Immersion breakers

[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...

 

[blankedboy]

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

Bulldongle!

I had to hold the "barter price down" button for about 5 minutes (no fucking joke) just to sell my extra Daedric Dagger.

IT'S A FUCKING DAGGER! IT DID PRACTICALLY NO DAMAGE!

OT, Elder Scrolls bartering prices and having no feet piss me off.

 

[fanklok]

-clip-

Ohhh man buying the house in Skingrad is actually the easiest way to raise your mercantile gather up about 50k then buy the house and all the furishings from the store that sells them leave for about a day or so then come back there will be some chic in the store that you can hire to be the servant in your house hire her then head home and talk to her, you now have access to an infinite supply of pies to sell and use in alchemy

I had to hold the "barter price down" button for about 5 minutes (no fucking joke) just to sell my extra Daedric Dagger.

IT'S A FUCKING DAGGER! IT DID PRACTICALLY NO DAMAGE!

OT, Elder Scrolls bartering prices and having no feet piss me off.

It's Daedric so it's rare plus 100 in daggers and 100% got it's damage up to about 20 which may not seem like much but daggers are the second fastest weapons

 

[twasdfzxcv]

lack of peripheral vision in first person game, no friendly fire, automatic top off clips on reload weapons, regenerative health, any form of sniping without securing the weapon first, human players, integrated tutorial with story, death, most moral system, scripted AI, weird npc behavior (like standing in one spot forever, repeating responses), realistic graphic (uncanny valley effect), etc etc etc.

 

[Vrex360]

For me, there is no better example then continuing to play Mass Effect 2 after the final mission. I mean for me at the time the final mission was awesome and huge, beginning with a tender scene in which Commander James Shepard gazes longlingly at the picture of Ashley and ending with a fiery climactic showdown in which the whole team/crew escape the exploding Collector Base and Shepard tells the Illusive man that he was ressurrected to save the galaxy... without the help of Cerberus.
Seriously, it was an amazing final mission and yet, when I decided to keep playing for the sake of getting everything done, I was distraught to find the universe feeling quite empty and there characters all kept mentioning plans to prepare the Normandy for the 'suicide mission'.
Clearly unaware that we had just completed said mission. I dunno, it just ruined the feeling for me.

Plus I made a note of going around and covertly rejecting all the other love interests so that there was no way the game would mess up and think I was pursuing a relationship, so now me and most of the NPC's had fuck all to talk about.

Finally I was given two Cerberus based missions to complete, and while in the first one I gave away valuable Cerberus info to the Alliance (I really hate Cerberus you see) in the second there was no way to complete it without helping Cerberus.
So I get an email from them thanking me, even though I have retired Cerberus, blown up their Collector station, told the Illusive man to go to hell and sent valuable detail to the Council, THEY STILL SAY THEY ARE LUCKY TO HAVE ME

I plan to replay it sometime over my holiday break on a different account, probably going to make all the same decisions save for one:
GET EVERYTHING I COULD EVER WANT DONE, DONE WELL IN ADVANCE OF THE FINAL MISSION!!

 

[Jekken6]

My parents telling me to stop playing.

 

[ShotgunSmoke]

Invisible limbs. Nothing puts you off like a protagonist who's a floating camera.

No hands on the steering wheel. *looking at you, Half Life*

Giant "RELOAD" letters on the screen.

Weapons instantly change, your character doesn't holster them.

Doors open by themselves, weapons instantly teleport to your inventory, the protagonist teleports to a car seat - lack of animations for actions. Far Cry 2 was perfect in this aspect, your hand opened a door, you didn't teleport between car seats, everything had an animation. FC2 aced the immersion.

Mute protagonists with no personality. *looking at the majority of FPS games*

Your character gets burned alive, who cares? He was just a floating camera with arms. When will developers learn? Mute characters don't add to the immersion. It just completely destroys the bond between player and the protagonist. It makes you care less about the story. And don't give me the "it's supposed to be you" bullshit. If I was supposed to be the protagonist, it wouldn't have a fixed name, sex, nationality and biography. You're supposed to experience a game like an interactive movie, not pretend that you're there. (That doesn't go for games like Fallout, where you can build your character from scratch.)

 

[SonicWaffle]

-clip-

Ohhh man buying the house in Skingrad is actually the easiest way to raise your mercantile gather up about 50k then buy the house and all the furishings from the store that sells them leave for about a day or so then come back there will be some chic in the store that you can hire to be the servant in your house hire her then head home and talk to her, you now have access to an infinite supply of pies to sell and use in alchemy

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, at this point in the game (50+ hours, head of all guilds but Mages, about to start the main quest) I have absolutely no need of money. I'll remember it if I ever play through again, though!

I had to hold the "barter price down" button for about 5 minutes (no fucking joke) just to sell my extra Daedric Dagger.

IT'S A FUCKING DAGGER! IT DID PRACTICALLY NO DAMAGE!

OT, Elder Scrolls bartering prices and having no feet piss me off.

It's Daedric so it's rare plus 100 in daggers and 100% got it's damage up to about 20 which may not seem like much but daggers are the second fastest weapons

Daedric is rare? I come across so much Daedric crap I don't bother to loot it anymore, and I've not even started the main questline yet. Even bandits seem to have Daedric weapons!

 

[SonicWaffle]

- Stuff about Mass Effect 2 -

Dude, spoiler tags :-(

I'm going to be buying ME2 today and now I know half the stuff that happens!

I agree with your point though, I hate when characters can't keep up with events. I'm seeing a lot of it in Oblivion currently, people talking about things I've done - that they know I've done - and remarking "I wonder who could have done that?"

What gets really annoying is the "I hear there is a new Arena champion! I can't believe someone beat the Gray Prince!" that you get from asking about rumours. A lot of NPCs seem to say that after introducing themselves to you with "Hey, you're the new Arena champion! I saw your fight against the Gray Prince!"

 

[Optimus Hagrid]

I remember in Silent Hill 2, I got yanked out the game in a certain place where you have to complete a puzzle, and you hear a completely out of place and not very scary scream.

In that second, I thought "Ah c'mon, this game has been so much scarier than other horror games till this point!"

Thankfully, it didn't persist.

 

[fanklok]

There where other words here

Sorry did I say rare? I meant highest quality, plus the ones in Morrowind looked fucking awesome

speaking of people saying silly things when they saw you do something then remark on who it possibly could have been, go on a guard killing frenzy some times for fun when you kill one another will shout "Some ones been murdered." Then run off to get the guards.

 

[SonicWaffle]

There where other words here

Sorry did I say rare? I meant highest quality, plus the ones in Morrowind looked fucking awesome

speaking of people saying silly things when they saw you do something then remark on who it possibly could have been, go on a guard killing frenzy some times for fun when you kill one another will shout "Some ones been murdered." Then run off to get the guards.

They do look fucking awesome. I'm wearing a full set of Daedric armour, not because it works the best, but because I look like Sauron. Hell yes :-D