Does instant transportation effect game immersion?

[Azurymber]

I don't have a clue about this but I'm wondering if the whole anima thing + now the "instant airship travel" is going to ruin any possible sense of immersion that this game could have.

** So based on your experience with other MMOs and games, do you feel more immersed in a game world when you have to run around everywhere and when airships and ships take time (ex. ffxi), or do you think that instant transportation doesn't effect immersion? **

here are my thoughts (feel free to skip them and just post your opinion):

Anima allows you to instantly port to the important spots in the game (leve crystals). So you don't really have to run around the pointlessly large world. It basically results in people only really utilizing maybe 20% of the world or less on a regular basis. As such the entire game to -me- feels kind of instanced and focused around small areas (leves).

FFXI had instant port but it wasn't to the "important" spots in a zone and was often out of the way. And you often had to run past agro mobs to get where you wanted to go. I found that to be a lot more immersive than just porting directly to leves.

Instant airships really destroys the sense of immersion for me because it essentially lets you travel to wherever you wanna go instantly for a fee.

Put another way, this game doesn't seem like a massive dynamic world I have to explore, but like a series of instances inside a massive world that you can warp to with anima or buy your way to.

And while I understand there will be an -option- to travel on the airship, it still makes the game seem more like a series of instances rather than a dynamic world.

To me FFXI was blended perfectly. You could warp to some places but they were usually in the middle of the zone and you still had to run or chocobo to where you wanted to go. It was like a warp would take you out to the wilderness, surrounded by agro mobs and such, and then you'd have to run from there past things that can actually kill you to get to your parties camp, or the town you wanted to go to, etc.

[Catapult]

No not really. Anima and its use is built in to the lore. And the concept of watching a cutscene (or also skipping it) is well entrenched as tool RPGs use to progress the situation.

And if you want to run around instead, you will. Ultimately, people play the game the way they want to play it and immerse themselves the way they want to be immersed.

[AlphaDragoon]

No, it doesn't. People who want the immersion can just do it the long way, it's not stopping them.

[Rau]

oh cool, another thread about this.

[Gramul]

To hell with immersion!

[AmyRae]

No, it doesn't. People who want the immersion can just do it the long way, it's not stopping them.

Apparently it's only immersive if everyone suffers.

However, immersion is broken all the time in the game. If you can't accept teleportation as legitimate, then you can't accept weightless inventories and currency supplies; you can't accept getting chomped, burned, slashed, pierced, and bludgeoned by your foes with no permanent scars and no visible marks. When people die, they should stay dead. People shouldn't suddenly wear their armor poorly just because they picked up a wand when they normally use a sword. People shouldn't get smarter because they put on a hat of smartness or stronger because they put on a belt of strength.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but if you want immersion, I would strongly recommend playing this game called Real Life. It's pretty intense.

[Commat]

No.
<('.')>

[AlphaDragoon]

Apparently it's only immersive if everyone suffers.

However, immersion is broken all the time in the game. If you can't accept teleportation as legitimate, then you can't accept weightless inventories and currency supplies; you can't accept getting chomped, burned, slashed, pierced, and bludgeoned by your foes with no permanent scars and no visible marks. When people die, they should stay dead. People shouldn't suddenly wear their armor poorly just because they picked up a wand when they normally use a sword. People shouldn't get smarter because they put on a hat of smartness or stronger because they put on a belt of strength.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but if you want immersion, I would strongly recommend playing this game called Real Life. It's pretty intense.

So much truth in such a small post. Respect.

[Gramul]

Apparently it's only immersive if everyone suffers.

However, immersion is broken all the time in the game. If you can't accept teleportation as legitimate, then you can't accept weightless inventories and currency supplies; you can't accept getting chomped, burned, slashed, pierced, and bludgeoned by your foes with no permanent scars and no visible marks. When people die, they should stay dead. People shouldn't suddenly wear their armor poorly just because they picked up a wand when they normally use a sword. People shouldn't get smarter because they put on a hat of smartness or stronger because they put on a belt of strength.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but if you want immersion, I would strongly recommend playing this game called Real Life. It's pretty intense.

Oh, but this is a magic world. And you have to hold you suspension of disbelief for magic worlds.
Unless it's teleportation obviously. That's just too much.

But anyway. Airships will eventually have a sort of skippable in game cutscene where you see Ezora from above, so if you want to get your blimp on, you'll have the option to do so.

[Azurymber]

I would argue that realism and immersion are different. Immersion makes you feel like you are playing in a dynamic world with many different things going on around you. So when you are able to quick-warp everywhere that turns a massive world into more of a series of small levels or small areas.

For example FFXI was a -VERY- immersive world. And a lot of people really loved the journey from outside jeuno to the 3 main cities in the WoTG expansion because you just couldn't port there. It kind of forced you to explore and discover the world. And the quests didn't just take you to spots 3 min away from the campaign locations. often you had to run through an entire area to get to them. (using this as an example to show that even end-game stuff made the world immersive) You had to run to sky through 2 awesome zones. You had to run through tons of dangeroud stuff in sea to get to certain areas. It wasnt just -port to leve, run 3 secs past weak mobs-

Same thing with the way the world was designed. It was difficult to get from city to city untill you had spent a good week or so in starter areas (but possible if you really wanted to). Getting to kazahm and that area required a fairly long quest that forced you to explore the early "dungeons". Missions made you go through the beastmen forts as opposed to ffxiv where you walk outside the city or port to a leve and walk for all of 2 minutes.

The point im trying to make is that ffxiv doesn't make you explore or experience the world in any way other than small areas around leves. There is no sense of danger, there is no sense of journey or vastness, and there is no sense of a massive immersive world. You can literally just appear anywhere you want and then reappear back in town. Doesn't that kind of ruin the concept of an MMO?