How Wynncraft Ruins Immersion

The definition of an RPG according to Wikipedia is "A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game; abbreviated RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of character in a fictional setting."

It's a generally accepted concept that immersion is an important aspect of RPG games. One of the best explanations of immersion in video games was found on Reddit, and it went like this...



Immersion allows players to fully embrace the mechanics and narrative of a game, which is especially important with the case of RPGs where numerous mechanics and a poorly written storyline can leave players confused or just mentally exhausted. The Redditor above continues to explain why immersion is so difficult to maintain within videogames... Here's what he said:



I promise that the last part I cut off wasn't super important. Anyways, as u/DG86 mentions, one of the hardest parts of maintaining immersion is the preconceptions we have from our own world. We expect things to work in a certain way, and when they don't, that can kill the immersion for us.

With that said, one of the things that kills immersion to most in Wynncraft is the usage of barrier blocks. In the earlier days, barrier blocks were basically only used to keep people from getting outside of the map. Nowadays, they're used basically any time the game wants to keep players from going somewhere. While their usage has been tolerable in the past, I feel that their current status threatens immersion and something should be done about this.

If you're not quite sure what I mean, just explore some of the areas in Wynn and see how many barriers you can find. They're used in dungeons, grind spots, the tops of mountains, world edges (this is fair), and all sorts of places you might not even expect. While yes, sometimes you want to keep a player from doing something, there are better ways to do it!

For example, certain grind spots place barriers to prevent players from getting on top of certain structures. There's a variety of solutions for this problem, including:
1. Don't put the hecking (Christian server) structure there
2. It's a grind spot... Have mobs that can attack the player even if they do get in those spots. Ranged abilities, abilities that pull the player off their structure, mobs that are capable of jumping up and reaching the player, whatever you gotta do. I know GMs are limited with what spells and shit they can use but like with the things I've seen being added to Wynn recently, I'm certain you guys can think of something.

In other situations, you can use things like the environment. In Corrupted Infested Pit, barriers are literally strewn all over the dungeon. Here's a crazy thought... Instead of using barriers, using fucking cobwebs. It's LITERALLY a spider dungeon if anything trying to run through cobwebs is going to cuck the player more than barriers making them avoid it even more... Come on, this is basic level design, and it kills the immersion so much less.

Hell, if you really want to add a new "wind" mechanic, for places like mountains. Instead of just putting up huge walls of barriers, strong winds would blow the player back to their position. Hell, in places like Molten heights you could even make the "wind" super hot, and damage them if they try to push too far into the zone.

Overall, my point is that there's plenty of relatively simple ways to prevent the player from going to certain areas. With a little bit of creativity, immersion will be maintained more throughout gameplay as well as thoughtful detail being added throughout the world, making it feel even more alive.

TL;DR - Barriers suck, think of more creative and immersive ways to keep players out of areas

Vote in poll. Thanks okay bye.

 

That would require effort

 

I agree. Some of the best games out there are completely open world, and only limit where the player can go at the edge of the map. Wynncraft should be more like those games.

 

Okay, all classes now have no mobility spells and all the walls that border the edge of the world are at least 5 blocks high to prevent horses from jumping up them.

I certainly don't think any of the mobility spells add to my immersion, so might as well get rid of them.

Jokes aside, barriers may take away from immersion, but they are BY FAR the easiest way of blocking things without having to either warp gameplay to prevent you from having the power to reach where the barriers would be or warp the aesthetics of the area to definitely make sure nobody could go anywhere they aren't supposed to (or both), which would either take time away from Grian to plan more areas or Salted to develop new features, neither of which i really want them to divert their attention from.

 

The barrier blocks that break immersion the most are the ones at the edge of the map. Being able to climb all the way up a mountain only for the last few blocks to be impassable is the worst. Still it's the best way to prevent people from escaping the map. Same with grind spots; just putting a few barriers on camping spots is way safer and easier than giving mobs spells and ranged capabilities.

 

GM : *Removes intrusive barriers*
Forum : "GLITCH IN DERN, FIRST PICS OF THE NEW AREA !"

 

I get what you're saying, and I can't help but agree with the points you make, but I still don't think it's all that big of an issue.

First, just to get it out of the way, while I loved abusing grind spots as archer and mage back before 1.18, I think the change is for the best. People non-stop complain that grinding isn't fun and one of the reasons is because people would just camp out grind spots until 75 and then run CSST till 100. By removing the ability to do either (as effectively) they basically forced players to play the game. That being said, I've seen some barriers in the HB bug report section that were massive flat walls for no reason, so they should definitely tone it down a bit.

I also personally play Wynn and have been playing for so damm long because of the aesthetics, so I would hate it if they had to compromise on builds to make it so players couldn't abuse them. I want the builders to be as free as they want without needing to worry about how abuseable or balanced their builds are. It's just one more thing on top of the pile to think about when the easy way out is using barriers.

Finally, I don't think wind mechanics for the edge of the world are a good idea either, but the mod explained that one perfectly so I won't go into it.

I'm not against your idea, in fact, I would be happy if the reduced the number of invisible walls. What I don't want with a change like that is for it to come at the expense of anything and I don't think that's all that realistic of an expectation to have.

Edit; you're lucky "yes, I guess" is the yes option seeing as this entire reply is probably the biggest "I guess" ever written :P

 

*Cough* ur spell suggestion *Cough*

 

What areas in specific are you most annoyed by?
And I’m guessing (hoping) your spider web suggestion was a joke cause imagine that.

I’d say a lot of the recent barriers are quite okay. Not a lot get in the way from just running around, and if they do I’m curious where in the world you’re running. Grind spots use barriers because free xp without effort = not what we want. We’ve tried to only have barriers on areas that are only accessed using movement spells.

 

I do get what you're saying about Barrier usage. It is pretty jarring to see those things in Infested Pit in the first room which blocks you from waalking off that ramp/cliff. It's rather bizarre placement and makes no sense.

But overall, I think the reason the barriers exist and such are due to the amount of effort that it would actually take to make it possible to have a sort of "immersive" barrier. It requires more than most people think.

Let's take for example the use of barriers on mountains and world borders. From what I've seen, most TP barriers (Ex. when you try to enter ToL when you haven't completed the ToL Quest) rely on region-based presets defined somewhere in a configuration file in the folder the server is stored on. I don't know how hard it is to make those, but if you need at least 2 points, each comprising of an x, y, and z coordinate, a place to TP the player to, and possibly a message. It's a lot of work. It could also be possible for Crunkle to make a completely new type of TP barrier for the usage of the world borders in which it would teleport them back to where they were previous when they entered the barrier, but that may take more work than expected.

Even if Crunkle did make it, looking at what you have to define for just one region is most likely extremely time-consuming just to cover up ALL of the map. You'd have to fly around the world border, creating these regions and making sure they work. You'd also have to make sure to cover any dips and dividends and to make sure that no actual caves or content is blocked off by the regions. With how big Wynncraft's map is, this is going to be extremely time-consuming.

You also have to consider the performance drop it may bring to the game. From my knowledge of Minecraft Development, there are only two known ways to check if a player is in a region:
1. Have a Runnable loop through all of the regions in the game, and check if there are any players within the specified area. You'd have to check the player's location, and check if that location is in between the two preset points.
2. Have an event that checks when a player MOVES, then check if their new position is within a specified area. Keep in mind this event will fire when a player moves due to any causes (TPs, walking, knockback, etc.)

From what I've seen, they use option #1, which makes it even more hard to make that "Tp back to their original location", since with the event you can actually get their from and to position and just TP them back. With option 1, you can't, so if they wanted to do that they'd have to store their location on the previous game frame/tick, then if they're within the boundaries, they teleport them back. But either way, with the amount of regions they'd have to make to make this thing work, it would probably increase the lag of the server. Keep in mind, when checking if a player is in the region, the system most like has to run a check on ALL players online that server, which can range from 1 to 50.

That's not even considering possible glitches in the system. Player's getting stuck in the TP barriers, players bypassing it using their escape spells, etc.

I do "Agree, I guess" on this situation, but with a hard phrase on the "I guess" part, as this would just require a lot of work. It's better to add in Barrier blocks. Plus, if you're explore the world border, it's weird why you're there in the first place when all of the content is within the border. I mean you can try to get out of the map but would that actually be a good idea?

 

Kind of curious...

 

My gripe is the barriers that exist seemingly randomly in some areas of canyon of the lost. I recently found that there is a barrier wall on the side of a mountain next to lake Gylia between Cinfras and Thanos, which was pretty annoying when I tried to teleport past the mountain on my way to the hive. As best I can tell, the barrier serves no gameplay purpose, as this isn't near a world border and I can't recall there being quests anywhere near there.

 

I would like it too if they removed all the barriers, although I could understand them putting some of them off due to the work needed to make a replacement.

I think some of the basic issues such as barriers around grind spots could be easily removed and just left like that, although I can imagine that in some locations there's more than just removing them D:

 

I don't know why this made me laugh so much

 

There is always a line that you must draw between an RPGs need for immersion and its need for strong mechanics. I personally feel that the benefit to immersion that would result from less barriers would far outweigh any difficulty the staff my experience trying to find creative and interesting ways to keep players out of areas. Easier is not always better.

Also I think Wynn really needs to get their head away from the "more features, more features MORE FEATURES" idea... Tons of new things keep getting added without ever going back to revisit existing mechanics. This results in a LOT of shitty mechanics existing and then just piling more stuff on top of it. I understand that you guys all want to create more content for the players, but I feel like Wynncraft could seriously benefit from an update where the existing mechanics are revisited and refined. Right now there's just a bunch of incohesive elements that make up Wynn, and on their own they can be enjoyable but together I find them to be quite a mess...

________________________________

I think you're misunderstanding the intentions of this thread. You make it seem as if I'm saying simply remove barriers so then people can abuse grind spots, escape the map, etc. While this leads me to believe you didn't read the whole thread, I'll pretend like you did.

My general message with this thread is that barriers, while doing their job, break the immersion and should be replaced with methods of keeping players out that are more immersive and detail oriented. These include winds blowing people out of areas, mobs jumping up or using ranged abilities to attack people who are in "camping" spots or even pulling them off...

Tl;dr Don't just remove barriers, replace them with better options.

________________________________

I'll compile a list of areas that bother me.

And I understand that barriers are used in moderation but I feel this still strongly impacts how immersive Wynn is, and would benefit from more creative solutions. It seems that everyone here just keeps saying "if we removed barriers people would cheat". I understand this, I'm not saying to just allow people to exploit the map, I'm saying to make actually intelligent, immersive ways to do it... Which IS possible with basic mechanics...

 

Now that's what I call inconsistency

 

It is a personal opinion of mine that any difficulties of implementing the new, more immersive solutions would still be worth it considering the immersive benefit.

Now, regarding your talk about the mechanics. I don't really think anything here would be very computationally intensive. For checking if a player is in a region on a move, it's literally just a basic algebraic comparison. Wynncraft is already constantly looping through regions for quests (caves that teleport you, etc.). The only difference here is a couple more regions need to be checked, and depending on how the regions are defined, this could be made extremely efficient. If you define individual points, merely loop along those points and find if their distance to said point is less than a certain value (this is what quest teleporters already do basically). If you want to go with the teleport option, zero their velocity (or reverse it) and cancel the movement. Alternatively, for options like wind, literally just set their velocity to push them away from said area.

The mechanics regarding mobs aren't any more computationally intensive than existing mobs, so I see no problems there.

P.s. I'm a developer too so go all out, I'm sure I can keep up ;(

Also, all of the barriers I'm referring to are the ones INSIDE the map. I'm fine with borders at tops of mountains for the most part, the ones that bother me are at grind spots, dungeons, etc. I'm really surprised other people haven't noticed them, they're super annoying.

________________________________

This is because Wynncraft wants people to have to go through canyon of the lost, not over it. This is understandable. Wynn could benefit from an alternative method of keeping people out (the entire idea of this thread is this), but there is still a reason for them being there, even if it shreds immersion.

________________________________

Shhhhh, I gotta make sure COPPA doesn't kill my ad revenue.

 

this is understandable 100%, but there are areas where you dont need to use barriers to prevent free xp grinding, like the little grind spot near cinfras that has 2-3 little mountains that have barriers, the barriers prevent the player from getting up and protecting themselves from the mobs' melee attacks, but you could literally just give the mobs pull spell instead, and not use barriers.
now why are we complaining about barriers here, it's because it makes the game feel more of a game, yes i know this sounds retarded, but by game here i mean it feels more like the player is responding to the developers' makings instead of the player acting on the untouched environment around him, which is the immersion that theeef was talking about.
plus, no matter what, there will be ways for free xp without true effort, like the wall-huggers on cib that literally do jack shit.

 

I'm seeing a general consensus that adding spells or ranged attacks to grind mobs in order to prevent players from camping is a good idea.

Keep in mind that actually trying to add spells to every relevant grind spot almost necessarily entails a large sacrifice on the variety of the game since 90% of the mobs will run around carrying pull. On top of that, not only would genuine grinders face a repeat of Shadow Amadel every time they enter the grind spot, unsuspecting wanderers could be caught off-guard by a surprise pull coming from one of these mobs (imagine the frustration already present due to IBKG/CIBKG).

Ranged attacks are less susceptible to these issues in all fairness, but I tend to find that large numbers of ranged enemies (or at least, enough of them to actually dissuade camping) generally takes the counterplay away from the grind spot. With even just four ranged enemies attacking a player from different angles, it becomes difficult to reliably evade their attacks, which is essentially equivalent to forcing the player to take free damage as they grind.

 

Right, I get that you want that, but all I'm saying that a request like that comes at a cost. You can't just axe all the barrier blocks and expect things to work out. If the builders make something cool and realize after the fact that it's ripe for abuse, I would rather barrier blocks be put up rather than have changes be made to the build.

I understand the concern, but I think you misunderstood my point. If it can be done without needing to change anything at all, great, go for it, but if the removal of barrier blocks requires builds in the world to change so stuff doesn't break or get abused I don't want it to happen. Sometimes it might be the case that the barrier blocks serve no purpose, but if they do I would rather have them then see things change for the sake of balance. Simple as that.