Here's an old article on Immersion, literally called "On Immersion", from my blog.  It's a roleplayer's perspective on the topic but many of my blog entries touch on the subject because it's just that important.

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/OddjobXL/022009/3374_On-Immersion

"Immersion is a loaded word with different meanings for different folks but it's one I'll sit down and discuss with you.

What? I can't sit? That's not a good sign. A sitting avatar often means, in roleplayese, "Sit down and talk to me." Nonroleplayers tend to be rushing around everywhere, places to go and things to kill, but roleplayers love a cozy setting where they can plop their bums down and just do their thing. Not being able to sit immediately reminds a player his avatar is just a character in a game and, when that happens, poof goes immersion. It's the canary in the coal mine - either a developer gets this off the bat or he probably is missing alot of other stuff roleplayers look for.

Immersive elements include setting, control, dynamism and simulation...."

And it goes on from there.

Heh, a rant. I should know, I'm a ranter myself.

Developers playtest EVE, we all know how that ended (cough, cheating, cough, exploiting, cough). Besides if management tells them to do things they will do it and make that little script that fills the gap. But have no fear, games like that die and you get to try a new one, free market is working in world of mmos. If you don't like WOW you just don't play it, simple as that. If a game starts annoying you instead of making you glad you played it it's time to move on.

Besides we all know that 99% of developers never ever tests their code out. Ever! Any industry in the world. This is why QA teams are huge for all who want to make a quality product.

Originally posted by OddjobXL

Here's an old article on Immersion, literally called "On Immersion", from my blog.  It's a roleplayer's perspective on the topic but many of my blog entries touch on the subject because it's just that important.

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/OddjobXL/022009/3374_On-Immersion

"Immersion is a loaded word with different meanings for different folks but it's one I'll sit down and discuss with you.

What? I can't sit? That's not a good sign. A sitting avatar often means, in roleplayese, "Sit down and talk to me." Nonroleplayers tend to be rushing around everywhere, places to go and things to kill, but roleplayers love a cozy setting where they can plop their bums down and just do their thing. Not being able to sit immediately reminds a player his avatar is just a character in a game and, when that happens, poof goes immersion. It's the canary in the coal mine - either a developer gets this off the bat or he probably is missing alot of other stuff roleplayers look for.

Immersive elements include setting, control, dynamism and simulation...."

And it goes on from there.

From what was discussed in that article, immersion sound pretty expensive.

I think my post was more intended to explore the subject than offer practical solutions.  A new pair of eyes for how to view MMO design when thinking about immersion.  If it worked on that level I might have succeeded.  If not, no harm in trying.

Excellent article, Sanya, as always.

I find your point about faliure and level of expertise in crafting is very true, but so is the risk element your friend states crafters need. To a point, you're both right.

If you haven't played UO in a while, do so, if for no other reason than crafting. It's the perfect blend, in my opinion, of what crafting in a game SHOULD be.

1) Lots of harvesting for gains. This may sound dull, but it's done in such a way that you get a decent quantity very quickly. How realistic is it that you can advance your skill, as a crafter, with 2 pieces of metal?

2) You do fail and lose materials. A lot. This makes sense because, hey, you're LEARNING the trade. You're going to make mistakes. Ever have to make a set of toaster tongs in shop class in high-school? If you mess up, that piece of wood you messed up with isn't going to be used for anything else, save tooth picks.

3) When you master a carft, the lower level stuff is almost gaurnteed to not fail. As you said, it makes sense, that higher level stuff even a master can struggle with, but entry-level items and equipment are easily done.

4) There's a LOT more control and diversity in crafting coming with the new UO expansion, Stygian Abyss. Imbuing is just one aspect.
 

5) Variety. Carpentry, Tinkering, Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Alchemy, Fletching, Cooking, soon Imbuing. So many different crafts, for so many different purposes, from the standard equipment and potions, to stuff that's just pure marzipan for housing.

It's for these reasons that I think UO has the best elements of both realism and practicality in a game's crafting system that you simply can't find anywhere else. Crafting is the chief reason I still play UO to this day. I love it. I love the slowness, the steady pace of it. It's cathartic. It's something you do because you love to do it, not because you need to. And the fact that I feel the community is so much better than other games I've played (At least he community I'm in, in terms of guild, server, etc.), and RP is more prevelant in that community (Again, the one I play in) doesn't hurt either.

Originally posted by Drevar

To enjoy "immersion" in a game it really helps to have absolutely zero formal education in history, geology, botany, chemistry, or meteorology or have any experience with "oldy-time" trades such as  blacksmithing or be involved in any SCA chapter.

To have any of the above only ensures that you will be yanking your hair out at the apparent ignorance or outright idiocy of world and game system designers. 

 

Drev

I think that's why games shouldn't aim at realism but only at an impression of realism e.g woodwork crafting needing a plane or a saw tool as a re-usable component but never explicitly being used. It should be very impressionistic and aimed at creating the *feeling* of realism not the actuality.

Originally posted by OddjobXL

That doesn't help alleviate the grinding issue and certainly factors like encumbrance can be a pain.  But instead of eliminating it I'd include wagons in the universe.

Yes, make managing the weight issue part of the process - pack animal, cart, wagon. hired porters etc.

Immersion...

I want the computer's operating system to mearly be the means for my avatar to travel through cyberspace from one game world to another.

Life is a game, xcept there are no 1ups.

Originally posted by olddaddy

Oh, I don't know, I can see experienced crafters having critical failures.

Take Stargate Worlds for example. Look at how many years of combined experience all that talent had, and yet, they went to craft a journeyman game and came up with a critical failure. All the time that was spend accumulating all those items with portraits of various dead Presidents on them gone to waste.

Vanguard is another example, as is Tabula Rasa. .

I mean, like who'd have ever thunk it that Brad McQuade and Richard Garriott could have had a critical failure in crafting?

But they did.........

Isn't that why designers build it into their game, just to remind themselves.......?.

 

 

Vanguard's harvesting and crafting system is excellent. Tabula Rasa never got to have a crafting system because they pushed the game out before it was ready.

Both of them are not failures of game design, but both were victims of being pushed out half finished. In the case of vanguard, microsoft had a change of priorities to the Xbox and cut off funding. In tabulsa Rasa, although the game had been in development for so long, the game had actually be redesigned a couple times and the version we got had the core of an awesome game it just needed another year in development to actually realize it's potential.

The number one immersion killer these days is *drum roll*    

Instancing

How can you possibly explain having the exact same looking area duplicated in the same world? You can't and it is the devs lazy way of handling more load. Just create X number of identical clone zones! yaaay

Some games are ok when it comes to instancing but when it comes to games like AoC, which holds only about 50 people before popping another instanced, I doubt I can still call them MMORPGs.

beta testing, play testing. i don't think half the mmo producers know what beta testing is.

You know, where you just reset the server every so often and wipe everything, or set up users in a random level for a while, let them run about as that level, then wipe the characters stats at the end of the week as if they never existed. Because it's not as if these accounts are real things and the people using them think they are playing the real game.

Or put in beta-only devices into the world that allow players to change their level or class or stats with a click. To fiddle and see if there's less nerfing after a particular level, or if something is fair in one class or another. And then wipe the results clean as if they never existed at the end of the week. It's not like you'll be pissing off players since it's a BETA test and they won't be paying for it. An idea for the developer to gain feedback would be to have a "rate this quest" star system in the beta on each quest, or a "exciting/annoying" button you could press on a script/npc to tally stats on what you think of it during that phase of the testing.

You the developer get feedback and see how people play and statistics and everything you need.

Because nobody who participates in a beta of a game would actually be silly enough to believe they were "playing" the "real thing" would they?

Originally posted by Yamota

The number one immersion killer these days is *drum roll*    

Instancing

How can you possibly explain having the exact same looking area duplicated in the same world? You can't and it is the devs lazy way of handling more load. Just create X number of identical clone zones! yaaay

Some games are ok when it comes to instancing but when it comes to games like AoC, which holds only about 50 people before popping another instanced, I doubt I can still call them MMORPGs.

Well, if each dungeon is only used once or if the dungeons are randomly generated then there are even worse problems than instancing to worry about.  It is not out of laziness, but out of practicality and production cost. 

Randomly generated dungeons might sound like a good idea, but in reality it can only be used to a certain extent.  All randomly generated dungeons are based on a set of parameters, and these parameters cannot be too complex other wise the dungeon will just be one big zone full of bugs and errors.  However if it is simple, then then players might not be entertained after a few times through.

If the developer keep designing a new dungeon every week, then the cost of maintaining a game becomes sky high.  Maybe if they charge each player $100 dollar a month this could be easily remedied, but I doubt anyone will pay that price to simply have new dungeons to go through every few days.

If a developer can find a cost effective solution to instancing I am sure they would jump at it, but for now they will stick with instancing more often than not.

I don't think randomized systems need to be buggy or boring.  We see randomized gameplay in singleplayer games that keeps them alive for decades - one can point to Daggerfall as an example of bad randomization or to X-Com or Civilization or even The Sims as Exhibit A for how to do it right.  Isn't the goal of an MMO to maintain longevity and to retain customers over a long haul?  Isn't the biggest complaint often the lack of "end game" content?  The popularity of PvP with MMO designers is in no small part due to the fact that it's got relatively low overhead from their point of view and keeps players, who like that sort of thing, entertained.   However we know this to be a fairly modest subset of the market and even PvPers want PvE content that isn't boring and mindless.  In fact, most PvPers will defend PvP gameplay by pointing out just how repetitious and unrewarding, in terms of fun or challenge, PvE gameplay often is in MMOs.

Yes, good randomized or dynamic systems will require a heavy front-end investment because getting them wrong would be worse than not having them at all.  Get them right, on the other hand, could for once give us gameplay in an MMO that resembles actual game-like gameplay!   Even more important that variability does breed immersion.  If you can't just sleepwalk through a generic situation because you've done it 500 times before and have memorized the gamefaq then suddenly what's actually happening before your eyes matters enough to get you to disable the macros and put guildchat on hold while you pay attention to what's going on.  That's immersion, baby.

Good to see Sanya is back to that terrible whiny writing style she started with, the type that is irritating to even read.

So to sum this up, Sanya wants a game that is easy mode and always rewards her but never punishes her. If she makes a mistake she wants the game to say hey don't worry about it, no such things as mistakes so here your stuff back try again.

The game she is asking for would be the worst game ever, no penalty to crafting so then every item is worthless because there's no risk in making them, everyone can and no one loses any materials on failing. Terrible that a person who works for a site called MMORPG wants such a non MMORPG.

And to complain about some ambient noises? Really? Who cares, and for that matter if you are waiting for the creature that only spawns at night to come back, uh well come back at night don't just stand there when it just turned day for it to turn night again.

This literally is one of the worst columns I have ever read.

I have to laugh when I think how many of these "problems" can be answered with one word: EVE. While certainly not without its problems, it does address all of these quite well:

Instancing - deadspace complexes are handled separately but still exist in "real space". They require special probes for other players to find (and ninja salvage if they want to), but they can be found. And their whole existance is explained nicely as some sort of subspace phenomena. Aside from this, EVE doesn't make use of much "instancing" and is the only MMO (afaik) where every single player is in the same realm.

Manufacturing - is always successful as long as you a) have the prerequisite skills (which sometimes take YEARS to acquire -literally) and b) materials (which can also be a challenge sometimes, as some things REQUIRE items you can only get as drops - kind of chiken-eggish, no?). Too bad its as boring as heck and the outcome is always the same (plop, ship, plop, another ship...). Why can't my corp make a spiffy looking Rifter than the next corp, or spend more time to make a better one, or shave off some time to make a cheaper one.

Missions - there's no standing around waiting for a mission - you can either do it now, or not do it at all. The only queues I've noticed in EVE is when a jump gate gets backlogged. Missions are fun (at first) and drop you into the combat (or situation) almost instantly. That being said, they get a little repetitve after a while (especially if you're career focussed) and have zero impact on the realm as-is (sad).

EVE has its share of problems (griefing, steep learning curve, blob-warefare, rapant piracy, mining/manufacturing-grinding, shallow character creation, lack of player customization, scamming, etc), but in these areas I have to give it credit for not falling into the MMO rut everyother game seems to be in right now.

Sanya Weathers for President! 

Another great piece of work! 

Originally posted by LordDmaster

Thank you Sanya

I had a great time reading and laughing all the way through it. I can not tell you how many times I have felt the same way about crafting and questing. You see I don't play MMOs all the time, some times I like to make things in my shop out of wood. And although it is posable to cut yourself or hit your finger with an hammer, for the most part I stopped doing that along time ago. I've been making things out of wood for alittle over 25 years, so when I set down and start to make a chair, it ends up being just what I wanted it to be. I do not loss the wood (PUFF its gone),I do not come up with TWO chairs, And you can take it to the bank that I will make more money selling my chair than the cost of the wood it took to make.

Again thanks

Quoted For Truth

But to put that type of crafting into a MMO has exploit written all over it!

Originally posted by arcana666

Originally posted by Talinguard

 Almost every game has filters, just use um...

 

I've thought about this a lot and I don't believe that's a workable solution.  Besides any ignore list limit (10 in WoW I think?), if you filter the chat yourself then that's just you doing it.  It still doesn't encourage other people to go to cities and taverns to meet up and do business, and largely just gives you a reputation for being ignorant.  You'll also never get a group unless you participate in these global telepathic communities.

I know I'll be in a minority about this but it's my personal bug-bear.

In most of the MMOs I play I have several chat boxes.  One has most of its exclusive filters set and another is rather open to all the global stuff.  The latter box is labeled "Blather'.
 

Some days I like to log on and explore, trying to be immersed.  Other times I will sit and listen to the "blather" until I feel sick...  Sometimes I feel like I am playing "Space Invaders" with a chat box.

Originally posted by Drevar

To enjoy "immersion" in a game it really helps to have absolutely zero formal education in history, geology, botany, chemistry, or meteorology or have any experience with "oldy-time" trades such as  blacksmithing or be involved in any SCA chapter.

To have any of the above only ensures that you will be yanking your hair out at the apparent ignorance or outright idiocy of world and game system designers. 

 

Drev

Quoted for Truth.
 

As a soldier, carpenter and amateur historian, I sometimes wonder why I even bother with anything the popular media presents me.  It's always so frustatingly innaccurate.  I also love the response anytime someone brings up how a game mechanic is unrealistic and fundamentally flawed: "This is a game and not meant to be real."  To me, that arguement is sad like that two-handed sword made out of tin.  Couldn't MMOs be an opportunity to learn about stuff?  As opposed to the same, old slot-machine mechanics hidden under prettier graphics.