It has been almost 6 years now since I played an MMO that was worthy of even thinking the word "Immersion."
For me, the entire game world itself not feeling like a real, living, breathing place kills it. These days, MMOs feel a lot more like the old school AOL chatrooms with awesome graphics than game worlds. Contributiing factors to this include (but are not limited to):
-Non dynamic quest giving. When every single person out of 2500 on a server have run the exact same missions, killed the same mobs in the same place and killed the same bosses, immersion dies. How many %(*^ing wolf pelts does that dude in starter town need anyway?!
-VOIP. Not really much explaination needed. That scantily-clad gorgeous healer chick with the voice of a two-pack a day smoking, Jack Daniels drinking redneck? PASS.
-Theme park elements. I was never a fan of the "rails" when it came to immersion. A zone where mobs are strictly in a ten or 15 level range is SILLY from an immersion standpoint.
-Loot-based economies. Cutting out the crafters and a player driven economy = not a living breathing world.
-Queues for PvP grounds. No explaination needed here.
-Gigantic elaborate cities whos populations consist of mostly NPCs. It just stinks of "nice try, but no!"
-Instances.
I really hope that *insert game name here* will be the first game to ever live up to all of its pre-release promises, maintain a manageable hype level and have a clean release. Just don't expect me to hold my breath.
100%, definitely, absolutely, without a shadow of doubt-- VOIP.
Worst...Feature...Ever...
If being a developer means being quiet, mature, well-spoken, and disconnected from the community, then by all means do me a favor and believe I'm not one.
Vent. Oh how I hate you. Whoever first thought it was a good idea to slap on a headset and listen to a bunch of internet strangers while playing an MMO needs to be taken out and given a good talking to.
I don't know you people, so I don't care what you did over the weekend or who you did it with. But I can cope with it if you decide to get all chummy and share. In text chat. Doesn't bother me. I might even be friendly and read it and respond with a personal tidbit about my weekend that you shouldn't care less about either.
But I do not want to hear your damn voice in my ear unless something major and massive is going down.
Okay, if it's a 500 player siege and you really have to coordinate that over vent, fine, I will put on the headphones. But only then. The rest of the time, if it's not important enough for your lazy self to type, it's not important enough to bother me with.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
Well, just kidding. It depends a lot on do I want to get immersed or not. A lot of MMORPG's I don't want to be immersed in, I enjoy mechanics and stuff. If the the story is not so predictable, characters interesting, visually not inspired by a cartoon or candy bag or Japanese hentai and world is vast as well as highly dangerous and unknown. Then I might just be immersed, and in that case, nothing else would break my immersion more, than other players talking about some sport event, the deliciousy of their breakfast or whatever.
Serious, I think the major factor 'to be immersed' is the player themselves, if you cant get over small nitty things like cutscene, quest markers, interface, in the end, its really about you refusing to be immersed. You cant really expect a game without any sort of interface; I agree quest markers can probably done a bit more realisticly, like quest giver waving you over; as for cutscene, most games allow you to skip cutscene, so if you don't want to look at them, you don't have to, but missing out on the story will always bugs me the most........and quest text :P
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.
The other major thing that breaks immersion for me is being too realistic and serious in a Cartoony game, or too cartoony in a Realistic game.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt "Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security." -Norman Vincent Peale
As many other people have already said, for me the biggest immersion breaker would have to be the other players. In particular, bad player names.
If you could put me in a game world filled only with people who acted as though they were characters in the world—not on the level of thee-and-thou roleplayers, but just avoiding any unnecessary jaunts into RL chatter—I could not fail to immerse myself in that world no matter how many other problems the game had. I know that this basically cannot exist and immersion isn't vital to my enjoyment of an MMO, so I don't expect a game like this and I don't seek it out. EQ at launch came close though.
What kills it the most for me is the Mods that most guilds require you to run in order to join/raid /group and this even includes random pug groups anymore. I managed to play EQ for 4 yrs with out the help of any Mods.
I think the only thing I d/l was a mod to change the style of the EQ Icons to use the World of Warcraft II Icons. Other than that we had individual channels and made hotkeys to deliver info during raids to the appropriate channels. Example being, I was a shaman and delivered debuff calls to shaman channel and the tank channel in guild raids. That was more than enough, didnt keep us from progressing not using some mod to tell me when to pound on some key. You just read emotes or watched the boss/mobs and used the appropriate spells.
Second thing I dont really care for and think kills Immersion is Vent/TS or any Voice Chat. Mainly because you hear so much from people other than the game. I dont care how your day was at work or how much homework you have. i dont want to hear you watching some horrible tv program in the background. I met some very good people during my 4yrs in EQ and I never had to hear them in Vent. If it was to the point that we wanted to talk I would call them on the phone or i even emailed some of the IG Friends and if I could of I would of taken trips to hang out. Vent/TS seem to be used to much for things other than game related.
Mods/Vent have killed the Immersion the most for me.
I honestly don't know what creates immersion for me. I just know that I remember all kinds playing sessions from PnP ADnD, EQ, and DAoC, and almost none from WoW. I would look at EQ and wonder why the game was so enjoyable to me, but in the end I decided it didn't matter. I think a lot of what immersion is can't be defined anyway, if you are able to define it in absolute terms, it is no longer immersive. That is prolly why DAoC and EQ (and vanilla SWG to an extent) were so immersive for me cause I couldn't categorize it or explain it, and didn't care in the least.
Alot of what has been mentioned about other players is right on for me as well. When players start treating the game as a game and not a WORLD, I start tuning out and thinking about that other world (you know, the REAL one). All that stuff, instanced dungeons, quick travel time, vent, dungeon finders, etc., may increase the fun, but somehow they have a tendency to decrease how enjoyable and interesting the game is.
And maybe I just have out grown the genre (God let this not be true), it is definitely true that I had a lot more IRL obligations by the time WoW came out (and even more now) than I did when I started on my MMO journey (in EQ, about two months prior to the release of Scars of Velious).
Honestly, I don't mind instances, nor non-dynamic gameplay. these are inherent compromises in MMOs to stop people from fighting over content, which would be the literal death of most games. What ruins my immersion the most is that I've long ago since tossed off the notions of immersion and accept that I am always a person playing a game, and find my enjoyment from playing games like they are games generally, especially so in sandbox games.
If you give me exact numbers on everything from skills to stat and scaling, expect me to spend the next few days number crunching to get the most OP builds -.- which usually ends up with me not enjoying the char Im playing or the planned build being completely useless except for extremely specific things. I want more viable builds! Lol
But seriously though. I hate it when I end up overplanning my build. Id rather play then spend all day thinking about builds! For the love of god I just want to be a swordmage but noo! 99% of the time I have to choose sword or magic and not both >_< Failure to comply means never being able to have fun because its not efficient and everyone calls you a noob >_<
As for the community... I hate it when people are too rushy. I knoe you have a meeting in 5 mins but can you please not seem so stressed? Games are there to relieve stress! Not to add into it
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni ( o.o) (")(") **This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Lack of focus on the Persistent games worlds and acheiving in it as a community
Lack of longevity
Lack of a whoie MMO; combat is just one small part generally other elements poorly implemented;
Economy
Political Map, taxes
Intuitive Crafting and base element gathering
Large Maps and well thought out world where people have choice....
Sadly most people think MMOs are combat and endgame in a month; as far as the original genre of MMORPG goes its pretty much non existant these days ; Just cheap immitations of what used to be fun.
A few titles on the Horizon may restore some faith but these days to get a real immersive fix ; Nothing better than a decent MUD with 3-500 dedicated players who care about the world ; not about a faceless guild that means nothing.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Thank you for the replies everyone, didn't know there was going to be so many responses.
After reading a lot of them, I came to realize why I haven't stuck with any modern day MMO. Old SWG, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call...just to name three as an example...I felt very immersed in those worlds. I guess to some degree, I feel immersed in Ryzom as well...since the world interacts with you and changes. New MMOs these days, I have fun for a month or so...but never feel immersed like I did SWG, UO or other oldschool MMOs. All three MMOs I listed felt like worlds, and not just games. I felt very immersed in all three of those.
I also realized after some people posted...nothing worse than doing a quest, completing it. And then seeing 50 other people doing the same exact quest. That really breaks immersion. Singleplayer games are much better for this style of gameplay (at least in my opinion), because it is only you that has done that quest...not 1000 and 1 people doing the quest before you and then after you. Sandbox games don't have this problem, or at least not nearly as much. Since they aren't really quest driven. EVE I get really immersed in, since it actually felt...well can't use the word "world"...but it felt "real", so to speak.
I think the difference between most (not all, but many) modern day MMOs and oldschool MMOs...many modern day MMOs are just games, which is fine...though at least myself, can't really get immersed in just a "game". But the oldschool MMOs really felt like worlds, and I personally, lasted a lot longer in them (many months or even years) compared to a month or two, or even less, in modern MMOs. SWG was highly immersive for me, simply because it felt like a world.
In UO, I could build a house anywhere (though it did clutter things up, sadly)...and I actually felt like I was part of that world. Not even because of having a house, there was many things that made it feel more like a world, instead of just a game. SWG felt like this for me as well. Those two are the few that I got so immersed in as I did, when I played them. Maybe it was even partly due to how good the community was as well, that helped with immersion...you didn't have people cracking Chuck Norris jokes, anything like that...the community was way better. These days, many MMO communities definitely don't help with immersion...especially the Chuck Norris jokes or things like that.
I can't really explain it much more than that, but if you played some of the older sandbox games, maybe you can understand what I'm trying to get at. They were just so much more immersive than many modern MMOs.
Check out my nature/animal/relaxing music channel on Youtube!
I can't really explain it much more than that, but if you played some of the older sandbox games, maybe you can understand what I'm trying to get at.
However, I do notice that quite a number of posts cited other other players as the most serious problem. Sandbox games are especially vulnerable to sliding down to the lowest common griefer because of the scale of ways that one player's actions can affect another's.
In a game where you are suppost the be a "hero" or a group of 5 6 "heroes" need to go into an dangerous jungle or desert just to see another 126 people leveling up just dusnt cut it for me
Comments
It has been almost 6 years now since I played an MMO that was worthy of even thinking the word "Immersion."
For me, the entire game world itself not feeling like a real, living, breathing place kills it. These days, MMOs feel a lot more like the old school AOL chatrooms with awesome graphics than game worlds. Contributiing factors to this include (but are not limited to):
-Non dynamic quest giving. When every single person out of 2500 on a server have run the exact same missions, killed the same mobs in the same place and killed the same bosses, immersion dies. How many %(*^ing wolf pelts does that dude in starter town need anyway?!
-VOIP. Not really much explaination needed. That scantily-clad gorgeous healer chick with the voice of a two-pack a day smoking, Jack Daniels drinking redneck? PASS.
-Theme park elements. I was never a fan of the "rails" when it came to immersion. A zone where mobs are strictly in a ten or 15 level range is SILLY from an immersion standpoint.
-Loot-based economies. Cutting out the crafters and a player driven economy = not a living breathing world.
-Queues for PvP grounds. No explaination needed here.
-Gigantic elaborate cities whos populations consist of mostly NPCs. It just stinks of "nice try, but no!"
-Instances.
I really hope that *insert game name here* will be the first game to ever live up to all of its pre-release promises, maintain a manageable hype level and have a clean release. Just don't expect me to hold my breath.
VOIP. VOIP. VOIP.
100%, definitely, absolutely, without a shadow of doubt-- VOIP.
Worst...Feature...Ever...
If being a developer means being quiet, mature, well-spoken, and disconnected from the community, then by all means do me a favor and believe I'm not one.
For me, what ruins immersion is these.
Instances, After all, were supposed to be in a virtual WORLD, not someone's house or room.
Invisible walls. If i see a tree in the distance, i want to be able to walk to that tree, not hit an invisible wall.
I thought I was all alone. Guess not.
Vent. Oh how I hate you. Whoever first thought it was a good idea to slap on a headset and listen to a bunch of internet strangers while playing an MMO needs to be taken out and given a good talking to.
I don't know you people, so I don't care what you did over the weekend or who you did it with. But I can cope with it if you decide to get all chummy and share. In text chat. Doesn't bother me. I might even be friendly and read it and respond with a personal tidbit about my weekend that you shouldn't care less about either.
But I do not want to hear your damn voice in my ear unless something major and massive is going down.
Okay, if it's a 500 player siege and you really have to coordinate that over vent, fine, I will put on the headphones. But only then. The rest of the time, if it's not important enough for your lazy self to type, it's not important enough to bother me with.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
My wife asking me to do something with her. :-(
Well, just kidding. It depends a lot on do I want to get immersed or not. A lot of MMORPG's I don't want to be immersed in, I enjoy mechanics and stuff. If the the story is not so predictable, characters interesting, visually not inspired by a cartoon or candy bag or Japanese hentai and world is vast as well as highly dangerous and unknown. Then I might just be immersed, and in that case, nothing else would break my immersion more, than other players talking about some sport event, the deliciousy of their breakfast or whatever.
The small feature called logging out :P
Serious, I think the major factor 'to be immersed' is the player themselves, if you cant get over small nitty things like cutscene, quest markers, interface, in the end, its really about you refusing to be immersed. You cant really expect a game without any sort of interface; I agree quest markers can probably done a bit more realisticly, like quest giver waving you over; as for cutscene, most games allow you to skip cutscene, so if you don't want to look at them, you don't have to, but missing out on the story will always bugs me the most........and quest text :P
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.
Feeling confined, as in seeing mountains I know I can never reach, not able to walk into a jungle/forrest due to blind walls.
Overall if the game is too much combat oriented and lacks a World feel to it.
The static game world which never changes.
I can save the princess a million times. And she still needs saving.
And, IMO, something like phasing just makes this 10x worse.
Now the princess still needs saving, but the guy I'm standing next to is seeing an alternate universe than me.
How immersion breaking is that?
What if you walked around all day, and nobody saw the same thing? You'd think either you were crazy, or everyone else was.
That would have to be the community behaving like 12 y/o bullies and when I play an MMORPG in English and I see people talking different languages.
I agree with many, I hate Vent.
The other major thing that breaks immersion for me is being too realistic and serious in a Cartoony game, or too cartoony in a Realistic game.
"Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security." -Norman Vincent Peale
I would say pretty close to this.
I hate "activating" something only to see it being activated again and again, or destroying something only to see it being destroyed again and again.
Most theme park mmo's have this and it just kills me.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
As many other people have already said, for me the biggest immersion breaker would have to be the other players. In particular, bad player names.
If you could put me in a game world filled only with people who acted as though they were characters in the world—not on the level of thee-and-thou roleplayers, but just avoiding any unnecessary jaunts into RL chatter—I could not fail to immerse myself in that world no matter how many other problems the game had. I know that this basically cannot exist and immersion isn't vital to my enjoyment of an MMO, so I don't expect a game like this and I don't seek it out. EQ at launch came close though.
the chat boxes
todays mmos arent immersive. to me.
What kills it the most for me is the Mods that most guilds require you to run in order to join/raid /group and this even includes random pug groups anymore. I managed to play EQ for 4 yrs with out the help of any Mods.
I think the only thing I d/l was a mod to change the style of the EQ Icons to use the World of Warcraft II Icons. Other than that we had individual channels and made hotkeys to deliver info during raids to the appropriate channels. Example being, I was a shaman and delivered debuff calls to shaman channel and the tank channel in guild raids. That was more than enough, didnt keep us from progressing not using some mod to tell me when to pound on some key. You just read emotes or watched the boss/mobs and used the appropriate spells.
Second thing I dont really care for and think kills Immersion is Vent/TS or any Voice Chat. Mainly because you hear so much from people other than the game. I dont care how your day was at work or how much homework you have. i dont want to hear you watching some horrible tv program in the background. I met some very good people during my 4yrs in EQ and I never had to hear them in Vent. If it was to the point that we wanted to talk I would call them on the phone or i even emailed some of the IG Friends and if I could of I would of taken trips to hang out. Vent/TS seem to be used to much for things other than game related.
Mods/Vent have killed the Immersion the most for me.
I honestly don't know what creates immersion for me. I just know that I remember all kinds playing sessions from PnP ADnD, EQ, and DAoC, and almost none from WoW. I would look at EQ and wonder why the game was so enjoyable to me, but in the end I decided it didn't matter. I think a lot of what immersion is can't be defined anyway, if you are able to define it in absolute terms, it is no longer immersive. That is prolly why DAoC and EQ (and vanilla SWG to an extent) were so immersive for me cause I couldn't categorize it or explain it, and didn't care in the least.
Alot of what has been mentioned about other players is right on for me as well. When players start treating the game as a game and not a WORLD, I start tuning out and thinking about that other world (you know, the REAL one). All that stuff, instanced dungeons, quick travel time, vent, dungeon finders, etc., may increase the fun, but somehow they have a tendency to decrease how enjoyable and interesting the game is.
And maybe I just have out grown the genre (God let this not be true), it is definitely true that I had a lot more IRL obligations by the time WoW came out (and even more now) than I did when I started on my MMO journey (in EQ, about two months prior to the release of Scars of Velious).
The community. Hands down.
At the heart of it all, you are a gamer. Love the games. Love each other. Respect the industry. And most of all, stop complaining.
Honestly, I don't mind instances, nor non-dynamic gameplay. these are inherent compromises in MMOs to stop people from fighting over content, which would be the literal death of most games. What ruins my immersion the most is that I've long ago since tossed off the notions of immersion and accept that I am always a person playing a game, and find my enjoyment from playing games like they are games generally, especially so in sandbox games.
If you give me exact numbers on everything from skills to stat and scaling, expect me to spend the next few days number crunching to get the most OP builds -.- which usually ends up with me not enjoying the char Im playing or the planned build being completely useless except for extremely specific things. I want more viable builds! Lol
But seriously though. I hate it when I end up overplanning my build. Id rather play then spend all day thinking about builds! For the love of god I just want to be a swordmage but noo! 99% of the time I have to choose sword or magic and not both >_< Failure to comply means never being able to have fun because its not efficient and everyone calls you a noob >_<
As for the community... I hate it when people are too rushy. I knoe you have a meeting in 5 mins but can you please not seem so stressed? Games are there to relieve stress! Not to add into it
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
( o.o)
(")(")
**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Ruins immersion:
Focus on Guilds and End Game
Lack of focus on the Persistent games worlds and acheiving in it as a community
Lack of longevity
Lack of a whoie MMO; combat is just one small part generally other elements poorly implemented;
Economy
Political Map, taxes
Intuitive Crafting and base element gathering
Large Maps and well thought out world where people have choice....
Sadly most people think MMOs are combat and endgame in a month; as far as the original genre of MMORPG goes its pretty much non existant these days ; Just cheap immitations of what used to be fun.
A few titles on the Horizon may restore some faith but these days to get a real immersive fix ; Nothing better than a decent MUD with 3-500 dedicated players who care about the world ; not about a faceless guild that means nothing.
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
So true.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Thank you for the replies everyone, didn't know there was going to be so many responses.
After reading a lot of them, I came to realize why I haven't stuck with any modern day MMO. Old SWG, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call...just to name three as an example...I felt very immersed in those worlds. I guess to some degree, I feel immersed in Ryzom as well...since the world interacts with you and changes. New MMOs these days, I have fun for a month or so...but never feel immersed like I did SWG, UO or other oldschool MMOs. All three MMOs I listed felt like worlds, and not just games. I felt very immersed in all three of those.
I also realized after some people posted...nothing worse than doing a quest, completing it. And then seeing 50 other people doing the same exact quest. That really breaks immersion. Singleplayer games are much better for this style of gameplay (at least in my opinion), because it is only you that has done that quest...not 1000 and 1 people doing the quest before you and then after you. Sandbox games don't have this problem, or at least not nearly as much. Since they aren't really quest driven. EVE I get really immersed in, since it actually felt...well can't use the word "world"...but it felt "real", so to speak.
I think the difference between most (not all, but many) modern day MMOs and oldschool MMOs...many modern day MMOs are just games, which is fine...though at least myself, can't really get immersed in just a "game". But the oldschool MMOs really felt like worlds, and I personally, lasted a lot longer in them (many months or even years) compared to a month or two, or even less, in modern MMOs. SWG was highly immersive for me, simply because it felt like a world.
In UO, I could build a house anywhere (though it did clutter things up, sadly)...and I actually felt like I was part of that world. Not even because of having a house, there was many things that made it feel more like a world, instead of just a game. SWG felt like this for me as well. Those two are the few that I got so immersed in as I did, when I played them. Maybe it was even partly due to how good the community was as well, that helped with immersion...you didn't have people cracking Chuck Norris jokes, anything like that...the community was way better. These days, many MMO communities definitely don't help with immersion...especially the Chuck Norris jokes or things like that.
I can't really explain it much more than that, but if you played some of the older sandbox games, maybe you can understand what I'm trying to get at. They were just so much more immersive than many modern MMOs.
Check out my nature/animal/relaxing music channel on Youtube!
My game channel on Youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/vendayn
However, I do notice that quite a number of posts cited other other players as the most serious problem. Sandbox games are especially vulnerable to sliding down to the lowest common griefer because of the scale of ways that one player's actions can affect another's.
this kind off
In a game where you are suppost the be a "hero" or a group of 5 6 "heroes" need to go into an dangerous jungle or desert just to see another 126 people leveling up just dusnt cut it for me
^
What he said.