Teleport kills immersion

[Dyvid]

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

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

[Ashkendor]

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.

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

[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!

[Kaurie]

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.

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.

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

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.

[karateorangutang]

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!

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.

[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. 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.

[Kaiser-Ace]

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.

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.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

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

[HorseBoots]

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."

[Saint_Angeles]

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!

Then don't use it...