Does instant transportation effect game immersion?

[Jobeto-Rin]

If you respond, also take into account I've never played any other MMO besides Final Fantasy XI. I've never even tried WoW. This is not a WoW vs FF argument. Nor is it a churn and burn vs. immersion argument. It's an options vs. no options argument.

Understood.

When you heard of a MMO game, (to me at least) immediate reactions of a game virtual world arose. From the detailed intricacies of what entailed a MMO game; An in-game clock, with it's own periods of night and day; applicable real world weather, snow, desert storms, etc etc.; Real life people oriented groups, shops, clans, gangs, entourages, posses etc.; To engaging environments, mountains, oceans, vast lands, cities and villages. You knew it would be massive and would take time to go through the necessities to create what you would deem as a virtual image of yourself and venture this world. The time invested wasn't relevant, it was the the thrill of experiencing the game and enjoying the e-world with other people and their own unique characters, that mattered.

Now fast forward to the aftermath of WOW. Players say they have no time, now it's just a game they throw hours into and just level up, vicinities filled with egotistical people trying to attain the greatest gear and highest level as quickly as possible, largest LS, all for bragging rights. No more dedication is required really, it's just become another game to play. MMO's are loosing it's essence.

I believe casuals, and the money they offered to game companies, swayed the change of this, but above is old school MMO's to me, it seems times are changing. There's so much more to say.

Money ruins so much crap man.

[Quanta]

Even if it's mundanely monotonous, my perspective is they're only moments that provide a MMO it's "You are involved in my massive world" feeling.

I can feel involved in a massive world without the developers adding pointless timesinks that are totally unimportant to the game itself. I can imagine, for instance, that the events of FFVII took months to complete, and that I haven't seen every town or village in the world because they're completely unimportant to the plot. Adding those villages with nothing to them except bits of dialog from the 2-3 inhabitants that would be shown and maybe a potion in a chest would not enrich the game or make it more believeable because their existence has no bearing on what I'm trying to accomplish, unlike every other location in the game. In Mass Effect, watching my ship travel through the void of space wouldn't add anything to the experience, so it's omitted. That doesn't stop the developers from getting the point across that space is vast, or that the places I visit in my quest aren't enormous. The Citadel would seem a lot smaller than it really is supposed to be if you could visit every end of it, hence why you're confined to small sections of the areas you're allowed to visit.

In other words, game worlds feel massive when you're only shown bits and pieces, and your imagination is allowed to fill the empty space. Being able to experience the airship ride and seeing the same passengers on the boats over and over again would rapidly make the world feel smaller, because the patterns are easily recognizable; the absence of the ride allows you to fill in the blanks yourself, and helps to maintain the fiction that the world you're in is ginormous, and you're not, in fact, riding with the same "Worried Adventurers" over and over again.

Imagine fighting the last boss of a game, and killing it in 3 hits.
That is the same effect we are feeling here. Where is the challenge? How am I to be immersed in a boss battle when I just literally skipped the fight?

Some games do have final bosses that go down in 3 hits. Super Mario 64, for instance. That doesn't make the fight any less of an epic final encounter, though. The challenge lies in being able to land the hits in the first place, something that the boss and the arena you fight him in try to make as difficult as possible.

Yes, we ultimately enjoy the boss killing, but it's the journey we went through to achieve it that was fun and entertaining. Killing the boss is similar to arriving at a destination. The enthusiasm and mental/emotional immersion we experienced gave that achievement a feeling of worth-fulness.

True, the journey is important, but only the first time on a given character. Once my Warrior kills the Wizard King once, killing him again isn't a worthwhile pursuit unless there's additional mechanics at work in the 2nd fight. A 3rd fight is even more pointless unless, again, new mechanics are introduced. And that's never the case unless you're playing WoW, whose bosses follow patterns rather than adapting to circumstances. Once you know the pattern, the boss is easily beatable on all subsequent characters, so long as you're proficient with them.

Now instant teleportations (can we just say IT's?) doesn't necessarily kill immersion totally, it just affects it, moreso than anything because when a game has no real achievements and less in-game involvement, it's killing what little we could have atm.

What's to be gained from a mandatory ride other than a convenient spot to AFK for a few minutes? Unless you can fight, gather, or have access to unique crafting opportunities on the boat, there's zero purpose to it taking any longer than the departure and arrival cutscenes. The whole "doesn't make sense" argument doesn't fly with me, because anyone with even a tiny bit of imagination understands that instant-travel airships are abstracted for the sake of brevity. Remember, we're playing games where hundreds or even thousands of people somehow manage to live together in an area that only has two buildings and no signs of agriculture, where all wild animals seem to breed like rabbits, where the same patch of mountain has minerals that never run out. All of those things are far more worrisome to the believability of the world than instant-travel airships, yet we handwave them because adhereing strictly to reality in those instances would result in a game that's far more terrible and puts far more strain on our willing suspension of disbelief.

[Rhomagus]

I can feel involved in a massive world without the developers adding pointless timesinks that are totally unimportant to the game itself. I can imagine, for instance, that the events of FFVII took months to complete, and that I haven't seen every town or village in the world because they're completely unimportant to the plot. Adding those villages with nothing to them except bits of dialog from the 2-3 inhabitants that would be shown and maybe a potion in a chest would not enrich the game or make it more believeable because their existence has no bearing on what I'm trying to accomplish, unlike every other location in the game. In Mass Effect, watching my ship travel through the void of space wouldn't add anything to the experience, so it's omitted. That doesn't stop the developers from getting the point across that space is vast, or that the places I visit in my quest aren't enormous. The Citadel would seem a lot smaller than it really is supposed to be if you could visit every end of it, hence why you're confined to small sections of the areas you're allowed to visit.

In other words, game worlds feel massive when you're only shown bits and pieces, and your imagination is allowed to fill the empty space. Being able to experience the airship ride and seeing the same passengers on the boats over and over again would rapidly make the world feel smaller, because the patterns are easily recognizable; the absence of the ride allows you to fill in the blanks yourself, and helps to maintain the fiction that the world you're in is ginormous, and you're not, in fact, riding with the same "Worried Adventurers" over and over again.



Some games do have final bosses that go down in 3 hits. Super Mario 64, for instance. That doesn't make the fight any less of an epic final encounter, though. The challenge lies in being able to land the hits in the first place, something that the boss and the arena you fight him in try to make as difficult as possible.



True, the journey is important, but only the first time on a given character. Once my Warrior kills the Wizard King once, killing him again isn't a worthwhile pursuit unless there's additional mechanics at work in the 2nd fight. A 3rd fight is even more pointless unless, again, new mechanics are introduced. And that's never the case unless you're playing WoW, whose bosses follow patterns rather than adapting to circumstances. Once you know the pattern, the boss is easily beatable on all subsequent characters, so long as you're proficient with them.



What's to be gained from a mandatory ride other than a convenient spot to AFK for a few minutes? Unless you can fight, gather, or have access to unique crafting opportunities on the boat, there's zero purpose to it taking any longer than the departure and arrival cutscenes. The whole "doesn't make sense" argument doesn't fly with me, because anyone with even a tiny bit of imagination understands that instant-travel airships are abstracted for the sake of brevity. Remember, we're playing games where hundreds or even thousands of people somehow manage to live together in an area that only has two buildings and no signs of agriculture, where all wild animals seem to breed like rabbits, where the same patch of mountain has minerals that never run out. All of those things are far more worrisome to the believability of the world than instant-travel airships, yet we handwave them because adhereing strictly to reality in those instances would result in a game that's far more terrible and puts far more strain on our willing suspension of disbelief.

This post is so well supported. +1

[Kiote]

How bout we just dont let everyone traverse the entire world in under 5 seconds?

[weeble]

How bout we just dont let everyone traverse the entire world in under 5 seconds?

the first time, not every time for ever and ever for years of there lives, multiple times a day. i agree...first time

[IStolzI]

Even FFXI's Xarcarbard, which you site as a "remote place," has at least three insta-warps available (teleport crystal, outpost, and abyssea). You're just remembering it wrong.

Maybe we just played during different eras of the game, but when I played, Xarcabard was not easy to get to. Abyssea must be post-WoG, which doesn't really count. Outpost and Crystal both required you TO GET THERE ON YOUR OWN first. Which is fine by me, instant tele is fine if the FIRST TIME you go there is through travel. I remember being a 30RDM trying to unlock SMN and needed carbuncle to absorb ice or something like that. I took the pass through eastern ronfaure and it was an ADVENTURE. Not begging/paying someone to tele me there.

And yes, at lvl 25 in FFXIV I decided to turn down a tele to central mhor da to travel there on my own. I did have a lot of fun, but it wasn't the same. It never will be.

[Griss]

I Have said it before, and i will say it again.

Immersion, Killing video games since the term was applied to them

[DeadRiser]

If you want to skip the whole cutscene in the future when you can actually ride on it, it should cost extra gil and anima.

[IStolzI]

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.

way to contort the opposing viewpoint. No one is talking about realism. But since you brought it up, yes the 100inv plus the 2 free retainers with 100inv is ridiculous. The only reason I don't have a problem with it is the amount of drops I seem to get in this game.

As far as the real life comment goes, you're playing the same game we are and posting and the same boards we are buddy. The fact that your lazy ingame probably means you're lazy IRL too.

[PrettyPrincess]

WHY IS THIS THREAD STILL EXISTING!?