Ranger//Necro
No Immersion?
I don’t care about immersion in games so I don’t have this problem. I usually read a book and let my imaginaion do the work when I want to have immersion in something fantisy.
I speak for my self and no one else. Only fools believe they speak for a majority.
Immersion has no real standard it varies from player to player, so honestly there is no point in bothering with it.
Personally, I think Immersion is cheap cop-out for people not liking something but are afraid to say it.
As long as you look at a screen, input lot of buttons and type on a keyboard worrying about immersion in a game is dumb. And if you can let yourself believe that all those things are not immersion breaking, i am sure you can let yourself believe that all those things you complain about are not immersion.
As u know im pro. ~Tomonobu Itagaki
This is an mmo forum, if someone isn’t whining chances are the game is dead.
This is an mmo forum, if someone isn’t whining chances are the game is dead.
I don’t feel like my character is really a part of a fantasy world.
Our characters cannot talk in the Living World. It’s hard to consider your character part of the world when he/she is just a silent observer. Or, more accurately, a silent courier – our characters basically go from X to Y following commands from other characters. Even at the beginning of Scarlet’s Playhouse, it’s Roxx who turns and says, “Everyone ready? Let’s go”, not our characters.
Besides, our characters always say the same things, no matter race or gender. When an Asura engineer has to do exactly the same things as a Norn warrior in order to build an Asura portal, you know who our characters are has very little impact on the game.
The game feels highly segmented and the lore feels both flippant and disunified.
There are multiple different teams doing the lore. The personaly storyline team was different from the dungeons team, who had different writers than the open world dialogue team. The lore couldn’t possibly feel unified. Now we have four different teams doing the Living World content, so don’t expect anything to feel unified any time now.
Are you ever excited to explore or do heart quests or story missions?
Farmers are excited when they get gold. They don’t care about immersion or lore or having fun at all. Each update has been catering to farmers since they are the easiest group of players to please and to herd to each new release. If you are really expecting immersion, you better pretend your character is a professional pillager, otherwise…
“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
I don’t think any game I played actually had immersion for me since RuneScape. But that’s basically because they all had classes of some sort which broke it as I keep thinking why can’t I learn to be a Mage as well as an archer.
But the Guild Wars universe was always rather shallow in terms of lore for me (why are the Elder Dragons destroying the world for a start?) and the LS has no depth whatsoever, Scarlet makes Trehreane seem like an ocean of depth.
But they are learning from the LS.
Just so you know, there ARE people out there that loves the immersion this game gives. For example, RP’ers and such. I, myself am not one but there is no other game I ever played that is as immersive as this one. If you bother to talk to minor NPC’s and notice ALL the little things in the game, walk around and explore the world, you will see what I mean.
Also, I noticed only in Living World, do our characters not speak. Elsewhere, they speak their own lines, especially now in the Maguuma Jungle.
I find it varies greatly depending on how I play.
I feel most immersed when I’m on my own in a map I haven’t been to for a while and so don’t remember well (or a brand new one) with no particular goal except to get XP and/or do map completion and I let myself just wander around, going towards whatever interests me and taking the time to talk to NPCs to learn about what’s going on instead of relying on event notifications. I’ll still use the UI, but my focus is on the game world itself and that’s what enables me to really get into it.
Conversely I feel least immersed when I’m focusing on completing goals, especially when I want to do it quickly. That’s when I start thinking in terms of game mechanics instead of story – I won’t stand in the entrance to the fort to block the invading dredge at the choke point and stop them getting to the scholars inside; I’ll stand at the spawn point so I can tag all the mobs, and if the odd NPC dies it doesn’t matter because they’ll respawn after. (Note the change in language between those two, it’s subtle but that’s how immersion works.)
I also find turning off or ignoring chat helps because, with the exception of role-players, most people talk about the game as a game – they talk about the mechanics and developers and play time and farming techniques etc. – it’s very hard to keep shifting between that mind set and being immersed in the fantasy world that overlays it.
With the story specifically I find it works better if I can play a large “chunk” at a time, and play in a way that keeps me immersed in between. That way I’m less likely to forget the details of what’s going on and why, which makes it seem less disjointed and badly written, and it’s easy to get back into it when I can.
It’s odd with MMOs. In single-player RPGs you don’t really have any choice because if you’re not immersed in the story there’s not much on offer (although there definitely are people who will happily play a whole RPG for the combat mechanics and don’t really care about the story or dialogue), but in MMOs there’s so much else going on and so many other people who you can interact with in completely different ways to NPCs that it’s very easy to get lost in that instead and lose track of the game.
Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).
“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”
“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”
First of all I noticed how it says “User was infracted for this post” at your post, so I googled what it means exactely.
Apparently it means a mod has decided this post had broken forum policies. All I see is healthy critisism; OP even says it’s his personal opinion and he still plays the game. It feels wrong to see this thread beeing treated as something bannable, something that isn’t allowed here. These are the general forums, I believe this is a nice medium to discuss all the different aspects of the game and the player’s opinion. Apparently if they aren’t kissing Anet’s kitten , they should not have a place here. This shouldn’t be happening and personally I find it very unprofessional.
OT I agree with OP on most parts.
Once you realize every zone is pretty much build on the same gimmick, it’s hard to get immersed. Character dialogue is bland; every text feels like a copy paste but with two words changed to fit the map I am on. Then again I believe MMO’s aren’t the best type of game to look for immersion, especially not GW2 wich is heavily focused on zergfests. The last time I was immersed by an MMO was WoW in his early days. But alas, those are long past.
I won’t lie, every time I come back every now and then (mostly every half year) to see what’s new, I enjoy going to Orr or SW (or whatever is THE MAP of the moment) and get in to some action. I also like how they handled crafting, but I still find it unacceptable I can’t deposit my frikkin’ balls of dough – and I’m not buying any reason or excuse they gave about this issue. Other then that the combat is nice and it’s intresting to have a funny or enthousiastic commander, both for big PvE or PvP events. But because you realize it’s the same events over and over again, the same paths, the same mobs, it grows stale pretty fast.
I will always have a love-hate relationship with this game. There are many features I like and I believe they do it better then any MMO out there, but there is too much annoyance and too many QoL they don’t bother to implement that the community has been asking for within reason. I will continue to see what changes; I often read forums or the reddit even when I haven’t played in months. We’ll see what’s next.
First of all I noticed how it says “User was infracted for this post” at your post, so I googled what it means exactely.
I noticed that too and went… “why?”
However the original post is two years old.
On topic:
As someone who roleplays in game, it can at times be hard to get immersed in the world, can, its not always, from time to time though.
We who do roleplaying in my experience very rarely use the “Personal Story” to further our characters, because it doesnt fit in with how people who live in the world would be.
For the Zhaitan fight for example, my character was there, but isnt the pact commander, shes just a priory magister who happened to be on the air ship that killed Zhaitan.
The pvp community reminds me of what Obi-kittenenobi describes Mos Eisley as from star wars.
I feel the same as OP and after three years I cannot figure out why I feel this way.
I know this is a great dusty necro but I’ll join in. I find it easy to get immersed in this world. It is what it is, and people will fall for it at differing levels. Like everything that humanity comes in contact with. The sword&sorcery&laser cannon theme was a tad off-putting at first (from memory) but now its just Tyria.
Fire up the Hyperbowl ma, we’re going to town!
Would you like some hard cheeze with your sad whine?
Would you like some hard cheeze with your sad whine?
From a personal perspective; the only time i really feel immersion in any game is when i did every aspect of it for the very 1st time. It was all new and exciting. After thousands of hours in any game theres bound to be lingering sense disconnection from that game; it just becomes routine?
True immersion in videogames you might find in the next lv of gaming; VR mmo’s with highly advanced a.i companions/npc that can simulate lifelike emotions; think, feel, care. all set in a evolving world realtime. (nothing scripted) etc. Or…does that sound silly? :P
Are you ever excited to explore or do heart quests
I’d like to do more heart quests, but they don’t make them anymore.
I usually dont get immersed in games at all, especially not MMO’s. GW2 sometimes makes me feel immersed though when im playing alone so I guess its not a universal issue.
I like inventing my own lore. For example ambient mobs because we’re able to attack them are corrupted by evil and we never really kill anything but instead if we say defeat a separatist, boar, raptor, or whatever they’re taking a nap and will wake up again after being rescued from evil mind control.
The inquest, separatists, nightmare court, centaurs, and other bad guy factions are in league with each other and are being influenced by an evil force that hasn’t been introduced yet.