I've grown to despise the term "immersive". Different meaning for every person, thrown around all over the place in thousands of ways, and mostly (in my experience) used by people as a club to wield against anything they don't happen to like ("_______ ruined mah immershuns!" )

Me, I just play games and enjoy them. As far as I can remember, I've never suffered from this "immersion" malady in the 35 years I've played games. Which, based on how much it seems to cause games to be ruined for people, sounds like a good thing.

edit: and, given all the things I've read on the Beth forums the past 5 years about "immersion", I'm not sure how FO:NV's hardcoe mode could have provided it. Minor differences in inventory management doesn't particularly seem "more immersive" - it's still moving lines of text around in an on-screen menu. And the "Eat Now! Sleep Now!" meters certainly can't be more immersive, since they're more UI... and having UI on the screen is an intrusion that "ruins immersion". As well as the game telling you do to things reminds you that you're playing a game/exposes game mechanics. Which is also, apparently, an immersion-ruining thing. Eh, whatever.

What he said

Anyway, if ammo has weight and healing happens over time, i don't really care.

If not, mods happen, so a temporary setback.

Meh, to me running around without basic needs just feels shallow and pointless. I want to play an RPG not an open world Call of duty. But each to their own. Once you go hardcoe you cant go back.

I think Kiralyn2000 is right here. Immersion is great but can be very different for different people.

I am a hard core roleplayer and immersionist and hardcoe stuff does nothing for me. A world that seems real while I'm playing it. NPC interaction, believable environments. etc. That's my standard. Basic needs and degradation often is just busywork. I kind of like what Skyrim did for sleeping and gave you a buff to encourage sleeping. A carrot rather than a stick.

Food and drink needs also provide a break from the constant action. It's nice at the end of the day adventuring and battling to sit down, make camp, hunt or prepare some food and consider your journey the next day. Without this its all action quest action etc... no time for the simple things. I hate that. It makes the game become stale too quickly.

Well I am sorry you don't understand how these help with immersion.

But "a different meaning for every person, thrown around in thousands of ways etc etc"? Where did you get that idea? Immersion is an english word and like all other words it has a specific meaning. Simple as that.

By looking it up on google you get this "deep mental involvement in something". It is very similar (but not identical) to roleplaying your character. Which, in games, means being absorbed so much by the game that you actually feel you are in it. Many movies/games manage to do that to their audience. Other forms of art have this characteristic as well. Paintings, music etc. It's an art by itself, actually, creating something that engaging.

So when being immersed/feeling as you were in the character's shoes, in an rpg like Fallout which essentially is a post apocalyptic world simulation/adventure, many of us don't like being a bullet sponge, having immortal companions, or being magically sustained without having to eat/rest, while our character is supposed to be a human being. On the other hand scrounging for resources/food like everyone else in your environment also does and like a human being would do in a post-apocalyptic harsh world, as it would be one of its biggest problems, really helps with immersion (which you now know what it means).

I don't know how you play games. I've got a friend who likes having no sound and instead listen to music while playing. Can't do that even in a mmorpg. Another one was never interested in the lore and skipped all dialogs but he still likes TES/fallout. Go figure.

Great post Bleak, summed it up perfectly. Hopefully Kiralyn will understand it a little better.

Except Fallout isn't a post apocalyptic world, its a post post apocalyptic world. Not even the people in Fallout 3 had a hard time finding food because they were raising brahmin, and Rivet city was growing food in its hydroponic lab, and they had people out hunting Mirelurks, and Yao Guai, and mole rats, and all that stuff.

Making the "need" for food be great is directly counter to the setting of the game, and thus, not immersive.

Which is different for every single person, which is what Kiralyn 2000 was obviously saying.

Its far less believable IMO to not have to eat at all, then it is to eat 10 times more or less then you do IRL, because the settings for the hardcoe mode are unbalanced, like they always are.

Immersion also takes suspension of disbelief into account. And what people are willing to suspend thier belief for differs from person to person, and things that could add immersion, such as needs systems, can in fact remove it if they aren't balanced properly, which they never are.

You speak under the presumption that such a mode would be imbalanced, hence less believable than not existing at all? Where did that presumption come from? It isn't nuclear physics to balance a mode like that. My character in Skyrim can survive by eating 1 time a day and sleep for 6-7 hours. If he eats 2 good meals and sleeps 8-9 hours he is in perfect condition. All humans are the same in that regard. Where do you see difficulty in balancing such a thing? Balancing what?

Are people still caught up on that fill the meter fad?

HAHA wow, they sure got you guys with that non-sense.

You know whats immersive? Eating only when I the gamer has to eat, see I can pretend that I'm in a cold climate by turning on the AC and then I eat something moldy I found in the fridge and after that I roll up a cigeratte for desert an pretend I'm roughin it out in the wastes!

Seriously turn off your HUD UI, that stuff ruins immersion...Got blood spatter and grunt noises let you know your hurt plus you can always look at your pipboy if you need a compass or directions which is Immersive!

Personally, I don't believe I've ever felt that with any media in my life. Not books, not movies, not games. I've certainly been "caught up" in a book, and kept reading it until 3am (to see where the story goes), but it's still been as it always has - an external viewer looking in. Never imagined myself as a favorite character, never imagined myself in a movie's world, etc. (not sure if it relates, but I also don't remember my dreams when I wake up. )

...that curiosity, wanting to see where the story ends up, is a reason that I tend to stick with things until they get really annoying. I'll put up with a lot (like dragging myself through Dragon Age:Origins' combat long after it became tedious) to follow the story. I stuck with several comic books, or Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels long past the point I probably should have quit. (LOST, I gave up on by third season, though. )

(It's also why I have a hard time understanding people who say they bought a TES game, or Fallout 3, and literally never completed the main story. I definitely understand just wandering around and exploring the world/finding your own fun..... but to never play the Main Story, one of the main points of the game? Really? So bizarre.)

Becuase in literally every game, and every mod for a game, that has had a hardcoe mode, its always been imblanced and laughably bad.

Like I said earlier I've got friends who don't need/care about immersion they just listen to dubstep loudly while playing, skipping the dialogs etc to get to the fun part like this guy gamefever above. Nothing wrong with that. Power to you.

Is it just me or is everyone saying Call of Duty a lot when talking about Fallout 4?

People say anything with any shooter elements is like CoD.

Its the eaisest way to insult a game without any saying anything at all

Jesus.

If Fallout 4 doesn't give you the "immersion" you want, and if you need to feel "immersion" to enjoy a game, then good god, don't play it. This gripe-fest is almost comical. I don't see why people are caring that much. I'm pretty sure a few of you had a brain aneurysm before your heads exploded. Personally (and maybe I'm in the minority here), I'm just happy F4 exists, and I'll be ecstatic to play it next week (survival/hardcoe mode notwithstanding).

It's gonna happen when you have FPS elements in any game but the fact that FO4 has hitmarkers isn't helping.

...had to go Google "hitmarkers" and then watch the combat video again. Eh, hadn't noticed it any of the previous times I'd watched the vid. Not sure why they'd bother (seems like it'd only be useful in an MP/PvP game), but I also don't see the big deal.

(Well, I can kind of see why they'd have them. People at the planning level said "We want to modernize our shooting combat mechanics!" and the Bungie/id codemonkeys said, "Ok, modern FPS has hitmarkers" and put them in. )

I can definitely see your point there but for me lots of things provide the break you like.

So what exactly is stopping one from eating and drinking water when they feel it is necessary? Unless all food and water have been removed from the game, you're still able to eat and drink it as you feel your character needs.

It's probably a lot more immersive than anything a mod will make, because even the most "hardcoe" mods are so immersion breaking, it's comical.

Dust, for example, will have you wake up dead if you sleep too long and didn't chug a bottle before bed. You will dehydrate in under 10 hours.

Now, the goal is trying to immerse yourself in a believable world, and with that comes eating, sleeping and drinking. In what world is it believable that a young to middle aged man will die from going to be thirsty when he turned in for the night?

The point is, your own head RP will do it way better than any mod or mode because they see you having to eat and drink unbelievable quantities of food and water a day.

Both sides of this argument have valid points to make.

The pro hardcoe mode people say it's pointless to play the game without the immersion provided by basic needs.

The anti hardcoe mode people say it's pointless to have to micromanage in a game theyd rather just enjoy without the minor annoyance.

I say it's pointless to complain about a feature not being in 7 days before the game release. Especially when that feature.was never promised to begin with.

Don't worry though there are likely going to be mods for eating, sleeping, drinking, and uh the other "ing" needs before long.

I just hope we can still drink from toilets.

Now THAT'S hardcoe.