First person is not more immersive than Third person view

[rusty_shackleford]

Not sure why people are mad at OP, third person better simulates human FOV than (standard, monocular) first person. Yes, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's true. You simply cannot represent a human's field of vision with a single camera, it becomes too distorted.
"Immersiveness" however, is a personal opinion.

 

[Viata]

Yeah, you can see yourself, have a 360º degree vision and even be able to look behind walls in real life. Thus, third person is the only one that can simulates human FOV.

 

[Harthwain]

Not sure why people are mad at OP, third person better simulates human FOV than (standard, monocular) first person.

Three words: multiple screens setup.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Anyway,if you guys want talk about hardcore immersion,there's always VR.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[DarKPenguiN]

When did this forum allow faggots to start posting?

 

[Ranarama]

I think the argument that seeing your character makes it less immersive is silly.

When you use a waggle stick or motion controls it is not more immersive than a keyboard and mouse just because the actions your perform are more similar. The whole point is for those things to drop away entirely. Much like a third-person perspective does.

And seeing the third person character do things can replace the feedback that you have as a person that first person games lack. That's why first person platforming is terrible - because you lack the perception of where your body is positioned. Third person games actually have more feedback that first person ones, because you have more of a sense of how your characters are positioned in the world.

 

[tritosine2k]

Inevitable consequence of FPP is that it's crowded below 3meters and no current display technology conveys that especially not this reemergent kool kid VR with a single plane at approx 2meter, in effect its not even VR but VS - virtual screen.
TPP can push that crowdedness out. FPP should be extension of TPP if viewing condition matters.

 

[Lurker47]

if it didn't almost always mean that the combat isn't turn-based (except in all the games where it is.)

What was your point again?

You know it.

If Wizardry, Might & Magic, Realms of Arkania and countless others are not "first person" enough for you, you are part of the problem.

OK, but what about shooters

Shooters as well might not exist. This is GRPGD.

 

[Viata]

if it didn't almost always mean that the combat isn't turn-based (except in all the games where it is.)

What was your point again?

You know it.

If Wizardry, Might & Magic, Realms of Arkania and countless others are not "first person" enough for you, you are part of the problem.

OK, but what about shooters

Shooters as well might not exist. This is GRPGD.

You missed one D there, mate.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

As a matter of fact TPP is closer to how you see things in real life comparing to FPP.

If I had a butt hanging in front of my eyes all the time, I'd consult with a doctor.

So no VR Heretic 3 Elf butt-in-a-thong for you? (he whispers sweet nothings in your ears and winks often).

 

[octavius]

When did this forum allow faggots to start posting?

Oct 6, 2012

 

[DarKPenguiN]

When did this forum allow faggots to start posting?

Oct 6, 2012

hmmm- Okay. Makes sense then. =P

 

[RoSoDude]

Only a handful of people in this thread have engaged with the basic problem of using "immersion" as a descriptive quality of games. While I would argue things like "depth" and "challenge" and even "player communication" can be discussed in fairly objective terms, "immersion" is a higher-order experience that's on about the same level as "fun". A person can have fun playing a game, and some number of people could agree a particular game is more fun than another, but that doesn't make mean we can say the game is in itself fun or unfun. It's the same with immersion. There are decisions you can make as a designer that will engage certain people in an experience they would describe as immersive, including first- or third-person perspective, but it largely comes down to the subjective preferences of the user. I personally find FPP to be helpful in immersing me in a game for what seem like obvious reasons (seeing from the eyes of my character), but I have a friend who feels precisely the opposite because he can't easily sense how his character is grounded in the environment. He professes that he feels like a camera on a stick in first person, while I could equally retort that I feel like I'm controlling a puppet on strings in third person. We can play the same games and come out with different impressions of which ones were more "immersive" because of a number of subjective factors. Some people like to see their character's appendages fully animated in FPP, while I often prefer when world interactions are a bit more abstract. Some people complain about unrealistic graphics as an obstacle to their immersion, while I feel that the cleaner visual languages of titles with dated graphics like Deus Ex or Thief helps bring me into the environment. And so on.

It doesn't help matters that, similar to the issues of saying a game is "fun" and failing to provide any specific reasoning, arguments relating to immersion usually involve people shouting past each other as they can rarely agree on what they even mean by the term. Is immersion identical to the feeling of presence that people get when VR is able to fool their senses? The ability of a "walk the plank" VR game to generate a genuine fear of heights that a person would not feel in the same situation in Mirror's Edge suggests otherwise, lest we argue that the latter cannot be immersive. Is immersion a synonym for player engagement or "flow"? If you've played Tetris for extended periods of time, you will have likely experienced the sensation of everything but the descending blocks on screen melting away from your locus of attention. That might seem as good a definition of this immersion thing as any; but in that case, why do people spend so much time arguing about "gamey" elements "breaking their immersion"? Why is it that people seem to have an expressed sense that the logical coherency and consistency of a simulated game world is related to immersion if there are incoherent and illogical game settings that can still prove engrossing simply for their raw gameplay? To me, the answer is that these are all different things, and the feeling that people describe as immersion is probably some amalgamation of them that has to do with the kind of emotional responses to media that they tend to exhibit.

If your view is that immersion is this essence that games have or don't have, you end up with a real epistemological problem on your hands. However, if you accept that people can find a range of things to be "immersive", whatever that happens to mean to them, then we can stop having arguments that boil down to little more than shouting "real-time combat is more fun!" vs "no, turn-based combat is more fun!" and actually get to the root of the experiential sides of games that will work for an ideal player.

 

[Excommunicator]

Speaking purely of perspective, first person is more immersive.

But it doesn't make a game more immersive by itself. Fallout is clearly more immersive than Oblivion.

It's harder to get all the details right in a first person game to make the player feel consistently immersed. The sounds, the movement, the animations, controls etc. But get it right and you get a game like Thief.

 

[Lilura]

When did this forum allow faggots to start posting?

Probably around the time VD stopped moderating?

 

[Storyfag]

Yeah, you can see yourself

Yes. You can see most of your front body, entire arms and legs. Show me a FPP that allows that.

have a 360º degree vision

No, but you do should have an awareness of what's going on immediately behind you, unless otherwise distracted.

and even be able to look behind walls in real life.

Could easily be chalked up to peeking behind a corner.

Thus, third person is the only one that can simulates human FOV.

It simulates human spatial awareness far better than FPP, that's for sure.

 

[octavius]

No, but you do should have an awareness of what's going on immediately behind you, unless otherwise distracted.

That's what hearing to give you that awareness is for, something which is really under utilized in games.

 

[Lurker47]

if it didn't almost always mean that the combat isn't turn-based (except in all the games where it is.)

What was your point again?

You know it.

If Wizardry, Might & Magic, Realms of Arkania and countless others are not "first person" enough for you, you are part of the problem.

OK, but what about shooters

Shooters as well might not exist. This is GRPGD.

You missed one D there, mate.

I did look that up. Blame (((Bing)))

 

[Excommunicator]

The Witcher 1 is one of the most immersive RPGs I've ever played, and I played it in 3rd person isometric view.

Other gameplay-related elements that break my immersion are:
Being unable to do some very basic shit I should be able to:

Yeah all those invisible walls and slightly uneven surfaces that were impossible to overcome just really made it for me

 

[Excommunicator]

I don't find FPP in movies to be more immersive

Completely different. It's the direct control of a first person camera which makes our mind subconsciously connect with it. If it's not controlled by us then there's no illusion to begin with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_transfer_illusion

 

[soulburner]

I will always prefer first person perspective in games. It is more immersive for me, because I can feel like I'm inside the game world more easily. When playing a third person game I cannot stop thinking that it's not "me", it's the player character doing shit. I will never fear for "my" life in a third person game the same way I would in a first person perspective.

Whenever a game allows to change the view I will always select it. I got interested in GTA only after GTAV release got the first person view (well, I liked GTA 1 and 2, played some of Vice City). I'm going to play RDR2 exclusively in first person mode. I played all Bethesda games in FPP too. In third person games there is often a moment when the camera cannot fit behind the character and will move to a view that's pretty much first person. That's when I have to stop playing for a while, because I'm suddenly more immersed for that short moment and ripped out of the immersion the moment later. This happens the most in Divinity 2, it happened a few times in Elex during my recent playthrough.

I am much more immersed in games with a top down or isometric view than third person. Looking at the character(s) from above is easier for my mind to comprehend than watching the world through an out of body experience, following "my" body around, looking at its back. The thing that make me immersed in isometric games the most is the audio - the music in Fallout 1 & 2, the music and ambience in Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dales are the best examples that come to mind. Pillars of Eternity 1 almost nails it too.

So, to sum it up: a 3D game with first person perspective is more immersive to me than a third person perspective game. I understand the limits of FPP (narrow field of view, sometimes problematic melee fighting), but the limits of TPP are more annoying to me (seeing my character all the time, not being able to look at items within the game world because they are obscured by the character, not being able to fully care about survival). I'm currently playing Pillars 1 and I'm enjoying every second if it and I feel more immersed in it than when I was playing Elex a few days ago.

PS - the most annoying kind of third person games are shooters. Each and every shooter with TPP I see I always think to myself "damn, I'd play this shit if it was in first person". Pretty much all of these games have the player character a little bit to the left of the screen, just so they do not obscure everything completely and when the gunfight starts, the view zooms in to pretty much the same field of view an FPP game would have, just instead of the weapon model in the corner of the screen, you see an arm and a part of the head of the character. And when you stop aiming, you get dragged back again.

PS2 - with all the issues I have with third person view, I do enjoy games like The Witcher 3, Elex, the Gothics, etc. It's just... I know I would enjoy them even more if I could change the perspective. I do understand, though, that if a game is designed around TPP it is not always possible to just add an FPP view (and vice versa) with just a few tweaks in the code. I get it that the combat model of the Wither 3, for example, would not work in first person.

 

[anvi]

I don't really care about the view, but you all need to play p99 for many reasons. First person is

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I play TPP better if my character is in another room.

 

[Storyfag]

No, but you do should have an awareness of what's going on immediately behind you, unless otherwise distracted.

That's what hearing to give you that awareness is for, something which is really under utilized in games.

Because it would probably require a very specific speaker setup. It is less bothersome to achieve similar spatial awareness through visuals.