Immersion breakers

[Mr.Black]

The worst thing, I think, is having to create my own character.

I know that sounds weird, but nothing drags me kicking and screaming out of immersion more than the Fallout 3 (or DA:O) method of "he has no personality, no character growth, no development, and no really defined motivation" makes it much more difficult to be into the game in the way I want to be.

Instead of being immersed in the game, the story, and seeing the characters as people I can care about, I'm given instead a constant reminder that this character is simply an avatar, a stand-in. And it means I can never really care about the characters.

Yes! This a thousand times. What's worse for me, is that in those types of games, i'm never satisfied with the way my character looks. If I find a picture of someone's character online that looks totally badass and mine looks like ass in comparison, I wont go running back to the game anytime soon because I know what I could have looked like. Sometimes i'll even go as far as restarting the game over, so I look cool.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Mooks in RPGs, especially the "levelled" kind. Seriously, did anybody else get seriously fed up of meeting giant scorpions every two seconds on the higher levels in Fallout 3? Sometimes I just want to explore the countryside without using up all my ammo in a useless repetitive randomized fight that I stand zero chance of losing on account of I'M CARRING A GUN THAT FIRES NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND ENOUGH CAPS TO BUY EVERY NUKE IN THE GAME PLUS A SMALL COUNTRY, goddammit!

And while we're on the subject... how come the scorpions never seem to attack the raiders except offscreen? I know that the NPCs sometimes battle (Yao Guai will attack any humans nearby), but the moment you come on the scene, everybody seems to be baying for your blood.

I think there should be a setting for the number of random battles you have to face when exploring in an RPG. So if you're the kind of person who likes going out and seeing everything there is to see in the game, which I am, you can turn this down low and just enjoy yourself; whereas if you like the fast-paced action stuff, you can switch it up a bit.

 

[loki6358]

Recently on godfather 2 Somthing that was game break worthy was I fell into a box and could not get out and it was very irratating because I had to restart the game after saving and attack the buisness again. I thought it was the most irratating ever because when I play a game I end up forgetting that I'm there. As in i am just playing a game and not controlling said guy (in this case Dominic)

 

[Noone From Nowhere]

Having to push a button in the middle of a cinematic sequence; Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit are prime examples. I either play a game or watch a movie, I don't want to do both.

And also any storyline that involves "anchent mystikal cult" heavily. Thats the reason I chucked Fahrenheit away,

A mystical cult isn't always a bad thing, if done right. Unfortunately, so many writers seem to use them as a modern version of 'a wizard did it' - bad shit happening? Not really sure why? Well, it must have been the ancient mystical cult! Those guys are such dicks, they're always doing things like this...

I find it strange that nobody ever uses an ancient mystical cult as a red herring. The hero encounters an ancient cult and, being the genre savvy fellow he is, immediately sets out to bring down their evil mystical conspiracy! Except it turns out that the ancien mystical cult mostly do charity work these days, and the real Big Bad put you on their trail to distract from his own diabolical schemes. It'd work really well because nobody would see it coming; we're all so used to believing that ancient mystical cult = evil that we don't give it a second thought.

Someone did do that already. It was Dan Brown, of all people, in 'Angels and Demons'. Isn't that a surprising plot twist in and of itself?!

 

[ottenni]

Mega-snip

Little tip for selling things in Oblivion, if the vendor doesn't have enough money, buy all his wares with the excess and sell them back to him or too another shop. It was the only way to work back in Morrowind when daedric items could be worth up to 150,000 gold.

But what really got me in Oblivion was how easy all that shit is to get, ever second rate bandit is wearing full glass Armour. And that i couldn't stand. There was no challenge in getting good gear, none whatsoever.

 

[ottenni]

Mega-snip

Little tip for selling things in Oblivion, if the vendor doesn't have enough money, buy all his wares with the excess and sell them back to him or too another shop. It was the only way to work back in Morrowind when daedric items could be worth up to 150,000 gold.

But what really got me in Oblivion was how easy all that shit is to get, ever second rate bandit is wearing full glass Armour. And that i couldn't stand. There was no challenge in getting good gear, none whatsoever.

Yeah that was kind of sad. I kinda wish the modding community put more effort into it too. A lot of them are great, but it's a bit disappointing to see "ARMOR OF AWESOME" just placed in the capital's square or something. At least hide it away : ( Maybe I'm just expecting too much

Not really, it shouldn't be too hard to make a set of armour appear a percentage of times in certain containers or on certain NPC's. Thats all you have to do.

 

[silverleaf81]

You think that's bad? In Morrowind, I couldn't even sell the most expensive swords, not even for smaller prices.

Bulldongle!

Well, you need to find The Mudcrab! He is the most rich person in Morrowind (He has 10000 gold!)

 

[Noone From Nowhere]

I'm pretty easy going about things such as in-game immersion since, at best, I see myself as being in harmony with my avatar rather than in the game world, sort of like the ideal relationship between a mystic of some kind and a guardian spirit. The only thing that pulls me out of that already partly disconnected state worse than breaking the fourth wall(be it for sake of humor or to make some observation about the nature of reality)is inconsistency.

It doesn't bother me that a 5'0" slender woman can lift a 1 ton monster over her head in gameplay but it does shake me out of the moment if she suddenly can't do so in cutscenes to lift her equally diminiutive boyfriend over the edge of a cliff.

If a space marine's power armor which can protect him from re-entry into the atmosphere can't protect him from a traffic cone, the illusion of nigh invulnerablity is wrecked for me.

If I'm playing a licensed game, if collectable items float in the air in ways that they never would in the show and characters are given motivations for in-game actions that don't ring true to what I've seen in the show, I can't get in to the game.

 

[fanklok]

You think that's bad? In Morrowind, I couldn't even sell the most expensive swords, not even for smaller prices.

Bulldongle!

try getting 100 alchemy with a collective total of 1400 gold between you and the merch I gave that alchemist so many god damn potions just so it would cut down on how many game years (seriously) it would take me to sell it all to Scamp (I made like 2mil worth of a fatigue potions once 2000000/5000=400 days I just pitched em and used the console)

and OP did you get your mercantile up to 100? you can add another 1k to the shops so you can get 3500 for that Greater Daedra Claymore of Immolation, or just do what I did and decorate your houses with them, which is actually pretty immersive after I clear out a gate I pawn off the useless junk that's weighing me down then head to one of my mansions and spend the next 3 real world hours making sure everything is perfectly in place, why? because I want my house to look nice even though I'll be the only one who ever sees it (I must've spent an hour and a half trying to get a Dremora Claymore to rest perfectly agaisnt my desk)

yeah uhh no futher contribution to the rest of the thread can't really think of anything that isn't obvious

 

[dagens24]

When games break immersion is an immersion breaker imo.

 

[WolfThomas]

There's a whole heap, but nowadays my biggest gripe is bad/incorrect reloading animations. Most games now if you reload with bullets remaining it's faster as you don't have to recock, if your completely empty you have to, just like in real life. But some Bad Company 1 and Far Cry 2 (i think), don't have this and for some reason it infuriates me.

I really like games with semi-realistic reloading like Rainbow 6, if you have one in the chamber you have 31 rounds when you reload, with a number of magazines rather than bullets,if you replace a half full magazine it goes to the back of the line and you can pull it out again.

Edit: Oh and I don't think the oblivion item price thing is too unrealistic, the merchant only has a certain amount of money like in real life and this he has to in turn re-invest in merchandise so he might not have that much spare cash despite having a lot of inventory, you couldn't walk into a pawn brokers with a 100k diamond and expect a good price, the merchant is the person with power in the trade, you need the money and he can ask anything.

 

[Jingermanoo]

High-end graphics, rather than draw me in, actually put me off when playing a game.

They're just right there, staring you in the face, making you think about how the gaming technology has developed and then you remember it's a game.

PS1/N64 polygons were the perfect design system.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Having to push a button in the middle of a cinematic sequence; Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit are prime examples. I either play a game or watch a movie, I don't want to do both.

And also any storyline that involves "anchent mystikal cult" heavily. Thats the reason I chucked Fahrenheit away,

A mystical cult isn't always a bad thing, if done right. Unfortunately, so many writers seem to use them as a modern version of 'a wizard did it' - bad shit happening? Not really sure why? Well, it must have been the ancient mystical cult! Those guys are such dicks, they're always doing things like this...

I find it strange that nobody ever uses an ancient mystical cult as a red herring. The hero encounters an ancient cult and, being the genre savvy fellow he is, immediately sets out to bring down their evil mystical conspiracy! Except it turns out that the ancien mystical cult mostly do charity work these days, and the real Big Bad put you on their trail to distract from his own diabolical schemes. It'd work really well because nobody would see it coming; we're all so used to believing that ancient mystical cult = evil that we don't give it a second thought.

Someone did do that already. It was Dan Brown, of all people, in 'Angels and Demons'. Isn't that a surprising plot twist in and of itself?!

Mmmm, kinda. Depending on your point of view, the Big Bad was actually part (and later - SPOILERS! - the head of it, albeit briefly) of an ancient mystical cult, whereas the organisation presented as the bad guys for most of the book are actually a group based around scientific discovery.

Who, IIRC, no longer exist anyway

 

[Rhayn]

KOTOR with it's hilarious tutorial level with the guy going "Move your mouse over the container and press the left mouse button to open the container!". Fortunately it only did it during the first level if you asked how to do it. Good thing games don't do that anymore, though I'm unsure how much better random text boxes with instructions when you've played several hours already are.

Funky physics can also be quite the immersion breaker. A Deathclaw flying off into the sky just because I punched it in the face is, while hilarious, not exactly realistic.

 

[ottenni]

Mega-snip

Little tip for selling things in Oblivion, if the vendor doesn't have enough money, buy all his wares with the excess and sell them back to him or too another shop. It was the only way to work back in Morrowind when daedric items could be worth up to 150,000 gold.

But what really got me in Oblivion was how easy all that shit is to get, ever second rate bandit is wearing full glass Armour. And that i couldn't stand. There was no challenge in getting good gear, none whatsoever.

Yeah that was kind of sad. I kinda wish the modding community put more effort into it too. A lot of them are great, but it's a bit disappointing to see "ARMOR OF AWESOME" just placed in the capital's square or something. At least hide it away : ( Maybe I'm just expecting too much

Not really, it shouldn't be too hard to make a set of armour appear a percentage of times in certain containers or on certain NPC's. Thats all you have to do.

Hell even just toss the armor in a cave in the middle of nowhere. There's enough of them throughout the land with nothing of interest in them that you could hide it anywhere. Maybe put some skeletons around it to make it look important. BAM you got a setting for it. Maybe write a note around it and you have something better then most already. If you wanted to get into it deeper you could make a small quest, something even as simple as NPC A asking you to get it, then you get a choice between handing it over or killing him and keeping it.
I need to learn how to make mods :\

I have some experience with Morrowind but none with Oblivion, but i know Pimpeter is quite experienced.

 

[SonicWaffle]

You think that's bad? In Morrowind, I couldn't even sell the most expensive swords, not even for smaller prices.

Bulldongle!

try getting 100 alchemy with a collective total of 1400 gold between you and the merch I gave that alchemist so many god damn potions just so it would cut down on how many game years (seriously) it would take me to sell it all to Scamp (I made like 2mil worth of a fatigue potions once 2000000/5000=400 days I just pitched em and used the console)

and OP did you get your mercantile up to 100? you can add another 1k to the shops so you can get 3500 for that Greater Daedra Claymore of Immolation, or just do what I did and decorate your houses with them, which is actually pretty immersive after I clear out a gate I pawn off the useless junk that's weighing me down then head to one of my mansions and spend the next 3 real world hours making sure everything is perfectly in place, why? because I want my house to look nice even though I'll be the only one who ever sees it (I must've spent an hour and a half trying to get a Dremora Claymore to rest perfectly agaisnt my desk)

yeah uhh no futher contribution to the rest of the thread can't really think of anything that isn't obvious

I'm working on raising mercantile, so if you have any good ideas to speed the process please let me know. I'm currently picking up items like arrows or alchemical ingredients whenever I find them and selling them on one-by-one, on the basis that every seperate transaction seems to raise mercantile by a bit.

I haven't actually bothered investing in a house, because there never seemed to be a point to it. In games like these I only use them for storage, but in Oblivion there isn't any point - when I come across better armour, I equip it and sell the last set. The same goes for weapons. Now, Fallout 3 was different. I kept a lot of spare guns around so I would always be ready to repair stuff, and I kept hold of a lot of the unique weapons and a ton of spare ammo. Not that I really needed it towards the end once the Ammo Press was unlocked, but I'm a compulsive hoarder when it comes to handy stuff...