Immersion, The Facts & Fiction

[StellarDissociative]

Thank you Konata Chibi. Your analogy of the Universe was excellent! It made me create my forum profile lol. It makes great logical sense; however, I do doubt it will stop the improper use of the word. Once the "creator(s)" tell us what we have to accept, regardless of the fact that it has not and never will be within 'our' black or white choice, it may simmer down to a slow burning ember.

[Konachibi]

Thank you Konata Chibi. Your analogy of the Universe was excellent! It made me create my forum profile lol. It makes great logical sense; however, I do doubt it will stop the improper use of the word. Once the "creator(s)" tell us what we have to accept, regardless of the fact that it has not and never will be within 'our' black or white choice, it may simmer down to a slow burning ember.

Thanks ^.^

I was compelled to do this because I tend to get nit-picky when I see improper use of the English language (Least to say I hate how most people talk in my area "arr right innit blud") so I made this in the hope that it'd stop people using the word incorrectly except as a form of joke such as "The power-cut my house just had ruined my games immersion"

[Azurymber]

Thanks ^.^

I was compelled to do this because I tend to get nit-picky when I see improper use of the English language (Least to say I hate how most people talk in my area "arr right innit blud") so I made this in the hope that it'd stop people using the word incorrectly except as a form of joke such as "The power-cut my house just had ruined my games immersion"

I still disagree with how you argue this. And I don't agree that immersion is being improperly used.

There are also many articles that tackle immersion as a technique

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/...-tell-stories/

There is one example.

Immersion is a tool to make a media product successful. So its perfectly legitimate to debate how immersive a game is.

[AsterBarnivere]

Me either, that's why I made this thread, to try and stop people using it incorrectly all the time. If they used it right, you'd hardly ever see anyone use it.

If you didn't ever want to see the word every again you wouldn't have made the thread. And PP said "Never wanted to see it again" not "Never wanted to see people use it incorrectly"

*And no, I just can't get immersed into FFXIV, there is nothing to be "immersed" in*

[Chocobits]

If people were truly immersed in the game, they would spend more time playing it than they do requesting fixes for known issues. It's hard to immerse yourself in any application that crashes to the desktop with Alt+Tab. It's hard to immerse yourself in a game with copypasta'd terrains - UNLESS you're playing a custom adventure you made with RPG Maker '95. Although the world map for FFXIV could very well have been created using RPG Maker.

It's hard to immerse yourself in a world where grinding and leveling up quests comprise the majority of the content. FFXI used the exp grind as an incentive to reach the level cap, which unlocked worlds of possibilities.

Also, when FFXI was a year old, its players had: Sky, BCNMs, Dynamis, 12 jobs to choose from, Chocobos, Airships, an engaging expansion storyline not tied to any city, a working party system, an awesome search function, Teleport spells, Warp spells, realistic real-time battles not severely inhibited by server lag, a (mostly) intuitive menu, a comfortable console style interface, collision detection, a great targeting system that differentiated between friend and foe, the ability to quickly engage enemies, about 40 unique full zones (not including battlefield/misc zones), 4 major cities (Windurst, Bastok, San d'Oria and Jeuno) and 5 "settlements" (Selbina, Mhaura, Norg, Kazham, Rabao) which were more than a dumpy building by the side of the road; those are what we'd call "outposts" in FFXI, 6 amazing beastmen stronghold zones that are entire zones unto themselves and not just blips on the world map, and an awesome subjob system that allowed you to specialize your job by tacking on the abilities of 1 other job, up to half the level cap of your "main" job. IE If you had Ranger 60 and Warrior 45, when you changed to RNG/WAR you would be RNG 60/WAR 30. No abilities or spells to tack on, they were just there. Oh, and you also got all the spells/abilities available to a class given to you, not having to pick and choose them.

So, a year later in FFXIV, we have: Leve quests, no transportation whatsoever except a ferry and a broken anima system, the Garlean invasion miniquest, the Grand Companies which some instanced raids, Market Wards with PITA item search and repetitive zoning, no party search/flag function, improper mob AI and every mob mysteriously uses ranged attacks, no collision detection, Behest, no major expansion, a world map consisting of about a dozen "zones" which are really just long, visually repetitive stretches of essentially nothing to get from point A to point B, with such clever names as "North Shroud", "South Shroud" "East Thanalan" etc ad infinitum, a few "mines" which are just lines on graph paper, seriously you can see the graph paper when you look at the map, little visual difference between weapon swing and weaponskill animations, lag, the most terrible UI I've yet to see in any game, and finally, an awkward armory system that requires you to level nearly every class to cap to maximize your potential at any class and even then having a severe limit on how many abilities you can equip AND a penalty placed on equipped abilities/spells not available to your main class.

My counter argument to this entire thread is: how can anyone find the current system immersive? Granted, the game has come quite a long way from the trainwreck it was, but yeah, it will be months before ANYONE should be throwing around the term "immersion". We just barely got out of Alpha with 1.18, and with 1.19 we're trucking right into Beta. When get to 1.20 Beta 2, THEN we can start talking about immersion. Until then, please develop a severe case of hydrophobia and hope this sinking ship can get bailed out faster than it sinks, or we'll all be up to our necks in "immersion".

[Konachibi]

My counter argument to this entire thread is: how can anyone find the current system immersive? Granted, the game has come quite a long way from the trainwreck it was, but yeah, it will be months before ANYONE should be throwing around the term "immersion". We just barely got out of Alpha with 1.18, and with 1.19 we're trucking right into Beta. When get to 1.20 Beta 2, THEN we can start talking about immersion. Until then, please develop a severe case of hydrophobia and hope this sinking ship can get bailed out faster than it sinks, or we'll all be up to our necks in "immersion".

The final part of your post was the best part.

As mentioned in the OP though, immersion is what the player allows, not what the game does. After only playing for 3 weeks I'm quite immersed in the gameplay in many ways. That's GAMEPLAY. I see the world, I understand it's aspects and much of it's lore along with the games gameplay and functionality to become immersed in it's totality, I do not try to seperate 'game' and 'world', since they both part of a complete package. The moment I sit down and decide to play the game for a few hours, whether it be leves or crafting, I am immersing myself in it, because I am focusing on it.

I agree with the 'game moving into beta' too, since the game is being rebuilt. Really what we are playing at the moment is part of the game as bits are being added, you could say the game is still in it's development phase even though it's live. And I think S.E are doing a good job, no game developer except them have ever attempted something like this before.

As for copy and paste enviroment I'll say what I said in a different thread.

I've ridden my motorbike through a lot of country roads that all look the same.

I shall go and complain to mother nature that she was copy&pasting.

[AsterBarnivere]

TL;DR with a few good points

Hey, the RPers get immersed in it fine, but that's because they ignore the game world and make a world of their own in the world of the game that isn't necessary.

[DoctorMog]

These threads are really breaking my immersion.

><

[Konachibi]

These threads are really breaking my immersion.

><

Hehe, I throw the same kind of joke around in my linkshell as a way to say "I'm too lazy to do that part of the game."

Like earlier today someone needed a teleport to Ul'dah and I was like, "I've got plenty of anima to do that and plenty of time, but if I did it I'd be ruining my immersion" just because I was in the middle of my leve cycle and didn't want to be interrupted (I was thoroughly immersed in my levequest) :P

[Chardrizard]

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Is one thread and 80 pages not enough?