It's the opposite. I'd like games to become less like movies.

Journey is one of the few games that has moved me to tears. The interactivity of the game was key to that.

If immersion is what you seek. you could just watch a movie. Less time consuming than video games, immersion is quicker, and sometimes cheaper.

Immersion alone can be achieved by cutscenes, cinema tics, great voice acting and good story-telling. The real question that you have to ask yourself, is , wether the "gameplay", the control you have over your character, amplifies your "immersion" to a degree not found in the movies, or is it just another aspect of gaming you like as well.

Agreed, I'd much rather deathmatch in Doom, ROTT or if it were possible Wofl3D than newer games as it's a lot more mindless. I don't really have to aim up or down, I can just blast away without thought.

But, I do think that it really depends, I like the progression of Diablo, but ultimately, Blizzard doesn't put enough effort into avoiding the grinding. D2 had I think 6 quests per act, IIRC, which inevitably leads to a fair amount of grinding before you get to the point where you're ready to finish the act and move on. I never finished that last act of D2 because it got too grindy for me to stand.

From the looks of it, TL2 seems to be significantly less grindy that Diablo, and hopefully will be a better play than TL was.
Cut scenes, cinematics? I guess it just goes to show that people can and do vary because I find those things to kill the immersion factor quickly than just about that. But, then again, I have a very powerful imagination and I remember even before I had access to sound just about jumping out of my seat whenever I'd see an enemy in an unexpected place in Wolf 3D, or the Catacombs Abyss.

But, with sound and music, those same games are incredibly immersive.

I would say any good game needs to immerse and engage the player to be really enjoyable regardless of its other core attributes, game mechanics/systems, etc. I do love RPGs both single and multiplayer, shooters for excitement, and simple games to unwind with mostly.

Progression, loot and character advancement in general is a fun thing I think. I enjoy starting off a weakling and rising to great power in some virtual world, preferably with a good story to be part of while I am at it.

The feeling of excitement and the fast paced action at times in shooters is a fun experience for me also. I also like the rare scary ones or other games that tend to be scary as well. That really draws me in.

Other times, just getting lost in thought or no thoughts at all while playing something as simple as solitaire or Mahjong is a nice experience. I find it very relaxing sometimes before bed for example or just taking a break during the day at some point.

In every case though, the game experience needs to immerse me somehow or I would fast lose interest and find something else to play that does. The power to immerse the player in another world simple or complex is the hallmark of well crafted games.

You can become completely immersed in a game that have no narrative elements at all. Consider for example Tetris, though when speaking of games people sometimes call immersion "being in the zone" or something like this.

Immersion is not the same as, or require, a narrative.

If you had asked me a few months ago, I would probably have said challenge, but I've come to the conclusion that it is not. It is "engagement". I need to feel engaged while playing the game. This can be accomplished in many different ways: Through a great & compelling story, through a fare challenge or just through enough "fun" stuff. Loot drop and frantic gameplay can work towards making me feel engaged, but a game can't live on that alone.

If you take for example "Heavy Rain", Immersion is exactly what they're trying to achieve.
This is why they played on cutscenes, cinematics and those fast reaction scenes.
They compensated the lack of control during these scenes, with the several path the game took depending on the player's choice/s.

Cinematics have also always been final fantasy's franchise strong point. The series' creator said that he wanted to "Tell a story", but If you look at final fantasy XIII, the lack of gameplay freedom led to a disastrous result. This has led me to believe that Immersion is achieved by an equilibrium between Great story telling (Usually via cinema tics, cutscenes, and dialogues between characters, and Freedom of Gameplay)

Because, the greater the story, the more appealing the world you're in.
The greater the gameplay, the more connection you feel with it.

Combine these two, and you'll never want to quit said world again.

Don't forget that cinematic and storytelling can actually disrupt immersion. You can be fully immersed in a game-world, and then suddenly (because you hit a trigger) you loose control over your avatar, emphasising it is not really you and pulling you back in the real world. Narrative can do the same by making you do choices you as a person would never do, but is required to drive forward it forward.

The key point for immersion is consistency, fluidity in mechanics and believability. For this, lore is more important then narrative.

Uh, that's the OPPOSITE of that I want. I want to feel like I am inside that world, not watching it.

As if your actions carry weight and actually appear to have an impact on the world in someway?

That helps, but I more mean like... I am in this hallway, I have 12 bullets left, I hear guys creeping in, what do I do? Like the real world is totally out of my mind at that point, I AM whoever I am in the game.

For this reason I prefer first-person, 3D usually, strong narratives but more in a Half Life 2 way than a Dragon Age way.

Basically monster hunter. No special abilities or magic powers except for your armour and weap. Its just dodge, hit and repeat, but that feeling you get when you down the beast is great

edit; I guess what I desire is a sense of accomplishment?.

A story that's fun to follow and no other players to fsck with me while I'm playing. If I want to deal with other people, I'll go to the park.

Spiderweb Software's graphical approach is just fine if you've got a story to go with the game, and a gameplay mechanic that doesn't make me stroke out with rage. Basically, any successful game made in the 90s or early 00s, before companies decided that always-on was acceptable, and shiny trumped content.

That said, I suspect that a lot of us old and cranky types would be much happier with games if the companies would re-release their product after a year or so, once sales had died down, in a DRM-free, single-player mode. Heroes of Might and Magic 6 was probably the most fun Heroes game since 3, but on release the single player offline mode was a little crippled. Diablo 3, for all that it's clicky and repetitive, is apparently full of lore and since it's a blizzard game will have amazing cutscenes and great music, so why not be able to play through the single player campaign? It might be fun. Just a guess, though.

My desire is that game that makes me forget I'm playing a game. For a FP game of whatever type, be it shooter or RPG, it shouldn't remind me that I'm controlling the guy onscreen, but instead should make me the guy onscreen. I don't want the controls to be so complex that I need to refer back to a keycard to remember how to do this or that.

If I'm crafting something, it should be a brain-dead simple procedure as far as game mechanics go, as if I've been doing this all my life. That doesn't mean that it couldn't include several steps, but those steps should make sense and I shouldn't have to pour through the manual or a wiki to figure it out.

If I'm playing a trader or dealing with the trading element within a game, I want it to feel as if the trade knowledge is intuitive to me. For instance, in my local town I simply know where to go to get this or that, and who has the best stuff at the best price. In games I never seem to make that connection, where it sticks in my mind that Elfin arrows are best found here in Aerdril but if I want quality steel to fab up armor repairs then I'm better off getting my stuff from Glendary. Something about game trading doesn't allow it to make that intuitive connection with me, so I'd like a game to have an "inner dialog" from the character, as if my memory is kicking in. Something like: as I saunter into Aerdril, my character thinks to himself, "Hmm, a bit low on arrows and I could use a new string. I should probably pick some up while I'm here." That, instead of kicking myself in the ass later on after my worn string breaks in combat not twenty minutes after leaving town. IRL, I'd remember this life-or-death stuff. In games, I never get immersed enough to make those connections and the games don't usually remind me as my own memory would.

Similarly, why don't future sims have this stuff as a mechanic? Today, I can get GPS-based reminders on my phone but 250 years from now, when my lot in life is plying the spaceways as a trader, my ship doesn't have software to tell me the best in-system trades automatically, nor suggest good places to sell my goods? I can have video communication over a kajillion miles but can't get simple price updates without docking at the station? C'mon.

So yeah, I think immersion is important, too, but for me it's the little things. Not necessarily that the graphics look real, but that the game helps me remember the little stuff. Got four side-quests going at once and during my travels I happen to swing through one of the towns where one of the quests would progress, but I don't get the reminder of, "Hmm, this reminds me - Glimnutz wanted me to check on his old uncle for him. Since I'm passing through..." And then when I get back to the town where Glimnutz lives, "Oh yeah, I gotta let Glim know that his uncle is doing better after I helped him find those herbs." IRL, I'd remember that stuff, so games should think about a mechanic that mimics that train of thought. Let's face it, the mundane shit of actual life sticks with us more than the epic stuff of virtual life, so give us a hand remembering this stuff, but in a manner that feels natural. You know, an automated location-based to-do-list reminder system of things that ought to be intuitive if I were actually that character.

Maybe that's too specific for the thread but it goes into my desire to have games feel more natural, not that I'm playing some other role, but that I was lifted from my desk, sucked into the computer, and AM that role.

Sounds like you should be playing the X-Universe series.
Not that I've managed to stick with an X game yet - keep trying but always get distracted.