World Of Warcraft did it right first of all. There was a bit of everything.
Entirely disagree. They didn't have open dungeons, and their instanced dungeons were far from "done right". WoW was the first big MMO to start putting in features that actively destroyed community.
@OP - I didn't read the post just responding to the title.
Because these are not supposed to be single player games. If you want an exclusive instance for yourself or yourself and a friend or two go play a LAN game.
World Of Warcraft did it right first of all. There was a bit of everything.
Entirely disagree. They didn't have open dungeons, and their instanced dungeons were far from "done right". WoW was the first big MMO to start putting in features that actively destroyed community.
Eactly, why do so few people seem to realize this.
World Of Warcraft did it right first of all. There was a bit of everything.
Entirely disagree. They didn't have open dungeons, and their instanced dungeons were far from "done right". WoW was the first big MMO to start putting in features that actively destroyed community.
Open-dungeons is a mediocre idea that does not create decent theme park ideas. WoW again proved that with the dungeons that people like a lot. It was it's own arena where Blizzard could give you enough challenge and reward to compete with each other.
and no. features in the game were not destroying community at all. If that was true, WoW would not be that big. If you are talking about LFR and LFG features. That's the only way they could go to satisfy casual community.
I've played a ton of MMOs in my day, with EQ1 being my first experience with the genre back in 1999 when the game was originally released. When WoW was released, one of the key features that got me interested was the idea of instanced dungeons. For me, one of the absolute worst things about EQ was the need to camp rare spawns for loot (often for hours if not days) in order to get many items. Clearing to a boss in a dungeon only to find another group sitting there was the worst. I never actually made it to end game raiding in that game, but from what I have read it seems fairly typical for uberguilds to essentially lock down the content on a given server such that a player's only chance to raid would be to join that specific guild.
I do get that instances break immersion, but for me having to metagame by joining an uberguild or camping a specific spot for hours on end waiting for a rare spawn also breaks immersion.
I know that a lot of you feel very differently about this. I'd love to hear some detailed explanations from those that hate instancing as to why you prefer an uninstanced world and how you deal with (or dealt with) the problem of other players hogging content.
Certain implies, "some." I can't cite a source bit it seems like a lot more than some people hate the negative anti-community effects of E-Sport/McDonald's fast food instancing.
Vandal. there are other ways to deal with "griefers" than instancing, you can have loot chests that let players loot 1 item in turn in order of contribution for instance.
Tibernicus, aspel Planetside 2 is a mmo. Whether its a mmorpg is debatable, but its definetly a mmo. More so in my opinion than stuff like swtor & Neverwinter. Compared to most modern mmos it admirably does the MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER part.
I liked Anarchy Online's instancing but I also like normal instances as well. They both serve a purpose and it depends on how they are done if they are fun or not. In ToTw (and instance in AO) had a limit of how many random people could get in a specific zone/instance. Only way to pull someone into a specific instance once full was to be grouped with someone inside the instance you want in.
Always thought these style of dungeons were fun. Could be a very random and fun experience at times because of the human element. You could be minding your own business and someone further down in the instance could mass aggro everything and start running a train towards the door in an attempt to save themselves. Always made me laugh to see it happen to people who pulled more than they could handle and then panic and start running to the door. Those who didn't know what to do got steam-rolled and those who did got a good laugh. I laughed even when I got run over. Players learn pretty quick to move out of the way when they hear the mass fireballs being cast in the distance. Now I am not so much talking about twinks being an ass and training people. But just people who pulled more than they could handle and panic. Most twinks when I played were nice enough to clean their trains up if they saw that they might run someone over with them in ToTW in my experience at least.
Another fun aspect to this was when the end bosses of Subway or ToTW weren't leashed. Someone would train it to the front door and it would literally turn into a fairly lively event. People would start interacting with each other. Chat would get lively. It would also just be mass chaos (the carnage).
I am ok with instances like for WoW raids. Stuff that can get complex when learning. I can't imagine having to learn Razorgore (Vanilla WoW) and our guild being trained constantly. It wouldn't work. I'm sure it still applies to current raids in WoW.
Many players want to "live" within a fantasy world. This is the entire essence of role playing (as in RPG ... role playing game).
This means every single thing is accessible by every single player in real time. The only reason why instancing occurred to begin with was due to technical limitations. It is extremely hard for servers and pcs to emulate a seamless word. From this evolved the mini-games and balances strictly applied to instances because developers didn't have to worry about other players entering.
There is only one reason why so many players think this is the staple of mmos now: they got used to it.
If there is a singular truth in gaming it is that players are lemmings willing to drink what ever juice developers give them. They said this is how mmos are going to be because they had limited game engines and wanted to lower development time and cost ... and players said "OK!". Developers changed the direction of mmo design to attract a larger audience from other genres who would never have played games like EQ, AC and UO so they could make more money at the expense of the genre. It is these players who now turn toward those who founded this genre and ask "you mad bro?". F#&k ya we are mad.
The point is that today's mmos are little more than a collection of zones and instances bound to itemization forcing you through mini-games that have no actual part of the core world. Many players want to enter a complete world just like our own but set in fantasy. The next city could be miles away and SHOULD take time to get to. The journey is the story ... not queueing for mini-games within the most complex GUI which is the so called "world" that offers little other than grinding levels so one can get to more instances.
I simply cannot fathom why so many cannot understand this concept. You log into a game and it is a seamless world. Every action you make impacts every thing and everyone around you. Perhaps the issues is that so many people today just live within their home, go to work and ignore every other aspect of the world in between pretending nobody else exists outside their social circles. They pretty much just queue for home, work and play and think other people's lives are just an annoyance.
Now there are others who realize society is what being human is. Perhaps they have no issues with the greater social structure around them but they certainly have no problem with a social structure in a game. It is the ENTIRE POINT to a seamless mmorpg. The power is put in the hands of the social groups that form within the game. The ability to police is held by the social groups. All these systems are required and instanced games are designed to take these systems away from the players. Today's mmos are a shadow of what they used to be. The more power you put in the hands of the players means less control over what the developer of monetize and force game play direction. Loss of these options is not for player benefit which so many have blindly thought but for the benefit of the developer.
If you a social drop out I understand that you many not like social games BUT those who enjoy social experiments (which is entirely what these games are) set within fantastic worlds DEMAND that type of game to be made. There are very few options for them at this time.
If you have to ask why people want a game that they enjoy and do not understand why they would enjoy it ... there is no way for anyone to explain it to you. The only answer is from within through some level of self-enlightenment and maturity. If playing along side others scares you or you cannot manage the level of accountability the comes with it then that is your failing ... not the failing of others trying to explain it to you.
I would love to think all these upcoming sandbox games (minus a few where I truly believe in the developer's sincerity) are because of player backlash but it is largely because they have now found a way to monetize them. As long as some damn good seamless'ish worlds are made then I likely do not care much why.
I believe instancing is a bad idea for the following reasons....
1) Cuts off players from the rest of the community
2) Causes loot itemization to be built around instances
The problem of spawn camping and clearing dungeons can be solved by random loot drops.
If a large area is roaming with "heroic" mobs with a set chance at dropping said item, then many many groups of players can be killing the mobs for random chance. There are probably much better ways to deal with the issue but that's just off the top of my head.
Instancing itself is bad, but it also encourages lazy game design and influences where the game's development goes.
First thing you have to understand that a lot of people don't seem to be able to. Just because your game has no instancing does not mean the game becomes about camping spawns.
EverQuest's design was flawed, and instancing was kind of needed to fix the spawn camping issue. WoW, which took the core of EQ's bad design and turned it into a new MMO, used instancing as a band aid, and kept the same flawed dungeon raid and loot systems.
Other MMOs, like DAoC, managed to design a game that allowed people to experience public dungeons without constant camping and fighting over "rare spawns". But that's a whole different story how they did that.
To answer your question, I hate instancing because it encourages soloing, forming cliques, removes people from the game world, forces you to do quests and group with very specific people, breaks immersion, encourages developers to release more instanced solo linear content, rather than try to simulate a game world, and several other slightly different reasons. Because the end result of abusing instances (which all devs do eventually, you can't just use A LITTLE instancing it seems) is SWTOR, with no day and night cycle, no real game world, just a bunch of instances pretending to be a bad singleplayer game.
I play an MMO to socialize with other people as we adventure TOGETHER in a living virtual world. I've met most of my lasting MMO friends randomly in dungeons. One of my favorite experiences was this: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/xkhlt/why_we_like_old_mmos_dark_age_of_camelot/ and that is not possible with instances. You can't randomly meet other people, decide to group, help other groups, and explore at your own pace. You have your pace dictated to you by the game, and you have only one path, to get to the end.
Raph Koster said something about the social glue that holds MMOs together... every time players are forced to interact with one another, they share ideas, experiences, and other things that a player might never come across if they never came across those other people. So old MMOs were designed to get people to cross paths a lot. At the bank, at the market, at your class trainer, in the dungeons, and you'd get experiences and friends from these things. And because of these friends, you'd stick to your MMOs longer. (It's no wonder modern themeparks collapse within 3 months).
So, that's part of why I don't like instancing.
Thanks for explaining this to OP so I didn't have to. Some people just need people to point out the obvious to them.
....I thought this was gonna be the "biggest sandbox ever create" stated by Sony,
So they are putting instances in it?
Yes, how many and how much, we do not know. I think the answer was, "We will use them where it makes sense and is appropriate"....So you could view that as maybe personal story type stuff only, and everything else is open, all the way to everything but the open part of the world is instanced...
It is a statement that no one can know what it means, except that something will be instanced.
I've played a ton of MMOs in my day, with EQ1 being my first experience with the genre back in 1999 when the game was originally released. When WoW was released, one of the key features that got me interested was the idea of instanced dungeons. For me, one of the absolute worst things about EQ was the need to camp rare spawns for loot (often for hours if not days) in order to get many items. Clearing to a boss in a dungeon only to find another group sitting there was the worst. I never actually made it to end game raiding in that game, but from what I have read it seems fairly typical for uberguilds to essentially lock down the content on a given server such that a player's only chance to raid would be to join that specific guild.
I do get that instances break immersion, but for me having to metagame by joining an uberguild or camping a specific spot for hours on end waiting for a rare spawn also breaks immersion.
I know that a lot of you feel very differently about this. I'd love to hear some detailed explanations from those that hate instancing as to why you prefer an uninstanced world and how you deal with (or dealt with) the problem of other players hogging content.
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa
To answer your question, I hate instancing because it encourages soloing, forming cliques, removes people from the game world, forces you to do quests and group with very specific people, breaks immersion, encourages developers to release more instanced solo linear content, rather than try to simulate a game world, and several other slightly different reasons. Because the end result of abusing instances (which all devs do eventually, you can't just use A LITTLE instancing it seems) is SWTOR, with no day and night cycle, no real game world, just a bunch of instances pretending to be a bad singleplayer game.
Both sides have the same problem (marked in red). Players will always walk the way of least resistance with biggest gain and exploit game mechanics for that reason.
ether you have open world where stuff gets farmed by a specific group all the time and you dont get a chance until you join them. Or your doing instanced content with a specific group and dont get the chance without them cause the content is that hard, or the content is so casual that every bad PUG can do it.
GW2 has a middle way. It has open world encounters which are not farmable by others and dont locks you out if you dont join them, and have dungeons that are quite non casual. GW2 lacks in other parts but it took steps that could brings the best of the two.
The hope is SOE learns really from all the past games.
They announced dungeon (caves) that are generated and destroyed on the fly. So open world dungeons that can not be farmed because they are only for a short time there. Rally Calls that are massive player dynamic events over weeks. Emergent AI to move the Rare NPCs around so another way to prevent farming spots.
Its a really fine line to go on the right balance.
The only reason why instancing occurred to begin with was due to technical limitations. It is extremely hard for servers and pcs to emulate a seamless word. From this evolved the mini-games and balances strictly applied to instances because developers didn't have to worry about other players entering.
There is only one reason why so many players think this is the staple of mmos now: they got used to it.
Incorrect on the first part, correct on the second.
There were some basic technical advantages to instancing, but that's not the reason it took off. It took off because WoW used it, because it was necessary to make EQ's design work, which WoW ripped off.
Seamless worlds have been possible, and have existed, for a long time.
I've played a ton of MMOs in my day, with EQ1 being my first experience with the genre back in 1999 when the game was originally released. When WoW was released, one of the key features that got me interested was the idea of instanced dungeons. For me, one of the absolute worst things about EQ was the need to camp rare spawns for loot (often for hours if not days) in order to get many items. Clearing to a boss in a dungeon only to find another group sitting there was the worst. I never actually made it to end game raiding in that game, but from what I have read it seems fairly typical for uberguilds to essentially lock down the content on a given server such that a player's only chance to raid would be to join that specific guild.
I do get that instances break immersion, but for me having to metagame by joining an uberguild or camping a specific spot for hours on end waiting for a rare spawn also breaks immersion.
I know that a lot of you feel very differently about this. I'd love to hear some detailed explanations from those that hate instancing as to why you prefer an uninstanced world and how you deal with (or dealt with) the problem of other players hogging content.
During which expansion timeframe did you quit EQ1, which originally released in 1999? What was the longest camp time during that expansion?
Also, would I have to join a specific guild in, for example, SWTOR to complete nightmare mode dungeons?
I've played a ton of MMOs in my day, with EQ1 being my first experience with the genre back in 1999 when the game was originally released. When WoW was released, one of the key features that got me interested was the idea of instanced dungeons. For me, one of the absolute worst things about EQ was the need to camp rare spawns for loot (often for hours if not days) in order to get many items. Clearing to a boss in a dungeon only to find another group sitting there was the worst. I never actually made it to end game raiding in that game, but from what I have read it seems fairly typical for uberguilds to essentially lock down the content on a given server such that a player's only chance to raid would be to join that specific guild.
I do get that instances break immersion, but for me having to metagame by joining an uberguild or camping a specific spot for hours on end waiting for a rare spawn also breaks immersion.
I know that a lot of you feel very differently about this. I'd love to hear some detailed explanations from those that hate instancing as to why you prefer an uninstanced world and how you deal with (or dealt with) the problem of other players hogging content.
Instancing turns a MMO (MASSIVELY Multiplayer Online Game) into a LAN (Local Area Network) game. Basically it takes the whole point of the genre and makes it an early 90s game in terms of network connectivity. You go from 1000's of players having an impact (potential impact) on the game experience to 2, 4, 6, or 8 (party size) having an impact (potential impact) on the game experience.
I've played a ton of MMOs in my day, with EQ1 being my first experience with the genre back in 1999 when the game was originally released. When WoW was released, one of the key features that got me interested was the idea of instanced dungeons. For me, one of the absolute worst things about EQ was the need to camp rare spawns for loot (often for hours if not days) in order to get many items. Clearing to a boss in a dungeon only to find another group sitting there was the worst. I never actually made it to end game raiding in that game, but from what I have read it seems fairly typical for uberguilds to essentially lock down the content on a given server such that a player's only chance to raid would be to join that specific guild.
I do get that instances break immersion, but for me having to metagame by joining an uberguild or camping a specific spot for hours on end waiting for a rare spawn also breaks immersion.
I know that a lot of you feel very differently about this. I'd love to hear some detailed explanations from those that hate instancing as to why you prefer an uninstanced world and how you deal with (or dealt with) the problem of other players hogging content.
Originally posted by Tibernicuspa
To answer your question, I hate instancing because it encourages soloing, forming cliques, removes people from the game world, forces you to do quests and group with very specific people, breaks immersion, encourages developers to release more instanced solo linear content, rather than try to simulate a game world, and several other slightly different reasons. Because the end result of abusing instances (which all devs do eventually, you can't just use A LITTLE instancing it seems) is SWTOR, with no day and night cycle, no real game world, just a bunch of instances pretending to be a bad singleplayer game.
Both sides have the same problem (marked in red). Players will always walk the way of least resistance with biggest gain and exploit game mechanics for that reason.
ether you have open world where stuff gets farmed by a specific group all the time and you dont get a chance until you join them.
What is wrong with you people.. NO. That was a problem in EVERQUEST. THERE ARE MORE MMOS WITHOUT INSTANCING THAN EVERQUEST.
Instancing itself is bad, but it also encourages lazy game design and influences where the game's development goes.
First thing you have to understand that a lot of people don't seem to be able to. Just because your game has no instancing does not mean the game becomes about camping spawns.
EverQuest's design was flawed, and instancing was kind of needed to fix the spawn camping issue. WoW, which took the core of EQ's bad design and turned it into a new MMO, used instancing as a band aid, and kept the same flawed dungeon raid and loot systems.
Other MMOs, like DAoC, managed to design a game that allowed people to experience public dungeons without constant camping and fighting over "rare spawns". But that's a whole different story how they did that.
To answer your question, I hate instancing because it encourages soloing, forming cliques, removes people from the game world, forces you to do quests and group with very specific people, breaks immersion, encourages developers to release more instanced solo linear content, rather than try to simulate a game world, and several other slightly different reasons. Because the end result of abusing instances (which all devs do eventually, you can't just use A LITTLE instancing it seems) is SWTOR, with no day and night cycle, no real game world, just a bunch of instances pretending to be a bad singleplayer game.
I play an MMO to socialize with other people as we adventure TOGETHER in a living virtual world. I've met most of my lasting MMO friends randomly in dungeons. One of my favorite experiences was this: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/xkhlt/why_we_like_old_mmos_dark_age_of_camelot/ and that is not possible with instances. You can't randomly meet other people, decide to group, help other groups, and explore at your own pace. You have your pace dictated to you by the game, and you have only one path, to get to the end.
Raph Koster said something about the social glue that holds MMOs together... every time players are forced to interact with one another, they share ideas, experiences, and other things that a player might never come across if they never came across those other people. So old MMOs were designed to get people to cross paths a lot. At the bank, at the market, at your class trainer, in the dungeons, and you'd get experiences and friends from these things. And because of these friends, you'd stick to your MMOs longer. (It's no wonder modern themeparks collapse within 3 months).
So, that's part of why I don't like instancing.
Thanks for explaining this to OP so I didn't have to. Some people just need people to point out the obvious to them.
There seems to be some assumptions that "Instances" and "Looking for Group with instant teleportation" are the same thing. They are not. Even before instances, even before video games, people formed cliques and did things with people they enjoyed to be around.
The original idea of instances was to allow better tuning of a dungeon to a specific party size. Quite often these open dungeons would be zerged and all difficulty removed. Bosses were not overcome, they were farmed and loot was distributed via the DKP system. As far as cliques go, anyone that played then can tell you how much it sucked when an item that would be a definate upgrade for you.. was instead given to the main tank or whomever was best friends with the guild leader.
I agree 100% that the Looking For Group tools have ruined a lot of the fun of dungeons. However this is not because they are instanced, it's because they inhibit communication and foster a sense of "me first". This is what (helps) kill the community.
Without misery, how good can things feel? What do I mean? If you never experience grief, frustration, failure, pain, discomfort, etc, how do you measure just how good an accomplishment is. This is only one aspect to my anti-instancing opinion, but it's a good one for me. It helped me understand why it was that I liked games like EQ where you had to spawn camp, or try to steal that kill to get credit.
With instances, you don't have to deal with other players. Some people like that, but I do not. I like going into a dungeon and either finding a group of players to team up with or take my team in there and take over the spawns. It's more engaging and I LIKE IT THAT WAY. If a place is taken and it looks like I have no chance to get what I need, I focus on a different spawn, quest, item hunt, whatever.
One of the worst solutions I've ever seen to a non instanced, non competitive environment is this:
When I first played World of Warcraft, I played a hunter on the evil side (whatever it's called), and one of the first things I had to do was go to a cave, find some items and then kill the main dude in there. It took all of about 20 minutes to get things collected. Then upon reaching the main dude, there were people there. I was thinking, ok, I can outlast these suckers. But, much to my dismay the boss popped approximately 2 minutes after death. Probably less. When it was my turn I simply killed him and moved on. No sense of accomplishment. No real adventure. In the amount of time it took me to kill bats and rats to level 2 outside of Qeynos, I was a level 15 hunter and didn't even care because I didn't feel like I had earned it. That doesn't count the seemingly random spawns of Flippy Darkpaw coming in to wipe out an unsuspecting noob.
I'm not going to go into great detail as to why I hate instancing or why I like spawn camping and taking YEARS to level a character up, because I cannot convince you to like it. But if I could say just one thing to someone who likes instances, fast spawn timers and short leveling times, "Why do you play MMOs when single player or standard multiplayer games are more up your alley?".
Instancing removes the feeling of being in a large open world. It really makes things seem so fake and destroys immersion. I hated the way it worked on tatooine in swtor. You couldn't even walk out of the main city to the dunes. You had to use fast travel. In EQN, I want to explore the routes between my favorite places. I want to tunnel down in random places and find a dungeon in there now and then - even if it means I get instajibbed by the boss that's waiting. I hope to never see an insyamce portal or load screen.
Without misery, how good can things feel? What do I mean? If you never experience grief, frustration, failure, pain, discomfort, etc, how do you measure just how good an accomplishment is. This is only one aspect to my anti-instancing opinion, but it's a good one for me. It helped me understand why it was that I liked games like EQ where you had to spawn camp, or try to steal that kill to get credit.
I just did a quest line last night in Pirate 101 with a couple other players where the main battles were all instanced. The number of mobs and their difficulty level was tailored to the size and level of our group members. Lots of fun travel together with plenty of challenging battles.
Oddly, despite the complete absence of anyone killstealing, ninja looting, PKing, blocking, griefing, tagging, training or creating any other sources of frustration or failure for our group, we all had a great time.
It didn't just feel good. It felt great.
I look forward to logging in tonight, meeting up with a couple people and having a similar experience. I am quite sure it will feel great tonight, too.
I hope that someday you can eventually experience the feeling of a good gaming session without needing misery to do so, so that such an experience is no longer a mystifying concept to you.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Wow... the "logic" some of you are using is so... idk if theres a word for it. Its just REALLY REALLY REALLY bad. Instancing does NOT destroy the community, nor does it make the world smaller (in most cases), and if your so uptight having a temporary invisible partition between you and uninvolved people kills your "immersion" its nobodies fault but your own. There are 100s of other reasons but my God you people are insatiable. Have a Snickers, your not yourself when your hungry.
Comments
Entirely disagree. They didn't have open dungeons, and their instanced dungeons were far from "done right". WoW was the first big MMO to start putting in features that actively destroyed community.
@OP - I didn't read the post just responding to the title.
Because these are not supposed to be single player games. If you want an exclusive instance for yourself or yourself and a friend or two go play a LAN game.
Eactly, why do so few people seem to realize this.
Open-dungeons is a mediocre idea that does not create decent theme park ideas. WoW again proved that with the dungeons that people like a lot. It was it's own arena where Blizzard could give you enough challenge and reward to compete with each other.
and no. features in the game were not destroying community at all. If that was true, WoW would not be that big. If you are talking about LFR and LFG features. That's the only way they could go to satisfy casual community.
Hardcore community was always there.
Certain implies, "some." I can't cite a source bit it seems like a lot more than some people hate the negative anti-community effects of E-Sport/McDonald's fast food instancing.
there are other ways to deal with "griefers" than instancing, you can have loot chests that let players loot 1 item in turn in order of contribution for instance.
Tibernicus, aspel
Planetside 2 is a mmo. Whether its a mmorpg is debatable, but its definetly a mmo. More so in my opinion than stuff like swtor & Neverwinter. Compared to most modern mmos it admirably does the MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER part.
I liked Anarchy Online's instancing but I also like normal instances as well. They both serve a purpose and it depends on how they are done if they are fun or not. In ToTw (and instance in AO) had a limit of how many random people could get in a specific zone/instance. Only way to pull someone into a specific instance once full was to be grouped with someone inside the instance you want in.
Always thought these style of dungeons were fun. Could be a very random and fun experience at times because of the human element. You could be minding your own business and someone further down in the instance could mass aggro everything and start running a train towards the door in an attempt to save themselves. Always made me laugh to see it happen to people who pulled more than they could handle and then panic and start running to the door. Those who didn't know what to do got steam-rolled and those who did got a good laugh. I laughed even when I got run over. Players learn pretty quick to move out of the way when they hear the mass fireballs being cast in the distance. Now I am not so much talking about twinks being an ass and training people. But just people who pulled more than they could handle and panic. Most twinks when I played were nice enough to clean their trains up if they saw that they might run someone over with them in ToTW in my experience at least.
Another fun aspect to this was when the end bosses of Subway or ToTW weren't leashed. Someone would train it to the front door and it would literally turn into a fairly lively event. People would start interacting with each other. Chat would get lively. It would also just be mass chaos (the carnage).
I am ok with instances like for WoW raids. Stuff that can get complex when learning. I can't imagine having to learn Razorgore (Vanilla WoW) and our guild being trained constantly. It wouldn't work. I'm sure it still applies to current raids in WoW.
Many players want to "live" within a fantasy world. This is the entire essence of role playing (as in RPG ... role playing game).
This means every single thing is accessible by every single player in real time. The only reason why instancing occurred to begin with was due to technical limitations. It is extremely hard for servers and pcs to emulate a seamless word. From this evolved the mini-games and balances strictly applied to instances because developers didn't have to worry about other players entering.
There is only one reason why so many players think this is the staple of mmos now: they got used to it.
If there is a singular truth in gaming it is that players are lemmings willing to drink what ever juice developers give them. They said this is how mmos are going to be because they had limited game engines and wanted to lower development time and cost ... and players said "OK!". Developers changed the direction of mmo design to attract a larger audience from other genres who would never have played games like EQ, AC and UO so they could make more money at the expense of the genre. It is these players who now turn toward those who founded this genre and ask "you mad bro?". F#&k ya we are mad.
The point is that today's mmos are little more than a collection of zones and instances bound to itemization forcing you through mini-games that have no actual part of the core world. Many players want to enter a complete world just like our own but set in fantasy. The next city could be miles away and SHOULD take time to get to. The journey is the story ... not queueing for mini-games within the most complex GUI which is the so called "world" that offers little other than grinding levels so one can get to more instances.
I simply cannot fathom why so many cannot understand this concept. You log into a game and it is a seamless world. Every action you make impacts every thing and everyone around you. Perhaps the issues is that so many people today just live within their home, go to work and ignore every other aspect of the world in between pretending nobody else exists outside their social circles. They pretty much just queue for home, work and play and think other people's lives are just an annoyance.
Now there are others who realize society is what being human is. Perhaps they have no issues with the greater social structure around them but they certainly have no problem with a social structure in a game. It is the ENTIRE POINT to a seamless mmorpg. The power is put in the hands of the social groups that form within the game. The ability to police is held by the social groups. All these systems are required and instanced games are designed to take these systems away from the players. Today's mmos are a shadow of what they used to be. The more power you put in the hands of the players means less control over what the developer of monetize and force game play direction. Loss of these options is not for player benefit which so many have blindly thought but for the benefit of the developer.
If you a social drop out I understand that you many not like social games BUT those who enjoy social experiments (which is entirely what these games are) set within fantastic worlds DEMAND that type of game to be made. There are very few options for them at this time.
If you have to ask why people want a game that they enjoy and do not understand why they would enjoy it ... there is no way for anyone to explain it to you. The only answer is from within through some level of self-enlightenment and maturity. If playing along side others scares you or you cannot manage the level of accountability the comes with it then that is your failing ... not the failing of others trying to explain it to you.
I would love to think all these upcoming sandbox games (minus a few where I truly believe in the developer's sincerity) are because of player backlash but it is largely because they have now found a way to monetize them. As long as some damn good seamless'ish worlds are made then I likely do not care much why.
You stay sassy!
....I thought this was gonna be the "biggest sandbox ever create" stated by Sony,
So they are putting instances in it?
My opinion to the OP:
I believe instancing is a bad idea for the following reasons....
1) Cuts off players from the rest of the community
2) Causes loot itemization to be built around instances
The problem of spawn camping and clearing dungeons can be solved by random loot drops.
If a large area is roaming with "heroic" mobs with a set chance at dropping said item, then many many groups of players can be killing the mobs for random chance. There are probably much better ways to deal with the issue but that's just off the top of my head.
Thanks for explaining this to OP so I didn't have to. Some people just need people to point out the obvious to them.
Yes, how many and how much, we do not know. I think the answer was, "We will use them where it makes sense and is appropriate"....So you could view that as maybe personal story type stuff only, and everything else is open, all the way to everything but the open part of the world is instanced...
It is a statement that no one can know what it means, except that something will be instanced.
Both sides have the same problem (marked in red). Players will always walk the way of least resistance with biggest gain and exploit game mechanics for that reason.
ether you have open world where stuff gets farmed by a specific group all the time and you dont get a chance until you join them. Or your doing instanced content with a specific group and dont get the chance without them cause the content is that hard, or the content is so casual that every bad PUG can do it.
GW2 has a middle way. It has open world encounters which are not farmable by others and dont locks you out if you dont join them, and have dungeons that are quite non casual. GW2 lacks in other parts but it took steps that could brings the best of the two.
The hope is SOE learns really from all the past games.
They announced dungeon (caves) that are generated and destroyed on the fly. So open world dungeons that can not be farmed because they are only for a short time there. Rally Calls that are massive player dynamic events over weeks. Emergent AI to move the Rare NPCs around so another way to prevent farming spots.
Its a really fine line to go on the right balance.
Incorrect on the first part, correct on the second.
There were some basic technical advantages to instancing, but that's not the reason it took off. It took off because WoW used it, because it was necessary to make EQ's design work, which WoW ripped off.
Seamless worlds have been possible, and have existed, for a long time.
During which expansion timeframe did you quit EQ1, which originally released in 1999? What was the longest camp time during that expansion?
Also, would I have to join a specific guild in, for example, SWTOR to complete nightmare mode dungeons?
Instancing turns a MMO (MASSIVELY Multiplayer Online Game) into a LAN (Local Area Network) game. Basically it takes the whole point of the genre and makes it an early 90s game in terms of network connectivity. You go from 1000's of players having an impact (potential impact) on the game experience to 2, 4, 6, or 8 (party size) having an impact (potential impact) on the game experience.
What is wrong with you people.. NO. That was a problem in EVERQUEST. THERE ARE MORE MMOS WITHOUT INSTANCING THAN EVERQUEST.
Thanks, I think it's the right answer too!
There seems to be some assumptions that "Instances" and "Looking for Group with instant teleportation" are the same thing. They are not. Even before instances, even before video games, people formed cliques and did things with people they enjoyed to be around.
The original idea of instances was to allow better tuning of a dungeon to a specific party size. Quite often these open dungeons would be zerged and all difficulty removed. Bosses were not overcome, they were farmed and loot was distributed via the DKP system. As far as cliques go, anyone that played then can tell you how much it sucked when an item that would be a definate upgrade for you.. was instead given to the main tank or whomever was best friends with the guild leader.
I agree 100% that the Looking For Group tools have ruined a lot of the fun of dungeons. However this is not because they are instanced, it's because they inhibit communication and foster a sense of "me first". This is what (helps) kill the community.
Without misery, how good can things feel? What do I mean? If you never experience grief, frustration, failure, pain, discomfort, etc, how do you measure just how good an accomplishment is. This is only one aspect to my anti-instancing opinion, but it's a good one for me. It helped me understand why it was that I liked games like EQ where you had to spawn camp, or try to steal that kill to get credit.
With instances, you don't have to deal with other players. Some people like that, but I do not. I like going into a dungeon and either finding a group of players to team up with or take my team in there and take over the spawns. It's more engaging and I LIKE IT THAT WAY. If a place is taken and it looks like I have no chance to get what I need, I focus on a different spawn, quest, item hunt, whatever.
One of the worst solutions I've ever seen to a non instanced, non competitive environment is this:
When I first played World of Warcraft, I played a hunter on the evil side (whatever it's called), and one of the first things I had to do was go to a cave, find some items and then kill the main dude in there. It took all of about 20 minutes to get things collected. Then upon reaching the main dude, there were people there. I was thinking, ok, I can outlast these suckers. But, much to my dismay the boss popped approximately 2 minutes after death. Probably less. When it was my turn I simply killed him and moved on. No sense of accomplishment. No real adventure. In the amount of time it took me to kill bats and rats to level 2 outside of Qeynos, I was a level 15 hunter and didn't even care because I didn't feel like I had earned it. That doesn't count the seemingly random spawns of Flippy Darkpaw coming in to wipe out an unsuspecting noob.
I'm not going to go into great detail as to why I hate instancing or why I like spawn camping and taking YEARS to level a character up, because I cannot convince you to like it. But if I could say just one thing to someone who likes instances, fast spawn timers and short leveling times, "Why do you play MMOs when single player or standard multiplayer games are more up your alley?".
I hated the way it worked on tatooine in swtor. You couldn't even walk out of the main city to the dunes. You had to use fast travel.
In EQN, I want to explore the routes between my favorite places. I want to tunnel down in random places and find a dungeon in there now and then - even if it means I get instajibbed by the boss that's waiting. I hope to never see an insyamce portal or load screen.
I just did a quest line last night in Pirate 101 with a couple other players where the main battles were all instanced. The number of mobs and their difficulty level was tailored to the size and level of our group members. Lots of fun travel together with plenty of challenging battles.
Oddly, despite the complete absence of anyone killstealing, ninja looting, PKing, blocking, griefing, tagging, training or creating any other sources of frustration or failure for our group, we all had a great time.
It didn't just feel good. It felt great.
I look forward to logging in tonight, meeting up with a couple people and having a similar experience. I am quite sure it will feel great tonight, too.
I hope that someday you can eventually experience the feeling of a good gaming session without needing misery to do so, so that such an experience is no longer a mystifying concept to you.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre