I thought when I got my ship and would start being able to go where I want that feeling of disconnection would pass but it hasn’t. Everything is just so instanced with zones being all corridors and rarely a lot of people around. Reminds me of FFXIV which felt very similar - although that game did have some memorable characters the WORLD itself felt so disconnected because of all the zoning. It’s like a bunch of puzzle pieces just dropped on a table and you’re told that’s a world. Each piece being some zone or dungeon or something.
I find combat and a lot of the side activities fun but I really miss that sense of being in a world that I have experienced with other MMO’s. What about you?
Yes, the immersion in this game is severely lacking. I don’t know if it’s the isometric thing or what but yeah doesn’t do it for me at all. New World was great, too bad they screwed that up royally or I’d still be playing it.
What MMO’s have you played that gave you great immersion to the world? I thought FF14 was pretty decent compared to this game. Honestly I think it’s mainly cause I can’t be bothered to read all the texts. The climactic scenes are pretty cool though.
New world had the atmosphere but it felt like every other game without having anything “fun” about it. It was just soulless. Beautiful and shallow imo.
I’d liken it to a pretty paint by numbers picture lol.
What i like about lost ark is combat is the best I’ve played in an mmo.
It’s stylistic, the cuts and camera pans make the isometric view really work and not feel dead.
The complex systems are built well on top of each other.
The balance between classes is really good.
The music is pretty good.
What i don’t like is the honing system is a little too unforgiving.
The areas, as you meantioned, feel walled off and disconnected.
The daily loop gets really old, I feel that will improve as we get more weekly legion raids though.
The p2w advantage is a little to high for me, powergains via paid advantage should be less and priced lower. No game should take multiples of $1000 to get to higher levels.
The story is lame and flat with a couple of low reaching spikes along the way but apparently we have about 10% of the story content in the game so who knows, it might get better but it’ll probably die before that happens lol.
That’s about it.
Yeah New World over all was really bad but it had a lot of potential. I found the world to be rather immersive (the sounds, graphics, feel of weightiness to the movement) they just didn’t develop it enough and instead copy pasted the same things everywhere. Really disappointing.
It’d help if AGS actually had a marketing team to use the tools right in front of them to help support the world building that Smilegate already has done in the past. Such as: 로스트아크 시네마틱 트레일러 (LOST ARK Cinematic trailer) - YouTube
BDO - Extremely immersive world, hardly any zoning. Not the best story, but good lore if you take the time to read it (knowledge entries). Quite similar to Lost Ark in that regard actually poor story but decent lore (adventure tome entries, item descriptions, etc)
LOTRO - Combination of large areas to explore and minimal instancing. Some, but not a lot. Add to that the musical instrument system and a lot of NPC’s talking with each other and moving about and it felt a lot more immersive and alive. Also a good story that you felt a part of and connected to.
New World - Extremely immersive enviornment/world, but lacking in attachment to the world due to horrible story. Still, they did nail the environmental immersion.
ESO - A bit more instancing than would be preferred, but still huge open zones with a lot of active NPC’s doing their own thing in the world. Plus fully voice acted with returning characters and a lot of story focused helped to feel more immersive.
EVE - Very immersive, out in space with everyone in the same world.
the problem with ff14 is the horrendous rendering on environments looks like it literally came from a ps3(because it did). Environments look like straight trash and it completely removes any possible immersion you could have. Just a giant ugly oversized map with a lot of nothing, randomly placed mobs with no real loot tables that make no sense and offer no real value to the game, and horrible slow movement speed to make it seem even bigger. I loved my time in ff14, dont get me wrong, but from day 1 one of my biggest complaints was how bad the graphics on environments were and the horrible sluggish movement/mounted speed just to prolong your stay on said maps