General Discussion

Originally posted by Antarious

Originally posted by tarkin1980

Personally I can't think of a single positive aspect of instancing. It's just plain boring and a short cut to cater to care bear whiners who are too weak/passive to grab what they want in a true, open MMO world.

 

First off I'd want to say you must be rather weak minded or not able to think very well.

Yet that would be an insult such as you toss around the term "care bear whiners".

So if you are speaking in terms of PvP.. yes it should be "open world".

When the 90% of subscribers who PvE (yes I've worked in the industry and the accepted standard is 90% of customers will be what you term "care bears") are sent to a very dangerous place.

They step foot inside to find... 100 other adventures.  They can wander the tower, dungeon, castle .. whatever it is with absolutely no fear.. no challege... because every mob is camped.

Thus instancing.

MMO's should be mostly based on large open world or seamless world settings.

However, when a place is described as very dangerous and I walk in to find every mob camped... to find that I could walk a level 1 though this place... I find that boring... and non immersive.

So again that's what instancing should be for...  If you can't think of that.. or understand that... well there really isn't much more to say.

Er.. I'm pretty sure what I'm talking about, actually. I'm just so incredibly tired of the mentality of your 90% of subscribers, who just can't seem to accept that to get somewhere in a multi player game should take effort. If you want to kill a rare boss, you should have to accept that he is just that. Rare. You shouldn't magically be getting a private boss of your own conjured up. Most players ARE whiners. I really can't see how that makes me weak minded or "not able to think very well". Have you ever stopped to consider why MMO's these days can't seem to keep us players involved for ever and ever like they used to? Back in the days, you paid a fee to access the game. The rest was up to you. Nowadays, it seems you pay for the unquestionable right to get 1 of each epic item in the game and if you fail to get it, the developer is to blame. Waaaahhh!!

Also, if you enter a "dangerous" place, and all monsters are dead because 100 heroes are inside, killing everything, well then it obviously isn't dangerous anymore. The heroes have won the day. It's called immersion. It's a feature, not a flaw. I like to be able to exploit the work of others. Sneaking into a "dangerous" cave, cleared by other groups, to mine the ultra rare nodes from under their noses or steal their loot/chests etc. 

Unlike you, I can't judge your ability to think from only reading a couple of posts. I can only make a qualified quess, but I'll keep that to myself for now..  

Originally posted by nariusseldon 

LOL .. you have no idea what instancing is for. It is not about whether the server can support a lot of people, it is about no more camping with other people.

It is a big advance and WOW shows that it is working great. I won't play a game that i have to wait in line to kill the boss.

It's about avoiding other players? The whole purpose of an MMO, by definition a game that is massively multiplayer, is to play and interact with other players!!!!

IMO instancing is simply a shortcut. It's too time consuming, difficult and risky to make a rules and gameplay system that actually works so instead they redesign things to simply avoid the problem. Why worry about designing a mob/loot system that doesn't cause lines or why spend the time and effort making a fair PvP system that allows the players to handle it when you can simply separate the players and avoid the situation entirely? It's just so much faster, easier and cheaper. It's also why I don't subscribe to any MMORPGs anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really have a problem with instancing in itself. It's how they use it as a shortcut and in turn reduce the quality of the overall game that I don't like. They are taking the easy route rather than the better route. Instead of coming up with gameplay mechanics and rules that actually work for a variety of situations they are using instances to simply avoid the problem entirely. That's fine except I'm not going to buy your game and pay a monthly fee in order to play alone. I want to play with the other players. I want to interact with them. I like running into people in dungeons or while running around aimlessly in the wilderness. These are the reasons I play an MMORPG because these are the only things an MMORPG can provide that a regular game cannot.

Developers and publishers seem to have forgotten this. They are trying to make MMORPGs more like simple and easy single player games and avoid the complications that occur when you put so many people together. They need to remember that large complex games with lots of player interaction are the basis for such games and why people play them.

No thanks, I don't want to sit waiting for a boss mob to spawn and 500 other groups waiting for the same boss mob.

(edit)

I'll add that overly instanced (Guild Wars and especially age of conan) are even worse than having to wait for 500 other groups...I much prefer WoW's way of instancing, I really dislike AoC's instancing.

Originally posted by tarkin1980

Personally I can't think of a single positive aspect of instancing. It's just plain boring and a short cut to cater to care bear whiners who are too weak/passive to grab what they want in a true, open MMO world. Everyone has the exact same chance to get the boss kill, or whatever. You lost it to the other group? Well Boo-Hoo? I guess you just didn't cut it. Maybe it's time to stop whining and actually PRACTICE, instead of expecting to get everything served on an instanced silver plate. I'm totally against the idea that being unskilled and generally sucky should be rewarded in games. I'm not saying I wont play a game that has instances, but it IS a huge turn off. Bleh.

That is the most stupid reasoning I have read.

First, if you play EQ, you know that you ROTATE, and waiting in line for boss kill. So how are you going to practice being patient?

Secondly, it is a  freaking GAME. It is entertainment. If i want challenge, I go to work. And guess what, the marketing is NOT listening to drivels like this. Thank GOD that instance has become the norm.

If I want instancing ill go play diablo, M M O RPG     hard to get into the RPG when your loading constanlty    whats wrong dont ya like doors that open??    im not an instance fan,  Guild Wars is the game that really comes to mind..  its like a single player game that  you can chat to other people.. 

Instancing is fine in some games, and in some it doesnt work. Just like everything else.

Take wow, before the expansion after i hit 60, I was in ironforge or an instance, the open world was useless and just made travel time longer. I also did the world raids which were always fun when ya have lil kids running and messing it up for ya. So if wow cant get it right how do you expect a self funded AA title to do it?

Im not saying that either is better im saying that neither is better. Every game is different. There is nothing wrong with loading screens unless your getting killed while loading (thx again wow).

Originally posted by Vendayn

No thanks, I don't want to sit waiting for a boss mob to spawn and 500 other groups waiting for the same boss mob.

 

(edit)

I'll add that overly instanced (Guild Wars and especially age of conan) are even worse than having to wait for 500 other groups...I much prefer WoW's way of instancing, I really dislike AoC's instancing.

I fully agree that WoW's take was excellent. Private instances in moderation are the only way to do large scale stuff like Molten Core in WoW. But what gripes me is where the entire world is separated with instances simply as a developer shortcut. In WoW, you could start at the bottom of the continent and walk to the other side.

I also want to add that graphics are not an excuse. Network load and client side graphics are totally different.

Originally posted by DragonShark

Obviously, some of you missed the first year of EverQuest. Specifically, the last couple of months prior to the release of the Kunark expansion.

For upper level characters (level cap was 50 at the time) there were only a few places to go, and most of those were raid areas. The only substantial dungeon of the time was Lower Guk. It got so crowded in there that you could quite literally walk (not run) from one end of the dungeon to the other without seeing a single mob. A given hallway would have three groups camping it; two at each end, and one at the middle. Yes, they were camping a single mob. Two or three groups sharing individual rooms, each also camping an individual spawn.

This went on for two or three months, when thankfully SOE launched the Kunark expansion, and the mass migration out of Lower Guk happened immediately.

I'll take instancing, thanks. As an old pen and paper D&D player, I enjoy the feeling that we're the only people in a dungeon. I don't want to meet other people in a dungeon. That kills the immersion for me. I'll see you all in the taverns.

What you fail to realize is that this is not an issue with instancing vs not instancing, this is an issue with poor game design. Not having enough dungeons or mobs to fill them is a game design issue. The solution is to have more dungeons, more mobs and harder mobs along with other forms of play such as crafting, trading and so on. A well designed game has enough places to go and enough things to kill or do that such camping problems aren't an issue because they don't exist.

Originally posted by SoSilencer

Originally posted by DragonShark

Obviously, some of you missed the first year of EverQuest. Specifically, the last couple of months prior to the release of the Kunark expansion.

For upper level characters (level cap was 50 at the time) there were only a few places to go, and most of those were raid areas. The only substantial dungeon of the time was Lower Guk. It got so crowded in there that you could quite literally walk (not run) from one end of the dungeon to the other without seeing a single mob. A given hallway would have three groups camping it; two at each end, and one at the middle. Yes, they were camping a single mob. Two or three groups sharing individual rooms, each also camping an individual spawn.

This went on for two or three months, when thankfully SOE launched the Kunark expansion, and the mass migration out of Lower Guk happened immediately.

I'll take instancing, thanks. As an old pen and paper D&D player, I enjoy the feeling that we're the only people in a dungeon. I don't want to meet other people in a dungeon. That kills the immersion for me. I'll see you all in the taverns.

 

What you fail to realize is that this is not an issue with instancing vs not instancing, this is an issue with poor game design. Not having enough dungeons or mobs to fill them is a game design issue. The solution is to have more dungeons, more mobs and harder mobs along with other forms of play such as crafting, trading and so on. A well designed game has enough places to go and enough things to kill or do that such camping problems aren't an issue because they don't exist.

 

 

Well, i don't see how it is possible to implement, without instances, special boss encounters with stage events. And those are a lot more fun than 50 copies of the same mob standing there for you to kill.