FPS=immersion?

This is the first thread ever with several long posts where I agree with every single thing said. Almost gives me a warm fuzzy sensation.

In the end I'm inclined to agree with Joxer, the word is obviously used so differently and means different things to different people, pretty much making it nonsense in a lot of cases. Kind of like the label RPG.

Personally, I'm in the same boat as @Kordanor;. But that's simply because his interpretation of the word seems to be the same as my own.
 
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You should give the Metro Games a try. :)

Or even better, STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl which is far more immersive, on so many levels. It's one of few shooters i call an RPG because it's really what it feels like..

STALKER and the Metro series are both really good. If you like those and haven't played Metro Exodus yet, you need to play it. It's much larger and better than the previous games. Easily the best shooter I've played in the last few years.
 
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I often have a harder time being immersed in first person point of view than other points of view. It's too limiting in too many ways.

Example:
If I walk through a forest in real life, I know roughly what's going on around me at all times. Slight head movements is enough to view everything around me, and adding smells, hearing, feeling the wind, the touch of the feet on the ground and so on provides a lot of information about the surroundings that games simply don't have. We're not even close to replicating how our senses work together to form a picture of what's going on around us.

Which brings me to what JDR mentioned on the previous page: It's more about the game itself, not the point of view. The most immersed I've ever been was Gothic 1-2, but that had nothing to do with point of view. It was down to the atmosphere and how alive the world felt.
 
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Yes, Maylander expresses my experience as well. I find there to be something so wholly unnatural about the first person perspective while travelling through an environment that it is a big contributor to breaking the fourth wall for me. It's more like a horse wearing blinkers during a horserace than a human wandering around an environment.

I saw a clip of Daggerfall on YouTube once after someone posted it somewhere and at one point the player character was running through a town/village with their sword drawn, swashing it two and fro so furiously that all I could think of was that it was like watching the windscreen wipers of a car in a car racing game as he drove around running people over.

The first person perspective is probably very well suited to driving games as when you're driving anything, from a truck to a Tie-Fighter, then you kinda are like a blinkered horse, tunnel-visioned to face forwards and charge.
 
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I have to be first-person to be immersed. 3rd-person constantly reminds me I'm playing a game because my perspective is wrong. When I look at the world I want to see it with my eyes, not a drone camera. There could be a psychological component too, I'm not a team player at all, so watching somebody do things doesn't appeal to me as much as feeling like I'm doing it myself.
 
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It does help using a ultra wide monitor (for a far better FOV).. smell or touch is of course not easy to simulate no matter your view preference.. i sometimes kind of miss my Track IR, slight head movements for your in-game head movement which is separate from the rest of the body (walk or aim forward, but look to the side etc). VR enhances movement in that way too.

I can sometimes like a controller for the rumble hehe.. not that it simulates touch perfectly, but it can sometimes make sense. Let's say the ground is shaking or you stepped on something which is out of the ordinary that you might want to check.. its a simple trick but it works better than a screen indicator sometimes. Edit: Witcher 3 - witcher sense = slight rumble to warn you of danger. quite good implementation..
 
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I can't imagine any serious gamer actually thinking immersion is overrated or claiming he's never felt it.

You've never been deeply absorbed into a game? I find that a little hard to believe. Perhaps you simply have a different term for that. Either that or you've been playing the wrong games.

I don’t typically play games for story or npc’s. I get most of my enjoyment from mastering combat and gameplay mechanics. Probably why I’m a big souls fan and find the Witcher games highly average.

I typically play games very systematically. For instance a BG or POE game i wont follow quests i’ll Just clear the fog of war on each board then move to the next and repeat. Quests will typically be solved through completion of each area.

I also don’t concentrate on only one thing at a time, my mind is always wandering. For instance playing Witcher 3 I’d open up the quest log, pick 4 or 5 level appropriate quest then do them in succession or I’d open the map and pick several question marks to clear.

It would kind of go like this. Open the map , pick the question marks to clear and head towards the first one. On the way there I’m thinking about work the next day, bids I need to do, what I’ll have for dinner that night. Get to the “?”, It’s a nest scenario, kill monsters, burn nests. All the while figuring what materials i need for the next day. Nests are burnt, open map and off to the next “?”..... so on and so forth. Needless to say not much room for “immersion there.

For more clarity I typed this while eating lunch, looking at last months P&L and carrying on a conversation with a friend. :biggrin:
 
I don’t typically play games for story or npc’s. I get most of my enjoyment from mastering combat and gameplay mechanics. Probably why I’m a big souls fan and find the Witcher games highly average.

I typically play games very systematically. For instance a BG or POE game i wont follow quests i’ll Just clear the fog of war on each board then move to the next and repeat. Quests will typically be solved through completion of each area.

I also don’t concentrate on only one thing at a time, my mind is always wandering. For instance playing Witcher 3 I’d open up the quest log, pick 4 or 5 level appropriate quest then do them in succession or I’d open the map and pick several question marks to clear.

It would kind of go like this. Open the map , pick the question marks to clear and head towards the first one. On the way there I’m thinking about work the next day, bids I need to do, what I’ll have for dinner that night. Get to the “?”, It’s a nest scenario, kill monsters, burn nests. All the while figuring what materials i need for the next day. Nests are burnt, open map and off to the next “?”….. so on and so forth. Needless to say not much room for “immersion there.

For more clarity I typed this while eating lunch, looking at last months P&L and carrying on a conversation with a friend. :biggrin:

Lol, you missed the whole point of the question. Immersion is about how authentic and believable, consistent game is, with it's setting.
Dark Souls you mentioned is not immersive. Environment transition is poor and illogical, enemies in game only exist for sake of killing you ( and are placed in just around the corner) to ambush you and usually nonsensical, there is no world simulation elements of any kind, game barrs progress with force fields, etc.
Ubisoft, CDPR, Rockstar, Bethesda, Piranha Bytes all have their pros and cons ( and a lot of this is subjective), but they're considered immersive for good number of reasons.
 
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Lol, you missed the whole point of the question. Immersion is about how authentic and believable, consistent game is, with it's setting.
Dark Souls you mentioned is not immersive. Environment transition is poor and illogical, enemies in game only exist for sake of killing you ( and are placed in just around the corner) to ambush you and usually nonsensical, there is no world simulation elements of any kind, game barrs progress with force fields, etc.
Ubisoft, CDPR, Rockstar, Bethesda, Piranha Bytes all have their pros and cons ( and a lot of this is subjective), but they're considered immersive for good number of reasons.

Oh you mean like the Witcher 3 when i went into a house and the lady was sleeping under her bed and wouldn’t wake up when i jumped on it and made as much noise as possible. Very believable.

You missed my point. I’m not going to immerse myself in something if i cant give it my full attention.

Dark souls isn’t about immersion. DS is refreshing because its a throw back to when games were just games. Pac-Man, mega man, Mario, etc. they were just games not interactive experiences. It was about mastering gameplay mechanics. I like that, you don’t? That’s fine.

I’m pretty sure you just posted though so you could take another shot at DS. That’s ok though as you liking a game or not doesn't limit my enjoyment of it.
 
Oh you mean like the Witcher 3 when i went into a house and the lady was sleeping under her bed and wouldn’t wake up when i jumped on it and made as much noise as possible. Very believable.

You missed my point. I’m not going to immerse myself in something if i cant give it my full attention.

Dark souls isn’t about immersion. DS is refreshing because its a throw back to when games were just games. Pac-Man, mega man, Mario, etc. they were just games not interactive experiences. It was about mastering gameplay mechanics. I like that, you don’t? That’s fine.

I’m pretty sure you just posted though so you could take another shot at DS. That’s ok though as you liking a game or not doesn't limit my enjoyment of it.

You caught a bit of a case of D'artagnan. :lol:
- Derails thread by butthurt complaining about another game that has nothing to do with the topic ( of the thread)
- Gets riled up when someone criticizes it
- "Oh, I don't really care what anyone thinks and that's why I keep telling them that I don't really care what anyone thinks"
 
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Using TW3 as a comeback was sort of Dart-like, but his post was only 4 small paragraphs total. Ole' Dart would scoff at that.
 
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Dart would have spent the next 2 days posting walls of text to deal with your shenanigans.

Ill just apologize for derailing the thread by posting my take on immersion in a thread about immersion.

And thank you for bring the thread back on topic with this gem of a post about immersion.

You caught a bit of a case of D'artagnan. :lol:
- Derails thread by butthurt complaining about another game that has nothing to do with the topic ( of the thread)
- Gets riled up when someone criticizes it
- "Oh, I don't really care what anyone thinks and that's why I keep telling them that I don't really care what anyone thinks"
 
I'm going to assume we're talking about first-person perspective and not shooters, right?

It doesn't equal immersion, no.

It does aid immersion in pretty much all cases, though. But that doesn't mean it's right for all games.

Games are different - and they're all trying different things.

Some games don't rely on immersion as a quality - and they don't have to.

Personally, I don't understand how people can miss that being closer to the world - and having a more direct connection with it - is an obvious way to pull you into the game.

If you're playing a character - then I think it would be supremely obvious that having said character between you and the actual world - would be quite the immersion killer, if you really think about it.

It certainly is to me.

Maybe it's about how you approach games, though.

I know that, for my part, I always try to identify with the character - and I always try to suspend my disbelief that I'm playing a game. Some games make that much easier - and that's where the perspective comes into play.

I truly love and enjoy forgetting that I'm playing a game - and the feeling of actually becoming my character and existing in another world is fantastic, if sadly very rare.
 
I will add that I think the most immersive games tend to be less…. gamey, if you will.

For instance, I think games like Subnautica, SOMA, MYST and Alien Isolation rank among the most immersive games of all time. At least, for me they do.

Which is kinda interesting because they're all very low on combat and typical gamey mechanics.

Obviously, games like System Shock and Bioshock rank just as high - but it's definitely not due to the combat. They tend to be at their best when you're not shooting stuff.

I wonder why that is? Hmm. Maybe it's just my imagination.

Maybe it's simply because I prefer exploring worlds and not killing things.
 
Immersion is no way reality simulation, immersion is only about forgetting real life and surrounding, because you are fully focused on something. A tense chess party can have a better immersion value than any video game.

The answer highlighting books, partially evokes the point, it's only words but still has a high immersion potential, but this post doesn't really pinpoint the true answer, or more exactly the false reasoning that is very common in video games.
 
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