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"Instanced" gamplay is really "offline" gameplay

13

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  • GyrusGyrus Member UncommonPosts: 2,413
    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    Originally posted by Gyrus

    Originally posted by cukimunga

    Originally posted by pencilrick go to sleep.
    "Instancing" and its forms have no place in great MMO's.  PERIOD.

     

    Well good luck starting a new game where nothing is instanced and everone on that server is trying to kill this one boss. ...

    So don't have "bosses".  Problem solved.

     

    And take away one of the most fun experience of playing this kind of games? 

    You may was well say, don't play games, go outside and play baseball, problem solved.

    So, you can't even imagine any other way a game could work without bosses?

    ...

     

    I blame Nintendo.

    Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.

  • kakarotragekakarotrage Member Posts: 280

    I totally agree.. in the perfect mmo the world will be just one big zone with so much stuff to do you won't even need instances.. though I don't mind wows' instances, I despise Aion's zone instancing or AOC instances.

    World of Warcraft is a proof that MMORPG quality should affect schedule/budget and not the other way around.

  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441
    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    And take away one of the most fun experience of playing this kind of games? 
    You may was well say, don't play games, go outside and play baseball, problem solved.

    I don't know that. Bosses are usually fun to fight because they have a slightly better AI and are harder to kill.

    Making a whole lot of more monsters that fit that description is the right way to go.

    Regular mobs is usually really stupid and easy to kill. Better AI (Mobs should act close to what humans do in PvP) and harder mobs will not take away the fun experience, it will make it better.

    I agree that some stuff should be instanced. Larger raids and some of the dungeons should be instanced and spawn camping shouldn't be worth the problem.

    The whole thing about regular mobs and bosses, tanks, healers and DPS all need some work now. We seen it for more than 10 years and it is getting boring now.

    A few really tough nameds that drop better loot is really something that we seen in every single MMO and really need some work because the world don't really work like that. This have nothing to do with instancing either, it is just bad AI and the reason noone fixed it is because many people like easy kills and being able to kill loads of nameless things.

  • GyrusGyrus Member UncommonPosts: 2,413

    On this subject... even if you do have to wait on 'boss respawns' there are ways to make that 'fun'.

     

    As an example - try Spellborn (Free at the moment).

    One of the bosses that appears early on ("Big Mama Molar" - a huge Lion thingy) is in the open world but also in a PvP area on the PvP server.

    So, player groups show up to fight her... and end up in some pretty frantic PvP... then she spawns in as well and proceeds to attack anyone and everyone...

    And killing her is not critical to advancement anyway.

    There are ways to make this work - that's one way.

     

    Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.

  • sazabisazabi Member UncommonPosts: 389

    "MMO's are about many players sharing a world, and not meant to be ...blah blah blah..."

     

    how do you know? you and only you define the whole genre?

    christ. its like saying that every first person game must be a shooter.

     

    you can shit on instances all you want, but if they actually make the game more interesting, while ruining the MASSIVE multiplayer online title a little, its cool.

  • decoy26517decoy26517 Member Posts: 313

    Instancing is only a mechanic which can be used for good or evil. Let's not blame the instance but rather the developers who USE the instances for ill purposes!

    instances don't kill MMOs, developers do.

    "World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this genre." - Hilmar Petursson. CEO of CCP.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by Gyrus

    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    Originally posted by Gyrus

    Originally posted by cukimunga

    Originally posted by pencilrick go to sleep.
    "Instancing" and its forms have no place in great MMO's.  PERIOD.

     

    Well good luck starting a new game where nothing is instanced and everone on that server is trying to kill this one boss. ...

    So don't have "bosses".  Problem solved.

     

    And take away one of the most fun experience of playing this kind of games? 

    You may was well say, don't play games, go outside and play baseball, problem solved.

    So, you can't even imagine any other way a game could work without bosses?

    ...

     

    I blame Nintendo.

     

    Sure I can imagine such a game. But I don't want to stop playing all the FUN game with boss just because of this possibility.

  • GyrusGyrus Member UncommonPosts: 2,413
    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    ....

     

    Sure I can imagine such a game. But I don't want to stop playing all the FUN game with boss just because of this possibility.

    So, back to the OP.

    If the FUN part of a game for you is the boss fights... why would you waste your time with MMOs?

    Single Player (and multi player) games offer boss fights too - and there is often (mostly) less grind to get to them.

    And how does an instanced boss fight differ from a boss fight in a Single Player game?

    (You can get Stand alone games for consoles that allow 2 or more people to co-op too so don't say "because I can fight with a friend" - you can do that outside MMOs)

    Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.

  • ninja33284ninja33284 Member Posts: 82

    lol this is a funny topic after reading all 6 pages i feel like i want my like 20 minutes back.. Seriously Instancing doesnt "ruin" mmo`s, it ruins your fun in the mmo but maybe not others.. I PLAYED EQ..  ok that shit Was fun no instances... BUT IT WAS ANNOYING.. ok so lets spend 10 minutes-30 minutes to get a party.. ok camp check.. shit everythings full ok.. lets run over tot hat desert and run the tower thing.. /party alright guys lets go.. 10 minutes of walking.. blah blahb lbah OH LOOK 50 parties are here tooling it.. Camp check.. oh look nothing.. lets walk over to that other place /party starts walking... anouther 10 minutes gone OH LOOK THIS SHIT IS FULL /party breaks up and looks for groups already controling something.. 60 minutes of my life just wasted how fun.. oh and look i got like 2k exp when i need like 3 billion to level...  IN A BIG MMO with MILLIONS OF PEOPLE you need instancing i dont care who the fuck you are.. think of it this way

    A game devolper makes  300 deongeons for cap level (lets say 60) ok so after a couple months, you have like 2 million people CAp level all running the same deogeons or whatever (im just making a quick point so stfu about why you would need exp at cap level... it doesnt matter) 2 million divided by 300 is a big friggin number so.. ~6,666 people per D.... lets say about 6 people per party, that means there would be 1,111 GROUPS PER D.. THATS ALOT OF FUCKING SPACE TAKEN UP AND I DONT KNOW ANY Deongeon that can hold 1K pluys groups.. THIS IS WERE INSTANCING COME IN HAND.. like really.. if you guys couldnt do this type of experimental math for yourself ,then your just lazy, that is of course say that a single server can hold 2 million people and they are all capped level, this is highly unlikly but very possible ... so thats why instancing is needed wether u like it or not is not my problem

  • GyrusGyrus Member UncommonPosts: 2,413
    Originally posted by ninja33284

    ....

    Swearing does not make you any more right or wrong... it just makes you look stupid TBH.

     

    You need to do a lot of work on your maths and assumptions too.

     

     

    Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.

  • ninja33284ninja33284 Member Posts: 82
    Originally posted by Gyrus

    Originally posted by ninja33284

    ....

    Swearing does not make you any more right or wrong... it just makes you look stupid TBH.

     

    You need to do a lot of work on your maths and assumptions too.

     

     

     

    sure is knows how to read Notes... your pro dude see the "this is a quick reference" and the "heyy i know 2 million people in 1 server is prolyl never gonna happen noteS" you my friend are a pro-reader GG

  • ScottcScottc Member Posts: 680
    Originally posted by Ilvaldyr


    "MMO's are about many players sharing a world, and not meant to be about isolated segregated experiences."
    There are no lockable doors in a "shared world"?
    Your logic is completely without merit.
    This thread (and your recent posts in others on the same topic) is nothing more than you attempting to aggrandize your preferred playstyle by using flawed logic to "prove" that all other playstyles are invalid.
    You have not succeeded.
     

    Instancing has nothing to do with playstyle.  It's merely a gameplay limitation.

  • ScottcScottc Member Posts: 680
    Originally posted by Quirhid

    Originally posted by jackeccs

    Originally posted by nariusseldon

    Originally posted by jackeccs


    Ok, so anyone saying anything about waiting hours for people to complete a dungeon is dumb. True, 90% of MMO's are that shallow to only have a single dungeon for a certain level range. But, a smart MMO would have a lot of dungeons for all level ranges. Not just a single one where everyone has to wait and get camped.
    Instances are noob. A real MMO has a large world and is seamless. Before anyone starts to say anything about ohh dur what about a small world with lots of detail. Well, this is where it comes down to having a company with enough money to make something unique that works, than a lot of companies making the same damn thing that fails every time.
     

     

    Stupid rant with no idea of how expensive content is. Even the richest company would not afford to build so many dungeons. There are a few THOUSAND people on each shard of a standard MMO at any time. Do you think they can build HUNDREDS of dungeons? You are dreaming. Not even blizzard can afford that.

     

    Then don't go into the market. How many game companies wished they wouldn't have? Blizzard could easily do that, if there's any stupid rant it's what you just said there. Look how many games their working on, and how many people they have on their teams. They could easily make a game with hundreds of dungeons. So tell me, aside from the salary every employee gets anyway, how much extra does content cost? It's whether the content is junk or not.

     

    I will not get into a discussion about software engineering with a guy who uses the word "noob". You have strong opinions about this and you've clearly made up your mind.

    World design has nothing to do with software engineering.  You seem to make the assumption that all dungeons for most games are designed by hand like a half-life 2 map using brushes and reshaping them, carving them, etc.  Having a tool that allows them to be created from components speeds up development time a lot.  Asheron's Call has 857 dungeons (that players have found), so why can't a game that brings in 165 million dollars a month make more than that?

  • ScottcScottc Member Posts: 680
    Originally posted by Pcgamer81


    i disgree with OP. i think instances are good thing. heres examples. in WoW it's bad enough putting up with players camping or teaming same mobs yours is. but popular instances like say Deadmines would suk if other teams kept coming thru clearing things. now look at city of heroes the instances keep you alone keeping the hero and villian feel. sometimes instances are there to keep the fun up you don't like oh well theres those like me who want time away from those not in my group ot just need time alone. should instances be offline not at all not one bit. i pay to play mmo and i like to have instance option live with it.

    I think you missed the op's point, why pay a monthly fee to play alone?  A singleplayer game should be fundamentally different in terms of game mechanics from an MMORPG.

  • ThenariusThenarius Member Posts: 1,106

    I think instancing and phasing can be amazing if done well. It can explain stories, let you in the skin of a powerful character...you know, it's a MMORPG, not just a MMO. Of course, most zones should not be instanced, but instancing can be great if used properly.

  • ScottcScottc Member Posts: 680
    Originally posted by Thenarius


    I think instancing and phasing can be amazing if done well. It can explain stories, let you in the skin of a powerful character...you know, it's a MMORPG, not just a MMO. Of course, most zones should not be instanced, but instancing can be great if used properly.

    Yeah that's great if you're playing a singleplayer RPG, but you need something that fits in the context of the game world, and everyone experiencing the same story at different points in time makes absolutely no sense and completely ruins any sense of immersion.  If you're going to learn about an evil character, you should do so by seeing the mark he left on the world, or seeing him romping around destroying towns.

  • RoosterNashRoosterNash Member Posts: 283
    Originally posted by pencilrick


    If your gameplay is "instanced" or separated from the community by "phasing", you might as well be playing offline.  And if you are with a group, then okay, the group might as well be playing offline, maybe at a LAN party at someone's house. [Suppose that these players are playing from different parts of the world. What do you propose then? Would you still consider that offline?]
    MMO's are about many players sharing a world, and not meant to be about isolated segregated experiences.  The player who brags about having spent 10,000 gold on his instanced housing makes no more sense than someone bragging that they have an offline castle [Agreed].  If you cannot see it, it does not exist (in the gameworld).  The player who goes into and comes out from an instanced dungeon, might as well have been logged off the whole time, as far as the community knows or cares [Given, but what's the point in this statement?].  The player who "phases" into some solo quest against an 80 Elite mob and uses some gimme item that is part of the quest chain and which zaps the creature into a non-elite mob that is easily defeated, has no more bragging rights than if he had been offline [Agreed].
    If it didn't happen in the greater shared gameworld, it didn't happen. 
    "Instancing", "phasing", "linear story quests" and such all serve to isolate the player from the community and reduce the call load of customer service, since minimized player contact equates with minimized number of player complaints.  And I really think these "instancing" game design methods are more about the latter.  The whole "instancing" movement is really equivalent to sedating an entire psychiatric ward so the patients will all shut up and go to sleep. [Well put, but it is not to say that instancing isn't reasonable in some areas. Without instancing, you could imagine the Hellish grief folks would take on dealing with others running through and downing a boss before they can get there because they're a ways back dealing with the mob that the other group gets to skip. While I understand some of what you are saying, we both know that instancing is the unfortunate biproduct of assanign griefers within the community exploiting what they can when they can. That, and it helps to dilute much of the lag that would be shared otherwise.]
    "Instancing" and its forms have no place in great MMO's.  PERIOD.



     

    While I wish we could have as in-depth game play as possible, instancing offers many variables that SHOULD be considered by great MMOs if they wish to truly produce large scale content and keep the "call load of customer service" reduced. I agree that it makes the immersion of dungeon scenarios, etcetera a little less tangible, but I don't personally feel that it's by much.

    I feel compelled to add that full-immersion into an MMO can be dangerous for one's psyche. If one can spend 20-30 hours STRAIGHT playing a regular RPG or FPS game all the way through (I know there are a TON of you out there who do this - I'm guilty from time to time), then what's to keep them from playing an MMO for the same duration? Additionally, with MMOs, the game doesn't end, so they'd do this for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months. Before you know it, they've grown tired of the game and discontinued their subscription. This was only hypothetical but I've seen it in friends and guildmates, so bash if you'd like, but if you're really wanting to make it as immersive as possible then this is only one scenario that you may have to look forward to.

    THE Rooster Nash

  • RoosterNashRoosterNash Member Posts: 283
    Originally posted by Scottc

    Originally posted by Pcgamer81


    i disgree with OP. i think instances are good thing. heres examples. in WoW it's bad enough putting up with players camping or teaming same mobs yours is. but popular instances like say Deadmines would suk if other teams kept coming thru clearing things. now look at city of heroes the instances keep you alone keeping the hero and villian feel. sometimes instances are there to keep the fun up you don't like oh well theres those like me who want time away from those not in my group ot just need time alone. should instances be offline not at all not one bit. i pay to play mmo and i like to have instance option live with it.

    I think you missed the op's point, why pay a monthly fee to play alone?  A singleplayer game should be fundamentally different in terms of game mechanics from an MMORPG.



     

    And I think the OP missed the POINTS of instancing. Namely, it doesn't offer single player content when there are multiple players in the same instance. However, it doesn't give it the feel of "massively multiplayer" when in such a scenario.

    I fail to see any evidence in this conjecture, but I'm all eyes if you have anything verifiably sound that I can read. Otherwise, we simply agree to disagree on whether instancing is a necessary means to MMOs.

    In conclusion, the OP is simply stating his/her opinion when they say that instancing or the like could never contribute to a "great MMO". It not only lacks evidence, but sounds completely proposterous.

    THE Rooster Nash

  • GreenChaosGreenChaos Member Posts: 2,268

    If the game is split into different servers, you are still split, and therefor offline according to your definition.

  • decoy26517decoy26517 Member Posts: 313

    There are no multiplayer MMOs! rabble rabble rabble rabble rabble rabble...

    "World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this genre." - Hilmar Petursson. CEO of CCP.

  • LansidLansid Member UncommonPosts: 1,097

    An interesting opinion... 

    What "true" MMORPG do you currently play OP?

    "There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by Scottc

    Originally posted by Pcgamer81


    i disgree with OP. i think instances are good thing. heres examples. in WoW it's bad enough putting up with players camping or teaming same mobs yours is. but popular instances like say Deadmines would suk if other teams kept coming thru clearing things. now look at city of heroes the instances keep you alone keeping the hero and villian feel. sometimes instances are there to keep the fun up you don't like oh well theres those like me who want time away from those not in my group ot just need time alone. should instances be offline not at all not one bit. i pay to play mmo and i like to have instance option live with it.

    I think you missed the op's point, why pay a monthly fee to play alone?  A singleplayer game should be fundamentally different in terms of game mechanics from an MMORPG.

     

    I think you have a comprehension problem. When is playing in a group of 5 in an instance playing ALONE?

    When is selling my loot on an AH playing ALONE?

  • Pcgamer81Pcgamer81 Member Posts: 186
    Originally posted by Scottc

    Originally posted by Pcgamer81


    i disgree with OP. i think instances are good thing. heres examples. in WoW it's bad enough putting up with players camping or teaming same mobs yours is. but popular instances like say Deadmines would suk if other teams kept coming thru clearing things. now look at city of heroes the instances keep you alone keeping the hero and villian feel. sometimes instances are there to keep the fun up you don't like oh well theres those like me who want time away from those not in my group ot just need time alone. should instances be offline not at all not one bit. i pay to play mmo and i like to have instance option live with it.

    I think you missed the op's point, why pay a monthly fee to play alone?  A singleplayer game should be fundamentally different in terms of game mechanics from an MMORPG.



     

    did you even read my post never said i play solo. i like to solo when theres no group. i group often. i made the point instances are great for solo or GROUP. please read whole thing before posting next time.

  • InterestingInteresting Member UncommonPosts: 972

    The TS is right.

     

     

    MASSIVELLY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLEPLAYING GAME 

     

    IS DIFFERENT THAN

     

    instanced multiplayer online roleplaying game.

     

     

    New developers should name genres based on the ammount of players they can support without lag in the same area wich has to be 95% of the actual game area and the place wich 95% of the time is spent by players.

     

    Why they instance? Its cheaper to maintain and easier to program, half assed job.

    They choose that route ignoring what people really want.

    And then use hoaxes like "we are instancing to prevent other people from ruining your group experience".

    THERE IS NO FORGIVENESS FOR INSTANCING.

    I HATE INSTANCING.

    THOSE ARE NOT WORTH TO BE CALLED MMOS.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by Interesting


    The TS is right.
     
     
    MASSIVELLY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLEPLAYING GAME 
     
    IS DIFFERENT THAN
     
    instanced multiplayer online roleplaying game.
     
     
    New developers should name genres based on the ammount of players they can support without lag in the same area wich has to be 95% of the actual game area and the place wich 95% of the time is spent by players.
     
    Why they instance? Its cheaper to maintain and easier to program, half assed job.
    They choose that route ignoring what people really want.
    And then use hoaxes like "we are instancing to prevent other people from ruining your group experience".
    THERE IS NO FORGIVENESS FOR INSTANCING.
    I HATE INSTANCING.
    THOSE ARE NOT WORTH TO BE CALLED MMOS.

     

    LOL .. who cares about what it is called as long as it is fun. "instanced multiplayer online roleplaying game" >>> old MMORPGs in terms of fun factor. Happy now?

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