[2022] The line between fun and immersion

Originally posted by ⛧Cursed Heart Chan💜: I would say almost nothing in this game is for the sake of immersion. And most "unfun" things are the result of trying to force players to play a certain fun P approved way. Immersion also went away because some people went "This is too hard/unfair".

One example of immersion still existing and being really annoying is Eating/drinking. You used to instantly get the full food/water/healing and it was great. Because you never over ate. Now you eat, eat, eat, eat, eat those charred meats and wait, wait, wait to see if it was enough and how much you need to drink.

Peak immersion was probably back in builds where trees falling could kill you/zombies. You needed a cooking pot to make water. No traders, goreblocks, zombies also killed wild animals, buildings existed as is, not as dungeons to run, learn by doing system, wellness, dying to weather, there wasn't music playing when morning/night started, even soil used to matter for farming, etc.

Or you could, yknow, use your eyes and see how much hunger you're missing. Gauge at a glance how much you need to eat.

It's a 1-100 bar, If it's 60%~ full, and you're eating a food that gives 4 hunger, you need to eat 10. Eat an 11th for good measure, and go about your day. No annoying waiting. And overeating within the first 20 additional points isn't particularly wasteful as it ticks down quite slowly and will replenish any lost hunger in the interim; So if you're unsure, eat a little extra and then go do something to burn stamina so your hunger ticks down and can accept the overshoot as you go around doing whatever you're doing.


That said, This post isn't about when 'peak immersion' was; 'Peak immersion' is subjective to the individual It's about the balance between what is Immersive and what is Fun.

The wellness system was reasonably immersive; But it was about as fun as being hit in the face with a pillow full of bricks. Died? Grats on lose 10 max health which makes it even easier to die next time. Die enough and suddenly you're in the range of basically getting 2 shot by any given enemy with your 50 maximum HP; You can no longer safely go out and scrounge up new food to get your wellness up, and you're effectively stuck in a death loop- Game over. Not fun. Several of my friends quit playing 7DTD during the period of the game where wellness was part of the game for this exact reason.

Cooking pot to make water was immersive; But again, wasn't particularly fun to many, and a constant complaint was that they could just boil water in the jar itself.. Which you can do now, and is also immersive in it's own right.

As for the soil mattering to farming....it still matters. In fact, The way we farm now is much truer to how many backyard farmers do things. You can't just till random soil anywhere and expect something to grow; And in fact, in the good old days you're thinking of, you still couldn't do that- You had to make fertilizer to get a larger return from farming than what you put into it. That fertilization process is still in game though, it's just built into the recipe of the farm plot instead of requiring the player to take a second step- But that mixing of soil and fertilizer is, again, much truer to how things are done by backyard farmers these days.


It would also be immersive and realistic to be limited to carrying at most one blocks worth of building material at a time. That is a cubic meter of material you're building with. Even if you're generous and say it's 90% hollow, that is still 75+ kg (165lbs) of material for a wood block.

Cobblestone? Yeah, That will be in the ballpark of 2 metric tons per cubic meter counting the binding agent, even taking 95% off the top is still 100kg (220lbs)

It would be immersive. It would be realistic. But it would be Incredibly unfun to have to take a dozen trips back and forth per block you want to build. So unfun that for many it would literally rip them out of the immersion with pure unadulterated boring tedium.