Massive World but with only instanced questing?

Feldron

From Q & A on the game dev site

"we are building what we believe is the largest Fantasy gaming MMO world in existence. 900,000,000 square kilometers, to be precise"

"We make the ultimate use of instancing. When you go on a quest by yourself or with a group of up to eight players, the entire world you enter is an instance"

"One item, due to our goal of Quest improvement, we did have to sacrifice raids. The maximum number of players in a group is eight."

"On the flip side, you may have to face large numbers of monsters opponent groups. We can offer this because we know we won't have to handle too many players in one location."

"There are several ways to travel in CoS. Walking and horseback are the most obvious. CoS also offers Permanent and Personal portals. "

Ok so they have a game world but all your quests are instanced so no raids.  So no non instanced dungeons then?

So its DDO with a larger map. but you now have to move around still on the map to get to where you want to go. either on foot horseback or the diablo style portal system.

Personally i like the quests and the storyline stuff but having all of the quests instanced is not the way to go.

They going to have a huge world but sounds like that world is only for player owned housing, pvp and building a party to do quests that you may or may not have to travel mins to hours RL time to get to the location to start.

1. Add non instanced dungeons so you have the best of both worlds.

Anyone else think of any thing they could do to improve rather then this instanced only quest system

please feel free to comment or add your opinion and ideas

Jatar

Originally posted by Feldron


Ok so they have a game world but all your quests are instanced so no raids.  So no non instanced dungeons then?
So its DDO with a larger map. but you now have to move around still on the map to get to where you want to go. either on foot horseback or the diablo style portal system.
Personally i like the quests and the storyline stuff but having all of the quests instanced is not the way to go.
They going to have a huge world but sounds like that world is only for player owned housing, pvp and building a party to do quests that you may or may not have to travel mins to hours RL time to get to the location to start.
1. Add non instanced dungeons so you have the best of both worlds.
Anyone else think of any thing they could do to improve rather then this instanced only quest system
please feel free to comment or add your opinion and ideas

I second the idea of people adding their opinions and ideas, it's a free world and forums are made for that very thing.

As to your suppositions about Citadel of Sorcery.  People seem to be missing the point about going on a Quest with a group.  We're not creating an instance of their quest... we're creating the entire world as their instance.  Everything.   When you say that the big world is just for player housing (which we may or may not even have) , grouping up etc., you are incorrect.  The world is for questing, all of it. 

The idea behind creating a Reflected World for the group's quest is so that we can use everything to facilitate the story and quests.  This kind of quest is not possible when another group can come through and mess things up. 

DDO's system is very different, with linear repeating instanced adventures.  Our quests are non-linear, not-repeated, full worlds.  The depth of quest immersion in this system is (in our opinion) unmatched in current MMO games.

Finally... quests in the Reflected Worlds are not the only game play available.  There is also non-group limited  multi-player areas for adventure in a dynamic world setting, though in these areas you will be involved in bigger sweeping events rather than intricate custom made quests.

For the moment, this is all I'm going to go into about how the system works.  There is a lot that I'm not at liberty to discuss at this time. 

My final comment is that we do not expect to please everyone in the world with this system.  We would rather give quality adventures to  those players who want this kind of emersive game play rather than attempt to please everyone and do a half assed job on the whole thing.

Feldron

"We're not creating an instance of their quest... we're creating the entire world as their instance.  Everything. 

Finally... quests in the Reflected Worlds are not the only game play available.  There is also non-group limited  multi-player areas for adventure in a dynamic world setting, though in these areas you will be involved in bigger sweeping events rather than intricate custom made quests."

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Ok with the first statement here it sounds like there is no static game world and is like D2. You make a world and players join, but with past history setting up whats going on

Then the second statement say things are a bit different

So is the world limited to 8 players?

Does the second statement mean only that players joining your world can go off and do solo content and arent't forced into your party by merely joing your world?

If i under this right you have a multi pleyer game with up 8 players at a time per instanced world and changing storyline and content.

Jatar

Originally posted by Feldron


"We're not creating an instance of their quest... we're creating the entire world as their instance.  Everything. 
Finally... quests in the Reflected Worlds are not the only game play available.  There is also non-group limited  multi-player areas for adventure in a dynamic world setting, though in these areas you will be involved in bigger sweeping events rather than intricate custom made quests."
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Ok with the first statement here it sounds like there is no static game world and is like D2. You make a world and players join, but with past history setting up whats going on
Then the second statement say things are a bit different
So is the world limited to 8 players?
Does the second statement mean only that players joining your world can go off and do solo content and arent't forced into your party by merely joing your world?
If i under this right you have a multi pleyer game with up 8 players at a time per instanced world and changing storyline and content.

You have it partially correct, but not completely.  We knew there would be inevitable comparisons to D2, just as there have been several other posts that claim we are just like LOTRO and DDO, etc.

The fact is, we're not like any of them, but people keep wanting to pigeon hole us into one game they've played or another. 

As to your comments, yes, there are full instanced worlds built for questing groups... but there are also multiplayer worlds as well.  You can keep poking at this, but no matter how many times you try to fit us into something else you have seen, you will inevitably be wrong. 

We're just  not ready to reveal everything about our system.  Partly because it is new and we want to keep some of it under wraps, and partly because portions are still in flux as we test and talk with players. 

You will just have to wait until later to find out exactly what we are doing in our game world.  Not that I blame you for not getting it right, since we haven't given you enough information to nail it down, but that is by design.

 

Jatar

Citadel of Sorcery dev team member