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Is it possible to be immersed in an mmo nowadays?
0tter
Member UncommonPosts: 226
I've read a lot of threads discussing upcoming and current mmos. Many times they delve into everything from what type of graphics engine the game uses to what kind of dance animations the avatars can do. Gamers know so much about an mmo, right down to its game mecahnics, is it possible to even get immersed in the character or story of an mmo anymore. Does knowing too much about the game before hand ruin in any way its immersive potential for you?
I've been in games where gamers were discussing how they need one piece of equipment because it will will boost another ones str by .3% or something like that. When you start discussing percentages and ratios, crunching numbers, when you basically have playing an mmo down to a science, are you really immersed in the mmo or is this just another type of game play style?
These types of gamers are the ones that usually find the exploits, bugs, etc., that plague some games and can be a positive force in stabilizing them. But I can't help but wander if it hurts their enjoyment of an mmo in the long run.
Can knowing too much about the technical side of an mmo remove the simple wonder of being in a new world?
Comments
I'd like to see a chat system that filters out leet speak and converts it into olde english, zero parsing, virtually no ui and cleans my apartment for me while I play :P
Not too much to ask methinks
Possibly also removal of names/exclamation marks bloating your view. Numbers appearing whenever you hit or get hit by something isn't really immersive either.
Or you could play a game with a mature community.
I am generally a knowledge-sponge and will research and study any game I play for an extended time. I like to crunch numbers and try to perfect my performance.
I still feel quite immersed in games and when I play a character I feel I play as the character. I generally can seperate my technical knowledge from the pure enjoyment of the storyline and atmosphere of a game.
Maybe some people can't achieve that seperation and thus can only be immersed if they stay ignorant of the game mechanics.
I béo áblycgan ðu wære geþoht of Shakespearean englisc.
^ that is olde english. It says, with a possible error or two (I got good grades in the subject but that was a while ago)
,I am thinking you mean Shakespearean English.
This English to AoL 12 year old is pretty good
http://ssshotaru.homestead.com/files/aolertranslator.html
I wish it translated the other way.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Gotta side with Torik. Information doesn't jolt me out of a game, so hiding it isn't necessary or even helpful for immersion. There are a lot of people who treat "immersion" as this fragile glass ball that will erupt into a cloud of shards at the slightest provocation. "Loading, please wait? This isn't really Azeroth, it must be a video game! Oh sh-*pKSSSSHHHHHHH!* I prefer to think of immersion as an overall feeling, not your ability to block out reality from moment to moment, but the realness of the world as it grows on you and you become more aware of it.
Nope. Not untill they start removing level caps which many people seem to think translates into "beating the game" it seems. I was watching some SWTOR video and even the guy who was talking said something of the sort "Well, yeah, once I get to level 50 and beat..I mean.." he then had to sort of retract his statements or change em up a little, however, it still gives you an insight on how people think regarding MMORPGs anymore. It's a race for people anymore..not to mention it's hard to get immersed when you do the same quests and follow the path to the next quest hub which you know is going to be there..
Last game I was truly immersed in was SWG, and that was because of the community. No game has ever had a community the same and with today's breed of antisocial, solo-focussed powergamers I don't think it will ever exist again. I don't know why I keep looking for another game to be immersed in really.
A lot of good argument in this thread but I also think that 'to get fully immerse' you need to be in the right mindset. For example I'll take DAoC. For me, when I started this game I was single, had a great job with lots of free time and many of my friends were at the same place in life. Same for SWG and City of Heroes actually. So immersion was AMAZING simply cuz I could really afford too.
But then came the more serious relationships, you know, the ones that really mean something. Gaming took some sort of backseat ((Although still very present)). My mindset was not there... WoW came and went, so did most mmos after that. I was psyched about DC Universe but not my friends and work was making me travel so again, I just couldn't really immerse myself.
So, I'm not saying RL is the only reason but it IS one of them I think. Now that I'm a bit more settled, I'm hoping SWTOR or GW2 will really suck me in. And my friends.
________________________
"If RL was an MMO, I'd probably be getting laid more often..."
You will never be as immersed as you were when you first played [insert MMO that has your personal highest nostalia value.]
Guess it all depends on your first MMO because really since like Blizzard came along they've really been the same. Go here, kill this, go here, kill that, cap out, grind this, now grind some more. I didn't play EQ so it probably followed the same forumla. I was more of UO/DaoC and to be honest DaoC really didn't do anything much different (sorry Mythic..UO actually had sieging (factions) and "RvR" - open world PvP before you), which is all RvR is. You couldn't get catapults and stuff but you could buy certain things with the silver you gained (Oh, another thing wayyyyy before WoWs "honor points") which is more or less the same thing or whatever your first MMO was that introduced that.
ps - I want ArcheAge.
What do you really mean by 'immersed'. A player can be just as immersed in crunching numbers and watching DPS meters as another player might be in roleplaying. eg in EVE I was reatly immersed in the markets and the spreadsheets that came with them.
Id have to agree with this.
Hmm, maybe I meant victorian english.
For me it's as follows with the exception of a few good singleplayer games.
Immersion = Books
Entertainment = Mmo's
~cheers~
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...
Show me one game with an entirely mature community. I will be there in a flash.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
I find it hard to belive that players are unable to like an MMO or be immersed in one more than their first. I was much more immersed in WoW when it came out, after being very immeresed in EQ for several years. EQ was my first true love, but WoW topped it. Though I admit EQ had some better mechanics than WoW (in my opinion), I fully believe I will be more immersed in the future than I was in Vanilla WoW.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I believe the mmorpg focus has switched from characters to players. All the 'improvements' now days have focus on player efficiency, convenience and recognition. Characters are thought of as merely tools for the player by designers and many of the players.
This focus is different than it used to be where the idea was the player was behind the scenes and the world/character was the focus. As a result the mmorpgs feel less like a home for a character and more like a simple arcade game.
I found EverQuest pretty immersive for the year or so I played.
World of Warcraft (WoW) was very nicely immersive for about half an hour. WoW destroyed my sense of immersion because of all the gubbage on the screen. Numbers floating out of characters during combat, punctuation floating over NPC, quest boxes, spell icons, item icons and so on. When I finally got around to raiding, it only got worse, with all the raid UI stuff to allow support characters to track the status of everyone in the raid. It got to be more like air traffic control at O'Hare than playing at being a Tauran Druid.
EverQuest stayed immersive because the game interface was so crude. All the information was jammed into a lttle box in the corner of my screen. That meant that I spent the majority of my time looking at the uncluttered game world. If the game had been usable without the floating name tags, I'd have enjoyed myself that much more.
Until MMOs can go back to a streamlined interface while keeping the game playable, I'm fairly certain I won't be able to get immersed. Making advancement less frenetic would help quite a bit as well. With so much change in the character, it's hard for me to think of my character as much more than a place to hang gear. A slower pace of advancement would also give players an opportunity to learn the game world instead of racing through quests and zones using all sorts of builtin aids to guide them.
Most games let you disable the UI.
Most let you play first-person.
Virtually all let you disable chat.
None force you to read about them before they're released.
None prevent you from forming a guild (advertising in-game or in forums) of like-minded players interested in role-playing.
...but if you apply zero effort, you're going to have a weaker experience (although personally I dig the atmosphere of Rift, with its cthulu-esque invasions happening across a fairly interesting world.)
I guess I'm saying that immersion is certainly possible if you approach a game with the mindset of letting immersion happen. Whereas if you allow yourself to ruin your own immersion, you'll find it's very easy to do so.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think the right question to ask is whether a MMO is fun.
A UI without any info but just the your char in the world is immersive but not very fun. There is a balance between the two. I would MUCH rather play with all the modern UI trapping than not knowing what the heck is going on.
I haven't been immersed in any MMO I've tried in the past few years (AoC, STO, CO, APB, Rift, FFXIV, DDO, LoTRO)
I would rather figure it out myself. I don't find any fun in following arrows all over the place and people with punctuation over their heads.
If you can get immersed in a P&P RPG without more than some paper and possibly a few dices you can of course get immersed in a MMO still.
But I can admit that the last game that did it for me was GW from 2005 and even that didn't have the feeling I had in some of the old games.
AoC actually got me into it for a few days but it kinda lost me after a little while. The world was actually pretty well made but it was too small, buggy and I just lost the feeling for the world after a while.
I think a game needs a certain size for it to work for me, and it also needs small details that isn't really for anything but to add to the feeling that the game is alive. Like a small part of an old fence in the middle of nowhere, a few stones that might once been part of an house, a tree with some pretty birds in or other small stuff like that.
Not too many but a few so the world actually look alive. Also the world need some planning I havn't seen in MMOs lately, you don't just place mobs and animals with certain distance from eachother for the players to kill. It is actually nice with a small part of the wood with almost nothing, maybe besides a squirrel and a few birds.
But I do have the hope things will be better soon.
I am of course certain other people still are immersed in their games, but I feel that this is a point that can be bettered a lot.
That is just you. Most people do. I don't find any fun have to talk to 100 NPCs to find the 10 that have quests. It is not difficult and just tedious.