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.
So you won't be playing the "instanced" "games"?
If you don't like them it's your choice to NOT play them.
Even RL has "instances": examples: a night at a football stadium, watching a boxing match, a cinema, the opera ("pun" intended).
Both elements have to be in a good developped game: the open seamless world which doesn't limit you to a single small fixed linair leveling path like War and Aion.
And at the same time instances in which you can watch or do things locked out from disturbing things that just spoil your fun.
The OP asks us to go visit the opera (pun intended) while kids jump in everywhere on stage and on your seat.
The OP fails as a typical Wow hater by even mentioning phasing. At last worlds can now change thanks to this invention. It's called immersion.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
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.
I love when elitist asshats post stuff like this when the games they describe and want would only get 50k subscribers tops.
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.
I love when elitist asshats post stuff like this when the games they describe and want would only get 50k subscribers tops.
Well but only games with so "few" subscribers would work without instancing.
I remember a game I played back in the day whose max. server population was only several hundred players.
But it had absolutely no instances and it worked just fine and was a hell of a lot fun.
If you are playing solo that's 'offline' play in my eyes. If you are with a group in a instance thats 'online' play. Nothing wrong with having to do some instance and some soloing, as long as it is not the major play style which for so many MMO's it is.
The OP is sooooo narrow minded. Even RL has "instances": examples: a night at a football stadium, watching a boxing match, a cinema, the opera ("pun" intended). Both elements have to be in a good developped game: the open seamless world which doesn't limit you to a single small fixed linair leveling path like War and Aion. And at the same time instances in which you can watch or do things locked out from disturbing things that just spoil your fun.
The OP asks us to go visit the opera (pun intended) while kids jump in everywhere on stage and on your seat. The OP fails as a typical Wow hater by even mentioning phasing. At last worlds can now change thanks to this invention. It's called immersion.
... Even RL has "instances": examples: a night at a football stadium, watching a boxing match, a cinema, the opera ("pun" intended). ....
If Sport was an instance the same way MMO instances (currently) work;
Players would all have to enter through the same door... at the same time. I'm not talking about running on to the field here... the door would be somewhere else in the world - maybe at an Airport? They would step through and "POP" they would be on the field. At least it would save on travel.
The OP is sooooo narrow minded. Even RL has "instances": examples: a night at a football stadium, watching a boxing match, a cinema, the opera ("pun" intended). Both elements have to be in a good developped game: the open seamless world which doesn't limit you to a single small fixed linair leveling path like War and Aion. And at the same time instances in which you can watch or do things locked out from disturbing things that just spoil your fun.
The OP asks us to go visit the opera (pun intended) while kids jump in everywhere on stage and on your seat. The OP fails as a typical Wow hater by even mentioning phasing. At last worlds can now change thanks to this invention. It's called immersion.
I am sorry I disagree.
Going to an Opera or a Sports match is not equivalent to instancing. Because if there is a baseball match that we attend to, there is not two different versions of it, one for you and your friends and one for me and my friends, we both enter the same stadium and share the match with many many other people that are strangers to us.
Same goes with cinema, and opera and a boxing match.
In fact all of these things you mentioned are no different than holding a party or a tournament or a ball or a guild meeting inside the confines of your own tower or castle (Ultima Online) or your own Guild hall and Cantina (SWG).
We can still have private moments with those that we trust and do it in a open and shared persistent world.
And that is the key word here, "persistent world", a game which relies or feature heavy instances is not a true MMORPG because instances are not Persistent, and having a persistent world is one of the pillars of what defines an MMORPG.
Hence the OP is very right in comparing instancing to offline play, since just like offline play an instance is created and then deleted depending on the player's needs, not unlike an offline game Session which the player runs and then shuts down depending on own needs.
No difference.
That being said, instances are good for Themepark games because of the nature of their gameplay...which at the same time, and in line with the above, would imply that Themepark MMO's are not true MMO's and constitute a design perversion of the genre.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
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. No MMORPG that I can think of allows players to enter into instances solo, so I'm not sure what the whole "offline" argument is about, but even with a gorup, I would disagree with you. 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. 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. 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. I agree with your first sentence, but again, in what MMORPG is "the world" not shared. Let me ask you a few questions. How many zones are in world of warcraft? How many opportunities do you have to run through the world and see other players? How many chances do you get to meet up with a few buddies and do quests in the overland areas? Even though I used WoW as my example, there is far more to an MMORPG than simple dungeon runs in instanced areas. Among other things which vary from game to game, these areas are only designed in such a way to prevent overcrowding, kill stealing, and to make sure every player has a positive experience for their efforts in running the dungeon. Next you bring up instanced housing, and I say, well, in what game can you not actually visit someone else's house? Just because a house is "instanced" doesn't mean it is always absolutely impossible for anyone in the game world to visit said house. The problem is, some game engines simply aren't capable of allowing individual housing areas, and even if they did, after a few years, the overland areas would be littered with houses, and when I'm adventuring in some far off land, the last thing I want to do is feel like I'm a 5 year old boy playing cowboys and indians in my backyard. Next, you say that the "player who goes into and comes out of an instanced dungeon, might as well have been logged out the whole time as far as the community knows or cares." Well, interestingly, are the other players the individual grouped with not members of the community? How about his guild mates that I'm sure he's chatting with on Ventrillo? Can he still not send messages through general chat channels? Just because the player is in an instance, even a "rare" solo instance, he or she is still very much a part of the community and has a serious presence within the game world. Any interaction which would occur with players not already in a group inside of a dungeon would likely be negative. The days of Everquest are over. Players no longer divide up specific areas of dungeons into camps, and stand there and kill the same groups of mobs all night. In modern MMORPGs, dungeons usually have an endpoint with a boss mob or numerous boss mobs that the player will have incentives to fight toward and to kill. This just doesn't work in a noninstanced environment. You have players KSing each other all over the place and far too much competition for kills to make the experience enjoyable. Your last point really makes no sense. Why would you assume any player would brag about completing a portion of a solo quest where he does as you say? In all seriousness though, I'd rather do something like that then have a quest to kill 500 wererats in a noninstanced dugeon.
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.
And that's exactly the point. players DON'T need to be running into each other all over the place in these dungeons. From a roleplaying perspective (which is usually where the anti-instance argument originates), how immersive is it to run across 5 full groups halfway down an endgame dungeon in one of the most remote areas of the game world? If they did, the only form of social interaction is most certainly negative, as I've described above. "Instancing" and its forms have no place in great MMO's. PERIOD. Oppinions do not equal fact. When you can acurately "prove" your point, you can make such a statement.
Comments
So you won't be playing the "instanced" "games"?
If you don't like them it's your choice to NOT play them.
Cheers!
The OP is sooooo narrow minded.
Even RL has "instances": examples: a night at a football stadium, watching a boxing match, a cinema, the opera ("pun" intended).
Both elements have to be in a good developped game: the open seamless world which doesn't limit you to a single small fixed linair leveling path like War and Aion.
And at the same time instances in which you can watch or do things locked out from disturbing things that just spoil your fun.
The OP asks us to go visit the opera (pun intended) while kids jump in everywhere on stage and on your seat.
The OP fails as a typical Wow hater by even mentioning phasing. At last worlds can now change thanks to this invention. It's called immersion.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
I love when elitist asshats post stuff like this when the games they describe and want would only get 50k subscribers tops.
I love when elitist asshats post stuff like this when the games they describe and want would only get 50k subscribers tops.
Well but only games with so "few" subscribers would work without instancing.
I remember a game I played back in the day whose max. server population was only several hundred players.
But it had absolutely no instances and it worked just fine and was a hell of a lot fun.
If you are playing solo that's 'offline' play in my eyes. If you are with a group in a instance thats 'online' play. Nothing wrong with having to do some instance and some soloing, as long as it is not the major play style which for so many MMO's it is.
I agree here
If Sport was an instance the same way MMO instances (currently) work;
Players would all have to enter through the same door... at the same time. I'm not talking about running on to the field here... the door would be somewhere else in the world - maybe at an Airport? They would step through and "POP" they would be on the field. At least it would save on travel.
Fans would not be able to watch - ever.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I am sorry I disagree.
Going to an Opera or a Sports match is not equivalent to instancing. Because if there is a baseball match that we attend to, there is not two different versions of it, one for you and your friends and one for me and my friends, we both enter the same stadium and share the match with many many other people that are strangers to us.
Same goes with cinema, and opera and a boxing match.
In fact all of these things you mentioned are no different than holding a party or a tournament or a ball or a guild meeting inside the confines of your own tower or castle (Ultima Online) or your own Guild hall and Cantina (SWG).
We can still have private moments with those that we trust and do it in a open and shared persistent world.
And that is the key word here, "persistent world", a game which relies or feature heavy instances is not a true MMORPG because instances are not Persistent, and having a persistent world is one of the pillars of what defines an MMORPG.
Hence the OP is very right in comparing instancing to offline play, since just like offline play an instance is created and then deleted depending on the player's needs, not unlike an offline game Session which the player runs and then shuts down depending on own needs.
No difference.
That being said, instances are good for Themepark games because of the nature of their gameplay...which at the same time, and in line with the above, would imply that Themepark MMO's are not true MMO's and constitute a design perversion of the genre.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard