When this game came out, I, as will as the rest of the world, was obsessed with it!! You just got plunked down into this world, and without reading any kind of manual, just started playing, hunting, building. exploring. The deaths were brutally painful, losing all your stuff and being far from home, having to start over, until you changed your strategies. So cool, and so fun. The key to the early success was IMMERSION. You got totally transported into this world and nothing took you out, except a screaming wife, kid, work, or a bio break...and even then.... lol

From there, the updates started. The game save happens often, and on my rig, freezes me up, many times in the middle of battle, and destroys immersion. Oh, I'm playing a game, that is saving and in the middle of a fight.. ok... hum de dum...

Then the blinkers on the mobs. Look. if a boar is running at me, a boar is running at me, I don't need a big exclamation mark. Now this is just like all the other games out there. The blinkers nullify the immersion.

Then the new food system. Im not going to get into that here, except to say, now I have three food numbers constantly blinking at me, and the stamina now blinking at me. Needles to say, Im distracted by all the blinking things which weren't there before. Reduces Immersion greatly

This is their game, and they can do whatever they want. My point is, out of the gate, it was tremendously immersive, and I believe that was a big key to its early success. Now all the saves, and blinking times, and icons, reduce that immersion now, for me, almost to zero. And for that, Im sad.