Teleport kills immersion

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Because the Aetheryte system was basically demolished in 1.0's end, there was a lot of expensive rebuilding. When we teleport, the fee is directed toward the debt the citystates have for putting up trillions of gil worth of aetherytes in 5 years, since it is a vital enough system they indebted themselves for it.

Its also in lore why there was no aetheryte near Waking Sands; Ul'Dah was trying to coerce Minfillia into allying the Scions with them by taking away convenience.

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Is this fee actually explained in game, or did you speculate? I don't remember seeing anything suggest this, granted it's been a couple years and 2500 hours of gametime since I unlocked Aetheryte travel.

Talk to the guard in Ul'Dah beside the aetheryte, and he explains the system to you and why you have to pay for it.

Teleportation costing Gil is hilarious in hindsight.

That said the mounts kill immersion by being slow and can't even fight.

Xenoblade X has spoiled me.

Yea the lore was slightly changed after the calamity to using Gil instead of anima.

Pretty sure I said it before but. . . in a magical land heavy with aetherial energy, you evoke a spell to travel aetherial streams between given points with aetheryte crystals acting as focal points for travel. And all at modest costs of the land's currency. . .

Sounds pretty immersive to me.

See, it WOULD kill immersion if teleportation magic was not in the lore. But literally everyone can do it, if you attune yourself to an aetheryte, you can travel to it at will. They explained much of how it works when we were fighting titan, and again with shiva.

Limited teleport spots would only work if there was actual open world content, but would not work with the theme park MMO style like XIV is.

I guess I feel matching the lore != immersion. I consider immersion being fully connected with the game. Anything that reminds me that it is a game and disconnects me from the world breaks immersion. Thus a teleportation window popping up and loading screens break immersion.

the teleportation is actually in the Lore of the game itself, so how it breaks immersion i have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, it's literally an immersive element.

As for 1.x Having Anima, and 2.x not, that's also in the lore, the calamity over saturated Aether in some way to make it to where we didnt have to gather the Aether slowly and expend it for teleporting (im pretty sure thats why it's this way in the lore, someone could correct me though)

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

I guess I feel matching the lore != immersion. I consider immersion being fully connected with the game. Anything that reminds me that it is a game and disconnects me from the world breaks immersion. Thus a teleportation window popping up and loading screens break immersion.

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Well this isn't a fully integrated VR simulation. This would be like complaining hotbars ruin your immersion.
The teleport window is just a prompt for the player, yes an extremely slight disconnect, but as are hotbars, the login screen, and all other UI elements.

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Originally Posted by Kaldor

return to a more FFXI-esque system with limited teleportation using instead boats/airships for travel between regions.

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{Teleport-Holla}{Do you have it?}2000g

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

I guess I feel matching the lore != immersion. I consider immersion being fully connected with the game. Anything that reminds me that it is a game and disconnects me from the world breaks immersion. Thus a teleportation window popping up and loading screens break immersion.

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Do you think mob AoE indicators also break immersion? Do you do dungeons/raids with the HUD off?

I can' read all the comments since I'm at work. I imagine your post might have gotten unwarranted negative feedback. Like you, I also find teleportation as incredibly immersion-breaking. In this game, when I once brought it up, I got the predictable, cookie cutter response of "Then don't use it..."

In Skyrim, I would use a mod to turn off fast travel. I realized that while I enjoyed the initial parts of the game more, all the hundreds of quests that made me go from one end of the map to another, made everything inefficient. FFXIV is quest-city. While I would like nothing more to have no or limited teleportation in Eorzea, I know that I will be setting myself up for failure - because FFXIV is just not that kind of game. It's not a virtual world to explore and exist in, it's a game to complete and excel at. That said, I appreciate your post and you get a thumbs up from me!

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Well this isn't a fully integrated VR simulation. This would be like complaining hotbars ruin your immersion.
The teleport window is just a prompt for the player, yes an extremely slight disconnect, but as are hotbars, the login screen, and all other UI elements.

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Indeed, teleportation is not the only thing that ruins immersion. I was simply agreeing with the OP that teleportation does ruin immersion.

Personally, my issue is less about immersion and more about being removed from the world. I enjoyed travelling in WoW as it felt very epic and you felt like you were in a massive world. FFXIV feels very small, and I spend more time interacting with windows than I do out in the world. This is also a fault of not having much open world content.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

Do you think mob AoE indicators also break immersion? Do you do dungeons/raids with the HUD off?

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Indeed they do. That said, look at my above response to Canadane.

I think they could simply making the loading screen look like you are travelling through aether - rather than a black screen with the name of the place you went to popping up. This would be more immersive. Granted, as I mentioned, I care less about immersion and more about the lackluster open world and lack of sense of exploration and adventure.

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Originally Posted by Datu

I can' read all the comments since I'm at work. I imagine your post might have gotten unwarranted negative feedback. Like you, I also find teleportation as incredibly immersion-breaking. In this game, when I once brought it up, I got the predictable, cookie cutter response of "Then don't use it..."

In Skyrim, I would use a mod to turn off fast travel. I realized that while I enjoyed the initial parts of the game more, all the hundreds of quests that made me go from one end of the map to another, made everything inefficient. FFXIV is quest-city. While I would like nothing more to have no or limited teleportation in Eorzea, I know that I will be setting myself up for failure - because FFXIV is just not that kind of game. It's not a virtual world to explore and exist in, it's a game to complete and excel at. That said, I appreciate your post and you get a thumbs up from me!

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The whole argument though, is that this would completely change the tone of the game. Making players spend time in travel is fine if that travel is engaging. In this game however it would be a chore. The overworld would need to be completely rebalanced to be engaging.... cause its not right now. It would also change it's target market. FFXIV is a game that is meant to be playable for the casual, midcore, and hardcore style of gamers. By including travel and making it a time sink then it inherrently becomes geared for the hardcore side of the spectrum and would become uninteresting to those with tight time tables.

I'll use myself as an example. Right now im a full time student, i work full time, and I have a wife and family. Now when school is out I can hop on for maybe an hour or 2 every day when the fam is in bed, but during classes I'm lucky to logon for an hour or 2 a couple times a week. If i had to spend even a quarter of that in travel I would simply unsubscribe while i was in school... which is all but one month of the year. That would be a gross loss in profits for Square as the casual crowd makes up a decent chunk of their revenue.

I've said before I wish we only had a few central aetherytes. The three main cities, Ishgard, Mor Dhona, and Idyllshire would be enough. From there, Chocobo Porters or simply riding your own bird to your destination would be much more preferable to me. I'd like it if ferries at least had short cutscenes attached to them too, instead of just warping us, Captain Placeholder style. Even WoW, as the MMO that basically kickstarted the modern MMO themepark, had more immersive travel than FFXIV does.

While the option not to use teleportation is there, it's a wildly inefficient choice to make in a game that is, at its core, extremely encouraging of efficiency. Systems like Hunts directly encourage (and indeed pretty much require) it to really progress. Other overworld activities like Treasure Maps are ultimately so minor that the sense of buildup that would come from traveling to them would be unimaginably deflated once you actually did the content you were traveling to.

We'll never see a reduction in teleports—it's the sort of thing that, once implemented, is going to always stay. But I definitely wish they would have emphasized actual travel at least somewhat more, as I rather enjoy the feeling of the necessity of travel itself. It makes the world feel more cohesive and less like a queue lobby. Electing not to teleport (which I do actually do on occasion) lacks the important element of necessity, so it doesn't evoke the same feeling of immersion for me.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

I've said before I wish we only had a few central aetherytes. The three main cities, Ishgard, Mor Dhona, and Idyllshire would be enough. From there, Chocobo Porters or simply riding your own bird to your destination would be much more preferable to me.

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With the exception of zones like The Churning Mists, The Sea of Clouds, and Southern Thanalan, that's actually pretty much how it works. One or Two Aetherytes tops per zone and then you ride, fly, or walk to your destination.

Perhaps I'm miss understanding the definition of immersion. Are people complaining about it actually TRYING to feel like they're in a game world with no connection to the real world? Because with out a Sword Art Online style full dive rig that's never going to be possible no matter what the devs, or any dev for that matter, does. You can never take away the fact that the first thing between you and the screen is a Controller/Keyboard. At least fast travel conveniences like teleport were actually given a lore explanation in this game. Where as other are more like "It's here but pretend it isn't." We already have the friggin time bubble to break immersions. "Oh God, someone is getting executed at sunrise, better spend three days gathering those rare mats for new gear before I pick that quest up" NPC: "You got here just in time, the trial's about to start"...... Yea, that's the real immersion killer. Want a lore explanation for the load screen? <Fires Head Cannon> Well when we teleport since we are effectively reduced to our base aether we don't actually have eyes until we reform on the other side. BUT when switching between zones, since it actually takes a few hours in world, we call on our trusty chocobos and take a nap while riding to the next zone then dismount just after waking up at which point the new zone is loaded.

Nothing is more immersive than a fat chocobo that can fly.

We are two weeks away from having turtles attain the gift of flight via fart gas and rotation. I think teleportation, a long-time staple of fantasy role-playing games is leagues down on the list of "thinks that break my immersion."

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Originally Posted by Datu

I can' read all the comments since I'm at work. I imagine your post might have gotten unwarranted negative feedback. Like you, I also find teleportation as incredibly immersion-breaking. In this game, when I once brought it up, I got the predictable, cookie cutter response of "Then don't use it..."

In Skyrim, I would use a mod to turn off fast travel. I realized that while I enjoyed the initial parts of the game more, all the hundreds of quests that made me go from one end of the map to another, made everything inefficient. FFXIV is quest-city. While I would like nothing more to have no or limited teleportation in Eorzea, I know that I will be setting myself up for failure - because FFXIV is just not that kind of game. It's not a virtual world to explore and exist in, it's a game to complete and excel at. That said, I appreciate your post and you get a thumbs up from me!

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Then don't use it...

Well, to be honest, we've had our immersion. Remember starting the game in your city-state? Not being able to teleport anywhere, giant fog-covered maps filled with various levels of content. No teleportation? Your only option was the chocobo Porter, except as you explored you could then find more Aetheryte to attune to and thus expand your reach. That being said, I have had my immersion. Imagine having to do a relic book in 2.x without teleportation - no.

So where is everyone going that teleportation is an issue? :P

Duty Finder also ruins immersion. Honestly though its the game.

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

So where is everyone going that teleportation is an issue? :P

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Makes me wonder if they also opt not to use fast travel in other games like Zelda.

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Originally Posted by Kaiser-Ace

Perhaps I'm miss understanding the definition of immersion.

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It seems like you are. No one wants to be "jacked-in" so to speak.

Immersion is a pretty common topic of discussion in fiction generally, in which the term "breaking the fourth wall" refers to the creator deliberately dispelling the audience's sense of immersion in the work. In video games specifically, in an immersive game, the audience "forgets" about the interface and method of inputs generally, allowing them to fully experience the game's world and narrative "in universe" as it were.

I thought this topic would be about NPCs teleporting in cutscenes which I actually hate as well. It looks quite silly and I tend to imagine that teleporting doesn't actually work as easily and conveniently as the in-game visuals would have you believe.

In any case, I need my teleports. I like walking and trekking and flying around a lot in my spare time and still use ground mounts in HW areas now and then, but sometimes I am not interested in wasting a ton of time taking a very long route to my destination as though there were anything along the way that I haven't seen a thousand times before already.

Dunno. If teleporting is so immersion breaking for people, they can just not use it. If the HUD breaks your immersion, you can turn it off. If mob AoE indicators break your immersion, unfortunately I don't think we can turn those off so I think you're stuck.

I don't think any of this stuff is going anywhere, though. I know I'd be pretty pissed if they suddenly yanked teleportation.

Forums Kill Immersion

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

Dunno. If teleporting is so immersion breaking for people, they can just not use it. If the HUD breaks your immersion, you can turn it off. If mob AoE indicators break your immersion, unfortunately I don't think we can turn those off so I think you're stuck.

I don't think any of this stuff is going anywhere, though. I know I'd be pretty pissed if they suddenly yanked teleportation.

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Completely true. I do sometimes just take my mount and ride from Idyllshire to Ul'dah for fun and to experience the world. Where it becomes an issue is that you will miss out on open world content if you are not using teleports when everyone else is. For example, a hunt is called. You can try to run to Churning Mists from Ishgard, but you're not going to make it in time - you have to teleport.

I don't think they should get rid of Aetherytes, but I'd like the following:

• Increased danger the further away from an aetheryte
• Areas where you are forced to proceed on foot (i.e. a cave where you cannot fly)
• Animation while teleporting - such as making the loading screen look more like you are travelling through the aether (maybe Stargate style)
• Perhaps require you to be near a crystal to teleport out?
• Probably most importantly, provide a reason to be in the open world

Remember when WoW removed flying mounts and there was a crazy amount of backlash and rage? Yeah, uh, taking something away that is an integral system in an MMORPG is a bad idea.

Do you play in 1st person only? cuz looking down at your character would remind you its a game :P

if teleport kills immersion dont teleport problem solved :3 no1 is holding a gun to your head n telling you to teleport :3

I have good news for you. There's a fair chance and option to remove teleports for everyone, (not only you):


- Convince 75% of the player base to make a forum thread and post and sign they want teleport off. 75% of all the data centers. Isn't it easy? If 3/4 of the people wants it removed, it would be removed, you just need to convince people! It's the easiest task in the earth!

(You have already a 0.01% convinced to your cause, just the 74.99% remaining!)

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

Completely true. I do sometimes just take my mount and ride from Idyllshire to Ul'dah for fun and to experience the world. Where it becomes an issue is that you will miss out on open world content if you are not using teleports when everyone else is. For example, a hunt is called. You can try to run to Churning Mists from Ishgard, but you're not going to make it in time - you have to teleport.

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I run/fly places too sometimes, just because. There's a point at which immersion has to give way to gameplay or you lose huge chunks of your audience though. I'm not interested in enforced time spent traveling. If I do it, it's because I feel like it.

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I don't think they should get rid of Aetherytes, but I'd like the following:
Increased danger the further away from an aetheryte

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Define 'increased danger' though. Mobs that hit harder? Higher level? We pretty much already have that.

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Areas where you are forced to proceed on foot (i.e. a cave where you cannot fly)

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Diadem has this.

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Animation while teleporting - such as making the loading screen look more like you are travelling through the aether (maybe Stargate style)

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This could bog down slower systems like PS3 or lower end PC's, though.

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Perhaps require you to be near a crystal to teleport out?

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As a gatherer, I'm going to have to give a 'hell no' to this, especially with the 55 minute nodes for HW areas.

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Probably most importantly, provide a reason to be in the open world

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I find plenty of reasons to be in the open world, honestly.

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Originally Posted by Alahra

It seems like you are. No one wants to be "jacked-in" so to speak.

Immersion is a pretty common topic of discussion in fiction generally, in which the term "breaking the fourth wall" refers to the creator deliberately dispelling the audience's sense of immersion in the work. In video games specifically, in an immersive game, the audience "forgets" about the interface and method of inputs generally, allowing them to fully experience the game's world and narrative "in universe" as it were.

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Ah ok, I get it now. And I can now understand how some would find fast traveling immersion breaking. But I will stay in the camp of "It's Lore supported" anyway as that's still my stance.

But at least now I can understand where others view points are coming from. As long as I understand a way of thinking I can peacfully disagree with it.

I dunno..I kind of like the teleporting as it is. Sure in FFXI times it was different...heh but I remember everyone using the OP cuz it was faster, and most choosing Bastok because it has the quickest teleports. I always auto followed someone and couldnt stand running everywhere..LOL I still do it in FFXIV or ask my BF if he would mind using the 2 person chocobos...haha.

In fact I follow people so much I get lost when I dont >.> I think more open world content would make the world feel more immersive. Maybe open world dungeons or interesting battles (NOT FATES!! lol) or stuff like we had in 1.x, where we had to kill certain mobs to pop coffers...I dunno. But please do not take away the teleports haha

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

I run/fly places too sometimes, just because. There's a point at which immersion has to give way to gameplay or you lose huge chunks of your audience though. I'm not interested in enforced time spent traveling. If I do it, it's because I feel like it.

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Agreed.

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Define 'increased danger' though. Mobs that hit harder? Higher level? We pretty much already have that.

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I mean increased danger as in the further away you get, the more dangerous it gets. As in, mobs are higher level, hit harder etc. We kind-of have this already, but in practical terms everything in the open world is not dangerous. Hunts, for example, could spawn only in the dangerous regions - rather than anywhere as currently.

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Diadem has this.

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That isn't open world content. Also, diadem, ugh.

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This could bog down slower systems like PS3 or lower end PC's, though.

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Ah not a bad point. i would assume playing a short video in loading screens would be less hard on PS3 than regular gameplay, but I am no software engineer.

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As a gatherer, I'm going to have to give a 'hell no' to this, especially with the 55 minute nodes for HW areas.

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LOL I don't gather, but I guess I can empathize with you there. I was just thinking it would make more 'sense' lore-wise. I don't have a strong opinion on that though.

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I find plenty of reasons to be in the open world, honestly.

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Hmm, I guess we play very differently, and enjoy different things. I feel very much like I just stand around and use windows to enter content - this includes teleport windows to hunts. Personally, I find beast tribe quests and gathering to be very boring in comparison to similar things in other games (I enjoy dailies in WoW, Wildstar, BnS etc, and enjoy gathering in WoW, Guildwars 2, Wildstar). I'd say that percent wise, I probably have about 50% of my time spent in a town/outpost/goblet, 40% of my time in instanced content, 10% of my time doing hunts - guesstimated.

How does it kill immersion?

Even NPCs and story characters use the teleport feature. :|

Even NPCs use it. Roewna uses it too to get between her two out posts. If you noticed, there's a teleport crystal behind her in mor dona

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Even NPCs and story characters use the teleport feature. :|

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I think if they worked teleportation into the main story more directly or at least more often, it would feel a lot better for me personally. There are a few scattered references to it, but not very many, which makes it feel more like something that exists for the sake of gameplay rather than for the sake of the world itself. NPCs frequently walk off toward where ever they say they're going to meet you in quest scenes, when you would think they would just teleport right in front of you—just like you frequently do.

The gil cost is also sort of dissociated—I mean, who collects my money, if I use one? They do explain that it's a tax levied by the cities or something like that, but it's not as though you get a bill in the mail. It just magically disappears from your gil count. I think I'd prefer some sort of internal cooldown (like Return, or the old Aether cost it had in 1.0).

It's certainly part of the lore in game, but it's not very well integrated into the world itself.

To put it another way:

For me, it just comes down to the fact that, like Kaurie mentioned, a large part of the game feels like using windows to enter content, rather than actually journeying to that content. FFXI actually now has a similar network of "Geofounts" that are essentially Aetheryte crystals, but the crucial difference is that you can't teleport to them from anywhere. They work largely like the in-city Aetheryte networks, meaning you actually interact with something in game to get around. The in-city networks bother me much. It's just the biggies.

If you actually had to go to a city Aetheryte to warp to another one, it would feel a lot better to me personally, as it would involve engaging with the world in a way that we largely don't right now.