The icebreaking is immersion breaking for me

[Nei]

I just started a game, haven't played much, but the way the icebreaking is animated breaks my immersion of the world. The icebreakers keep appearing and disappearing and it just reminds me that it's a game and makes it harder to get immersed.

On the first scenario it also feels odd to me that there are multiple (vanishing and teleporting) icebreakers, but it doesn't make much sense to me since we're there on a train and they aren't parked anywhere or anything. Another thing that bothered me was the train carriages just disappearing when I placed a district there. Or the fact that the ice breaker wheel isn't even spinning and there are no people walking between my disconnected districts on the first map.

I know that this may be a pretty minor detail, but things like this make it harder to get immersed as the world doesn't feel real and it just reminds you that you're in a game, which is a shame because the game is really pretty, I love the environment and how smooth and flowy the camera is. I know this is probably not a priority now, but it would still be nice if this was improved on down the line. Immersion is in the details that make a game come to life.

[Kirioz]

Originally posted by Neimit:

I just started a game, haven't played much

stop reading

[Nei]

Originally posted by Kirioz:

Originally posted by Neimit:

I just started a game, haven't played much

stop reading

You stopped reading too soon as this is not about gameplay

[Grand Poobah of Bees]

Y'alls immersion is so fragile I'm surprised you don't immediately whine that the game makes you click buttons.

[Goodfella]

Couldn't agree more, this and many other bizarre design choices in the game are really damaging my experience. It's just so far detached from the first game I can't quite comprehend how this got the green light.

[Nei]

Originally posted by Goodfella:

Couldn't agree more, this and many other bizarre design choices in the game are really damaging my experience. It's just so far detached from the first game I can't quite comprehend how this got the green light.

I don't mind it being different, I like the direction they took, to continue the story instead of making a sort of remake/remaster of the first, that's applaudable.

But yeah, this is something that breaks my immersion, I love watching things happen in games, people doing stuff. In fact one of my favorite things to do in city-builders (or games where you build public transport) is watching people transfer between different routes in transport hubs, it's so satisfying, makes all the building of it worth it. Immersion is just in the little things, watching people go about day, watching buildings being constructed, in general, just watching things happen in a game. It's these details that make it feel real, that make it feel alive. that make you feel invested and immersed in the world in front of you, and this game lacks that.

[Goodfella]

Originally posted by Neimit:

Originally posted by Goodfella:

Couldn't agree more, this and many other bizarre design choices in the game are really damaging my experience. It's just so far detached from the first game I can't quite comprehend how this got the green light.

I don't mind it being different, I like the direction they took, to continue the story instead of making a sort of remake/remaster of the first, that's applaudable.

But yeah, you are right, this is something that breaks my immersion, I love watching things happen in games, people doing stuff. In fact one of my favorite things to do in city-builders (or games where you build public transport) is watching people transfer between different routes in transport hubs, it's so satisfying, makes all the building of it worth it. Immersion is just in the little things, watching people go about day, watching buildings being constructed, in general, just watching things happen in a game. It's these details that make it feel real, that make you feel invested and immersed in the world in front of you, and this game lacks that.

Exactly, in the first game it was so captivating watching all the people do their thing, huddled around the central core for warmth, trudging through the deep snow to gather materials, the placing of individual buildings, and so on, you felt an attachment, a sense of immersion and you really wanted to save these people.

In Frostpunk 2 it's just like a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet.

[Net]

While I didn't care much for the animations my issue with the game is that it's soulless to me for some reason. I just don't care compared to the first game.

[Goodfella]

Originally posted by Net:

While I didn't care much for the animations my issue with the game is that it's soulless to me for some reason. I just don't care compared to the first game.

Same, they seem to have ripped out everything that made the first game so unique and turned it into a generic, empty God sim.

[Nei]

Originally posted by Goodfella:

Originally posted by Neimit:

I don't mind it being different, I like the direction they took, to continue the story instead of making a sort of remake/remaster of the first, that's applaudable.

But yeah, you are right, this is something that breaks my immersion, I love watching things happen in games, people doing stuff. In fact one of my favorite things to do in city-builders (or games where you build public transport) is watching people transfer between different routes in transport hubs, it's so satisfying, makes all the building of it worth it. Immersion is just in the little things, watching people go about day, watching buildings being constructed, in general, just watching things happen in a game. It's these details that make it feel real, that make you feel invested and immersed in the world in front of you, and this game lacks that.

Exactly, in the first game it was so captivating watching all the people do their thing, huddled around the central core for warmth, trudging through the deep snow to gather materials, the placing of individual buildings, and so on, you felt an attachment, a sense of immersion and you really wanted to save these people.

In Frostpunk 2 it's just like a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet.

Yeah, on one hand it makes sense, the city grew, you can't keep track of individual people anymore, the cities priorities changed, there's politics and districts and such. But even if you don't place individual buildings and look after individuals, in my opinion that doesn't mean you have to neglect immersion. You can still have people going around, walking, performing tasks, building things, ice breaking. Maybe they are small and not as important, but that doesn't mean they should not be there and that things should just teleport around. You should still be able to see these things happen.

[Jay30mcr]

Anyone who played FP1 for the immersion and the soul is going to be disappointed here because for some reason 8Bit Studo did away with all that and leaned heavily into the most boring aspect of it which was Politics.

When you can only see your citizens as little black specs and even when zoomed in it takes away any of the emotion you were getting when you were sending them to their deaths (or not) each day as they pushed though the snow to reach the precious resources.

All that is gone and now you see pretty colours and flashing lights and its no longer even a concern if you lose a bunch at once because you have thousands.

[Goodfella]

Originally posted by Jay30mcr:

Anyone who played FP1 for the immerion and the soul is going to be disappointed here because for some reason 8Bit Studo did away with all that and leaned heavily into the most boring aspect of it which was Politics.

When you can only see your citizens as little black specs and even when zoomed in it takes away any of the emotion you were getting when you were sending them to their deaths (or not) each day as they pushed though the snow to reach the precious resources.

All that is gone and now you see pretty colours and flashing lights and its no longer even a concern if you lose a bunch at once because you have thousands.

Yep, your people are now literally just numbers in a boring (and corrupt) political struggle. When I see a pop up with "132 people died" I just shrug and carry on watching the pretty colours.

Such a disappointment.

[Nei]

Originally posted by Jay30mcr:

Anyone who played FP1 for the immerion and the soul is going to be disappointed here because for some reason 8Bit Studo did away with all that and leaned heavily into the most boring aspect of it which was Politics.

When you can only see your citizens as little black specs and even when zoomed in it takes away any of the emotion you were getting when you were sending them to their deaths (or not) each day as they pushed though the snow to reach the precious resources.

All that is gone and now you see pretty colours and flashing lights and its no longer even a concern if you lose a bunch at once because you have thousands.

I still feel like this could be fixed, they just need to add immersive animations, fix the weird teleporting animations, don't make things just magically appear and disappear and let us zoom in a little more to look around, I feel even just this would help massively.

[Dr Deep]

I think the point here is that in the first one everything was animated, everyone was animated. everything had it's place. Akin to Manor Lord. Yeah the icebreaking bots vanishing etc did throw me off.

to be honest the ice breaking itself also throws me off, maybe I'm blind but i just cant see a difference between icebroken and non icebroken tiles...

The first game made everything so visible, lots of contrast between melted snow and snow. I could get into the icebreaking thing a little more if you could really see the difference.

maybe i'm missing something

[Nei]

Originally posted by Dr Deep:

I think the point here is that in the first one everything was animated, everyone was animated. everything had it's place. Akin to Manor Lord. Yeah the icebreaking bots vanishing etc did throw me off.

to be honest the ice breaking itself also throws me off, maybe I'm blind but i just cant see a difference between icebroken and non icebroken tiles...

The first game made everything so visible, lots of contrast between melted snow and snow. I could get into the icebreaking thing a little more if you could really see the difference.

maybe i'm missing something

I mean there is a bit of broken ice laying around the edges, though it looks like just a flat texture. This threw me off too, there isn't much of a noticeable difference, it's very minor. If the texture wasn't flat and maybe you could see some sort of dug up hole. Since I assume the purpose of this is to get rid of the thick snow and ice layers so they can build on it, but we don't actually see it being... well broken/gone. It would make sense for it to be white, since it keeps snowing in frostpunk, but we should be able to see the depth of the icebreaking at least a little bit.

[Strategic Sage]

Originally posted by Neimit:

I still feel like this could be fixed, they just need to add immersive animations, fix the weird teleporting animations, don't make things just magically appear and disappear and let us zoom in a little more to look around, I feel even just this would help massively.

Not possible IMO. You can't animate people meaningfully at the scale FP2 is at. Choosing this scale is choosing impersonalization.