Ah thank you.

Very humorous.

I find myself contradicting myself. But not everything is set in stone...I mean paper.......I mean....digital text.

I like immersion to an extent and I like to roleplay.

Add a side square - Contradictioners. lol

Like I said, if you're undecided, chances are you're a wholist. Either of the aspects not being shown enough attention would spoil the game for you.

Also I think you could add this to Story people: Story people would say no to good gameplay if it contradicted to the lore or took away from the story in anyway.

- I felt it was missing a bit in the description.

This will definately ruffle some feathers, knowing obviously that much of this is very true. Being grouped with game reviewers(people I despise, well ok just bad ones anyways) does make me cringe but is true.

What if you just want to take it for what it is? Eh..still a wholist I guess ah well,thanks for not making me use media fire at least.

Point taken. I'll upload a new version sometime soon.

Ha ha, I'm a story-casual-wholist, I think. I'm not big on immersion all the time, but I don't always treat my character as completely separate. My first runthrough on a game will usually be under my own moral compass, with later runs being more character-specific. I am big though on feeling like I am a part of the story, that my PC is properly in it and isn't being penalized for being custom, rather than a pre-set person. If that makes sense. I'm a big svcker for custom character stuff. ^.^()

@ OP:
From a personal view,the info about different gamers is wrong in my view.
It's typical "stereo type" [censored]!
Gamers can be any of those things at any time,depending on mood etc.
And because i roleplay myself in a world thats different to our's,that makes me a nemesis to roleplayers.....No it doesn't!
There are people who'll do all of those things at the same time.
I appreciate your effort for posting it,and it was interesting to read,but that does not mean i agree with it.
As i've said it's "stereo typing"

I want the game to challenge me and I hate hand holding.

I want to role play and the character's capabilities should be a strong factor in my ability to traverse the landscape to high danger areas, or to be able to accomplish harder tasks and quests.

I want immersion and no badly implemented game mechanism should reduce the immersion, and by that immersion, I do not mean graphic immersion, as intellectual immersion is enough for me, so it has only to keep my whole attention attached to it, as I would play text based RPGs if they had great game-play.

And most important of all is the game-play, and it depends on a lot of small and large details in the whole game aspects.

Were do I stand in your chart? :unsure:

Im either immersionist or storyplayer


as I think thew charracter as my self and I really love the story of a game.....tho I do like the smaal stuff too, but MQ it is

so I am an immensive story player so thats: storymersionist :hubbahubba:

Well with any comparison chart it can't represent every possible outcome. Just a nice basic guideline where the community sits. Its based on group not whole individual people, just an estimant. I'd say in the whole of this categorizing and generalization chart you would be in Wholist. Also we'd have to add a few more columns and rows to accomodate your take on graphics, PC, console, etc.

@ Eps

This post is a little more serious than my previous one(but a lot more convoluted). I liked your chart(comical and true in some ways) although it obviously needs many more sub categories to really accurately define the population around here. One thing I don't understand though, is how you depict immersive players to be so anti-roleplaying. I crave immersion in my games, but I still maintain that my character would have different qualities than myself and would make different choices than I would and therefore I view it as a role that I'm trying to strictly play while still immersing myself in the gameworld. I hate dice-roll mechanics, however, because I'm also a 'competitive' gamer who believes that player skill is extremely important in any game and should work in unison with your avatar's 'skillset and attributes' for maximum effectiveness and creativity, and yet adversely I don't play any game for meaningless achievments, as you described in your definition...I play for fun, for challenge, for immersion, for escapism, for the experience and the journey.

Finally I enjoy realism and want to see the defining numbers and statistics that I choose to increase and which, in turn, form the very essence of my character, translated into a variety of precise and tangible actions on-screen, which I skillfully, strategically and sensibly initiate as a competitive gamer through the control of my roleplayed avatar. These actions and choices I make should have consequences, that create not only strengths, but weaknesses in my character, and the choices I make should not only intertwine with the creative storyline that is so rich in elder scrolls lore that I love, but should also help to create the story in a very unique way as the two of us...both me and the distinct avatar which I control, maneuver our way immersively through the beautifully rich and realistic environments that the gameworld provides.

Where do I fit in your chart? :unsure: :biggrin:

I fit as neatly into one of your categories as the skills in the previous leveling system fit under a single attribute.

I'm part Immersionist - I don't hate dice rolls but in a real time game i don't think they should be the main deciding factor in combat. All passive activities though such as alchemy and lock picking should be based solely on character skill. Not a fan of mini games, just give me a skill check button ala Oblivion lock picking.

I'm part competitive RPG gamer - I am a huge advocate of balance in any game but not when it comes to different play styles having the same advantages/disadvantages but when it comes to anything that is overpowering.

I'm also and for the most part a wholist - I started playing TES with Morrowind(which changed my gaming life forever) and I found Oblivion to be an equally enjoyable and engaging game. In fact MW, OB and FO3 are all great games taken as a whole. I loved them all for different reasons and I love Bethesda for creating them.


Maybe you should add a wildcard category:

The Bethesda Really Devoted Fan - These people would often be willing to pay more than the current market game price for a Bethesda open world game that they know nothing about. They are quick to jump to Bethesda's defense when being critiqued and often lavish the company with praise bordering on total ass kissing. Most of them believe Bethesda to be the only worthy game developer in the industry and rarely play anything else. A large portion of these individuals are modders and mod users and therefor are PCs.

Yeah, that's me, I'm a BRDF.

According to this I am immersionist and roleplayer (laid out as a contradiction?), with a tad of hyper-realist. I am a "competitive gamer" in that I play Arma2 which *has* PvP, well, except I never play PvP, only Coop games (and never for the score, but for the cooperative effort) - also with a great amount of immersion and some hyper-realism. I've never played an MMO, so I guess I'm out of that category.

I'm not sure why immersionists and roleplayers are split like this. I'm all for immersion, that I can believe the world. However, an on screen HUD won't ruin it for me. Non reactive AI when I silently kill the guy next to him, however, will. As I come from dice based role playing, the dice roll is also important to me as it *defines* role playing - my own skills doesn't matter much for what the character will do, it's my characters stats and skills that determines successrates, not so much how well I aim my battleaxe (which is seriously flawed anyway since you can change direction mid-chop).

Immersionist/Roleplayers? In the "magnetism thread" I suggested a slider, on one end you would get full immersion with no aid from the system, at the other end you would get full magnetism to help you but suffer from dice rolls (if you hit or not in the first place). I don't think I got any responses, so apparently it's a disgusting idea.

As for hyper-realism, I don't think basic needs (food, water, sleep, cold which was radiation in FONV) are hyper realism at all, but a basic gameplay element in an immersive game. Play FONV in hardcoe, it's not hard, intrusive, or repetitive at all - just natural. Hyper realism for me is when arrows can't do any damage to armor at all. Hyper realism is when sleeping is done without quick speed. I'm all for realism, but it has to be playable realism. If you loose all realism, you loose the believability and immersion associated with it. And gameplay suffers and we have *yet another* casual game out on the market.

As a gamer, and a fairly old one at that, I'm saying "why does ALL games have to be casual"? FONV improved it a little actually with its hardcoe mode. If I was a developer/businessman however, I'm not so sure I would say the same thing... Just saying...

To get a sense of how roleplaying is seen,especially nowadays,check the GI website.
Find "The road to skyrim" interview with todd howard,video 3.
It sorta tells you his view on what roleplaying means,and how it's creeping into other game types.
Not sure if i can link it,so just look for it

"...I don't think I got any responses, so apparently it's a disgusting idea." :lmao: You sound absolutely miffed by it. Here you go :cookie:

I actually really like the idea. It would go a long way to making a wide range of players really happy.

I'm not sure how it could effectively be applied across a slider though. Seems to me it would have to be all the way on, all the way off , or right in the middle.

So if I want to write my own story, then I am not a role-player. That explains a lot actually. I am an immersionist firstly which I knew, I didn't know I was arch-nemesis of role players.

Let's see.

God-moders
I admit that things that I can't do in real-life attracts me in games, or movies(sci-fi, fantasy). If it fits in the game world, then it is fine by me. I think this is an extension of immersionism.

Casual gamers
Play to have fun - checked. It all comes in one package, to have fun.
stay away from hardcoe games - checked. 1.Artificial difficulties breaks immersion, 2.Artificial is not realistic
cheats- breaks immersion. A big NO.
I have strong opinions... that I can change anytime because I am an open-minded person.

Roleplayers-Immersionists-Hyper-realists
OK. I don't role play as a job. I need to be immersed to play my role which I am self assigned. In the Elder Scrolls world, my character changes by the events and environments he/she been to. I can start as myself and be changed through the course of gameplay or start as something else and turn to myself or any other character evolution which I can't predict now. I am schizophrenic enough to pull this off. I thought this was called role-playing. If one needs to assigned a role, all those CoD games are perfect role-playing games, you role-play a soldier by heart.

The world needs consistency, so it must be as real as possible. The more consistency means more immersion. So I can role play better so I can have fun. I don't mind if some aspects use dice rolls, as random numbers are needed for simulations. I want a more defined simulation though so pure dice roll games don't interest me. If some realism element designed badly, it can hurt immersion instead too. I am after a balance that is also fun.

Story
I like a good and original story. It is very hard to find these days. So this is not high up in my list. Also, I hate if my precious Elder Scrolls experience sacrificed for a more linear story-telling. I only need the game to give the settings, characters and situations, I can write my own story. For other cinematic games, it is better they have good stories and good gameplay giving player interactivity and freedom of some kinds.

I want real-time consequences not logic gates. I should be able to derail from anything and everything, anytime I want. I should be able to change my mind have the ability to go back in half way and be able to prevent things and sometimes live with them on my own terms. I shouldn't be tricked into choices that I can't see past by a smart-ass writer. A writer punishing me and throwing some things to balance it in his/her own mind. Or a story which force the writer's life views on me which is so transparent it becomes annoying. I like the open-text method in Elder Scrolls which fits this interactive media perfectly. Main quest is a hidden feature and it is optional.

Competitive RPG players
I have no comment. Never played MMOs. Also this is a single-player game.

Competitive gamers
I get angry because of artificial difficulties, I often don't quit. It isn't good for my health. Think "angry german kid". But that is for single player games. For MP, I like deathmatch mod a lot, can play for hours. Battlefield, CS, Quake 3... I like Co-op a lot. I like single player games most though. ES is single player, and you don't play it to beat it but to live it.

I am a wholist, ain't I? Still, I think because I had to combine immersionists, role-players, hyper-realists in one title, I think I deserve my own group.

Role playing game is very shallow term if it means pre-assigned roles. All games are role-playing games then and Elder Scrolls is pretty much the only game which is not RPG since your role is not assigned at all. There is a prophecy in the game world, which we kind of jump on the bandwagon on our own terms not because game dictates. You may decide that you're not the hero in the prophecies without dooming the game(but not the world). Off course, Oblivion really forced this by undroppable objects, essential NPCs and such and apparently with dragon shouts, it will be forced to us in Skyrim this time. I want to be wrong in this since there are others who can use dragon shouts too, I heard. I still hope our role is still open to interpretation.

I believe you're misunderstanding the properties of a causal gamer, the properties of a casual gamer/hardcoe gamer has to do with the amount of time they spend on gaming, not necessarily what games they play. It's basically a measure of passion. You also put roleplay as being opposed to immersion, which isn't necessarily true, given for example, that Choice & Consequences are a form of immersion.



I think this is a confusion too, I'll try to explain why.

Immersion is quite important to feel like the gameworld is believable, to feel like you're there, but in the gameworld (stay with me here) you aren't RL you, you are a different you, had you been containing different properties, and characteristics. You can parrallel it to an actor and there role, two actors can play the same role, but the way the role is expressed is different based on the actor, even though the actors are playing the same role with the same characteristics.

This, exactly this is my problem with the chart.

So OP... Immersion and Role-play rule each other out do they now. Couldn't be more wrong.

I got up to the point where you said something along the lines of: wholists make devs sweat, reviewers are wholists. Reviews are [censored], reviewers have an expectation to give certain games good reviews. Is a company advertising on your website/magazine with boatload of marketing money? Then you'd better give them a decent score or maybe next time they'll "forget" to advertise with you, or "forget" to send you a copy of the game in advance to review. This is in addition to the fact that every reviewer has his or her own bias, which you can only tell by reading several of their other reviews about games which you've already formed your opinions about.

By your definitions, there's so much overlap that's I'd fall a little into every single category. I'm a godmoder because I think mark and recall is a good idea, I'm an immersionist because I think games must do without some features (or you get feature leak; DNF), I'm a hyper-realist because I think that basic needs and survival can be interesting, I'm a casual gamer because I want to have fun and have no scruples about cheating if it makes the game more fun, I'm a wholist because I'm everything else, I'm a godmoder because I support y-axis exploration via levitation and I support Mark and Recall as spells, I'm a competitive RPG game because I want the game to be well-balanced and fun to play (somewhat challenging) regardless of how I choose to play it, I'm a story player because I love a good story (I just don't expect it from Bethesda), I'm a competitive gamer because I tend to play newer games on the hardest difficulty setting, I'm a roleplayer because I like building my character and being given many choices with many consequences (I don't expect ARPGs like Skyrim to have character skill supersede player skill, though).

tl;dr: Read my post, I read your "text as an image" thingymajig.

Rather amusing.

I've always considered myself a roleplayer, but I see I'm more of an immersionist combined with a story-player, and spiced with a whif of hyper-realism. Rather, I don't want over the top stuff that breaks my immersion.

Either way, I am not certain I agree, but a funny read none the less.

From everything Todd has said he seems like an immersionist to me. He wants to get numbers and non-viscerally received elements out of the way of experiencing the game world.




Try explaining all of THAT to authors of threads like "So where's the roleplaying aspect of Skyrim?" which turned ugly with debate over what an RPG should be (read them up if you haven't). It wasn't my idea of what they interpret as a "true" RPG. Their concept of "immersion" is very different from the one of the people I labeled immersionists.
I was quite surprised about why they are so upset myself, until I got a grasp of their understanding of what they expect (and yeah, it takes a bit of time to get used to it). Sometimes life is difficult to understand without throwing away what you take for granted :shrug:
If anything my attempt demonstrates how difficult it is to "please everyone" in a game.

I think the terminology may be confused. On the one hand, there's a distinction between players who want to play a character they've conceived in their head versus players who really just want to play as themselves-in-Skyrim. On the other, he's lapping this in with the distinction between players who want to define their character (or better represent themselves) through statistics, versus players who want to define their character (or better represent themselves) through personality and actions, i.e., the tabletop "rollplayer versus roleplayer" distinction.

And "role playing game" is a very shallow term. It's based on pedigree, not any kind of actual game mechanics.

Uploaded an updated version http://piczasso.com/i/01dff.jpg. Changes are based on feedback. The main ones are the change of the term Roleplayer to Purist Roleplayer to better distinct who I have in mind, the definition of Story Player and a little bit of extra to give a clearer understanding of what I mean by Wholists. Also replaced the term "hardcoe games" with "Nintendo-hard games" in Casual gamers for sake of clarity.

Is this a serious thread?

Holy [censored]...