Not sure if you were being factitious or not, but WoW does it by adding in fatigue. If you go too far out into the ocean, you get fatigued and die. Also, lots of cliffs. A lot of players have found ways around the cliffs to explore places, like the disappearing waterfall. And if you did already know how they deal with it, sorry for the mini explanation. :) @ jambarama:

Ok first i like these points ur making its just dumb to have invisible walls al over the place.
i good example of a wall that is ok to be there is in a game called city of heroes i stoped playing a while back but they had huge walls of energy that u could no get thorugh and u could fly teleport run jump and all that fun stuff.But the reason for these walls :wich is exsplained in great deatail in the game it self is the fat that there r many super high level monster lurking out there……… that ur arent rdy for yet……. notice YET like later mabye u will be able to go there O.o so it leaves u thinking still wuts out there . just my thoughts

good post BTW

I never played AoC but that sounds awful. Guild Wars had similar issue – invisible walls, insurmountable waist high fences, and artificial walls everywhere.

WoW on the other hand avoided this issue completely – no invisible walls in that game. They avoided invisible walls up to the point where people could “wall jump” into areas where they were not supposed to at one point. Maybe that kind of design approach is why it is the top MMO on the market?

The invisible walls in Oblivion were only around the ‘boundaries’ of the world, so that really didn’t bother me much. It does bother me however when MMOs like Age of Conan have invisible walls everywhere :(

@Lars: Interesting! Funny that you mention GTA because I always had this love-hate relationship with that series.

I love how huge the GTA cities seem to be. You can drive around for hours just sight seeing. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much all you can do if you are not following the main quest lines.

At any given time there are probably only 4-5 people in this whole immense game world that will actually talk to you. Most buildings can’t be explored, and those who can are usually tied to a specific mission and remain empty until you trigger it. In effect, there is really not much to do in this immense game world. I find that while GTA San Andreas playable area is much, much bigger than that of Oblivion, it actually contains less interactive features available to the player at any given time.

Oblivion has a small world populated by hundreds of named NPC’s and more loot than you could ever hope to sell – all available to you right from the get-go. San Andreas has huge, sprawling city full of fake buildings with only 10-15 active areas of interest that you could interact with at a time. Driving around that city bore me to tears, and I could not stand the Reply  |  Quote]]> http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2009/01/15/invisible-walls-kill-immersion/#comment-11276 Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:44:51 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2009/01/15/invisible-walls-kill-immersion/#comment-11276

@Luke: That’s the thing: it’s not about realism – it’s about fun.

I know that having everything to scale wouldn’t be fun. I agree. But having developers create backdrops that imply the village goes on even though you can’t go there for me is more fun because it maintains NARRATIVE immersion. Having the roads and valleys go on even if you can’t go there maintains narrative immersion.

You seem to prefer immersion of control (if I can see it, i should be able to open it, explore it, etc.), and I prefer narrative immersion which necessarily means having movie-set-style backdrops that make things APPEAR to be realistically sized when they aren’t. For example, all the doors in Grand Theft Auto you can’t open sitting next to doors you can. It makes the city feel bigger (which to me is immersive, because its a CITY) even if it isn’t fully interactive (which to you isn’t immersive, because there’s a door that can’t be opened).

Of course, both of our opinions are as valid as the other, but this does show you can’t please everyone. Knowing that, I certainly don’t envy game designers. =)

@Lars: You know, I don’t actually mind small towns with only few buildings across. I’d take that over a sprawling city maze with hundreds of fake doors that cannot be interacted with. Stuff like that just annoys me.

That’s the thing: it’s not about realism – it’s about fun. Morrowind and Oblivion worlds are not realistic. The towns are to small, and to close together. But I’m willing to accept that because it makes the game more fun. For example, in real life it would probably take me more than a day to hike from my house to where I work. In Oblivion I can hike from one end of Cyrodiil to the other in a matter of minutes. This is a good thing, because it keeps the game interesting. Making the game to scale would basically make normal travel incredibly dull.

I’m not that fond of strategically placed lava pits and cliffs either. This is why I think island worlds are actually the best model for avoiding invisible walls. Then again, mountain chains have acted as natural borders for ages now precisely because they were nearly impossible to scale. People used meandering and dangerous mountain passes to get through them and you could effectively close your mountain facing borders by controlling those few access routes that existed. So using mountain chains as game-world borders is not as un-realistic as one would think.

Well, I guess I’m the opposite of everyone else here. I think invisible walls ENHANCE immersion. You know what I hate? Walking into a “city” that only has four homes in it. All the homes in Oblivion were small. Why? Because if you have to make it so you can walk into every single one there aren’t enough developers in the world who could ever get a game out in a reasonable timeframe. I’d prefer to see the city have four homes you can interact with (whatever the developers have time for, focus on the important story-related ones, etc.) and the rest can be behind some invisible curtain somewhere where you can’t access but can see.

You know what else I hate? Stupid cliffs and lava barriers everywhere. How does this nation function when you can’t get goods in and out of it??? So, yeah, just have the road continue onscreen and stop the player from going. Now we have the illusion of a REAL world where countries are not separated from each other by impenetrable barriers and can actually trade with one another, its just your player won’t go there because he doesn’t need to.

[quote post=”2819″]Most people can’t jump up to an object a little above knee height and land on their feet. Even very fit people can’t jump up to a waist high object landing on their feet without a gigantic run-up. In order to jump something that’s around your eye-level, you have to be very good, sail over it horizontally, and land on your back. All of the above is totally unencumbered to boot – forget trying it carrying around your bag of provisions and loot. [/quote]

Very true, but then again you do have to admit that most people out there would probably have no problems whatsoever climbing over a waist high wooden fence. Even while wearing a backpack full of crap and bulky clothes/armor.

I believe that “manifesto” (and you are right, it is a wish list not a statement of intent) is partially wrong on this one. Or rather, he probably worded it wrong. For me the point is to create a game world where things act the way player would expect them to act. So if you see a door, you should be able to open it. If you see a window, you should be able to break the glass and see what is on the other side. If you see a waist high fence, you should be able to climb over it.

This does not always mean realistic. It means never breaking the fourth wall, and never reminding the player he is playing a game. Fake doors, invisible walls, unbreakable panes of glass and insurmountable waist high fences are painful game mechanic devices that brutally jerk you out of the game world each time you encounter them. They don’t destroy the game play, but they do destroy immersion and by extension the mood and tone of the game changes. It is hard to be afraid of the scary monsters or scripted events if you are to busy figuring out how to navigate the maze of fake and real doors, and fences you cannot scale.

Curiously, stuff like seemingly super-human jumping powers that let you hop over barriers that are taller than you doesn’t break immersion that much. Especially if you don’t have a climb button of any sort. It’s just that player expects to be able to get over that obstacle in some way because it would be easy to cross in real life. If he is able to do it, then immersion can be maintained even though he is force-jumping or levitating or whatnot.

Similarly when the player sees a body of water, he expects to be able to swim across it. No matter that he would never do it in real life. No matter that jumping into freezing water during a snow blizzard would probably lead to hypothermia. Being able to swim across is still more “realistic” and immersible than watching your character drown instantly in a knee deep puddle.

My rule of thumb is this: if it is fun, and adds to the game play experience it should be allowed. If it breaks immersion and takes the player out of the game, it should be dropped.

@jamba:

I had a look at that manifesto (it’s actually a wishlist, not a statement of intention – the guy fails his own “don’t bullshit us” theme) and there’s a lot of hit and miss, but the end of the bit you quoted made me smile:

We’re to the stage where it should be a minimum requirement in the game universe: rock should act like rock, air should act like air and humans should move like humans.

This always makes me smile – rare is the game that has humans jumping like humans. Most people can’t jump up to an object a little above knee height and land on their feet. Even very fit people can’t jump up to a waist high object landing on their feet without a gigantic run-up. In order to jump something that’s around your eye-level, you have to be very good, sail over it horizontally, and land on your back. All of the above is totally unencumbered to boot – forget trying it carrying around your bag of provisions and loot.

I’m not sure how big those rocks are in the LotR game, but if they’re bigger than knee-height (almost guaranteed), then, well, the humans are moving like humans :)

I’ve always found comparisons between techie gamer (or in the case of the jumping human, physiologist gamer) and non-techie gamer greivances very interesting. Non-techies seem to think that AI is just a matter of twiddling some deep setting somewhere, when in reality it’s a very difficult, multifaceted thing and tuning it is a bastard. Non-techies are much more unforgiving when small bugs persist through patches. Things like that. It’s all good fun.