If you didn't think that establishing the existence of objective standards was important, why were you talking about it? Anyway, I'll let In Exile handle the substance of the issue.
But by saying "loved one" there you're assuming what you're atttempting to prove. Since the person in question has a "loved one" he's by definition already using a system of values that includes "loved ones,." This has no relevance to the current topic since the question is how various gameplay experiences are valued.
Sooo. Right. My statement was: "I never said 'whether objective standards are possible' was the important question. I said, 'how the devs are expecting the player to spend their time' is the most important question." This means that my main concern is how the content is constructed, not about "establishing" objective standards. It does not mean that I don't think objective standards exist, or even that I won't take time arguing some point along that line, but that it's not, you know, what I'm on about, and nor is it the thrust of the thread, is it? If we hash through that one, will it answer anything meaningful? Uncertain. It came up in relation to my main concern, however, so... I responded. But, yes, chasing that argument can become a tangential distraction given the topic of this thread (though not necessarily). As you eschew it, so perhaps will I. And anyway you'll let In Exile do your speaking for you on the subject...
This is obviously a joke. The word is evidently "rigour" (or if you prefer the American spelling, "rigor"). You can even see the typo in the next sentence - "rigeur", that swaps the "q" for the "g".
Now we have a definition: "jars the player out of a sense of identification with their own protagonist or their sense of the character being a part of the game's narrative, a living part of the fiction". The definition is meaningless nonsense.
I disagree - because that doesn't describe my subjective experience of "immersion". To me, immersion is about a loss of a sense of self - forgetting where I am and who I am and getting lost in the story.
And putting aside your meaningless definition, your "objective" measure doesn't actually measure it. It measures how often the game crashes. You haven't persuaded me - or even explained - why a game that crashes would break immersion. That's not an objective definition - that's a bare assertion.
Not to mention that - even if I accept your nonsense definition, and your non sequitur "objective" measure, your argument doesn't actually follow. Because your illustration of "buggy" breaking immersion in this example, that's predicated on the frequency of crashing. The implicit position in your argument is that 30 minute breaks in the game - outside of the control of the player - are immersion breaking. Let's say that's true. You don't assert DA:I crashes every 30 minutes for everyone. You assert that it crashes every 5-6 hours for you:
Even if that were universally true, which it isn't - it's a baseless anecdote - your argument about the rate of crashing wouldn't work. But it's not the argument you use for the rest of your post - the rest of your post is based on the quality of side quests.
Suppose I accept your purported measure, you go on about "side-venturing" as "shyte". But this has absolutely nothing to do with your previous point, nothing to do with your putative objective measure. In fact, you haven't even shown - going to your original point, about immersion - that "shyte" content is immersion breaking. And even if we say that it is, we run into the problem of subjective evaluation.
The subjective evaluation problem isn't that we can't come up with criteria. It's that reasonable people will disagree as to whether those criteria are met. The way to resolve that problem is to survey many reasonable people - and then say that the majority description is the one we accept as "right", because there are good reasons to defer to the majority opinion. You've misunderstood the fundamental issue with taste being measured from an objective standpoint.
As to the rest of your post, I never contested that it's possible to measure quality. I said "immersion" is a nonsense measure, and that you haven't provided a serious definition or a way to evaluate it.
Nope, not a joke. No idea what you'd meant- actual sincere confuddlement (as opposed to deliberate obtuseness), particularly as you'd spelled everything else correctly but misspelled "rigour" twice and thus left it not in the least "evident." I guessed well though. I sometimes add a British superfluouus "u" myself to add colour.
I didn't intend that as a definition of game immersion, though I anticipated you needing one, so I threw over some concepts for you balk at (and me to work with). Unfortunately you seem to have missed that they were concepts about game immersion breaking, not game immersion itself. Easy to call a not-intended-as-definition "meaningless..." well, period, easy to call anything mean names, but also easy to do so when misrepresenting the we'll-pretend-it's-an-attempt-at-official-definition. In fact, I like your own definition of game immersion, though I'd tweak and add to it. As you know, I add a lot... But I don't find myself disagreeing... too much. I've even stated something similar in comments above (just getting to your posts now)... We'll get back to it in a bit as its probably the most interesting point of contention (and agreement)...
Another clarification needed... I never said side-venturing- or even DAI's side-venturing- was shyte. I believe I was making another hyperbolic hypothetical to dramatize a point, not stating that outright. I don't actually think that. I just think it's the kind of content I'd expect to find in far less self-respecting AAA game or a rushed game or a game with little narrative strength to begin with. If the player's point of entry into DAI were the side-venturing rather than the whole Fade and such, they'd have a qualitatively different idea of the level of content in DAI and what to expect from the game. But shyte... no.
OK, so your major issue was with me claiming that immersion-breaking is an objective fact. Cuz immersion measurement is ridiculous! Do you not concede that a lightning storm that fries your computer and shuts off all the electricity will make it a tad more difficult to, as you put it, "lose your sense of self, forgetting where you are and who you are and getting lost in the story." Hell, it outright ends the story, doesn't it? With a big crash where you think hour IRL house is on fire. Reminds you in a jiffy where you are, who you are, and where the flashlight is stored. That's pretty much the most extreme example of immersion being subject to objective criteria. OK, an earthquake and lightning storm... My previous example about game crashes was quite sufficient, however. One of the criticisms I actually heard articulated in the early days of DAI when bugginess was more prevalent was that the constant issues broke immersion. And why wouldn't it? Of course, it did. I'm not making any profound insight on this, am I? Now, it's probably possible that a person could still sit there in the dark during the lightning storm feeling fully immersed in the game narrative despite all the IRL events around them, but in terms of probability, it's going to be a low chance at that point, much lower than before the power went down. So though subjectivity may make immersion more or less easy for one person as opposed to another, the probabililty for it can indeed vary according to objective factors.
Where the argument continued into specifying factors that make the game less narratively-driven, I was seguing from the extreme example of game crashes and bugs to game limitations that affect immersion. Because, you see, if power outages are an extreme case, then you should already be recognizing that there is a continuum within which there are less and less extreme cases. Perhaps you somehow still don't get it about the extreme example, but I'll proceed anyway in case some of it registers. If you're facing nothing but half-assed content, how well will you be able to manage game immersion, feeling like you're there, feeling like the character you've created and conceived regarding the game narrative... is going to be adversely affected. It's like if someone says, "Hey, dipstick. Go hunt eight beavers for a reward. Bye." Actually that might be very immersive in a game where the NPCs usually talk to you that way. ("The Bard's Tale," for instance.) But in DAI? In DAI the uninspired side-venturing dialog tends to go more cordially... and blandly... and all-too-predictably. See that there's a different impact on game immersion for uninspired writing? If the voice actor were lousy, that too would have an impact. It's not the same oomph of impact that a power outage has, but as an objective condition, it factors. Are you asserting that there is an equivalence of immersion condition in every gaming situation regardless of any such conditions? That such a continuum of adverse effects on game immersion doesn't exist. That's your "unfortunate" position on disagreement. If you're willing to acknowledge game immersion as a reality, you have to recognize it can be affected by objective conditions.
Is it a "meaningless" distinction to make that an experience you get while more or less immersed in the game feels like fluff? Take a side-quest where you find a letter on a corpse talking about completing a ritual... which auto-places a mark on the map. You go there with a narrative of, hm, a ritual. You find the location, there's an altar. You click on it. A normal demon just sort of spawns... on a nearby rock.... It stands there a moment, then attacks... So... you kill it. You get XP and loot. That's it. Quest done. Now... how immersed in the narrative were you? And that is an actual Hinterlands side-quest. One of a great many of its kind. Can you not imagine any number of ways that could've been more immersive, more engaging, more intriguing as a character in the game's narrative? If not, I have to wonder at your imagination. If you can, you've already conceded that game quality can affect game immersion...
All that said, it doesn't really matter whether you accept my Super Official Definition of Immersion (which I still haven't offered you- rascal that I am) or even the notion that objective conditions can affect subjective conditions. The point of it was just to show one other casualty of producing sub-par game content: people are going to be far less likely to enjoy or even sustain game immersion. The term "metagamey" isn't facetious. The more a game is constructed that way, the less impactful the narrative.
Resources aren't unlimited. People use TW3 as an example of a game that had higher resource side-quests than DA:I. But TW3 didn't have companions. There was no companion banter. Sure, the banter was designed in an incredibly stupid way that made it impossible to trigger for most people and was a huge waste of resources ultimately, but it was still a huge VO cost. TW3 cuts all of that, and invests it in dialogue.
Companion quests - and companions - should be part of the criticism. Because they are part of the actual reason why the quests were so sparse in terms of dialogue.
OK, so TW3 has different needs. Not sure what you're addressing- at least regarding anything I wrote- with that mention or the rest of this post, but I'm not disputing it. Not that I know, having never gotten past that first non-tutorial fight scene in TW3 with the annoying jumpy critters. But I get the point about DAI investing a lot more resources in companion content for logical reasons. Yep. Are you saying great content is there but it was just too sparse (and buggy) to appreciate? Not sure on that one.
In a different thread I made about bringing back origins for DA4 I mentioned that I'd encourage the devs to make companions- already one of the most important features of the franchise anyway- far more connected to the side-quests. This way each side-quest gets all those resources and the sort of content that works best (and among the most fan-celebrated) in DA already- banter, companion reactions to ongoing events, companion relationship building- but lending it the impact of discovering things spontaneously. Maybe a bit simplistic a suggestion, but I do see your point about how much content each event would then involve given, say, eight companions with varying potential reactions to varying potential encounter elements.
EDIT:
Just recognized what you were saying... I think. Yeah, I agree that companion quests are certainly not above reproach or criticism. I've just been saying that their quality was more than high enough that it poses no concerns for me regarding content quality. Could it be better? Are there things they did even worse than in previous DA's? I agree with Nefla and hoechlbear above that there weren't quite the same amount of moving moments, and hoechlbear described the "Wicked Grace" scene exactly as awkward as it felt for me. It's just not the glaring example of content quality laziness I find most needs addressing as the OP's article did.
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I had tears falling down my cheeks by the end of that. Specially because I did not see it coming, at all. I mean, the mood is super heavy at that point so it was really unexpected. It's the best comic relief I've seen in any videogame.
hopefully in the next game they won't rehaul everything again like they did between DA:O and DA2 and keep the same systems and assets so there will be more resources left over for sidequests 
The mechanic really added nothing positive. The concept behind it could have been interesting, if there had been large scale and involved quests where you gathered extra troops or made alliances or what have you but as it is it just forced me to waste my time. Why would following notes on the ground telling me I should find 3 bear claws give me power? Why would finding someone's lost goat give me influence? Why would restocking the Dalish supply of elfroot get me either? Having the leader of the Inquisition off frolicking around the meadow picking herbs and reading dead people's diaries seems like it would weaken the inquisition, not strengthen it.
