reward - it's not a primary draw, but... the first time I was in a battle and my screen went black from Blind was an exhilarating rush of adrenaline and panic. Screen going wavy from being drunk is also fun and immersive.
Starting with EQ, the first thing I typically do is run from one racial starting area to another. There's a bit of thrill trying to survive that run, but I don't know that I would relate that to immersion.
Achieving signature class abilities, like Spirit of the Wind, makes me feel immersed - like I am finally, actually my class.
Games like KOA: Reckoning and Valheim make me truly feel like I'm a Rogue with stealth. And the combat in those games turn me into a hunter/stalker. Even though I am typically a carebear, I love slitting throats in KOA:Reckoning and I love butchering Deer in Valheim. Games that drastically change my playstyle due to immersion are fantastic.
Scouting dangerous areas via Stealth typically have me feeling immersed - when I level, I like to Stealth as far across the map as I can until I reach mobs that can see through my Stealth and one-shot me.
Last week, I played BDO for the first time. The action combat is too actiony. I don't feel like any class even though I'm playing Hashashin. I feel like I'm basically just button-mashing. I could be a fighter or a monk - it's just a melee class with a bunch of abilities. No Stealth so far. I did find an appearance for my avatar that's OK - sometimes I feel immersed in my BDO avatar appearance.
One measure of how immersed I feel is how many screenshots and vids I take.
One of my favorite immersion memories was in Vanilla EQ.
My Gnome Cleric was leaving Ak'Kanon and noticed a party sitting just inside the gates, medding to regain some Health. I dutifully Healed them and patted myself on the back for a job well-done. As I turned around to head out into the wild, I ran smack into a pair of knobby knees.
I thought, "Hunh. What's this???" I tilted my head up, up, up and realized I'd run into an Ogre...
just as it smashed me to a pithy pulp with its giant hamfist.
And, I want to feel like I'm in a movie or novel - I'm not interested in a sim that is as close to the real world as possible.
CoE game design just seems way to tedious. Like, they want you to have to dress appropriately for the weather as you explore the world, such that your character suffers from heatstroke or frostbite if you don't change into the proper clothing.
I just don't find the fun in that. I want to play; not work.
Also, I think some mobs should make noise even when not engaged with you. I find it really weird that, say, bears only make noise when facing you, when it's fairly realistic for them to grunt at each other in a group.
No matter how old much time passes and how many problems I have in my life, I will never forget what I felt when I bought wow and was questing through Elwynn Forest, Redridge, Duskwood, etc with my paladin
And then there are the illogical things tied to the limitations of computing a virtual world.
Damn, I've grown old.
Then scheming daily about how to make this fun and somewhat beneficial for everyone involved until the opposing Faction finally gives up, assuming they ever do.
Being 100% focused on the game, having great environment, music and vibe while playing with no UI if possible
Do you have favorite memories when you have felt the most immersed?
Are there specific games that exemplify 'an immersive experience'?
Recently I'd say Vermintide II (especially with the non-UI event) and Sea of Thieves. Both of these games have cool landscape that fits their universe, cool music that come along, and provide a good game immersion once you're into it
Not sure if that counts, might have been the 10 pints and the chicken vindaloo.
Very little
One recent game that did it for me was Cyberpunk 2077. I played with the NPC amount turned way up in Night City. The combination of all the NPCs doing their thing, moving around and having their own lives, combined with a great soundscape in the background and the scenery and artstyle, drew me in. Passing by NPCs having an actual conversation you could listen to that was more than just a couple of lines on repeat, was great.
Sometimes bugs would pull me out of the immersed state for sure, but in a way that helped me better understand what drew me in.
So for Ashes, I want moving NPCs and mobs with a life. Not stationary robots. I want a great soundscape, where everything that moves, even the rustling leaves and the flies, makes an appropriate sound. Make me believe the world is a living place.
Its a game, so immersing oneself depends entirely upon ones ability to do so. And while a game can work to make immersion easier, I believe immersion will always come after gameplay, systems, and mechanics as far as priority goes.
Immersion is just the perk of getting lost in the game instead of real life.
- The World (Environment, sound design, quests, interactable)
- Combat
- Side Progression (Professions, cosmetics)
Everyone has different priorities for what needs to be immersive and what can be less immersive. Which I think really brings us to an important concept of game development and that it seems immersion and quality of life (QoL) often seem to go against one another.
Sure a "!" above an NPC's head is not immersive, but how miserable would a majority of players be without quest indicators? Imagine if you had to go around clicking random bushes to figure out which one to collect herbs from? Of course, some people will like that, but more often than not, that does not appeal to the wider MMO audience. Dygz and Vhaeyne cover this idea well.
The battle is how can I, the developer, make this content immersive, without making it tedious, frustrating, or boring. Which is a battle I don't envy to have to go through.
Without going on a longer tangent, I thnk the best example of a developer overcoming this battle is Dead Space and its health display. Now I haven't played Dead Space, but imagine how frustrating it would be to play any game and not know your health? Just randomly dying without any warning? To combat this, most developers throw a health bar on your HUD. But a HUD is not very immersive. So in Dead Space, they incorporated the health bar into the main character's suit on his back. It looks like it's part of the spacesuit, but also displays the key information to the player.
I don't think this exact example needs to be copied into AoC obviously, but I figured it's a great example of developers overcoming the QoL vs. Immersion battle.
Great topic Crow3!
Thanks! Good response.
There are two immersive experiences I had in games this week, that I thought worth adding to this thread to see if it triggers any additional thoughts and/or ideas.
First, in RDR2 I found a canoe pretty far north on the main river that runs from the Grizzly Mtns into the main lake. I was able to float in the canoe using (mostly) the river current all the way to the lake, and just watch the world pass by. I think it took me like 30-40 min for the whole trip, which was like 2 days (give or take) in game. It's also worth noting that at a very basic level navigating rapids in this river was very close to how you do it in RL (e.g. head for the "v"). Overall, it reinforced the stability and flow of the world that I was a part of, not built around.
Second, in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Well, let me say first... I'm still trying to like this game. It has a lot of flaws (bugs, crashes, NPC scripting issues, and the worst melee combat system conceived by man). Ok, that said - on one of my many long walks (because I'm carrying more weight than my horse can carry) I took a moment to think about what I would take away for Ashes. And really it comes down to a really simple thing: environmental movement. Meaning, trees bend in the wind, long plants and undergrowth move at different times but the same rate. The grass does that cool wave thing. It all adds up to constant, subtle movement and makes the world completely immersive. As long as I don't focus on the awkward combat (honestly wtf), it's a good place to take a breath.
Anyway, random thoughts.
A shit attempt at realistic combat. Devs thought dueling was how you thought in battles
It would be way more like in bannerlord
The easier the mounts traverse the land and ignore mobs the more the immersion is replaced with a feeling of falling asleep.
The harder it is to navigate and maintain a mount and the more danger there is for the mount to be attacked and die, the higher the environment immersion goes, as well as the adrenaline and sense of adventure.
If every part of the design, whether it's art, music, animation, AI or anything really, is only there to serve a gameplay purpose, the world will not be immersive, because it will always feel like a game, sterile and technical and "designed".
If some elements, perhaps the majority of elements, are created for their own sake and with life and a story in mind, and game play is built within or on top...then you get immersion.
It's the difference between
1) Designing a village of NPCs with the central goal or idea of how players will move through it. What levels of enemies they will encounter when, proper respawn timing, and following a typical progression of trash - more challenge - boss - escape.
or
2) Designing a village of NPCs with the central goal of imagining how they live, work, and defend themselves, and what their motivations as living beings might be. Where does this NPC sleep and eat? What does he fear or worship?
In the second case, playing through that village is likely going to be "sloppier" in terms of game play in a technical sense. But it will feel so much more immersive, and will keep players coming back to discover the intricacies and nuances and emergent game play.