fazool said:So many things have break the "fourth wall" and ruin immersion.
Firstly, to me, immersion is allowing that experience to become my reality. Anything that reminds me I am not *LIVING* in that reality but sitting at my desk playing a game is an immersion breaker.
And those things are the things that make the in-world experience not cohesive with BEING in the world.
In other words, as soon as me (the real human) is doing something as part of a game instead of my character doing something as part of funcitoning in the world.....THAT breaks immersion.
And that can be all the things that make it a game and not a world......"convenience" things, like instant travel and auto mapping and ESPECIALLY punctuation quests, etcetera.
what if they are interdimensional beings(cough cough gnomes) that start talking to the player? it wouldn't be farfetched because technicallly the player is a mind controlling entity(which we know exist in the lore). plus all my characters worship me as their creator and they don't mind it if i possess them and imbue them with action(or essence? soul?). without me, the player, they are essentially npcs. i am a mini god in the garden of the gods(devs) roaming the dimensional plane known as pantheon rise of the fallen.
or you could just play on an rp server XD
Seeing people wearing gear they aren't actually wearing.
Bugs, Watching players Rubberband everywhere, Items disappearing, or having your 3rd person view able to look outside of the graphics and see indefinately.
Leaches
monk FDing right in front of npc that were just chasing him but somehow think he's dead without ever taking damage.
many things kinda bother me but i understand why they work the way they work, so i accept them as a mechanic in the game.
i'll have to say static npc.
1. like a farmer npc tending the field and not doing other things.
2. npc chopping wood and not storing it. Just standing there chopping for eternity.
3.low weak "draw distance" exploring the world and trees, bushes, objects, mountains, etc just magically "pop up" on screen.
4. adding inapropiate modern clothing like sneaker shoes, teddy bear backpacks, t-shirts, baseball caps
5. modern mounts like motorcycle, cars,
edit: 6. content fight with three or four tiers level fights. Like FFXIV Titan Fights Extreem mode fight, Hard mode fight, and Savage mode fight its so annoying
AbsoluteTerror said:i'll have to say static npc.
1. like a farmer npc tending the field and not doing other things.
2. npc chopping wood and not storing it. Just standing there chopping for eternity.
3.low weak "draw distance" exploring the world and trees, bushes, objects, mountains, etc just magically "pop up" on screen.
4. adding inapropiate modern clothing like sneaker shoes, teddy bear backpacks, t-shirts, baseball caps
5. modern mounts like motorcycle, cars,
edit: 6. content fight with three or four tiers level fights. Like FFXIV Titan Fights Extreem mode fight, Hard mode fight, and Savage mode fight its so annoying
oh you mean like this?
Text chat.
Nothing is more immersion breaking than having to read or type text. Voice and voiceovers all the way.
Kass said:Beefcake said:Text chat.
Nothing is more immersion breaking than having to read or type text. Voice and voiceovers all the way.
That's an extreme amount of voice acting in an MMO.
Is that even feasible? Do other MMOs have this?
The majority of the FF14 main story quests are all voice acted and very well done. It was a huge undertaking though because they had to hire voice actors in multiple countries for all the languages. If the game isn't going to be story driven in the way FF14 is I wouldn't expect voiceovers to be much of a thing.
As others have said my big hang up is pop culture or unrealistic names. EQ was very good about forcing people to change their names even on non-RP servers if they were pop culture references the first few years.
That bugs can be immersion breaking, seems obvious. But I believe it de facto not being the intention of the game to have that in the game altogether. So, it wouldn't be under my list of immersion breakers. It's just a bug, not a design choice.
Seasonal events or holidays if you will, need to be in the game. And unless I'm the already present Lore mentioned possible festive events. As long as they are fitting to the world of Pantheon itself, it would give me the opposite feeling of breaking immersion. All real life based holidays should be kept out of the game, but there is no reason why you can't write senseable lore about celebrations that coincide with real life holidays. (I mean, people still have the winter holidays, summer holidays) The period of an ingame celebration, can start prior or past a real life holiday. So it doesn't have to be spot on the same day. I understand what you're saying HemlockReaper, a world without any celebrations would not make sense to me, as races have culture and history to remember/honour. To have these things covering the real life holidays, just seems practical, it wouldn't pull me out of a the game per se.
What breaks my immersion is a story that is just too far fetched or too overpowered. (in other words badly written?) In line with what Alyonyah said, keep thinking about long term when you're writing the lore of the world.
Overpowered stats are a deal breaker for me. If I'm looking at my character and it has more than 100% of something that just makes no sense to me. From then on, I know I'm not playing a character but just an assembly of numbers to match whatever is the next content.
A name generator and name filter at character creation could solve a lot of immersion breaking experience based on silly/offensive/smartass namechoosing, according to me. For those that can't come up with a name by themselves, just let the ingame namegenerator make one up for you. This can already keep many names within Pantheon lore. If you have invented one, try it out and see if it clears the filter.
Real life ingame transactions are immersion breakers. More then likely, this will not be in Pantheon, anyway. (not saying that if you want to purchase cosmetics you can't be redirected to a site)
Boxing toons, disproportionate mounts or appearances
Cut Scenes, (if I'm using that term correctly here) really take me out of the moment. It can be attractive to others, but it makes no sense for me personally to suddenly have a video fragment popping up and losing control of my character. And especially when I have to press ESCAPE to skip that movie. Other then when I'm being transported by something, I don't want to lose control of my characters movements or awareness of my surroundings. Moviemaking is not a tech that is explained on Terminus, so hard pass on that as an ingame thing (not talking about promotional footage ofc) And no, I'm not talking about making your own ingame recordings either.
HemlockReaper said:Fake Holidays that conveniently coincide with real world ones.
oh these really annoy me, especially the holidays I never celebrate. However if they fit well in the Lore I am cool with it.
Animals that are not scared of humans. Often Deer, Rabbits are placed in the game to give a it natural idea, but they often do not run away from the greatest two legged predators on the planet. It is much more natural to see them running away for safety (except druids or rangers.).
Predatores outnumbering Herbivores. Predators not attacking Herbivores!.
NPC's standing still. Every NPC should be moving if they can and having a pretent interaction with another NPC, working on a table, drinking, arguing, cleaning, eating, makeing food, repearing something, shouting, dancing, feeding etc etc. Even NPC's doing nothing should be doing something like resting, sleeping, fishing. Not just standing still. Only guards stand still, that is their job.
No Bathrooms, you never see tiolets, no digital poop anywhere. Or showers, no one takes showers or baths.
Endless bunny hopping is annoying. Make it so bunny hopping is a poor tactic in combat.
I want the ability to place an item on the ground.
NPC who repeat themselves over and over again.
Just want to add - a terrible expansion is immersion breaking. An expansion does one of two things: an expansion either keeps the game good or it ruins the game. Expansions should be very carefully planned out. VR is smart though, so I think they realize this.
Lore that gets out of hand or runs away in different directions with expansions so that it's loosely cohesive or makes little to no sense.
Then it ceases to become a world and just becomes a series of games in a particular venue setting with modified mechanics.
What I mean to say is: so much impressions are made as a newbie, the formative years are truly formative years in an MMO. For those EQ players, how many remember getting to a level to not being scared of spiders and farming their nuicance for silks and then running into terrortantula in South Ro? or the sea monster in Cobalt Scar? or having dealt with hill giants and coming upon the massiveness of Kael?
Not to say that bigger is always better, but there was a heiarchy that was understood and lead up to the gods. It's when it leads to... other things hat dont make sense to the core lore that it gets too wierd to keep in mind.
And with all eyes on it these days, you have so many people picking apart the lore and making comments and reading things into it, the lore makers have to be sure of what they are coming up with and that any expansion fits in with the lore or was predestined or hidden in the lore. But clearly hidden, if that makes any sense, not vaguely reffred to or question presented, but clearly able to be pointed to once the expansion is released so that all those lore-pickers can point to it and say Ohhhh! there it is! That's what they meant when they said something or other would come back when blah blah blah was bloop. Blah blah blah was the second expansion, and bloop was the fourth, the third was the bridge between blah and bloop and the 6th is this return! That means the 5th expansion was the minions that were said to be created to herald the return. You see?, its all there... when on the initial read it was all just so much fluff.
Keep the Lore in hand.
Kass said:Beefcake said:Text chat.
Nothing is more immersion breaking than having to read or type text. Voice and voiceovers all the way.
That's an extreme amount of voice acting in an MMO.
Is that even feasible? Do other MMOs have this?
Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) has full voice acting. No text screens that you have to read. Its even a free to play MMO.
Beefcake said:Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) has full voice acting. No text screens that you have to read. Its even a free to play MMO.
Sad part is I actually played that game to max level but didn't remember it being full voice acting.
It was most definately not free to play for at least the first year to be fair.
I suppose anything like this is doable given the budget. Quick google shows SWTOR at around 300 million budget.