What Matters Most - Sounds or Immersion and why? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
(Would you rather remove all other immersion and just focus on Sound or remove Sound?)
Not sure I understand the question correctly. With "sounds", do you mean ambient sounds (birds chirping, water flowing, or how your character's foot steps sound differently on different terrain etc.)? Or do you refer to zone/area music? If the first, they are a very integral part of immersion for me, and I definitely want them in!
If the other, music can help with immersion, but it is not as important as ambient sounds. That said, just playing FFXIV currently, I have become very spoiled by the great zone music that game has (oftentimes even several versions of a soundtrack, one for day, one for night. If you don't know about these, search for some night themes of the cities in FFXIV for example, they really help to set a totally different mood compared to during daytime!). I would be kind of sad to play in a music-less world.
As for other immersion factors next to sound: What do we have there? I can think of graphical effects such as lens-flares from the sun when walking through a forest, or distortions underwater, or air distortions from heat. I would love to have these too.
Other things we have seen are the "frost cover" on the screen when in cold climates, or the greenish tint from the crystals in the caverns. These are actually things I would rather NOT have, as I find them more distracting than immersing. If there was an option for these, I would probably turn them off.
Personally, I don't care about immersion. This is a game, not like another country or something you can actually fly or get to. That aside, If you have great music but the world around looks like trash, then the game itself becomes uninteresting. If you have a great looking and detailed world, and have it be dead silent, it becomes boring and, again, it becomes uninteresting. You need sound that reflects the graphics and vise versa. You can't have one better than the other, or else you run the risk of having people being really turned off from the game and leaving it, even if you have a great story. It's kind of hard to separate story, sound, and graphics, because they are too intertwined in what people consider part of the immersion they are looking for.
Kilsin said:What Matters Most - Sounds or Immersion and why? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
(Would you rather remove all other immersion and just focus on Sound or remove Sound?)
Yeah, the question just reads wrong. Sound is part of the overall immersion. That being said, the soundscape of most games is repetitious and quickly become annoying. Hearing the intro music as you enter a zone the first few times is wonderful, but after that it just grates on my nerves. The same can be said for atmospheric noises that constantly repeat. Oh, and dont get me started on thunder in a game when it starts raining. Why does thunder always accompany rain? That doesn't happen every time but in most games it does.
Plus, these days, so much communication between players happens in voice chat and having the cacophony of noises from the game ontop of that gets to be too much. Then there are people who prefer to listen to music while they play.
Basically, ambient/atmospheric sounds, any combat music, etc gets turned off immediately as it has no value-add for me.
What I do want out of the soundscape are positional audio cues of NPCs and their activities. Combat sounds from other groups should travel quite a ways depending upon the environment. I would appreciate hearing the sounds of battle from other groups and the sounds of caster NPCs doing their idle buffing from much further away. If I'm on the other side of a rise from a wizard, for example (NPC or PC it does not matter) and it is casting spells, I should hear those positionally from some distance away.
VR, put more effort into that end of the soundscape part of immersion as that will make the game much more interesting and engaging, at least for me.
If I had to choose one, I would go with immersion. Like Vandraad, I also spend a lot of time on discord with friends. So I also turn down the sound pretty far. After around 10-20 hours, music is usually off for good. I know someone worked long and hard on the soundtrack so I at least want to honor all the hard work that was put into it.
I do agree that sound plays a vital role in immersion. Ambient sound especially.
I think immersion means different things to different people.
It might be worth exploring that first.
For me, the right sound + the right visual aesthetic = nirvana. If any of these two pieces are missing, then it doesn't really matter what kind of cool mechanics you throw at me, I'm not going to reach that state of mind.
The sound = the immersion.
That could be the sound of a flute and woodwinds while walking past a bard’s guild, or the sound of trumpets walking past a city gate, or an eerie sound walking past ruins containing undead creatures. The sound pulls me in and I cannot have the immersion without exceptional sound programming.
I hope the audio for Pantheon is developed with the art of the area in mind. It would be great if the world is designed and the audio engineer that brings it all together can see the game world and see what the message the world designers are trying to deliver.
It should be a tough question to answer, play a game in complete silence but with all other aspects of immersion or just sounds and no moving trees, destruction, day/night cycle etc.?
Personally, I would probably lose the sound but it would still hurt immersion, a tough choice!
Sound (music and enviromental) elevated Skyrim to be more than the sum of its parts. Fallout solo games can be swapped in here, but less so. Sound amplifies immersion, and yet In an MMORPG I think social interaction can, to a degree, supplant sound in boosting immersion.
Perhaps sound elevates individual immersion with personal dividends whereas social play is corporate immersion with a shared investment return.
d'oh!
The overall experience would surely suffer without sounds, but immersion can still be had in an MMO albeit as a degraded, soundless experience.
Immersion is more important because it is a bigger picture concept. Immersion includes visuals, sounds, gameplay, lore, NPC behavior, weather/climates, believability... etc. Immersion is basically the sum of its total parts.
If I were forced to make a choice, I would remove the sound. I think that sound is an integral part of creating an immersive experience. I also think that a completely silent world would be a bit offputting and alienating. However, the other aspects of immersion are too important in having a functioning game to remove.
Kilsin said:It should be a tough question to answer, play a game in complete silence but with all other aspects of immersion or just sounds and no moving trees, destruction, day/night cycle etc.?
Personally, I would probably lose the sound but it would still hurt immersion, a tough choice!
We have different definitions of what immersion is then. Moving trees, day/night cycle aren't immesive by themselves. Sounds without a moving world aren't immersive. In neither situation would you create immersion for me.
If I had to choose between an "animated" world without sound or a non "animated" world with sound I'd choose without sound because sometimes I mute my game and watch TV or streams while I play.
EppE said:We have different definitions of what immersion is then.
I think at the root of it, immersion is just a measure of the degree to which something has a person's attention.
I also think the emotions that a person experiences as a byproduct of immersion are what make the topic difficult to pin down.
These emotions vary from person to person and the specific immersive characteristics of a game that cause them also vary.
As I've gotten older, the types of immersive characteristics I find the most enjoyable has shifted from ones that resulted in more energetic emotional states of mind, to ones that result in a sort of sedative or calming state of mind.
Sound is the most immersive feature for me, therefore I would not pick to remove it over any other immersive feature. The soundscape of a game plays into my sensory connection to the combat and the world. Of the five senses, we only have two that connect us to the game world. It is just untenable to sever that tie back to one single connection.
I like ambient sound, wind through the trees, rustle of leaves, hiss of rain, crackle of fire, kind of thing. Animal noises only if there is an animal making that noise that can be spotted and killed, or like if there was a hokey, not really a quest, thing where you get a telescope and in order to "tune"/focus it to see really far you have to evidence by spotting birds throughout Terminus that you hear as you get near certain trees or rock outcroppings and jotting down in journal. You could see accross zones (?) just see, and see what is lurking about at whatever distance you "spotted" up to, 3/4 zone, zone, zone +1/4, etc. Might be a nice fishing type pass-time.
Like someone mentioned earlier city or area theme music can get tiresome but I liked some of it, maybe theres a way to have it play once only when a char comes in range?
I can see how some will want to listen to their own stuff when playing and not want other things going on. There was an event that at a certain level, was timed perfectly with Rossini's William tell overture, like every time. I stumbled upon it by accident, when everyone had to run and then burn, was right when the trumpets blasted (lone ranger theme). I wanted to post it on youtube but I dont know how. Like the video posted about the skydiver saving that one guy who got knocked out? they called it some mission impossible stuff from the images on his go-pro? play the old school mission impossible theme at 46-47 seconds in- it works!.
It might be too complex but it would be nice to have musical easter eggs built in, I mean, have the music be a clue, like basic fight music for a caster? have something times to cool downs and timed to spell casting. or a staccatto beat for monk punches at certain times.
I think we broke Kilsin over the last few weeks.
Graphics, animations, dialogue boxes, visual cues, etc all combined are more important than sound. You should be able to have a rewarding game with the audio muted.
I hope we see an example of this hypothetical game with every PC and NPC all frozen in a standing positions, hovering over the terrain and fighting epic battles without any movement at all, but with a glorious sounding battle, crackling thunder as the wizard charges the lightning spell, a proper echo caused by the shadowless, motionless cave. As the motionless bandit hovers in place he gasps for breath and faintly whispers, "- my son." It is now possible to loot the floating corpse.
Kilsin said:It should be a tough question to answer, play a game in complete silence but with all other aspects of immersion or just sounds and no moving trees, destruction, day/night cycle etc.?
Personally, I would probably lose the sound but it would still hurt immersion, a tough choice!
This makes it easier for me, definitely complete silence with all other aspects of immersion. Too often I have the game muted anyways either due to being in a group and listening to voicechat or not wanting audio streaming in the house or headphones blocking out the family.
If we were talking only about films, the answer would be sound every time, but with games it has to be everything else instead. The film can more or less indicate what all is happening through the dialogue, but most games don't have voice acting and even then rarely to the extent where it all culminates into an experience separate from the visuals. Even with cut scenes included, I would still choose everything else over sound, and that's coming from someone who loves everything from the grand booming soundtracks all the way down to the ambient noises. Even better when the game has the player interact using elements of its audio, like in Ocarina of Time.
Sound is immersion. New World has all but bombed in my eyes, with that said, their sound is amazing and really sells the world. Now, do I need big epic music blaring in the background or during all the fights? No. I turn off combat music, it doesn't help. It was actually super nice when New World didn't have music on day 1 beta and it was just great sound effects.
So music = I only like it for 'town music' or 'atmosphere music' that doesn't overwhelm us with ATTENTION. Old school kelethin, neriak, Nro music was solid.
Sound effects = immersion.
Immersion = Sight, sound, feel... You can keep taste and smell.
Perhaps I'm just a very audio-focused person, but sound/music quality and immersion are directly correlated to me.
I'd be happy playing a game with 8-bit graphics as long as the sounds and music are good.
Nothing takes me out of a game faster than bad voice acting or annoying out-of-place sounds.
