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Open World vs Instances Fail or Future?
bigtime102
Member UncommonPosts: 177
in Guild Wars 2
Or was it better with the instances like in Guild Wars 1 ?
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We're slowly seeing the problems they created a month after launch and on nov 16th start to affect the population.
It's getting to where people just don't want to login anymore. And I can relate. Even the dungeoneers don't want to do the fractals and that i find is most telling.
Instances defined GW1 and are what the game successful, it was the key ingredient in the formula for its success. It had an affect on many gameplay elements that made GW1 a winner that weren't apparent at the time until now when GW2 did the opposite approach. Respawning mobs- immersion killing, zergs - no challenge. For me anyway the things that made GW1 fun arent in GW2 and after 17 hours in 2 days of playing Ive had enough! next.
Oderint, dum metuant.
I disagree. There are some very valid reasons to make your MMOG 'zoned' over a fully open world. These tend to be technical but the differences are also rather obvious. Let’s compare WoW (a fully open world, accept continent - continent) and Guild Wars 2, a world divided into several dozen 'hard zones'. Now the reasons to have an open world are obvious, no loading screens, the feeling of a seamless world that you can walk across, etc. But there are also downsides to having an open world. Because the loading has to be kept minimal enough to avoid a loading screen, art assets, texture sets, the color palette have to remain largely the same as there is a limited 'budget' for each of these things and without a loading screen very little of it can be dumped between zones. This is why from one zone to the next, little tends to change in WoW. Buildings are re-used, trees look pretty much the same (with different color foliage), the color palette is the same. The game (like all games) has a limited texture and polygon budget and without a full load the constraints are tighter. The only time we see significant changes is if you switch continents, which requires a full load but also allows the game to drop previous assets, and load new ones.
Adversely this is why many games that still use hard zones have such great graphics. GW2 is perhaps most noted for its beauty. Each zone is stunning in its detail. The game requiring a full load each zone means they can use a whole new set of assets, color palettes, textures, etc. Each zone tends to have a fairly unique look (though each region tends to be themed in GW2) and zoning from one to the next can bring significant changes because with each load brings entirely new assets, a new texture and poly budgets, etc.
So it's a trade off. Neither is necessarily the 'only way to go'. Some folks tend to prefer an open world obviously. To me so long as the loading is kept to a minimum, I am 100% fine with hard zones, and in some ways prefer it. GW2 is fantastic in that dept, with loading screens generally under 3 seconds for me accept specific maps like Lion’s Arch.
There is a difference between open zones and instances - Instances you are in by yourself and/or your group (think all of GW1 besides the lobby towns and GW2 dungeons and PS). The reason for the zones in GW2 is the areas are pretty large and if the whole world was on one server at once, the server would choke. It is a way to make the servers a little less expensive.
There is no game with fantastic graphics that is not zoned, currently.
Exactly. See my post above for why that is.
TERA, brah. Other than swapping continents.
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I agree with instances from gw1. Open world take the challenge and the scaling system obviously doesn't work, not as goos as it should be. Its probably not possible to ballance the open world to work, or its extreamly complicated to do so. This is indeed what bothers me the most. But, !!!dungeons!!! are instances for 5 players and still they are way to easy, once you know the fights. Again different from GW1, where dungeons are hard even if you know how to do it, there is still a challenge to them. Why did they made this decision?! At least Dungeons should be hard...
Rift is largely seemless, and has graphics tehcnically as good as GW2, or better (poly counts, textures - disregarding design which is a matter of taste).
Instancing the game world has likely more to do with managing players within that world than an actual limitation of graphics engines; 7 year old consolees can manage high detailed sprawling worlds (RDR, Skyrim, GTA IV, BF3) that hold many more assets than a typical MMORPG does - not counting the variety of player controlled characters (my explanation above).
http://lyrics.iztok.org/verse/Lynyrd_Skynyrd/Simple_Man/80615
GW2 may not be as instanced as GW1 but it's still full of instancing, multiple copies of world's and instanced dungeon , it's not an open world.I disagree. There are some very valid reasons to make your MMOG 'zoned' over a fully open world. These tend to be technical but the differences are also rather obvious. Lets compare WoW (a fully open world, accept continent - continent) and Guild Wars 2, a world divided into several dozen 'hard zones'. Now the reasons to have an open world are obvious, no loading screens, the feeling of a seamless world that you can walk across, etc. But there are also downsides to having an open world. Because the loading has to be kept minimal enough to avoid a loading screen, art assets, texture sets, the color palette have to remain largely the same as there is a limited 'budget' for each of these things and without a loading screen very little of it can be dumped between zones. This is why from one zone to the next, little tends to change in WoW. Buildings are re-used, trees look pretty much the same (with different color foliage), the color palette is the same. The game (like all games) has a limited texture and polygon budget and without a full load the constraints are tighter. The only time we see significant changes is if you switch continents, which requires a full load but also allows the game to drop previous assets, and load new ones.
Adversely this is why many games that still use hard zones have such great graphics. GW2 is perhaps most noted for its beauty. Each zone is stunning in its detail. The game requiring a full load each zone means they can use a whole new set of assets, color palettes, textures, etc. Each zone tends to have a fairly unique look (though each region tends to be themed in GW2) and zoning from one to the next can bring significant changes because with each load brings entirely new assets, a new texture and poly budgets, etc.
So it's a trade off. Neither is necessarily the 'only way to go'. Some folks tend to prefer an open world obviously. To me so long as the loading is kept to a minimum, I am 100% fine with hard zones, and in some ways prefer it. GW2 is fantastic in that dept, with loading screens generally under 3 seconds for me accept specific maps like Lions Arch.
All that you have written does not get away from the fact that GW2 is not an open world, it's full of instancing.Its actually zoned, with some instances.
The PvP is fully zoned.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
I disagree. There are some very valid reasons to make your MMOG 'zoned' over a fully open world. These tend to be technical but the differences are also rather obvious. Lets compare WoW (a fully open world, accept continent - continent) and Guild Wars 2, a world divided into several dozen 'hard zones'. Now the reasons to have an open world are obvious, no loading screens, the feeling of a seamless world that you can walk across, etc. But there are also downsides to having an open world. Because the loading has to be kept minimal enough to avoid a loading screen, art assets, texture sets, the color palette have to remain largely the same as there is a limited 'budget' for each of these things and without a loading screen very little of it can be dumped between zones. This is why from one zone to the next, little tends to change in WoW. Buildings are re-used, trees look pretty much the same (with different color foliage), the color palette is the same. The game (like all games) has a limited texture and polygon budget and without a full load the constraints are tighter. The only time we see significant changes is if you switch continents, which requires a full load but also allows the game to drop previous assets, and load new ones.
Adversely this is why many games that still use hard zones have such great graphics. GW2 is perhaps most noted for its beauty. Each zone is stunning in its detail. The game requiring a full load each zone means they can use a whole new set of assets, color palettes, textures, etc. Each zone tends to have a fairly unique look (though each region tends to be themed in GW2) and zoning from one to the next can bring significant changes because with each load brings entirely new assets, a new texture and poly budgets, etc.
So it's a trade off. Neither is necessarily the 'only way to go'. Some folks tend to prefer an open world obviously. To me so long as the loading is kept to a minimum, I am 100% fine with hard zones, and in some ways prefer it. GW2 is fantastic in that dept, with loading screens generally under 3 seconds for me accept specific maps like Lions Arch.
All that you have written does not get away from the fact that GW2 is not an open world, it's full of instancing.Its actually zoned, with some instances.
The PvP is fully zoned.
Right, so you agree that GW2 is not an open world, it has instancing and loading between zones and multiple copies of each zone. I'm glad you have just reconfirmed what i have been sayin: GW2 is not an open world.
I know the difference, GW2 has instanced dungeons and loading between zones, does it not? One would think that 16+ years after the first mainstream graphical MMO, some would understand what open world means.Like I said... it's nothing to do with graphics. It's about keeping track of everything that's currently happening in the zone. Static quest givers can be treated as pieces of terrain, always there with no extra processing required. However with the dynamic events the system has to keep track of every NPC as though they were players... location, state (dead, alive, where in their event chain they are, etc.) and all that. You can't simply load the immediate area someone is in like in an apparently seamless world... when you load into a zone you need to have all the information available for all the events and NPCs in that zone.
Get used to zones, they'll be the norm in the future as more content becomes more and more dynamic.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Good post.
Also, there is "zone" and "zone".
I'm usually strongly anti-zone, but when the zones are as huge as in GW2, and the passage from one zone to another actually makes sense, meaning you don't suddenly move from snow to dry desert, then I don't mind them at all.
Want examples of badly designed zone based games? EQ2, where you have that problem of moving from one zone to another with a totally different biome, which makes them feel totally disconnected. Age of Conan and TSW, where zones are at least hundreds if not thousands of kilometers appart, and are only small random spots of a world, which results in it not feeling like a world at all. LOTRO, where even though a vast part of the game's landscape is zoneless, you have a loading screen for every single damned indoor area, be it the local Inn or a cave in the wilderness.
GW2 is nothing like those examples I just gave. Links between zones make sense, you don't go from snow to desert out of nowhere. All zones are geographically side to side. 99% of buildings, caves and other indoor areas are seamlessly part of the zone, without the need for a loading screen, only exception being the few story related areas which aren't a big deal because they are very rare. Actually, many zones in GW2 are multi level with huge underground parts. That's good zone based design.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Open but zoned world lol, seems you are trying to make your own win win situation up. GW2 is not an open zoned world it's an instanced zone world, dungeons are instanced and you load between zones, it's not open no matter how you try to gloss over it.
Is a zoned world the way of the future,who knows but make no mistake GW2 is not an open world MMO .
Question: has GW2 got instances and loading between every single zone including cities?
Tera is not a complete open world but even that is not as closed as GW2, the same applies to WOW.
Eh... what? I'm not talking about the instanced areas. Dungeons are dungeons, they're instanced, everyone knows that.
The world, however, is an open world split into zones (i.e. not seamless). When you're in a zone you're in there with anyone that chooses to enter or was already there. When you leave, it stays behind instead of disappearing to be recreated next time you go to enter. So yes, GW2 is indeed an open world that is divided into zones. Response to your question, no. GW2 does not have instances between every single zone and city, whatever that means. It does have to load up the zone as you travel between them for reasons I stated above... dynamic content and moving NPCs that are treated as characters and not terrain.
You seem to be mixing words and definitions. You have open worlds (non-instanced) and you have instances, which are "private" occurrances of the world. Zoning is completely different. Zoning is when the open world is broken down into manageable pieces for the sake of performance. Seamless worlds load the zones around you while you progress through them. WoW is pretty good at that and can afford to do so with their static world. Non-seamless worlds, like GW2, need to load and keep track of an entire zone and the activities within, so as much of the zone is loaded as possible at once when you enter, then the dynamics of the zone are kept track of while you're in the zone. This is necessary in a world where NPCs are mobile and can be in many states, as well as the environment itself.
It's been awhile... what's that early level zone in WoW near the human capital (Stormbridge was it? I forget... spent more time in IronForge) where that broken lodge area has been having its roof repaired for... well, years? (Don't know if that finally changed with Cata...) That's an example of a big difference in the styles of worlds. While WoW may "feel" more open, every time you go by there the same worker is hammering on the same piece of roof in an endlessly cycling animation. In GW2, however, walls may be completely destroyed or fully repaired. Town gates may be blown open and all the NPCs dead or it could be a thriving trade stop for you. When you enter a zone, the game needs to put you in the right setting, loading you into an up to date current environment rather than simply plopping you into static terrain and only needing to know where players are.
Oderint, dum metuant.
@Volkon: nope, it hasn't changed much since Cata - the most "dynamic" content you have in WoW is through "phasing", but you still have the same NPCS hammering on the same broken building for ages. Nothing even remotely close to GW2's dynamic events.
This said, I think GW2 is just the first step in that direction (I'd daresay the "right" direction), the much needed "kick in the hornet nest" of WoW clones, and that the best has yet to come, truely dynamic worlds where nothing ever happens twice the same way, where you have a realistic ecology and migrating populations of sentients and animals, and where "events" or "quests" or whatever you name them are generated on the fly depending on the actually local situation.
E.g. you have a wolf population annoying a village, because the local hunters exterminated the rabbit and deer population, therefore wolves get closer to human habitat and start to be very agressive because hungry. The adventurer(s) pass by, and help the population, reduce the wolf population to a tolerable level, and the ecology balances out when the deers and rabbits reproduce and repopulate the area. Next time an adventurer (or his alt) will pass there, the situation will be totally different, maybe orcs, or brigands, or a volcano spawning fire elementals, or whatever else. The wolves may be back too at some point, of course, but it won't be scripted at all, it depends on the actions of the players in game. The point is, you've killed all the deers in an area? Expect to have some trouble with their predators. And that's not scripted on event size, but on world size.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Eh..what? You cant pick and choose what you want to make up an open world MMO. GW2 instances are part of the GW2 game and with the zoning between zones stops GW2 from being an open world MMO.
You can go into a long winded spin on it but the fact remains that GW2 is not an open world. I cant go from one side of the world without having to zone or bang up against a mountain i can't climb.
I cant enter a main dungeon and meet random people in that dungeon who are not in my group. Write as many long winded essay you want but it wont change the fact that GW2 is far from an open world MMO.
I really have no idea what point you're trying to make here. Yes, the dungeons are instanced, like they are in practically every MMO out there ( although they do have some open dungeons as well). No one is debating that. We're talking about the PvE world, which is open and divided into zones. Having zones doesn't mean the zones themselves aren't open.
Oderint, dum metuant.