RES Reset – Immersion Breaking

[Cablefast]

Here is a little background for those who have not heard about this topic.
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Story: Criminal NPC ships regularly travel to (spawn at) Resource Extraction Sites (RES). They seek to exploit hard working but poorly armed mining ships. The high number of criminals makes these sites a good place for player bounty hunters. This is an immersive game play element.
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There are three intensities of RES. They are Low, Regular, and High. The gist is that HIRES are more dangerous than regular RES are more dangerous than LORES. In exchange for the danger, HIRES offer better mining. I have read different things as to how these designations are actually implemented.
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I have read that HIRES generate higher ranking criminal NPC.
I have read that HIRES generate fewer authority NPC.
I have read that HIRES generate more criminal NPC at one time.
I have read that HIRES generate tougher criminal ships.
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I have not seen any of these to necessarily hold true. What I have witnessed is that all RES seem to have two modes, let’s call them Fun and Crap. In Fun mode, the RES generates challenging criminal NPCs to fight. There will be Pythons, FDS, and Clippers along with a smattering of smaller ships. In Crap mode, there are only smaller ships. The mode is chosen randomly when a player enters a RES and will not change until the player leaves. Moreover, the rate of Fun to Crap RES is about 1:10 in favor of Crap.
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A player can RESET the mode through two methods. Players can Supercruise out of the RES and back or they can exit to main menu then rejoin. Both of these methods are jarring to immersion.
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As a side note to RES RESET and the associated immersion breaking, I have also witnessed an odd player behavior with regards to ship loadouts. Players who bounty hunt try to avoid weapons that have ammo. Since the odds of getting a good RES are low, having to reload means leaving a good RES.
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My 2 cents: I think RES should operate much differently then they currently do. All ship types should be spawnable as criminal NPCs at a RES. The spawns should be randomized. Higher threat NPCs should be more likely to spawn in a higher intensity RES and vice versa at LORES.

 

[Evil]

Erm dont re-set it then?

 

[Kitiara]

I always laugh when I read someone posting that something is "immersion breaking".

 

[cherbert]

I always laugh when I read someone posting that something is "immersion breaking".

I always laugh when I read someone posting that they laugh at someone posting about "immersion breaking".

What a ridiculous comment.

 

[Monk]

I always laugh when I read someone posting that something is "immersion breaking".

I've promised to kill a baby seal every time someone says immersion. I'll just say, there aren't many seals left in the Midwest.

@OP: This is the most obvious post I've seen in a while. You mean logging out of the game and logging back in breaks immersion. Really? Tell me more!

There is a point to it all though. RES hunting is generally not satisfying. Especially for those of us who don't "reset" the RES (out of principle, in my case). I wish RES were more reltaed to recent CMDR activity (heavy hunting in a RES should reduce the number of big ships) and the attributes of the system. Right now, it really feels like a roll of the dice (probably b/c it is)

 

[Marshall...]

Yeah its a fair point. It would be good if RESs "content" was based on system/security type. ie, high security has lots of feds with a sprinkling of small wanted ships, so it would be safe for player miners to work. Going to a RES in an Anarchy system, should be just that, absolute anarchy, with far fewer minors and larger wings of pirates. The only thing that is similar to the "Anarchy" version, I just mentioned is when you are hostile to a faction in the system RES you are in - they then send wings in specifically to kill you.

 

[IronGremlin]

If someone desperately wants to deliberately make the game into a terrible experience for themselves, let them.

Personally, going to a mining belt to hunt pirates never really felt like it made sense to me, so about the time that I found that activity itself was breaking my immersion, I went and started actually playing the game, which turned out to be really fun.

If you want to have logically consistent gameplay, avoid areas where NPCs constantly spawn like a turkey shoot.

 

[goemon]

from an immersed perspective story goes like that (and works as intended?): hunter comes into the wood to search fo prey (RES). but today the wood is empty of prey ("crap-mode"). so hunter goes to antother wood (suoercruise or jump).... i see no problem there ;-)

 

[daygobah]

Look the game is a work in progress.

Its no way finished yet. Its playable but not polished.

If you have to reset the instance yes it sucks.

Would high res be better if it worked the way its supposed to yes of course.

The devs need to tweak the res site abit. Maybe in the next patch or update they will do so.


In stead of leaving the res site just log off and log back in until you get the right kind of ships you want to fight.

 

[Abomination]

Whatever the reason for OP or anyone else is to 'reset' a RES, the OPs reasoning is actually quite true.
Suppose there are a lot of 'good' ships in a RES site and you get damaged. You go and repair to a nearby station and come back as fast as you can.
Suddenly, the 'state' of the RES gets a poor roll of the dice and there's nothing but sidewinders out there.
Where did all the big ships go?
So yes, it IS immersion breaking, whatever the reason for leaving and re-entering the location.
Same is true for NAV beacons and combat zones.
I can understand it is impossible for the game to keep track of every ship out there, even more because most of it runs client-side.
But with their knowledge of procedural generation, can't they create something allowing RES and other sites to have a predetermined time based state instead of something purely random?
It SHOULD be possible since RES sites, NAV beacons and Conflict Zones have a fixed place which is the same for every player, so this is already determined server-side. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[MrChipper]

I read a lot here about "immersion breaking" stuff and I really want to know how I can become that immersed in this game that i don't actually notice that a) I have children that need stuff, b) the postman has just arrived, c) work around the house needs doing, d) work at work needs doing, and e) most importantly "I'm actually sat in a room outside a small village on the outskirts of a city, in England, on earth controlling a computer generated image on a screen with a lump of inert plastic."

I'm always immersionally-broken. How do I achieve such deep immersion that I notice this sort of stuff?



(oh, and I think a quick exit to menus is therefore quite acceptable )

 

[Abomination]

I read a lot here about "immersion breaking" stuff and I really want to know how I can become that immersed in this game that i don't actually notice that a) I have children that need stuff, b) the postman has just arrived, c) work around the house needs doing, d) work at work needs doing, and e) most importantly "I'm actually sat in a room outside a small village on the outskirts of a city, in England, on earth controlling a computer generated image on a screen with a lump of inert plastic."

I'm always immersionally-broken. How do I achieve such deep immersion that I notice this sort of stuff?



(oh, and I think a quick exit to menus is therefore quite acceptable )

What strange logic is that?
So, in your opinion, movies shouldn't have to be immersive either because kids, postman and housekeeping?

 

[Schmack]

I always laugh when I read someone posting that they laugh at someone posting about "immersion breaking".

What a ridiculous comment.

I laughed at your comment about laughing about his comment about laughing about comments about immersion.

- - - Updated - - -

I read a lot here about "immersion breaking" stuff and I really want to know how I can become that immersed in this game that i don't actually notice that a) I have children that need stuff, b) the postman has just arrived, c) work around the house needs doing, d) work at work needs doing, and e) most importantly "I'm actually sat in a room outside a small village on the outskirts of a city, in England, on earth controlling a computer generated image on a screen with a lump of inert plastic."

I'm always immersionally-broken. How do I achieve such deep immersion that I notice this sort of stuff?



(oh, and I think a quick exit to menus is therefore quite acceptable )

"You're not actually where you think you are. The immersion on reality is a construct of the feeble human mind" -Thargoid

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What strange logic is that?
So, in your opinion, movies shouldn't have to be immersive either because kids, postman and housekeeping?

But in the spirit of the OP, you can pause the movie or start over, does it break immersion? If so, why do it? Does some one else restarting the instance break your immersion? How could it?

Otherwise I agree that more ships would be more better, but what pirate in his right mind would compete with an Anaconda in a sidey?

 

[Darth Ender]

This can be fixed by making instancing not RNG anything upon initial instance creation except the position of available NPC's and the available pool is persistent and responsive. But that's a pretty big departure from the RNG everything and forget it method they're currently rocking all over the place.

 

[MrChipper]

What strange logic is that?
So, in your opinion, movies shouldn't have to be immersive either because kids, postman and housekeeping?

Ah yes. I mentioned movies. Of course therefore that's my opinion about them - thankyou. I'm personally always aware of my surroundings and stuff I have going on and therefore not "immersed" to the point that I can forget all else. Does that make me bad?

In essence though I think "immersion-breaking" forum-cliche is nonsense. Feel free to disagree.

 

[Abomination]

But in the spirit of the OP, you can pause the movie or start over, does it break immersion? If so, why do it? Does some one else restarting the instance break your immersion? How could it?
Otherwise I agree that more ships would be more better, but what pirate in his right mind would compete with an Anaconda in a sidey?

Yes. Pausing a movie breaks immersion.
Why do it? Because it might be necessary.
Is that a reason to give up immersion completely?
Just for the record, abusing this system to get a good RES is not ok by my standards. A calculated mechanism would not only improve immersion, it would also make it impossible (or at least much less possible) to abuse it.

 

[Abomination]

Ah yes. I mentioned movies. Of course therefore that's my opinion about them - thankyou. I'm personally always aware of my surroundings and stuff I have going on and therefore not "immersed" to the point that I can forget all else. Does that make me bad?

In essence though I think "immersion-breaking" forum-cliche is nonsense. Feel free to disagree.

Of course you are aware of your surrounding. Should be bad if you weren't.
But, again, does that mean game designers should simply give up on trying to make it as immersive as possible?
Immersion doesn't mean that you have to forget all else, it just means that you can feel yourself in the situation presented by the game (or movie or whatever).
Noticing abrupts environmental changes due to excessive RNG is not immersive.

 

[Gray Lensman]

I read a lot here about "immersion breaking" stuff and I really want to know how I can become that immersed in this game that i don't actually notice that a) I have children that need stuff, b) the postman has just arrived, c) work around the house needs doing, d) work at work needs doing, and e) most importantly "I'm actually sat in a room outside a small village on the outskirts of a city, in England, on earth controlling a computer generated image on a screen with a lump of inert plastic."

I'm always immersionally-broken. How do I achieve such deep immersion that I notice this sort of stuff?



(oh, and I think a quick exit to menus is therefore quite acceptable )

This qualifies as one of the most astonishingly unperceptive replies to a sensible statement ever seen on this forum in my probably unreliable opinion. You have no accurate comprehension of the term 'immersion' in the context of a simulated reality.

 

[andyraptor]

I always laugh when I read someone posting that something is "immersion breaking".

Ya... in the UK it means your hot water boiler has broken down :S

 

[Geldonyetich]

The mode I play RES in is, "burn 25k+ away from the waypoint and mine in peace," so I guess I would not know much about bounty hunting in RES but I would say the risk:reward ratio might not be working as intended.

What OP basically is asking for is greater instance persistence. E.g. if you supercruise or log out, the area you're in does not actually despawn for 15-30 minutes without activity in order to preserve immersion.

Sure; Works for me! Yeah, it might make grinding a little more protracted, but why condone the activities of cheeseballs who resort to this tactic anyway?

Actually, the reason why is because the instance isn't on the server, it's being simulated by clients on a peer-to-peer network, so technically speaking that instance is GONE when nobody's there. We'd have to rig up an instance saving mechanism to get around it.