Graphics have no impact on latency, which is usually the reason to instance something.
The main reason to instance things is so that you can have a bunch of people in the "same" area of the world without tripping over each other.
No, the main reason for instancing is when developers don't know how to properly design an MMO, so they slap instancing over the problem hoping it'll go away.
A well designed MMO has NO need of instancing.
But yeah, modern graphics have nothing to do with the death of seamless worlds.
Why are you talking about instancing again? That has nothing to do with whether a game world is seamless. There is probably a correlation between people who want seamless worlds and people who are against instancing. But from a game design perspective, they're independent issues, just like the decision of whether to have a deep crafting system is independent of whether to have a seamless world.
I'm aware of this, but most other people in the thread are not.
I'm talking about instancing because its been brought up dozens of times in this thread, and also because if a game has instancing, it's not seamless.
Nonsense. Instancing doesn't mean a game can't be seamless; it all depends on how the instances are used. If a game is completely seamless, except that it has several different language versions, and you can't pass from the servers of one language version to another, then it has instancing. That doesn't mean it's not seamless.
For that matter, one could argue for technical reasons that even a single seamless game world is likely to be a single instance of that game world--and thus, the game has instancing.
Graphics have no impact on latency, which is usually the reason to instance something.
The main reason to instance things is so that you can have a bunch of people in the "same" area of the world without tripping over each other.
No, the main reason for instancing is when developers don't know how to properly design an MMO, so they slap instancing over the problem hoping it'll go away.
A well designed MMO has NO need of instancing.
But yeah, modern graphics have nothing to do with the death of seamless worlds.
Why are you talking about instancing again? That has nothing to do with whether a game world is seamless. There is probably a correlation between people who want seamless worlds and people who are against instancing. But from a game design perspective, they're independent issues, just like the decision of whether to have a deep crafting system is independent of whether to have a seamless world.
I'm aware of this, but most other people in the thread are not.
I'm talking about instancing because its been brought up dozens of times in this thread, and also because if a game has instancing, it's not seamless.
Nonsense. Instancing doesn't mean a game can't be seamless; it all depends on how the instances are used. If a game is completely seamless, except that it has several different language versions, and you can't pass from the servers of one language version to another, then it has instancing. That doesn't mean it's not seamless.
Whatever it is, it is not because developers don't know how, are lazy or anything of the sort. It is a design decision with pros and cons just like any other.
Action-combat may have better performance in an area with a fixed amount of players.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Hmm, i like this thread, people claiming its hardware limitations not developer "laziness", then explaining exacly how a seamless world could be done adequatly well enough if devs would invest the time and effort...
People tend to confuse instancing and zones separated by load screens a lot. I think it may have to do with instancing usually being associated with load screens and artificial barriers that make the world seem fake. This is almost always true for zones separated by load screens as well, despite there not being "copies" of that zone.
Graphics have no impact on latency, which is usually the reason to instance something.
The main reason to instance things is so that you can have a bunch of people in the "same" area of the world without tripping over each other.
No, the main reason for instancing is when developers don't know how to properly design an MMO, so they slap instancing over the problem hoping it'll go away.
A well designed MMO has NO need of instancing.
But yeah, modern graphics have nothing to do with the death of seamless worlds.
No. The main reason is people like instances that they can run with their friends. And the problem goes away with instances. People are over-estimating the need of one virtual world.
So what if the world is cut up into little pieces, as long as players are having fun.
most game engines dont render everything. they render pretty much only the things you can see.
what killed the seamless world was carebears. carebears love instanced dungeons because there is no chance of pvp.
There is some truth to the claim that game engines only render the things you see. There's also a lot of stuff that has to be rendered because it's not obvious whether you'll be able to see it. But that's a performance optimization and has nothing to do with a seamless world. Even if something is behind you, it has to be loaded, as the player could spin the camera around at any moment.
Carebears killing seamless worlds is complete nonsense. Do you really think carebears like staring at loading screens, rather than being able to seamlessly enter dungeons? And who says there can't be a PVE-only seamless world? Whether to have a seamless world or not has nothing to do with whether there is non-consensual PVP.
most game engines dont render everything. they render pretty much only the things you can see.
what killed the seamless world was carebears. carebears love instanced dungeons because there is no chance of pvp.
There is some truth to the claim that game engines only render the things you see. There's also a lot of stuff that has to be rendered because it's not obvious whether you'll be able to see it. But that's a performance optimization and has nothing to do with a seamless world. Even if something is behind you, it has to be loaded, as the player could spin the camera around at any moment.
Carebears killing seamless worlds is complete nonsense. Do you really think carebears like staring at loading screens, rather than being able to seamlessly enter dungeons? And who says there can't be a PVE-only seamless world? Whether to have a seamless world or not has nothing to do with whether there is non-consensual PVP.
i think by seamless people mean basically no instances, no loading screens, just one big seamless world
I'm not a tech guy but SWG succeeded well enough way back when, so it should be doable today. The thing is you just can't go crazy with the graphics. SWG graphics or maybe a little better is all that I require.
most game engines dont render everything. they render pretty much only the things you can see.
what killed the seamless world was carebears. carebears love instanced dungeons because there is no chance of pvp.
There is some truth to the claim that game engines only render the things you see. There's also a lot of stuff that has to be rendered because it's not obvious whether you'll be able to see it. But that's a performance optimization and has nothing to do with a seamless world. Even if something is behind you, it has to be loaded, as the player could spin the camera around at any moment.
Carebears killing seamless worlds is complete nonsense. Do you really think carebears like staring at loading screens, rather than being able to seamlessly enter dungeons? And who says there can't be a PVE-only seamless world? Whether to have a seamless world or not has nothing to do with whether there is non-consensual PVP.
i think by seamless people mean basically no instances, no loading screens, just one big seamless world
By seamless, people mean just one big seamless world? Yeah, that makes sense.
Whether or not a game has instances and whether it has loading screens are completely separate issues. Actually, the question usually isn't so much whether the game has instances, but what type of instances it has and how they're handled. To argue that having instances at all means a game world can't be seamless is to argue that seamless worlds never have existed in online games, and awfully near arguing that they cannot exist.
I suppose that you could say the same for loading screens, as it always takes time to load the game initially. The key question of whether a world is seamless is whether you have to stop to load things later, or only when you launch the game at the beginning.
most game engines dont render everything. they render pretty much only the things you can see.
what killed the seamless world was carebears. carebears love instanced dungeons because there is no chance of pvp.
There is some truth to the claim that game engines only render the things you see. There's also a lot of stuff that has to be rendered because it's not obvious whether you'll be able to see it. But that's a performance optimization and has nothing to do with a seamless world. Even if something is behind you, it has to be loaded, as the player could spin the camera around at any moment.
Carebears killing seamless worlds is complete nonsense. Do you really think carebears like staring at loading screens, rather than being able to seamlessly enter dungeons? And who says there can't be a PVE-only seamless world? Whether to have a seamless world or not has nothing to do with whether there is non-consensual PVP.
i think by seamless people mean basically no instances, no loading screens, just one big seamless world
By seamless, people mean just one big seamless world? Yeah, that makes sense.
Whether or not a game has instances and whether it has loading screens are completely separate issues. Actually, the question usually isn't so much whether the game has instances, but what type of instances it has and how they're handled. To argue that having instances at all means a game world can't be seamless is to argue that seamless worlds never have existed in online games, and awfully near arguing that they cannot exist.
I suppose that you could say the same for loading screens, as it always takes time to load the game initially. The key question of whether a world is seamless is whether you have to stop to load things later, or only when you launch the game at the beginning.
im guessing when OP said seamless he meant no loading screens + no instances but i dont know for sure.
there are quite a few mmorpgs that dont/didnt have instances. eg. ultima online, darkfall, EVE, mortal online
im pretty sure no instances is how mmorpgs are meant to be - the ideal
most game engines dont render everything. they render pretty much only the things you can see.
what killed the seamless world was carebears. carebears love instanced dungeons because there is no chance of pvp.
There is some truth to the claim that game engines only render the things you see. There's also a lot of stuff that has to be rendered because it's not obvious whether you'll be able to see it. But that's a performance optimization and has nothing to do with a seamless world. Even if something is behind you, it has to be loaded, as the player could spin the camera around at any moment.
Carebears killing seamless worlds is complete nonsense. Do you really think carebears like staring at loading screens, rather than being able to seamlessly enter dungeons? And who says there can't be a PVE-only seamless world? Whether to have a seamless world or not has nothing to do with whether there is non-consensual PVP.
i think by seamless people mean basically no instances, no loading screens, just one big seamless world
By seamless, people mean just one big seamless world? Yeah, that makes sense.
Whether or not a game has instances and whether it has loading screens are completely separate issues. Actually, the question usually isn't so much whether the game has instances, but what type of instances it has and how they're handled. To argue that having instances at all means a game world can't be seamless is to argue that seamless worlds never have existed in online games, and awfully near arguing that they cannot exist.
I suppose that you could say the same for loading screens, as it always takes time to load the game initially. The key question of whether a world is seamless is whether you have to stop to load things later, or only when you launch the game at the beginning.
When people talk about instancing and a seamless world they in general think only about 4 possibilities
1) the world has loading screens between areas but, every area exist only once on a particalar server (not seamless, not instanced)
2) the world has some loading screens (usually when entering the areas that can exist multiple times) and there are cetrain areas that exist more than once for particular players or groups of players (seamless to a point, instanced), wow style
3) the world has loading screens between areas, most of the areas can exist multiple times (not seamless, instanced), more or less eq2, but it gets blurry
4) one world, no loading (seamless, not instanced), early lineage 2
As customers we do not care how the backend works, even if point A is on a different server physically from point B, if the travel from A to B is seamless, the world is seamless even if we got low fps along the way from loading textures. We judge things by our ability to meet other people in the areas we are and what happens to a item we drop in the dungeon once we exit the dungeon, and if the dungeon can be empty because someone else has killed all the monsters before we arrived.
I just thought this is going in circles far too much
Nobody has mentioned Skyrim. A large, mostly-seamless world with modern graphics is definitely possible with today's client technology. I think the issue is more related to the server-side. Splitting up players with "loading" boarders allows you to place players on several different physical server machines. This means you can spend less on processing power. Alternative methods have been difficult to implement and few have succeeded.
World of Warcraft is not seamless. It appears to be from the client side, but the servers definitely have borders. In the beginning of WoW, the borders were easy to spot because no critter would cross them, but they quickly removed spawns from areas near the borders. Players also found some exploits related to being on borders of zones.
Comments
Nonsense. Instancing doesn't mean a game can't be seamless; it all depends on how the instances are used. If a game is completely seamless, except that it has several different language versions, and you can't pass from the servers of one language version to another, then it has instancing. That doesn't mean it's not seamless.
For that matter, one could argue for technical reasons that even a single seamless game world is likely to be a single instance of that game world--and thus, the game has instancing.
That is NOT what instancing is in MMOs.
Whatever it is, it is not because developers don't know how, are lazy or anything of the sort. It is a design decision with pros and cons just like any other.
Action-combat may have better performance in an area with a fixed amount of players.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Hmm, i like this thread, people claiming its hardware limitations not developer "laziness", then explaining exacly how a seamless world could be done adequatly well enough if devs would invest the time and effort...
Flame on!
No. The main reason is people like instances that they can run with their friends. And the problem goes away with instances. People are over-estimating the need of one virtual world.
So what if the world is cut up into little pieces, as long as players are having fun.
no
most game engines dont render everything. they render pretty much only the things you can see.
what killed the seamless world was carebears. carebears love instanced dungeons because there is no chance of pvp.
There is some truth to the claim that game engines only render the things you see. There's also a lot of stuff that has to be rendered because it's not obvious whether you'll be able to see it. But that's a performance optimization and has nothing to do with a seamless world. Even if something is behind you, it has to be loaded, as the player could spin the camera around at any moment.
Carebears killing seamless worlds is complete nonsense. Do you really think carebears like staring at loading screens, rather than being able to seamlessly enter dungeons? And who says there can't be a PVE-only seamless world? Whether to have a seamless world or not has nothing to do with whether there is non-consensual PVP.
i think by seamless people mean basically no instances, no loading screens, just one big seamless world
I'm not a tech guy but SWG succeeded well enough way back when, so it should be doable today. The thing is you just can't go crazy with the graphics. SWG graphics or maybe a little better is all that I require.
By seamless, people mean just one big seamless world? Yeah, that makes sense.
Whether or not a game has instances and whether it has loading screens are completely separate issues. Actually, the question usually isn't so much whether the game has instances, but what type of instances it has and how they're handled. To argue that having instances at all means a game world can't be seamless is to argue that seamless worlds never have existed in online games, and awfully near arguing that they cannot exist.
I suppose that you could say the same for loading screens, as it always takes time to load the game initially. The key question of whether a world is seamless is whether you have to stop to load things later, or only when you launch the game at the beginning.
im guessing when OP said seamless he meant no loading screens + no instances but i dont know for sure.
there are quite a few mmorpgs that dont/didnt have instances. eg. ultima online, darkfall, EVE, mortal online
im pretty sure no instances is how mmorpgs are meant to be - the ideal
When people talk about instancing and a seamless world they in general think only about 4 possibilities
1) the world has loading screens between areas but, every area exist only once on a particalar server (not seamless, not instanced)
2) the world has some loading screens (usually when entering the areas that can exist multiple times) and there are cetrain areas that exist more than once for particular players or groups of players (seamless to a point, instanced), wow style
3) the world has loading screens between areas, most of the areas can exist multiple times (not seamless, instanced), more or less eq2, but it gets blurry
4) one world, no loading (seamless, not instanced), early lineage 2
As customers we do not care how the backend works, even if point A is on a different server physically from point B, if the travel from A to B is seamless, the world is seamless even if we got low fps along the way from loading textures. We judge things by our ability to meet other people in the areas we are and what happens to a item we drop in the dungeon once we exit the dungeon, and if the dungeon can be empty because someone else has killed all the monsters before we arrived.
I just thought this is going in circles far too much
Flame on!
Best post in this thread.