Does instant transportation effect game immersion?

[Jaber]

DUURRRRR

Anima is teleport from anywhere to point A. Or B. Or C. And so on.
Airships are run to point A, teleport/ride to point B.

Anima has an effective time cost of 8 to 24 hours depending on the location you teleport from and the location you teleport to.
Airships have an effective time cost of however long it takes you to run to point A.

Personally, I don't like the way anima works and would rather it be set up similarly to the insta-travel airships, e.g. teleport from Aetheryte to Aetheryte for a much lower cost.

As for quests... quests need pointers. They don't need to be big DERRRR pointers, but they need to have pointers. Clear directions. You should never need to guess blindly at what you need to do. In FFXI, that's exactly what you ended up doing most of the time, as most of those pointers were not in the game. They were on the wiki. That's just poor design, and I'd like to not have to figure out what ??? I need to check in what zone at what time, assuming I need to check it and not trade it an item or items or dance naked in the moonlight next to it while someone plays banjo music with their feet.
That is, of course, entirely and completely unrelated to the topic of forcing delays on people for no reason other than to force delays on people. Call it immersion or whatever you like. It's still a delay, and it's still forced on you whether you enjoy it or not, and it's not going to be any more enjoyable if you don't have the option of skipping it.
Forcing it isn't going to add immersion, unless it's simulating what it's like to ride an airplane filled with clothing mannequins when everyone who doesn't enjoy it goes AFK.

I love your immersive dynamic content idea, however as I'm sure your aware If that choice were to be presented the hard way would have to out way the easy way with benefits, as does anything of that nature.

Obviously if you skipped the ride you would be skipping any events that takes place during the ride, including any rewards or repercussions they may offer.

[Rhomagus]

I love your immersive dynamic content idea, however as I'm sure your aware If that choice were to be presented the hard way would have to out way the easy way with benefits, as does anything of that nature.

Of course, that's the main tenant of game balance.

You choose to do more, you get rewarded more. You want the easy way out, you pay a fee. That is how the current proposal is laid out as of September 9, 2011.

[Bled]

Anima is teleport from anywhere to point A. Or B. Or C. And so on.
Airships are run to point A, teleport/ride to point B.

Anima has an effective time cost of 8 to 24 hours depending on the location you teleport from and the location you teleport to.
Airships have an effective time cost of however long it takes you to run to point A.

Personally, I don't like the way anima works and would rather it be set up similarly to the insta-travel airships, e.g. teleport from Aetheryte to Aetheryte for a much lower cost.

As for quests... quests need pointers. They don't need to be big DERRRR pointers, but they need to have pointers. Clear directions. You should never need to guess blindly at what you need to do. In FFXI, that's exactly what you ended up doing most of the time, as most of those pointers were not in the game. They were on the wiki. That's just poor design, and I'd like to not have to figure out what ??? I need to check in what zone at what time, assuming I need to check it and not trade it an item or items or dance naked in the moonlight next to it while someone plays banjo music with their feet.
That is, of course, entirely and completely unrelated to the topic of forcing delays on people for no reason other than to force delays on people. Call it immersion or whatever you like. It's still a delay, and it's still forced on you whether you enjoy it or not, and it's not going to be any more enjoyable if you don't have the option of skipping it.
Forcing it isn't going to add immersion, unless it's simulating what it's like to ride an airplane filled with clothing mannequins when everyone who doesn't enjoy it goes AFK.


Obviously if you skipped the ride you would be skipping any events that takes place during the ride, including any rewards or repercussions they may offer.

first and foremost laying out the game mechanic of anima and airships is not grounds for material in stating that it is not a step in the direction of making games less immersive.

Second quests do not need big pointers, or giant exclamation points in order to be doable again they just ruin immersion. Continuing with the example of final fantasy 11 finding destinations were not all that difficult, the game laid out the region, then area, and then person, truly that is all you need. i am not the poster child/advocate for no skip able airship rides, what I'm advocating is the importance of immersion as a whole. In FF11 you finished a quest and you reflected on that quest with funny stories, fond stories, or even stories of frustration; in FF14 i cant even remember the name of any decent quests let alone one frustrating.

forcing delays on people is to set the tone of a game, it sets the mood. what would you remember more:

A. FF14 leveling which equates to abysea power leveling.

B. FF11 back before abysea.

and be honest with yourself.

[Seif]

This conversation ceased to be a legitimate debate when your main platform was "show me games that made me wait"...talk about irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Edit: You are missing the whole big picture, first we say hey you get insta teleport in the form of anima, then insta teleport with no cost in the form of airships, then we get the option to skip cut scenes, then we get GIANT POINTERS FOR QUESTS! that say DUURRRRR this way, seriously man when does this crap end. I hope you are seeing the trend in the game and why ruining immersion is ultimately ruining the game.

Things are not black and white, and there is always more to something then what seems.

I think you bring up a good point here. The giant arrows everywhere make the world and the lore completely irrelevant.
In XI you were hanging onto every word the NPC's spoke because it could have major gameplay information woven into the conversation. In XIV all text are just completely flavor text glued on top of a levequest that is completely irrelevant to the player and that more than any other aspect in the game ruins the immersion for me.

warp to location X--> get handed a leve-->warp to location-->kill the too easy mobs-->warp back---->get anded a useless piece of gear/too much gil

[Jaber]

first and foremost laying out the game mechanic of anima and airships is not grounds for material in stating that it is not a step in the direction of making games less immersive.

Second quests do not need big pointers, or giant exclamation points in order to be doable again they just ruin immersion. Continuing with the example of final fantasy 11 finding destinations were not all that difficult, the game laid out the region, then area, and then person, truly that is all you need. i am not the poster child/advocate for no skip able airship rides, what I'm advocating is the importance of immersion as a whole. In FF11 you finished a quest and you reflected on that quest with funny stories, fond stories, or even stories of frustration; in FF14 i cant even remember the name of any decent quests let alone one frustrating.

forcing delays on people is to set the tone of a game, it sets the mood. what would you remember more:

A. FF11 leveling which equates to abysea power leveling.

B. FF11 back before abysea.

and be honest with yourself.

You're not advocating immersion as a whole, you're advocating forced immersion and nothing else, and only your idea of what immersion is at that. For starters, if it's forced, then it's going to be LESS immersive, not more. It will be immersive to some people, but for everyone else it will just cause them to pay less attention to the game world.

And to answer your question, I would choose B, but not for the reasons I'd want to remember a game.
Not for memorable moments. Not for feelings of achievement.
Instead, I'd remember the mechanics I enjoyed and the gameplay that hampered that enjoyment. I'd remember spending all day playing another game while LFP. I'd remember zoning into crawler's nest and dying before it loads because someone zoned the entire map. I'd remember having gilsellers pull Guivre onto my exp party. I'd remember finally getting a party in the dunes then hearing the words "going to form an alliance with the tank". I'd remember how much work it was to level up and how it wasn't something you looked forward to doing, but something you looked forward to being done with. That's not how it should be, and that's now how I want to end up remembering FFXIV. I want to remember it for how it was great, not how it could have been great, and that's rather difficult when most of my time in the game is spent traveling while paying attention to other things.

[Bled]

You're not advocating immersion as a whole, you're advocating forced immersion and nothing else, and only your idea of what immersion is at that. For starters, if it's forced, then it's going to be LESS immersive, not more. It will be immersive to some people, but for everyone else it will just cause them to pay less attention to the game world.

And to answer your question, I would choose B, but not for the reasons I'd want to remember a game.
Not for memorable moments. Not for feelings of achievement.
Instead, I'd remember the mechanics I enjoyed and the gameplay that hampered that enjoyment. I'd remember spending all day playing another game while LFP. I'd remember zoning into crawler's nest and dying before it loads because someone zoned the entire map. I'd remember having gilsellers pull Guivre onto my exp party. I'd remember finally getting a party in the dunes then hearing the words "going to form an alliance with the tank". I'd remember how much work it was to level up and how it wasn't something you looked forward to doing, but something you looked forward to being done with. That's not how it should be, and that's now how I want to end up remembering FFXIV. I want to remember it for how it was great, not how it could have been great, and that's rather difficult when most of my time in the game is spent traveling while paying attention to other things.

hmmm well your first sentence makes 0 sense seeing as i can advocate immersion as a whole while advocating that it be forced... but hey you did say something that i agree with, immersion can be different to some people even though most of the time they are confusing what immersion aka spacial presence actually is. again ill break it down even more in depth:

Completeness of sensory information (aka visuals) means that the fewer imperfections about the mental model of the game world that the player has to fill in, the better like big arrows for quests, and instant teleports with no travel time to speak of. Abstractions (there are no people in this town because of, uh, a genocide!) are the enemy of immersion. Assassin’s Creed 2 was immersive because its towns were filled with people who looked like they were doing people stuff, actual daily tasks. Dealing in a familiar environment also allows everyone to comfortably make assumptions about those blank spaces without being pulled out of the world to think about it like copy pasting areas over and over again in FF14. Knowing that the world is not a copy paste but rather a different piece of a puzzle allows you to be more immersed in the game.

Cognitively demanding environments where you stop and think causes the player base to focus on what’s going on and getting by in the game will tie up mental resources. This is good for immersion, because if the brain is used for understanding or moving around in the world, it’s not free to notice all its problems or shortcomings that would otherwise remind them that they’re playing a game like instant teleport forces on people.

Finally, a strong and interesting narrative, plot, or story will suck you in every time no matter who you are. In fact, it’s pretty much the only thing in a book’s arsenal for creating immersion and look at the long running of books! it works in games too! Good stories attract attention to the game and make the world seem more believable. They also tie up those mental resources I spoke of earlier in avoiding notice of other game flaws.

Your aspect of immersion you keep bringing up "ideling" is a portion of time were you are taking in sensory information allowing you to use more of those mental resources. Today's crowd of gamers is so impatient, so greedy, and so ignorant that they cant help but not appreciate immersion; does this lack of patience and appreciation of quality come from something outside of the gaming world, yes i do believe so... i pin this on American culture.

This is all just a piece of immersion as a whole that i am speaking of, if this needs to be forced on people then it should.

[Nabiri]

hmmm well your first sentence makes 0 sense seeing as i can advocate immersion as a whole while advocating that it be forced... but hey you did say something that i agree with, immersion can be different to some people even though most of the time they are confusing what immersion aka spacial presence actually is. again ill break it down even more in depth:

Completeness of sensory information (aka visuals) means that the fewer imperfections about the mental model of the game world that the player has to fill in, the better like big arrows for quests, and instant teleports with no travel time to speak of. Abstractions (there are no people in this town because of, uh, a genocide!) are the enemy of immersion. Assassin’s Creed 2 was immersive because its towns were filled with people who looked like they were doing people stuff, actual daily tasks. Dealing in a familiar environment also allows everyone to comfortably make assumptions about those blank spaces without being pulled out of the world to think about it like copy pasting areas over and over again in FF14. Knowing that the world is not a copy paste but rather a different piece of a puzzle allows you to be more immersed in the game.

Cognitively demanding environments where you stop and think causes the player base to focus on what’s going on and getting by in the game will tie up mental resources. This is good for immersion, because if brain is used for understanding or moving around in the world, it’s not free to notice all its problems or shortcomings that would otherwise remind them that they’re playing a game like instant teleport forces on people.

Finally, a strong and interesting narrative, plot, or story will suck you in every time no matter who you are. In fact, it’s pretty much the only thing in a book’s arsenal for creating immersion and look at the long running of books! it works in games too! Good stories attract attention to the game and make the world seem more believable. They also tie up those mental resources I spoke of earlier in avoiding notice of other game flaws.

Your aspect of immersion you keep bringing up "ideling" is a portion of time were you are taking in sensory information allowing you to use more of those mental resources. Today's crowd of gamers is so impatient, so greedy, and so ignorant that they cant help but not appreciate immersion; does this lack of patients and appreciation of quality come from something outside of the gaming world yes i do believe so i pin this on American culture.

This is all just a piece of immersion as a whole that i am speaking of, if this needs to be forced on people then it should.

I just have to applaud this. Very well said. :3 /clap

[Rhomagus]

I think you bring up a good point here. The giant arrows everywhere make the world and the lore completely irrelevant.
In XI you were hanging onto every word the NPC's spoke because it could have major gameplay information woven into the conversation. In XIV all text are just completely flavor text glued on top of a levequest that is completely irrelevant to the player and that more than any other aspect in the game ruins the immersion for me.

warp to location X--> get handed a leve-->warp to location-->kill the too easy mobs-->warp back---->get anded a useless piece of gear/too much gil

Nael van Darnus is mentioned in a cutscene. As we now know that's pretty key information. You'd be surprised how many nuggets of info are available in game if you pay attention.

[Azurymber]

You're not advocating immersion as a whole, you're advocating forced immersion and nothing else, and only your idea of what immersion is at that. For starters, if it's forced, then it's going to be LESS immersive, not more. It will be immersive to some people, but for everyone else it will just cause them to pay less attention to the game world.

And to answer your question, I would choose B, but not for the reasons I'd want to remember a game.
Not for memorable moments. Not for feelings of achievement.
Instead, I'd remember the mechanics I enjoyed and the gameplay that hampered that enjoyment. I'd remember spending all day playing another game while LFP. I'd remember zoning into crawler's nest and dying before it loads because someone zoned the entire map. I'd remember having gilsellers pull Guivre onto my exp party. I'd remember finally getting a party in the dunes then hearing the words "going to form an alliance with the tank". I'd remember how much work it was to level up and how it wasn't something you looked forward to doing, but something you looked forward to being done with. That's not how it should be, and that's now how I want to end up remembering FFXIV. I want to remember it for how it was great, not how it could have been great, and that's rather difficult when most of my time in the game is spent traveling while paying attention to other things.

most people remember failing in the dunes as a memory
dying to skeletons as a fun time
falling down the holes in garliage as a thrill
even dealing with chained zones or spike flails as fun

Yes, waiting for a party sucked. So they should make solo options as well. But challenging solo like FFXI dnc or bst. not this kinda hit it 3 times solo.

even bad things contribute to immersion and feelings of acocmplishment

[Crica]

if this needs to be forced on people then it should.

Force players to travel slow all you want, but if the game does not offer the options that people enjoy, they will not buy and play the game - it's really that simple.

You enjoy slow travel in a game, and another player enjoys fast travel in a game.

You will play a game with a slow travel option and the other player will not play a game unless it has the option to travel fast.

Which do you think Square will want to do - place both options in the game in order to get both players to play their game or only place one option in the game and only get one player to play their game?