How do people even get immersed in MMO's?

For one I find the HUD to be extremely intrusive and annoying most of the time. You have your character's stats, equipped weapons, hotkeys, chat window, status window etc. It makes for a screen that is filled with texts, logos and icons.

Then you have the very nature of the genre. For instance you might be completing a quest that involves stealing a precious gem from a mine. On your way there you'll inevitably run into other players that are doing the exact same thing and it simply feels silly.

The next point ties down to the second one. Players behavior. How is it possible to get immersed when you have dozens of other players monkeying around? In ESO for example, I was simply walking through some market place until I saw a player jump around everywhere like he had an extreme case of Parkinson. Another one was randomly summoning monsters and shooting fireballs all over the place, probably a pyrophiliac. In a damn market place. Needless to say, I was reminded right there I was playing an MMO.

Communication is just extremely annoying with so many things happening at once. Other players running around completing quests, timers for events, friends quitting and joining sessions etc.

It's not like I haven't tried to get into them. I tried Guild Wars 2, Wildstar, Black Desert Online, ESO and a few others and all had the exact same problems. This is without mentioning the very frequent poorly written and uninteresting quests and insulting amounts of grinding. I also have a group of friends who try to get me into every big MMO that comes out and I play with them. Two of them are good friends of mine and we organize groups but I simply can't get into MMO's.

So how do people do it? I simply cannot get immersed while playing an MMO. Too many annoying things and intrusive issues that break the immersion.

Yeah I kind of know what you mean aye.
I was annoyed at Elder Scrolls online as soon as I learned there where unmissable skills.

Press button fire a homing arrow etc.

That ruined it for me. I was hoping for skyrim online where I actually had to aim.

Different gamers, different tastes. I learned to live with it. ;)

@jun_aka_pekto: This doesn’t even address the thread.

I played a couple on the Xbox One and really wasn’t bothered by those things myself. I don’t know why you would think that seeing others in the game world doing quests like you would be silly. That’s just what makes an MMO an MMO, seeing other people around you doing a whole variety of things.

Try world of Warcraft 10 years ago. Get back to us

I think the problem with MMO's these days is A.) they are pretty much all RPG's, and B.) they all want to match WoW's success.

First off, we need some diversity. There is nothing wrong with the MMO genre as a whole; there is a problem when most of those games are RPG's. I mean the only legit MMO's that are not RPG's are Planetside, and EVE Online. That's pretty much it.

Second, WoW is an exception to the rule. An anomaly. A freak of nature. There is no other MMO that will match its success, player base, and so forth (except for maybe WoW 2 or World of Starcraft :P ). So these devs need to stop trying. Make the game they want to make, not a game to rival WoW.

I've seen so many great MMO's come and go over the years--Earth and Beyond, Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, to name a few--it's a damn shame so few of these people seem to not know how to operate an MMO from a money perspective, for a long time.

It's a different type of experience, I have found few MMO's that I like but they have their place. If you want immersion than you're barking up the wrong tree. Not every game has to be immersive... I play different types of games for different reasons.

I'm no authority on the matter. The only MMO I've ever invested heavily into was Guild Wars 2, primarily because I'm too stingy to pay a monthly premium. That said, I thought it was fantastic.

@MuD3: Isn’t non-immersive RPG kinds pointless? It’s like a non-realistic sim driving game to me.

@Basinboy

GW2 got too little recognition from reviewers. WoW updates are still being talked about but I haven't heard anyone even mention GW2 updates while that game did some things real well. Underappreciated game.

Yes I think people's first MMO is the one people really get immersed into. The first time you see other people in your RPG doing quests and hanging out in towns buying things at shops etc. is extremely immersive. You'll ignore the random naked guy doing a dance for you.

But after that first time I think the mechanics are much more obvious to the player and it will be hard to get immersed like that again.

I felt like this about 5 years ago but the more I started to play, the more I understood that it was ME more than it was the game.

I was used to playing a certain kind of game, having a certain kind of interaction.

After playing Guild Wars 2 (watching AngryJoe's review got me interested) I completely changed my mind on MMOs.

Sure, sometimes the interfaces are poorly designed (FFXIV).

But, there are also some out there with gameplay and combat that rivals some of the best single player RPGs out there. Tera comes to mind.

I actually love the social interaction now, which is completely opposite to my personality. Im usually an introvert.

Its just all about taste. MMOs, sometimes, are an acquired taste.

I would say play Tera as an entry to MMOs since its easy to understand and has a more traditional RPG combat system that cam be as complex as you want it to be.

WoW really did screw up the MMO market but it was really investors that ruined it, just like the standard $60 AAA gaming industry. Too many greedy people that saw the success of one game and all decided to try and create soulless copies. When MMOs were still a new genre there was tons of diversity and experimentation going on. Remember Huxley? That game was originally going to be what Destiny 1 claimed it would be.

I think it's nothing to do with presentation but lore. WOW has warcraft lore, GW2 had its lore.

I dunno, it's just me I guess. I liked the lore.

I used to like grinding too when I had the time, but I guess grinding isn't really immersive.

@jasonofa36: Lore and story certainly helps, I played Mabinogi and Runescape a lot because I found the quest storylines very engaging, the fantasy life and interactions with other players were just icing on the cake for me.

Probably by not caring as much.

For myself back in the prime WoW days it was all about character progression, leveling up was to be celebrated, getting to 60 (top level back then) was an accomplishment, unlocking skills, being able to wear that piece of gear I found a few levels ago finally, getting high enough level to run a dungeon with friends for a piece of gear I wanted. Could see the character grow and become what I wanted it to be.

Now all that has been dumbed down in all MMO's, most of them you can get "carried" to the top level very quickly, there's so much content that your constantly getting new gear which loses the feeling of really working to better your character.

I try and get into MMO's still but none of them click like WoW did when it first came out.

MMO addicts play these games for so long that they become part of the virtual world and that is how they become immersed. I was addicted to Everquest from 1999-2005, so I know.

Mmo's are chat boxes, massive co-op games. Friend make machines. And competition machines.

When i log into black desert online, i do not read a single quest. I only see it as filler i have to pass before the good stuff starts. decking out loads of kids with my all mighty hammer. Group up with loads of people and decking out there entire towns and take it over.

Aka competition. In the meanwhile leveling trades in order to gain more money to get better and stronger then all other people.

It's a pvp game at heart.

Other people that for example play world of warcraft are in it for pve scene. which result in friends / chat boxes / doing something progressive in a competitive style pve wise. With pvp completely eliminated. But there still is competition and progression.

See them as massive co-op games.

You shouldn't be looking at is as an RPG. MMO's (no matter which genre they are trying to imitate) focus is the social aspect, team strategy and grinding. Immersion isn't important to achieve any of these and if it's what you're looking for you won't find it in any MMO.

My biggest complaint is I can't use one of my favorite features for X1 when using the TV pass through. On normal games you press the green X button and go right to TV then whether you come pack to the game in a few minutes or a few hours you're right there back exactly where you left off no loading up the game required. SoT is one of those games and my only complaint so far.

there are two ways people use the word 'immersion' and they often use it interchangeable making the debate horrid.

When one says 'immersion' they might mean 'believe that I am in that world' or might mean 'so hyper focused on the game play that I forget all else around me'

the two are very similar but not the same.

best you guys iron out the difference sooner rather than later

@Juub1990: If immersion is the problem, try finding a semi-serious role-playing (RP) guild and try to limit your exposure to content beyond that. I play Final Fantasy XIV and deliberately chose a low- to med-population server (Mateus), and while it didn't start out as an RP server, it quickly grew into one after the Stormblood expansion released. There's still tons of silliness that goes on in guild housing, but nothing that detracts from the experience like the spell-casting in crowded areas that you see, and not a lot of random jumping around, save for platforming puzzles.

MMO's aren't meant to be deep and highly immersive worlds with intricate stories meant for total escapism. That simply is not where the focus is. MMO's are about multi-player interaction, co-operative play, and regular updates of repeatable material to offer seemingly limitless content.

If you're dying for an immersive MMO, my best recommendation is Planetside 2, because it's first person with well developed sound and visual design, and the content is about endless fighting and minimal downtime or fluff content. Past that, you're basically looking at the genre hoping for the completely wrong experience.

as a side note for me stories in games breaks me out of immersion...often bigly.

a study of the personality types on that would be interesting.

@Juub1990: For one I find the HUD to be extremely intrusive and annoying most of the time. You have your character's stats, equipped weapons, hotkeys, chat window, status window etc. It makes for a screen that is filled with texts, logos and icons.

That right there kills most for me. There is like an 8" clean viewing screen

10-15 years ago mmorpg was freaking awesome, the community was great and yeah people kind of understood that hard to obtain crap and socializing was the glue that bound those games together... these days it’s all easymode with legendaries for everyone, aka. No satisfaction in getting anything... horrible toxic communities and no socializing of any kind, just Enter a dungeon look easy mode up online and complete it as fast as possible and move on to the next group....

And of course F2P happened, where instead of a steady stream of context with a large expansion every once in a while, we now have constant mini event where the only purpose is to lure players into the cash shop....

So yeah mmorpg are beyond dead to me these days, of course it doesn’t help that the mmorpg genre haven’t had a fresh idea since WOW!

MMO were not meant for that kind of immersion even if in games like GW you still have your personnel story and the living world episodes were you can wander alone or if you want, invite some teammates to help in your quests.

Sound to me that you need sp setup to immerse yourself in rpg games, MMOrpg are all about team-play and players interactions, thus they sure suffer like all other genres that require other players, to deal with some foolish and unexpected behaviors!!!

If you can't get past that, then surely MMO ain't a place for ya ^^

I've poured like 1500 hours into the Elder Scrolls Online over the past 2 years.

This is the first MMO I've ever managed to get into though. I've tried to get into others, but they just fell flat in terms of content. ESO is mostly structured like a single player RPG, which is why I enjoy it.

MMOs provide me with a never-ending quest and co-op. I love single player RPGs (it's my favourite genre), but I also like multiplayer games, so an MMO provides that extra social interaction.

I guess this isn't for everyone though. You make it sound like you're pretty antisocial in the OP, which would explain why you get frustrated when you have to see other players and interact with them. I don't mind it at all (in fact, it's the reason I play an MMO).

I agree the HUD in MMO games are incredibly annoying, and overwhelming for new players, especially in Black Desert Online, but I liked the game enough to try to tolerate it, but the constant pop ins as you traveled along the road made it impossible for me.

For immersion, you had rather play a game where the community tries its best to keep the online scene alive, even if it wasn't designed as a MMO in the first place. You could try Discovery: Freelancer where there is an elite that does its best to own disruptive players by actually playing instead of kicking them out of a server. Those people are actually role playing, because the game was stripped from its NPC, and the framework is that of a PVP with quests. In other words: they pretend to be NPC. The interface is simpler than EVE Online (which isn't saying much) and more complex than character based RPG on PC. You should give it a try!

The idea of an MMO for me is to play with friends and try to get to that top 1%.

Need lots of data to do that. DPS meters, spell indicators, cooldown bars, etc... I've spent entire evenings just setting up my UI in WoW.

Immersion is more in the community than the world. MMOs are boring as shit to me unless I'm continually making my character more badass. If I want immersion in a world I will go play a single player game like Fallout of Divinity.

Realistically I can only play WoW for a few months after an expac comes out and my group of friends dives back in.

Lots of nerds love it for some reason. I like mmo's but i play them maybe max 10-50 hours and leave them. The only game i've played 15k hours plus was the original guild wars, but that was more a coop rpg and i played it because i had a guild and we basically fooled around socially.

Immersion from aesthetics is only one way a gamer can be immersed in a video game. Immersion in an MMO could simply come from the play experience; being engrossed in the act of play.

My problem with MMOs was never the immersion or the HUD more as it was with constant end-gaming grinding and raiding. I never understood why people wasted countless hours grinding just to have decent enough gear to enter raids only to die a thousand times until everyone got it right only then to have a modicum of a chance to be able to lot on a piece of gear that even if they won, they could use AND THEN to have that gear obsolete with the very next patch/expansion... Sorry for the run on sentence.

You need top of the line graphics and dumbass informationless HUDs to be emmersed?

I sure didn't.

Dancing around with your mates and going to various warzones killing enemy faction players was far more immersive than "Oh look, I'm Geralt of Rivia, I clicked a text button and my character did my thought!"

There are different ways to be immersed.

MMO's focused on the gameplay experience, offered far more challenging content than Single Player games would offer, and forced team work. It's a shame the genre got REKT by WoW's ridiculous success and heavily dumbing down of the genre.

WoW was the Cod of the MMO market... sure it was good fun, but it largely damaged the future of the genre because if its raging success. Innovation stopped, the clones game, and the genre has not recovered since.

Because back in the day that would make you stand out heavily... as you went up tiers, the gap between you and the mediocre players grew wider, and it had an effect on all areas of gameplay. Vanilla WoW did this well.

Then came the catering to casuals and crying "Wah, people are higher geared then me, I can't win with my skill alone! ITS UNFAIR!" then came the dumbing down, then came the seperation of PVE and PVP gear... because f*ck a virtual world with a heirarchy? HERE COMES THE COMMIE REVOLUTION.

But that wasn't enough...

Along came the people that cried "I can't experience the new raid because I can't beat the old raid!" so then started the 3 month cycle where gear from the previous raid became redundant and accessible to all... and they could get the gear and skip the raid they were stuck on.

And then it got even worse!

"Wah, I want to experience all the raid content, but I Cant beat the first boss on Normal difficulty" - So along along came "Casual mode" basically spoiling all the content by making it steam-rollable with random parties.

And the genre became this empty husk of what it could of been.

I remember back in the day being a lowly Black Wing Lair scrub fighting NAXXARAMAS geared players in PVP and fighting an "uphill battle" due to thier stats, but I was never bitter... I just thought "Well to be fair.... they frigging earned it!".

Not every MMO is like that. GW2 and ESO have no gear grind.

And they were both bad.

Gear grind was never a bad thing, implementations changed over time, gear wasn't as hard to get.

I disagree. I enjoyed them both far more than WoW. Gear grind MMOs were the first implementation of "gaming as a service". MMO developers designed their games so that you wouldn't have time to play anything else. Gear grind MMOs were all-consuming

ESO is all about competiton. There are leader boards for raids as well as PvP. You play for the sake of being the best, not because you feel compelled to do it for better gear. The overland content is about immersing yourself in the rich story content. Non-leader board dungeons are about challenging yourself (they typically unlock cool skins and are punishingly difficult). Tying a carrot to a stick is a very shallow way of compelling commitment to a game.

its like asking somebody how y lsn to techno music , i cant stand it .... everybody has his own taste , learn to accept others tast.

ITs the journey and the peoples interaction more than anything. MMOs are excellent if youre into such time consuming social environments. If not though games can become a boredom pretty quickly and look/play like a decent or mediocre single player game.

The only MMO I ever liked was Everquest. It was a major grind killing enemies, but you could get right down to it if you had a group. Forget all of that boring story nonsense and just chat with people while you kill enemies. Was a fun time. Lol

Nowadays, you can't just kill to really level up in many MMOs, or doing so takes ages and ages. You HAVE to do the quests if you want to level up. It's blah. That, and WoW was filled with nerds that took the game way too seriously. EQ was fun because most people were over 18 and were pretty chill; running into a hothead that gets mad about everything was extremely rare.

Guild Wars 2 was a phenomenal game for a pay to play game that lost it in details and some weird mechanics. The issue i personally had with the game was the lack of serious PVE and Trinity approach. I love to have a role in a PVE environment. Guild Wars 2 tried to define how PVE is done but with an atrocious way imo. No healers, no tank, no dps etc ... Pure zerg. That ruined it for a massive amount of potential players that loved the traditional way of PVE. That right there ruined PVE as a whole for the game. They tried to save it later but was too late.

They focused on PVP aspect which we all know what PVP stands for majority of MMORPGs... Zerg, Zerg and more Zerg. Balance issues, that epic flaw when HP reach ZERO you dont automatically die made game PVP feel like a stupid mess. Bad decisions and mechanics ruined one of potentially, best mmorpgs out there.

Other than that game looked phenomenal. Graphics, story was ok, the world detailed and big, well crafter regions, classes, weapons etc.

ESO was a tragedy from the get go. From combat mechanics to world to you name it.

Progression systems, GameSpot did a piece about Destiny that explains this, basically that desire in a never ending quest to grind for more gear, better loot, I imagine on MMOs the leveling system also opens up new quests, the ability to team up with others also likely adds to the dynamics of the game, while sure true other players interfering with individuals is likely, there's a need to team up to complete objectives and thus ward off meddling by others, this design rewards a social dynamic. Kind of a similar situation in other games, like The Division when entering the dark zones, people going at it alone have no chance in hell, the AI is tough and running into other players who will kill you to take your stuff is always a thing, that's why you don't go in there without a posse. Even the Sea of Thieves comes to mind, a game that by itself would be frustrating to tackle alone, but in groups there's so much more to do. Having a full crew opens a lot of doors in games that mix these PvP and PvE modes.

I avoid MMOs that do this not because I think they're horrible games but I've had friends get sucked up into them and that's all they play. I like gaming in a way that allows me to play lots of other games, getting sucked into a game that turns into all I play sounds like a threat to my current hobby as I know it.

Except neither of those games perfected their gameplay or content, so it ended up being less impressive than score boards in WoW.

You ended up with clusterf*cks with no real game design direction just turning into flailing contests.

Only WoW , Rift and FFXIV made any kinda competent end-game experience.

Challenge yourself is nonsense, you challenge yourself while gear grinding as well, there is no difference in that regard. "no gear" just made Guild Wars 2 dead after a month (relatively speaking)

Both GW2 and ESO are still extremely active (definitely among the most active MMOs at the moment).

And WoW is hardly a bastion of great gameplay and rich content. Most overland content is just fetch/kill quests while gameplay is slow-paced tab targetting. It was just the first great MMO and so it established a loyal following. Both GW2 and ESO have much richer quest content (especially ESO) and more active, skill-based combat.

I can't speak to GW2's endgame experience since I quit the game a while ago (although I'm sure it's doing fine considering the massive player base it still holds). But ESO has plenty to offer (6 raids, 32 dungeons, and 2 arenas, plus large-scale and battlegrounds PvP, with 2 raids and 2-4 dungeons being released annually).

And if you need gear grind to challenge yourself, you're obviously not playing the game because you enjoy it. Gear grind forces you to play. If you are having fun, then gear grind isn't necessary.

It helps to read the lore. A larger universe hinted at is always better than one specifically defined.

World Of Warcraft is very good at this.

-

For example, the road in Path Of Glory, if you look, they are skull and bones, from a Draenei genocide that took place before the portal was opened. But the game doesn't explicitly spell this out unless you search it out. Otherwise it can easily go unnoticed by the player.

That's interesting. Something really quite dark, especially for a light-cartoon game, that feels organic, not shoved up your ass with subtly of a brick as it would be with other games.