I'm all about crafting and going into buildings(and having building there to begin with).

Many times I've been disappointed by lack of buildings, and if there are buildings, they're solid and you can't enter them.

I also would love to see much more focus on crafting.

I have a bit of a roleplayer in me.

I'm a book junkie, a word nerd.  I love and live my imagination.  So it is not boring work running around click click clicking.  To me it's a constant umbilical cord attaching me to a fully graphical world.

watching the trees go by as I ride my horse or walk around gathering.  Just soaking up the warm feeling that I can stroll around a city and run into people, and go sight seeing as if I'm going overseas to a new country.

That's a lot of what I do.

But buidlings are a big thing that can break immersion for me on many levels.

what kills it for me?

voicechat. i know it makes things easier for communication, and alot of people couldn't live without their social time in MMO's. but yea. hearing people go on and on and on about crap kills the immersion for me and is the main reason I don't care much for raiding or being in a guild.

Developer cheapness.

Text Chat.

Point and Clickness.

Levels, Classes, Races and Skills. If they arent able to think outside of these concepts, its not immersive enough to me.

Quests. Stupid Quests and inability to have a "roleplaying" repply option -"I dont give a fuck, do it yourself"

Instancing.

Lifeless NPCs.

Enemies respawn.

Player respawn.

Inability to interact with anything on sight in the most purposeless ways I might desire.

Bright Colors.

Womans design and breats. Womans lack of clothes. Womans armor design.

Pretty faces. Emo looking faces. Androgenous faces.

Lack of blood and dismerberment and screams of pain and agony.

Remove all that and we might start talking about immersion.

Steampunk

What do heliocopters and chopped up "hogs", (motorcycles)...omg and  grenades.. have to do with a fantasy middle ages mmo where characters main weapons are staves, wands, daggers, maces, and swords?

1. bots & gold-sellers

2. bot-like or random nonsense character character names

3. tethered mobs that are non-intelligent and don’t pursue the aggressor player.

4. instanced game-play

5. instanced anything, including housing – and the lack of non-instanced player housing
 

Originally posted by alyndale

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steampunk

 

What do heliocopters and chopped up "hogs", (motorcycles)...omg and  grenades.. have to do with a fantasy middle ages mmo where characters main weapons are staves, wands, daggers, maces, and swords?

 

Um, it's not a Fantasy Middle ages MMO if it's steampunk based >_> It's a Steampunk MMO. Which in my opinion is a much more rich and diverse enviroment.

Teenage boys with attitudes

Unnatural animation

Limited, guided and simplified gameplay introduced in almost any MMO in the last 5 years.

Ventrilo. Enough with it. It should only be used with raids. Otherwise it is pointless. You can't type while game playing? Well...stop being lazy. I'm level 5 and need Vent? uhh...why?

and....

Shooting a spell at an enemy to only hit a player running into its path and then thinking it was meant for them and then killing you and then taking all your gold and armor, etc, and then having a community telling you that that is how real life is when its not, not everyone in this world will shank you with a knife from behind... That annoys me the most....I quit a game because of that bullsheeet.

I am fine with names though, KillyMcStatStab is rad (isnt that from the 'i must be emo' video?) and btw...Agnostic Front is badass.

The more I play the more the Tank-Healer-DPS system kills immersion for me.  It's so artificial since there is no logical reason why any monster should attack the tank (a guy who can't do decent damage), when the real threats can die in one or two hits (and that's because the game mechanics are like that...a better game would have different mechanics).  PvP in such games always demonstrates how idiotic a mechanic this is and how all the NPCs must be complete morons even when they are supposed to be smart.  It isn't like there aren't other systems to go with, but everyone wants to copy EQ and WoW so that's pretty much all we get.  Lame.  Worse still, these games basically never require quick-thinking in the combat system...largely you are just doing the same thing over and over and over in a pretty boring way.  I want some more chaos in combat, because a little bit of chaos forces you to be on your toes and thinking quickly, and that's what I enjoy most  (nothing kills immersion like a fight with the big bad that's about as interesting and requires about as much thought as taking out the garbage).

Mechanics that require you look things up in detail online because the game doesn't tell you how they work at all.  WoW is particularly guilty of this as an example (armor pen, defense rating, etc, all require looking up information so you know what you need and so forth).  Nothing is more annoying than needing to sift through dozens of webpages to avoid doing something completely idiotic or to even have a clue as to how to proceed.

Quests where I don't get any options on how to complete them.  When someone who is obviously very suspicious or evil wants you to do something, you should be able to keep the storyline going by NOT aiding them or even working against them once you get a quest.  Even if the end of the quest was much the same (e.g. the villain finds a way to achieve victory regardless) at least I shouldn't be forced to have my character act like a complete idiot.

Thankfully it looks like there are some games on the way that will address some or all of these concerns.  FFXIV and SW:TOR I am looking at in particular (well, DC Universe as well, but I'm not as sure on that).

Idiots kill immersion...

- The 15-year-old testosterol junkie 

- The 25-year-old unemployed grunt

- The 20-year-old socially handicapped tech nerd

these are the three basic characters that kill immersion. Lowest rate of all these you'll probably find in LotRO...

M

 psh back in eq1 the mob would attack whoever was physically closest and they got pushed by meelee dmg so everyone that didnt want to die instantly had to make sure they backed off so the tank was actually on the piss list.  to offset this aggroe mechanic method they did have a few fun features like dread and terror randomly death touching someone in your raid every 45 seconds or so.  and alot of bosses would hit everyone in their front 90-180 degrees with meelee.  eq 1 was a game of positioning and heal chains remaining coordinated, wow was the one you spammed taunts and heals without really having any skill other then how fast you can click that button.

 Biggest immersion killer is zoning like in EQ2 or AoC. Also poor world design and graphics.

Im perfectly fine with channels

Cash shops. Completely kills immersion for me. Nothing makes you feel more like you're not in  a world but just playing a game than breaking out the old credit card.  Feels like I'm playing Ebay instead of a video game.

I do  like to play Ebay now and then, just not in my video games.

 Global chat channels kills immersion for me.

Well, the crappy written MMO quests is the thing that usually kills the immersion for me in any game.

How many reasons to kill 10 rats are there? With very few exceptions does the quests feels like they have been written by 14 year old schoolkids on a rpg session. It makes Eragon seems like a masterpiece.

The public chat channels are annoying too, they should at least do like in old Lineage and don't give the lower levels access to them, a noob help channel is enough at least.

The guildchat however is a must in most games because it is very hard to plan anything otherwise. I guess a message board in the guildhouse could work to some degree. Or maybe some one use magical device that opens the guildchat for a few minutes.

Originally posted by Drachasor

The more I play the more the Tank-Healer-DPS system kills immersion for me.  It's so artificial since there is no logical reason why any monster should attack the tank (a guy who can't do decent damage), when the real threats can die in one or two hits (and that's because the game mechanics are like that...a better game would have different mechanics).  PvP in such games always demonstrates how idiotic a mechanic this is and how all the NPCs must be complete morons even when they are supposed to be smart.  It isn't like there aren't other systems to go with, but everyone wants to copy EQ and WoW so that's pretty much all we get.  Lame.  Worse still, these games basically never require quick-thinking in the combat system...largely you are just doing the same thing over and over and over in a pretty boring way.  I want some more chaos in combat, because a little bit of chaos forces you to be on your toes and thinking quickly, and that's what I enjoy most  (nothing kills immersion like a fight with the big bad that's about as interesting and requires about as much thought as taking out the garbage).

You do have some point there, MMO combat do need a lot of improvement.
 

Guildwars 2 and TOR might change that if one of them gets huge (The original Guildwars uses another system also but it isn't a traditional MMO).

I agree to a point that global channels are somehow killing the roleplay atmosphere of a medieval fantasy rp world. I agree with Drachasor that the heal tank aggro system kills immersion too. For that though u need specific combat system design where all classes will have survivability skills and talents,feats etc so they can pick in order to survive tanking a boss or mobs for 3-4 secs. There could be every 3-4 secs a random aggro roller so bosses change target evey few secs. that could keep players on toes and actually watch the boss moves instead of just spamming frostbolts etc. 

Immersion has also to do with a relative freedom of character development. Imersion has to do with freedom, adventuring,exploration lore close to the so called old schools rpg's. Immersion is gameplay but sadly we are living in an era where good grafix are in prior and impressing effects.

Originally posted by tazarconan

I agree to a point that global channels are somehow killing the roleplay atmosphere of a medieval fantasy rp world.

I don't think it's the global chat channel.

I think people complain about this because they see so many players in the game, and not a word is spoken, since everyone is chatting in a global chat channel.

However, the reason not a words is spoken is because it's not necssary.

Everyone says they dont' have time to group, dont' force me to group, let me play the game the way I want to, I'm paying 14.95 a month, give ME access to all the content solo, etc., etc.

Well, that's what you get in a solo game. There's no need to chat with someone standing in front of you.

If you made a game that encouraged grouping, you'd want to talk to someone standing next to you, because you'd have a reason to do it.