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Dev Discussion #22 - Immersion

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  • I don't think MMORPGs have really ever really been successful at immersion. Rather, RPGs have been more successful at capturing immersive gameplay and environments.

    Immersion is really important for me because I think it is one of the major things that is lacking in the MMO genre.

    To me, "immersion" means "being a part of the world". This can be broken down into three different areas: the environment, gameplay, and story.

    Story
    ___________

    - MMOs have never really had immersive stories. As a player I cannot make decisions that affect the trajectory of the story or the outcomes. I am really just a bystander watching the events as they happen. This is one of the main reasons that I never really become truly invested in stories within MMOs.



    Environment
    ___________________

    - I think MMOs have done better and making immersive environments. An immersive environment really takes the lore and brings it to life with a changing and growing world.

    - Small things like night/day cycle, ambient noises, game music, dynamic weather that affects how mobs behave and even the types of mobs that spawn, environmental hazards, dynamic seasons etc... really make me want to stay and explore the world.

    - When games don't properly handle environmental interactions like stepping on lava or being in freezing waters, it just makes the world feel fake and unimportant.

    - Furthermore, cosmetic items and mounts that don't fit into the world and that are over the top are one of the main reasons I will quit a game. For example, I only got an hour into TERA before I quit due to the ridiculousness of the character cosmetics I saw other players wear.



    Gameplay
    ________________

    - For me immersion in gameplay is more about believability.

    - Over the top ability and spell effects with lots of glowy textures and particle effects really turns me off from a game. Furthermore, stiff animations and unrealistic movements can make it hard to get into combat.

    - Another pet peeve of mine is when games don't care about how abilities or spells would affect things in a real living world. For example, trying to kill a fire elemental with fire should be next to impossible or hitting a frozen enemy with fire should melt it. I think FFXI did a pretty good job with this. Using water spells during rainy weather would increase the effects of the spell, but damaging a water element with water damage would heal it etc...

    - Mobs that don't really have any advanced behavior or react to players combat decisions really makes them feel pointless and doesn't make the world feel alive. However, almost all MMOs have these trash mobs whose only point is for exping or are there as an annoyance.
  • Aeneas wrote: »
    Inventory limitations... Or at least constantly having to packmule back and forth. I think immersion is really important, but you can make it too immersive and it just becomes tedium.

    I think bag space should be heavily limited to make gathering worth it for those who decide to specialize in it.
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  • I think that being able to see places on a general map that you cant go to in game is the only thing that has destroyed my immersion. I want to be able to climb the mountains and swim in the oceans and lakes
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  • VoidwalkersVoidwalkers Member
    edited September 2020
    Dead bosses coming back to life every week or even every few hours without good explanation.

    Example in WoW:
    1. The legendary Lich King is finally dead. No king rules forever.
    2. Bolvar takes over as LK, became jailer of the damned.
    3. Tirion gets a statue in Dalaran.
    4. Ahhh, the scourge is finally over. The long, long battle with scourge since Warcraft 3 is finally over.
    5. Next week - raid reset! be on time to kill Lich King AGAIN or no lootz for you!

    Example in GW2:
    1. Kills Tequatl
    2. Some Hylek: A fine home! For all Hylek! Spread the word! All tribes are welcome.
    3. A few hours later (next event window): Something's in the waterrrrrrrrrr
    Duh, actually I dunno why Teq's still respawning over & over again years after Zhaitan's dead (and its death magic energy absorbed by other elder dragons)

    It just really breaks immersion.

    Yet in an MMO's case this seems unavoidable, there needs to be contents, and players need rewards, farmable loots being an important part of it. And for devs spending countless hours to create a boss that can only be killed once by everyone seems ... not cost efficient? Although that's almost always the case in single player RPGs - you kill a boss, it stays dead.

    So I'm not sure what can be done about it. May be design the bosses such that their revival seems natural & inevitable? e.g. A certain dungeon is so packed with dark energy that a shadow monster boss will always spawn once in a while?
    Although that doesn't solve problem for the named, lore-related bosses :/ ... so, not sure what can be done about it.

    Excessive API in a fantasy game

    Thought I should mention this coz I saw "API's under consideration".

    Eve Online has a large set of API that basically allows you to pull data related to kills, market data (sell / buy orders across the whole universe), character / corp info (if you have their apikey) etc. etc. This heavily incentivize players to build tools, pull as much data as they can, and analyze / game the shit out of it. e.g. identifying active pvp regions and profitable trade routes without even being near the systems involved.
    These made sense for Eve Online coz it's a space-age Sci Fi game. It makes perfect sense that players can use information technology to their advantage.

    But it would utterly break immersion in a fantasy game. How do I justify the information I've found online on a market 10 nodes away? magic?
  • TacualeonTacualeon Member
    edited September 2020
    1- Cheesy animations.
    2- Lack of physics.
    3- Overuse of particles. I dislike medieval setting looking like a mall or a set of Blade Runer.
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  • Quinny_WinnyQuinny_Winny Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    immersion.gif?h=250

    Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.

    Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!


    Dev Discussion #22 - Immersion
    What were some moments in an MMO that broke your immersion? How much did those moments affect your perception of the game? How important is immersion to you, generally?

    Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion topic regarding housing and decor tools!


    Immersion is something everyone is effected by every time they watch TV. If you loose immersion in what your watching the picture gets small and your eyes start seeing everything around the TV, but when your experience immersion your mind deletes everything around your screen and draws you in.

    Immersion has three important parts.

    - Story Telling
    - Graphical Believability
    - Contextual Sound Design
    I would reference the Trine Series for having great immersion designed around multiplayer or Dragon Age Orgins for designing great companion stories


    The biggest thing about MMOs that break immersion for me is other players. Players race from point to point mindlessly spamming through quests and ignoring the story. They power-level to give them an advantage and when they get board they tend to grief others or loiter in taverns.

    When it comes to Immersion I believe that an innovative MMO will design a normal level system to show character progression, but also a hidden 'Rank System" to honor a players personal goals.

    For instance you might become a level 50 character, but if all you ever did was spam your way through a personal story for XP instead of following through with your side Quests or honoring commitments to a NPC you might only be a low ranked adventure who might not even see rare quests.

    It would be more immersive for me from a story point for the game to acknowledge times when I might cheese the monsters like leashing them or pat me on the back for doing a ridiculous optional quest to make the Mayor of such and such town some Toast. (Just learned that mayonnaise makes incredible toast today)

    At the end of the day quests with voice acting and limited side banter can make and break immersion, but for an MMO it is mindful to be aware how a player is playing and who they are playing with.
  • Being able to skip quest text. Might seem annoying but the most immersive thing about wow classic(real classic, not new, there is an option now) was that there was no option to skip quest text, it just rolled at you slowly. So you had two choices, ignore it and be bored or just read it because you may as well, while learning about some lore and/or why you're doing it.
    Being able to skip means you learn nothing and makes all quests seem like a job you have to do to progress.
    There would be haters, but let them hate.
    The last mmo i played was BDO. All i did was run up to a quest, spam the button to accept it and run to where the arrow pointed, completely disconnected from what I was doing it for apart from getting EXP.
  • When I can’t kill a certain character because he or she is to important to the game. Like Esbern from Skyrim. Immortal. Reminds me that I’m playing a game. That’s immersion breaking.
  • VhaeyneVhaeyne Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    I want immersion to be important, but it is hard to actually achieve in an online game. The second you allow players to even name their characters you start to lose immersion. I don't feel very immersed in the world dealing with a player named "BigDPSnake" from the guild "Critonyou". The naming is going to be out of place in most settings. It makes the world feel more like "4chan" than "Middle Earth".

    It sucks to say this because I am extremely pro player agency. I want as many options and tools for customization as possible. However, literally every creative choice you give players is a area where immersion will be taken from the world. You want to design a sweet system so that players can upload a guild logo so they can have flags and shields with their own unique coat of arms? Well you have just created a way for players to put memes and anime girls on all their stuff.

    Immersion breaking player names, guild names, and logos will all be things that are pretty unavoidable. The only solution I have ever seen work to correct this is to have a system to report non-RP names and logos. Most people don't want to deal with that, and I can understand why. It would be cool if AoC had a immersion/RP server with strick name and logo rules, but I am not sure enough people would want such a thing.

    Immersion is not the most important thing to me, but if a MMO was even going to seriously attempt it. The above issues would have to be addressed first.
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    If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
  • angelicshiyaangelicshiya Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    Overload wrote: »
    When your actions don't matter... that's what breaks the immersion for me. That's why I never play theme-park MMOs, e.i. cause no matter what I do or not do, Alliance and Horde are just going to become friends, get together and defeat the ultimate evil at the end of any expansion.

    P.S. Also quests where I have to go fetch something from a dude that stands right next to the questgiver. That's just stupid.

    I So agree, like the quest says to go find Susan's daughter and to bring her to the mother, she is worried/time for dinner etc. and the daughter is a couple meters from her. Or Aunt May ask you to go collect 5 "medical roots/herbs" for granpa Joe who is sick. She says they are growing in the vicinity of the farm that she is standing right next to. ugh lady just go walk 5 feet from you.
  • TroutAmbushTroutAmbush Member
    edited September 2020
    Naming one of the game's classes just "Tank" is pretty immersion breaking, even if we set aside the confusion it could cause (new) players who get Tank (class) confused with Tank (Role).

    Tank does not sound like an in-universe term for skilled practitioners of any sort, it just sounds like a video game term.
  • angelicshiyaangelicshiya Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    1) When i'm walking past a fellow mage and we look exactly alike (unless we're both in mages guild and that is like standard gear attire for low ranks to wear the same robes. (cult like)
    2) When I RP and have to move my character to look at someone, my face should turn to look at the character that walks up to me. Elder scrolls and oblivion did it so well; when you walked up to an npc and they would say well met. and even stayed looking at you until you left their Point of view.
    3) All characters during character creation looking the same, We have fat people in real life, we should be able to make a big character in game, everyone should not have to pick b/w skinny/lean/muscular.
    4) Interactable features, not just a few emotes like wave, sit, blow kiss. How about let our characters RP with a Wooden Tobacco Smoking Pipe while sitting on a stool telling a story through proximity voice chat. How about RP reading a book in a tavern or in the library etc. audible laughing RP sounds. So many RP options than just the regular wave/smile. (also marriage rp options such as asking other player's characters for a kiss/hug and they can accept or decline.
  • biggkennybiggkenny Member
    edited September 2020
    Lukeh wrote: »
    Being able to skip quest text. Might seem annoying but the most immersive thing about wow classic(real classic, not new, there is an option now) was that there was no option to skip quest text, it just rolled at you slowly. So you had two choices, ignore it and be bored or just read it because you may as well, while learning about some lore and/or why you're doing it.
    Being able to skip means you learn nothing and makes all quests seem like a job you have to do to progress.
    There would be haters, but let them hate.
    The last mmo i played was BDO. All i did was run up to a quest, spam the button to accept it and run to where the arrow pointed, completely disconnected from what I was doing it for apart from getting EXP.

    I disagree with this, infact this really boots me out of immersion. The reason is simply that the text scrolls way too slowly. When we read in our heads it's significantly faster than how people speak. I prefer it when the text appears all at once so I can read it at my normal fast reading speed. The problem with what you did in BDO was simply because the quests were super boring and didn't suck you in. You also made the concious choice to do that, so its on you not the game. In WoW I've played where I just skip the text, go to place etc, but I've also hit many points where I've been really interested in the story it's trying to tell so I've read every bit and been incredibly immersed. On vanilla servers its just a case of you click NPC, and then go get a drink or something. It feels like being stuck in the mud.
    3) All characters during character creation looking the same, We have fat people in real life, we should be able to make a big character in game, everyone should not have to pick b/w skinny/lean/muscular.
    I would also argue that this could be immersion breaking to have in. For example a fat rogue who is based on agility would be like beverly hills ninja. A skinny (no muscle) berserker with a gigantic 2h weapon. It might be interesting if they had some kind of player health system but that brings too many problems where people feel like theyre being shamed for having lower stats because they aren't peak physical health in real life. I think they could probably give you some reasonable min and max parameters where your character always has at least a bit of muscle so you cant be too skinny and you can have a bit of body fat too (more if you increase muscle by more)
  • - No dps formula and dps meters:
    The moment people can calculate the most dmg they will and the game will be more of a mathematical thing instead of just having fun with your character.

    - Downtimes after some fights are good!
    Yes, it might seem odd, but if you have some downtime where you need to drink or eat to get your health/mana back up, you will have some time to get social, maybe write something in global chat or w/e. If you don't need to stop once in a while, the game will feel like you are in a constant rush to get as many stuff as possible done.

    - No transmog
    I think this is clear...

    I could think of dozens more, but the core thing is, that immersion comes from socializing with the people you play with. I think this should be the most important criteria for almost every decision made in a mmorpg.
  • I personally have a weak spot for weather in zones, i read a bit about the planned ones on wiki, and i just hope you pull it off right.
    Im really hoping for weather to feel strong and heavy, rain,storms, fogs.
    In WoW they mostly removed it all , nights are just dark blue skybox.

    You can additionally let professions craft things such as lanterns/potions to help with vision in certain situations, instead of reducing or flat out removing the heavy effects.


    As for other immersion breakers, i feel like costumes and mounts that overall dont fit the artistical theme of the game.
  • SuperyetiSuperyeti Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    edited September 2020
    I haven't seen this issue raised by anyone yet, but to me the most immersion breaking thing in game is the chat.
    Entering a town and being barraged by gold selling ads, people talking about real world politics or a football game doesn't really allow for a good immersion.
    I don't really see a solution for this except being able to disable chat, which really limits gameplay.

    Also really flashy or out of place cosmetics, but this one can easily be solved by a allowing users to toggle others cosmetics on or off.
  • To me immersion is the 2nd most important thing in an MMO, right after feeling connected to my characters. Here are a few things that annoys me:

    1. In the real world I don't see nameplates, healthbars, markers everywhere, so I don't like any of these while playing. I know it's necessary in a game, but design it in a way that blends into the world. Harsh red and green bars, terrible font choices for text, big glowing circles around my target hurts my eyes.

    2. Unrealistic gear progression. Let us start as a nobody, and don't give us floating shoulderpads at level 20. Same with the story progression. When my faction leader tells me I'm the hero of the world, right after I did a grind questline at level 12, it makes future achievents less satisfying.

    3. Faking open world. Just don't do it, it's always obvious. If you make an open world game, do it without lame restrictions.

    4. When monster locations doesn't make sense. When there are 200 wolves in a small area, all circling around quest givers and boars, like they are not even there, it hurts the immersion. If I have to kill wolves, I would love to track down the pack, which attacks the wildlife when they passing by.

    5. When NPC-s and locations always need to be tied to quests. Why? Just make a lake with unique mobs in a random corner of the map for players to discover it. Let me hang around it without watching levelers grind everything for a quest. Also add friendly NPCs who feels like inhabitants of the world, without asking me to free them from slavery, escort them to their family and so on. Make them say "Greetings, traveller", and keep working on that corn field :pensive:

    6. Zones with never ending battles. I just can't visit old zones and chill when there is a siege that seems to never end. In WoW after finishing the last quest in Westfall, Sentinel Hill burns down, and the flames will never go away. It totally ruins the zone.
  • AmistAmist Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
    1. The pop-up notification and cluttered UI in BDO absolutely ruined the immersion for me. Not being able to turn off getting a notification when "Weebslayer69" gets an upgrade on his item was absolutely terrible. I like to be able to see the world I'm playing in and with the UI taking up the majority of the screen, that was not possible.

    2. A lack of some realism. What makes MMOs grounded in my opinion is how they draw parallels to our real life and then break certain stereotypes and aspects by introducing something fantastical. What tends to ruin it for me is when certain realism is completely thrown out the window and the game devs start including chainmail bikinis for tanks to wear and cars for players to drive around in - in a medieval MMORPG. Remaining consistent to the graphical style of the game is in my opinion crucial for players to feel connected and part of the world.
  • FelroraFelrora Member
    edited September 2020
    As a WoW player I can say this: Too much meta kills it for me. In the WoW endgame people do not have to interact socially with each other to get a pretty good idea about who they are dealing with. If you want to join a certain guild you better have some good damage/heal logs, Raider IO score or Arena rating. There is no need to chat/talk a single word with anyone when searching for a dungeon group, raid group or pvp group and you don't have to communicate in any way during these encounters. You are expected to know what you have to do and you expect the same from the others.

    Lets say you play a fury warrior, but according to the latest simulation craft results this class has the lowest DPS. Good luck finding any group for anything.

    Everything is defined from the very start, which makes the game feel cold and worn out. However, Im pretty sure that Ashes of Creation will not have this problem :) Especially not at the start.
  • shazoooshazooo Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
    Hi folks,

    I personally, it should remain realistic in a certain way and also adhere to the laws of physics.

    Here are my thoughs (some of these have certainly been discussed before):


    Armor
    As a clasic example are the armors for female characters - the fact that such a half-naked female axe swinger can take as much as a male counterpart with full armor always makes my head shake. There should also be a difference between light and heavy armor (agility, jumping, swimming etc.).


    Weather
    (origin post: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/35416/influence-by-weather-seasons-and-time)
    I’ve made some thoughts how can the seasons/weather/time influence the char. To be honest, nobody would wear a t-shirt/short at sub-zero temperatures, so why should your char do?

    My suggestion is, to add an extra-slot, where you can equip special gears.

    For example:
    During the winter season, your char will get the debuff "getting cold", which decrease your movement by x%. To avoid this, you have to equip a cape or a fur coat with the buff "keeping warm", which remove this debuff.

    But if you wear this cape/fur coat during the summer season, it will get you the debuff "starts sweating", which decrease your power abiity by x%. So you have to unequip it to remove this debuff.

    The other point is the weather and day-night-time.

    For example:
    During rain, fog or night, your char can hardly see other players/NPC's and by clear weather or day, it's hard to hide from someone.


    Map
    (origin post comment: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/41156#Comment_41156)
    A cartographic-system like in "Miasmata" would be cool. You have to spot three POI's and then draw your own map by yourself. Same for dungeon-maps. And you have to update your map (e.g. cities changed or destroyed or replaced by another city).


    Inventory
    Should have a cap for everything (weapons, armor, ressources etc.). And the weight of the objects should have an influence on the mobility.
  • The biggest immersion breakers for me are when the story treats your character as the single hero, and when random people have flashy gear that get your attention but the didn't do anything special to get it.

    For me to get immersed, the world needs to have things to be stumbled on and reward you for finding them, e.g. you go in a cave and there is an enemy occupied encampment, you spot a blood trail leading off and abruptly stopping at a wall, you go to the wall and find it's an illusion, you go through and find a survivor, they give you a key and ask you to retrieve something from a chest in the encampment.
  • RakestoRakesto Member
    edited September 2020
    Rabbit wrote: »
    This one may not be popular, but I hate when Alt characters are treated separately by account mechanics.
    For example: If I join a Guild, I want it to affect my whole account. Otherwise, it becomes a matter of: Oh, my Guild wants to do something so I need to log on my Guild character.

    As a side benefit, it makes it easier to keep toxic people out of your Guild because they can't just come back with a new toon once you've banned them.

    This is one of the very few things I don't like about what we know so far! This MASSIVELY breaks immersion on the social AND gameplay aspects. Getting around the banning is easy - the guild ban applies to the account ID instead of the char ID

    I really hope they decide to change this to account based. I want to meet some like minded people and stick with them, make good relationships. Not be in 7 different Guilds with half hearted relationships and no loyalty
  • PendragxnPendragxn Member
    edited September 2020
    immersion.gif?h=250

    Dev Discussion #22 - Immersion
    What were some moments in an MMO that broke your immersion? How much did those moments affect your perception of the game? How important is immersion to you, generally?

    1) Firstly MMO stands for Massive ‘Multiplayer’ Online hence the Multi-player, but IMO things like being made out to be the main protagonist of a story or a hero type figure in a co-op player world can make the social immersion feel very secluding possibly none existent.

    2) Repetitive encounters with monsters as well as dungeons or landscapes that look similar aka copy and pasted assets. I mean we all love content but after running the same instance for the 30th time while killing that same skeleton over and over just to acquire resources or one piece of gear it becomes tedious.

    3) Hearing the same soundtrack on repeat while in an area or dungeon from start to finish really kills the ambience, but with a mix up of tempo and music with unique sound effects for encounters things can get a bit more exciting.

    4) A lack of consequences or diminishing returns while seeing people spamming strong abilities, spells and consuming energy/mana. Everyone would love to feel like a god don’t get me wrong but it lacks a level of realism plus fairness which is a huge immersive game breaker for me personally. E.g if I sprint in person eventually I’ll get tired or run out of physical stamina that’s reality, but if I spam all my magic abilities without running out of mana then surely that shouldn’t seem as realistic in terms of immersion.

    5) I’ll be honest I actually love the idea of carry weight on bags plus transport mounts as it adds to the immersion, yet can also understand this is hard to realistically balance as well apply a generalised average weight to every item in-game, though it could be fixed via limited bag slots as well as different types of bags, satchels, mount types that can be acquired etc.

    6) Hard CC without counters as there should be a way to build your character with some resistance to stuns, pulls, slows or adverse status effects.

    7) Character customisation we definitely need some diversity in regards to how everyone looks as it’s quite off putting when everyone appears the same or has the same personal features.

    8) There’s plenty more I could probably talk about but would be here all day ✌🏼

    “I’d personally say immersion is very important it’s like the tipping scale of will I be bored of this game in a month or can it hold my interest”.










  • There are many many aspects to immersion and many of them have been brought up on this thread. For me one important aspect is character creation . The reason i say this is i believe nobody should look the same we don't in the real world and so for me to make it more immersive i don't think we should in the game world either . i hope the char creation will have many many options including things like scars tattoos jewellery height body build. i really don't want to be walking through a town where everyone looks very similar or the same size .
  • nonsense RNG drop
    For example when you dismantle an end game gear for enchants you are supposed to get enchant of high value not lower.
  • Dont know if its already wrote but if its not the case. I totally dislike if i cant see far things because they fogged out for performance. Teso did this so horrible. If i can walk there i want to see it and if i can see it i want to walk there! :-)
  • For me, immersion is about the small details, the little extra efforts of love and care that breathe life into the world, its characters, and the player's experience. To be specific; something that draws me into a game is the ability to feel like, if my character wanted to, they could blend into the world for a few hours or a day by breaking convention and instead of hunting, raiding, warring, or dungeoneering, they can go to a local tavern and have a pint, and get buzzed or sloshed and get into some fun with others, or trouble- or they could retire from the martial world altogether and work exclusively on professions *which never become useless and are infact fully-fleshed out engines of a game*.

    I think a lot of the issues modern, highly-popular MMO's run into is that every new addition adheres to gear acquisition, class optimization, balance, etc. where I think fleshing out the world, in unconventional but meaningful ways, (like holidays, allowing alcohol/drug use, allowing cosmetics to be created by players like tailors or such, a plethora of emotes/dances, the ability to play instruments, etc.)actually helps draw a player in and keeps them playing and living in a world instead of logging in for content and right out again once it's over.

    MMORPGs mean different things to different people - to some it's a game to become the best at, or a fun timesink to make your character look their best in; to others it's an escape from this world and an opportunity to get lost in one completely new, to make new friends and take on new challenges while learning a new lore and history. For me, seeing someone with a punny name or something totally off-kilter like "pwnologist" or something breaks my immersion, but I can get over that if there's other fleshed out aspects of the game that I can get lost in after I'm done dungeoneering, or geting up to whatever other conventional methods of progression there are.
  • - Community: opportunity to add or subtract to community (realm, town, guild, etc) through actions (crafting, pve, and/or pvp). There should be more than one option to fit preference or mood
    - Maintenance: Maybe a better description is "make what you have done matter!". For example, most games are all about moving forward and never looking back. Immersion to me would be having to provide materials for town/wall upkeep, or cleared areas/monsters regaining strength if not "maintained", or ?
    - Viable path options: ability to enjoy the game at "your" pace without being "disadvantaged" along the way. For example, if time to play the game is low and leveling slower, it would not be fun to be a constant victim to those who can level faster. Or if a person is able to level faster, they are not "just done" or having to wait on others to level
    - Crafting matters: Should be able to make gear, with investment, which is competitive to pve/pvp.
  • Edge25Edge25 Member
    edited September 2020
    in contrast to the first post of this discussion, i think inventory limitation should definetily be a thing for immersion. it makes the time spendig by gathering things meaningful. carrying 999 pieces of stone, wood, ore etc simultaneously just breaks the immersion.
    a big thing for immersion is the feeling, that your actions are done without a delay, they need to be fluid.
    immersion also has something to do with the sense organs. since we can't feel, smell or taste the game, it at least should have good looking and modern graphics (beautiful environment, charackters, monsters etc.) as well as realistic and impactful sounds. the monsters and charackters abilities shouldn't be too flashy though, since we need to see what's happening in the game, especially in a (big) fight.

    sorry for my bad english :smile:
  • DDragonDDragon Member
    edited September 2020

    cozminsky wrote: »
    I don't think "immersion" and "mmorpg" go along. Just read the comments above, one reads:

    - I shouldn't be able to carry 200 logs in my backpack, that breaks my immersion
    while another reads
    - I shouldn't be limited to how much I can carry, that's too much

    I think that the word "immersion" translates to "how much do you want this MMO to be played like a single player game" . "Grind", "boring quests", "unrealistic terrain" mentioned in the comments above are just some examples of stuff that is part of the definition of an MMORPG, while might not happen in games like "Skyrim". The problem is that there is always an audience of people that want to play their single player game while joining an MMO.

    I understand "immersion" as the game keeping me actually interested in the lore of an mmo while not interfering with the game itself. The only MMORPG that ever managed to keep me interested in the lore is Guild Wars 2.

    Why? It's simple:

    - Cutscenes with fully voiced acting. Producing questlines that consist of 1000s of words is just a waste of time for the production team, even WoW started to include some voice acting and cutscenes into their game as simply noone cares about what do the kill/talk/fetch quests read. We are not playing a MUD afterall.
    - Fully voiced acting during quests with significant characters, not forcing the player to read some text while playing the game or blocking the UI while an npc talks, GW2 does that very well, ESO sucks at it
    - "Living World" being new content every X months with fully voiced acting and cutscenes explaining the story and making changes to the world + adding incentives to play the content

    I agree when u say mmo s arent the perfect example for game immersion but details like inventory space dont impact it that much, only a small amount of people would like to have realistic weight carrying system anyways. I think the main objective of the team should be to accomplish the building of a world that feels alive and meaningful wether in story telling and the environment over all. And seeing how the development is progressing I think they will be able to achieve that.
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