for me its instant travel, be it the wow LFG dungeon system or city portals, instantly traveling to a location should not be allowed, you the player should have to travel to that location before you can enter it.
10 --- The paradox quest: A guy in the desert needs 10 pelts for his new coat, someone needs 24 lion hearts for a stew but only every 6th lion actually has a heart.
9 --- Bland plots. Nobody's expecting Dostojewski. But repeatedly, in absolutely every game, some unnamed evil is scheming behind some obvious evil and you're there to destroy it. In some games, namely AoC, this pattern repeats in each, and, every, zone.
8 --- Bunny-of-doom-mobs: Bossmobs that look exactly like their 3-shot-brothers but kill you in an instant. Palm-sized crabs that crit you for 50% of your health. The mob should reflect its threat level, not the number above its head.
7 --- Complete lack of environment influences: We almost got used to it, it still bothers me as it has 15 years ago. When I wander across a blizzard-torn mountain pass in bikini-mail I should freeze to death. Period.
6 --- Soulless arrangement of mobs: You enter an area and you meet, 15 mobs, planted like a wheat field, no movement, no dialogues, not even campfires. Vanguard was great at this.
5 --- NON-instanced-dungeons. Nothing breaks my personal immersion more than an EQesque dungeon where you wade through rat-filled, skeleton-infested, blood-stained dungeons barely surviving JUST to find another group of 'heroes' camping a questmob-spawn.
4 --- Instanced world-zones. Nothing breaks my personal immersion more than 'Fields of the Dead' I, II and III.
3 --- Actually, anything non-medieval. I can force myself to ignore or at least repress this in games like WoW or WAR; but to be honest, only games like 'The Witcher' or 'Age of Conan' can really grab me. Complex machinery should get the hell out of fantasy MMORPGs.
2 --- Zoning. Really. badly. Zoning is one of the worst things hands down. Especially when it's this Age-of-Conan-Zoning. Wzoooom you're in the mountains freezing your behind off, wzooom you're in imperial italy, wzoooom you're in the desert. In 2 Minutes. That's a real killer.
1 --- And the one and really the most annoying game breaker that made me quit several games, namely Age of Conan, Everquest 2, Guild Wars and Champions Online. The INVISIBLE WALL! This Truman Show feeling you get when you want to climb that mountain but somebody added rocks there, oh, and the bridge has collapsed, and once you, sneaky bastard, glidejumpstrafed your way up that hill theres a wall you can't pass, no discussion, no way to go. I can't say HOW much this devastates immersion for me. If I'm in a world I want to pull out my flying pegasus and get on top, and on top of that mountain I can see the sea that's 50 miles away and I stand there watching the sunset, pulling out my sword screaming 'For [insert generic fantasy god of honor and war]' and feeling fucking epic. Like in any major fantasy book/film whatever; Fantasy Is journey and landscape, wandering and exploring.
And yes, absolutely no immersion breakers for me are anything combat/race/leveling/game mechanics related. I was pretty happy for more than 16 weeks in dark and light, and all I did was essentially a hiking simulation. An epic hiking simulation, with paragliders, and undead, and claimable forts....
M
P:S: I don't do voice chat btw. but if I did it would probably rank #1 hands down. Completely vaporates anything related to my idea of fantasy and adventure.
EDIT2: oh, and yes, I did have fun in games like Guild Wars, and I used voice chat. But that wasn't an MMORPG, at all, it was like playing a board game with some friends. You move a soulless, meaningless piece over a board and try to achieve some goal, completely detached from anything that makes MMORPGs something special and different from all the usual X-Box crap.
The lack of fast travel is a massive immersion breaker for me. Long, boring travel quickly makes me realise that I am just playing a game. Games are meant to be fun and unrealistic. Pointless 'realism' breaks the suspension of disbelief and kills immersion.
"I used to think the worst thing in life was to be all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." Robin Williams
ventrillo.....i play mmo's to roleplay as someone else....not make phone calls......the sad part is that most guild REQUIRE you to be on vent. especially in EvE.
Invisible Walls, instanced zones(overworld, not dungeons) bad sound effects(think Aion). Lack of music(think Ryzom/Xsyon/Darkfall etc.. Sound is a big issue for me personally and can make or break a game's immersion for me.
Also, MOBS that don't react correctly i.e. pulling from a group and only one comes at a time instead of the whole group (a la Warhammer).
I have to respectfully disagree with everyone siting vent. For me ventrilo actually helps me get lost in a game, but that being said, I don't use vent very often and when I do, the people i talk to on vent sound like the characters they play. I don't know a lot guys playing female toons, or guys with big deep voices playing tiny characters.
For me it would cartoony character models, ! and ? over heads of npcs. Instant travel with no real explanation of why you can do it seems weird to me as well, I don't mind a good walk if the terrain is pretty. I loved the teleporting in ffxi because you could see the structures and how they connected across the world, and there was a storyline that explained their origin.
I have a very valid answer to this question that's a confirmed result with replicated testing: GRIND!
By about half-way in the levelling the proportion of gameplay/progression/fun to Grind tips over and I cease to play. The thought of the grind actually changes my mind even without logging in and it works like magic: Jeez, suddenly from playing daily to not having played in months occurs and no need for a conscious decision on the matter.
I don't normally go insane over immersion, but voice chat does bug me. I usually like having my in-game volume turned up, not to mention the fact that I find having to listen to idle chatter for hours on end to be irritating. Even if you're not on vent, you'll join these guilds where every five minutes it's like, "Hey, did you guys know we had a vent channel?" "You should really get on vent!" "Hey, you guys want to log into our vent channel?" "Lets get in Vent!"
The only time that I support voice chat in these games is during raids or dungeon runs. Expecting me to download a third party program just for idle guild chatter is foolishness, and reeks of laziness on the behalf of all those who can't seem to be bothered to actually type on a keyboard.
Floating quest markers, how numerous and pointless quests are, GPS mini map, and instances. Good lord developers, stop being lazy cop outs and get away from instancing. Instancing is the opposite of MMO.
Remember the good days when quests made sense?
I think one of the worst "well, I quit" moments was playing LotRO and I found a cave and it said "You don't have the proper quest to enter here". Whats more heartbreaking is right up until beta, the game had billed itself as a sandbox game, but the reality after the name change from Middle Earth Online to LotRo was far different.
On Topic: using your mouse while in combat to select your target.
[Mod Edit]
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
What ruins my immersion the most? Probably anything that takes my character out of the world, or reduces the importance of the game's virtual world.
The thing that got me into MMOs in the first place was the possibility of my character existing alongside hundreds or thousands of others in a persistent virtual world. It seems that the current trend in MMOs is to streamline the world out of these games, via instancing, dungeon finders, etc.
I can get character development and storytelling in a single-player RPG or co-op game. To me, the world, and my character's ability to meaningfully interact with and have an impact on it, is what makes all the difference.
Instances #1, and this new phasing tech that Blizzard has over used. Both funnel players away from being apart of a massive community.
Trion got it right with their open world Rifts & Invasions, but then fell short when you get to the cap and are back into funnel mode with small instanced dungeons and raids. They were close but had they kept everything on a massive outdoor scale where anyone could participate it would've been much better. I recall seeing a video demo of was it the 5-10man rift events that are outdoor; where one group starts it, and gets all the rewards and others could stand by and watch or even participate though they only get XP!?
Comments
Hands down the most annoying aspect in mmorpg's and game immersion ruined is other PLAYERS.
for me its instant travel, be it the wow LFG dungeon system or city portals, instantly traveling to a location should not be allowed, you the player should have to travel to that location before you can enter it.
This is a good one.
I also hate when I see a character running around with a "one-handed" weapon that is nearly twice the size of their character.
For me, it's the auto-walk function, fast-travel of any sort and worlds with too many boundaries and limits.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
That IS a good one. Yours, as well. That explains my dislike of asian MMO's, and my appreciation of LotRO.
I enjoy WoW, which also does that to an extent, but that's certainly not one of the reasons I enjoy it.
Top Ten Immersion Breakers
10 --- The paradox quest: A guy in the desert needs 10 pelts for his new coat, someone needs 24 lion hearts for a stew but only every 6th lion actually has a heart.
9 --- Bland plots. Nobody's expecting Dostojewski. But repeatedly, in absolutely every game, some unnamed evil is scheming behind some obvious evil and you're there to destroy it. In some games, namely AoC, this pattern repeats in each, and, every, zone.
8 --- Bunny-of-doom-mobs: Bossmobs that look exactly like their 3-shot-brothers but kill you in an instant. Palm-sized crabs that crit you for 50% of your health. The mob should reflect its threat level, not the number above its head.
7 --- Complete lack of environment influences: We almost got used to it, it still bothers me as it has 15 years ago. When I wander across a blizzard-torn mountain pass in bikini-mail I should freeze to death. Period.
6 --- Soulless arrangement of mobs: You enter an area and you meet, 15 mobs, planted like a wheat field, no movement, no dialogues, not even campfires. Vanguard was great at this.
5 --- NON-instanced-dungeons. Nothing breaks my personal immersion more than an EQesque dungeon where you wade through rat-filled, skeleton-infested, blood-stained dungeons barely surviving JUST to find another group of 'heroes' camping a questmob-spawn.
4 --- Instanced world-zones. Nothing breaks my personal immersion more than 'Fields of the Dead' I, II and III.
3 --- Actually, anything non-medieval. I can force myself to ignore or at least repress this in games like WoW or WAR; but to be honest, only games like 'The Witcher' or 'Age of Conan' can really grab me. Complex machinery should get the hell out of fantasy MMORPGs.
2 --- Zoning. Really. badly. Zoning is one of the worst things hands down. Especially when it's this Age-of-Conan-Zoning. Wzoooom you're in the mountains freezing your behind off, wzooom you're in imperial italy, wzoooom you're in the desert. In 2 Minutes. That's a real killer.
1 --- And the one and really the most annoying game breaker that made me quit several games, namely Age of Conan, Everquest 2, Guild Wars and Champions Online. The INVISIBLE WALL! This Truman Show feeling you get when you want to climb that mountain but somebody added rocks there, oh, and the bridge has collapsed, and once you, sneaky bastard, glidejumpstrafed your way up that hill theres a wall you can't pass, no discussion, no way to go. I can't say HOW much this devastates immersion for me. If I'm in a world I want to pull out my flying pegasus and get on top, and on top of that mountain I can see the sea that's 50 miles away and I stand there watching the sunset, pulling out my sword screaming 'For [insert generic fantasy god of honor and war]' and feeling fucking epic. Like in any major fantasy book/film whatever; Fantasy Is journey and landscape, wandering and exploring.
And yes, absolutely no immersion breakers for me are anything combat/race/leveling/game mechanics related. I was pretty happy for more than 16 weeks in dark and light, and all I did was essentially a hiking simulation. An epic hiking simulation, with paragliders, and undead, and claimable forts....
M
P:S: I don't do voice chat btw. but if I did it would probably rank #1 hands down. Completely vaporates anything related to my idea of fantasy and adventure.
EDIT2: oh, and yes, I did have fun in games like Guild Wars, and I used voice chat. But that wasn't an MMORPG, at all, it was like playing a board game with some friends. You move a soulless, meaningless piece over a board and try to achieve some goal, completely detached from anything that makes MMORPGs something special and different from all the usual X-Box crap.
What kills it for me:
Load screens
Instancing throughout most of the game
Invisible barriers
UI overkill- tons of buttons, icons, hotbars, mini-map and maps with more detail than necessary with markers and arrows, giant xp bars
Basically way too much stuff on screen all the time
I see it as this
Immersive experiance <---OR---> Game experiance
The lack of fast travel is a massive immersion breaker for me. Long, boring travel quickly makes me realise that I am just playing a game. Games are meant to be fun and unrealistic. Pointless 'realism' breaks the suspension of disbelief and kills immersion.
Player names.
Quest: Kill 10 rats!
But to be honest, I never felt immersion in a MMO. That is reserved just for good single-player games.
ventrillo.....i play mmo's to roleplay as someone else....not make phone calls......the sad part is that most guild REQUIRE you to be on vent. especially in EvE.
_The Sauce Man
Nothing says ruined MMO immersion like fairy wings and pink ewok cherubs....
--------
Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Invisible Walls, instanced zones(overworld, not dungeons) bad sound effects(think Aion). Lack of music(think Ryzom/Xsyon/Darkfall etc.. Sound is a big issue for me personally and can make or break a game's immersion for me.
Also, MOBS that don't react correctly i.e. pulling from a group and only one comes at a time instead of the whole group (a la Warhammer).
quests.
I have to respectfully disagree with everyone siting vent. For me ventrilo actually helps me get lost in a game, but that being said, I don't use vent very often and when I do, the people i talk to on vent sound like the characters they play. I don't know a lot guys playing female toons, or guys with big deep voices playing tiny characters.
For me it would cartoony character models, ! and ? over heads of npcs. Instant travel with no real explanation of why you can do it seems weird to me as well, I don't mind a good walk if the terrain is pretty. I loved the teleporting in ffxi because you could see the structures and how they connected across the world, and there was a storyline that explained their origin.
I have a very valid answer to this question that's a confirmed result with replicated testing: GRIND!
By about half-way in the levelling the proportion of gameplay/progression/fun to Grind tips over and I cease to play. The thought of the grind actually changes my mind even without logging in and it works like magic: Jeez, suddenly from playing daily to not having played in months occurs and no need for a conscious decision on the matter.
That's gotta be a result found wide and far?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I don't normally go insane over immersion, but voice chat does bug me. I usually like having my in-game volume turned up, not to mention the fact that I find having to listen to idle chatter for hours on end to be irritating. Even if you're not on vent, you'll join these guilds where every five minutes it's like, "Hey, did you guys know we had a vent channel?" "You should really get on vent!" "Hey, you guys want to log into our vent channel?" "Lets get in Vent!"
The only time that I support voice chat in these games is during raids or dungeon runs. Expecting me to download a third party program just for idle guild chatter is foolishness, and reeks of laziness on the behalf of all those who can't seem to be bothered to actually type on a keyboard.
The fact that I'm here and the screen world is 40 cm from me.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
Given a back yard by the Devs, and told this is the WORLD have fun,
An exclamation point or question mark above an NPC's head.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/
Floating quest markers, how numerous and pointless quests are, GPS mini map, and instances. Good lord developers, stop being lazy cop outs and get away from instancing. Instancing is the opposite of MMO.
Remember the good days when quests made sense?
I think one of the worst "well, I quit" moments was playing LotRO and I found a cave and it said "You don't have the proper quest to enter here". Whats more heartbreaking is right up until beta, the game had billed itself as a sandbox game, but the reality after the name change from Middle Earth Online to LotRo was far different.
On Topic: using your mouse while in combat to select your target.
[Mod Edit]
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
What ruins my immersion the most? Probably anything that takes my character out of the world, or reduces the importance of the game's virtual world.
The thing that got me into MMOs in the first place was the possibility of my character existing alongside hundreds or thousands of others in a persistent virtual world. It seems that the current trend in MMOs is to streamline the world out of these games, via instancing, dungeon finders, etc.
I can get character development and storytelling in a single-player RPG or co-op game. To me, the world, and my character's ability to meaningfully interact with and have an impact on it, is what makes all the difference.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Instances #1, and this new phasing tech that Blizzard has over used. Both funnel players away from being apart of a massive community.
Trion got it right with their open world Rifts & Invasions, but then fell short when you get to the cap and are back into funnel mode with small instanced dungeons and raids. They were close but had they kept everything on a massive outdoor scale where anyone could participate it would've been much better. I recall seeing a video demo of was it the 5-10man rift events that are outdoor; where one group starts it, and gets all the rewards and others could stand by and watch or even participate though they only get XP!?