Do Flying Mounts and Fast Travel BREAK IMMERSION in Persistent World Games?

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Paradox Gaming Network

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Published on March 12, 2024 1:15:19 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahwJbNl3F-c

Game:

EVE Online (2003)

Duration: 13:43

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Coming off of my YouTube video about optimizing the fun out of MMORPGs, someone asked me to do a video on Do Flying Mounts and Fast Travel break the immersion in Persistent World Games? The poll is here if anyone hasn’t added their vote or you want to add in some more feedback: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxX1p7V6lRotjeHrp2ubDkOTmgbfXM5M6f

One of the biggest problems with persistent world (MMORPG) worlds as we know them now is that there isn’t any danger from the environment/world. As it is now the only real danger in most of these games are the few zones that happen to be “max level” zones or from PVPers in games where non-consensual PVP is allowed. Some games that are due out in the future like Throne and Liberty basically operate on a zone-level concept where you know if the mobs in the area are going to be a threat. This has been repeated in other games like FFXI, FFXIV, WoW, Archeage, Eve Online (security system) and most other games. I am still hopefully for Ashes of Creation, because one of the biggest selling points is their node system, which doesn’t create zone that have a fixed level content in them, but instead creates a world where there is a range of content from starter content to a maximum level as determined by the level of the Node.

Still I think another game in development, Eternal Tombs, is taking this risk or threat of an open world to a new level. Eternal Tombs plans on having events run by live staff so that you aren’t ever really sure if you are safe since an event can spawn off anywhere. If you’ve not seen this topic, I did a video on it here: https://youtu.be/Dx_B6RNP4LM

I would agree with most of the respondents to the poll that Flying Mounts and Fast Travel do break the immersion of persistent world games, however, from the Massively OP article that started this optimization discussion, Sam Kash wrote “as if the fun was in screwing around for an hour waiting for the actual game you want to play to begin.” If you’ve not had a chance to check out that article you can do so here: https://massivelyop.com/2024/03/07/massively-overthinking-are-we-optimizing-the-fun-out-of-mmos/

I would argue that Sam is right. Players, the average players not the college students or high school students on summer break, have on average about 3 hours per night for play sessions and more on the weekends. A player who only has 3 hours doesn’t necessarily want to trek 90 minutes to do content, especially if the content is going to take an unknown amount of time. As much as I hate to say it, I think gone are the days of 6 hour power gaming sessions on a nightly basis, so unfortunately that is where fast travel comes in unless you make the trip meaningful.

If you either have meaningful events pre-planned into the trek, or the dungeon can only be done as part of a story chain and not just on farm, or if you have random world events that can spawn at any time (which also have to be of a risk/reward. Content for the sake of content isn’t good, neither are cheesy rewards for the rewards.

This will lead into the next question, what kind of open world content is good?

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