Their refusal to instance anything has led to several unfortunate design decisions on the part of Sigil, but the game has a multitude of other problems as well.
I urge you to find a buddy key and try the game for yourself before you waste $50 on the box. You'll be glad you did.
How soon people forget. If anyone played everquest one to high levels should remember the raids. Getting 50 or more people together at a set time to go kill a mob only to have someone else bet you to it. I do not play vanguard, but if the timers for the mobs are anything like in everquest one waiting a week per spawn is crazy. No instancing just leads to alot of people getting frustrated not being able to get to the content they are paying for. Give it time as guilds get to high levels the fighting will start for high level mobs.
IMO, Dungeons that have a single "door" entrence should be Instanced.This would go a LONG way to reducing Lag in major Dugeons, which makes some places unplayable during busy periods, and does nothing to hurt Immersion.
I'll start my own SWG... with Black Jack... and Hookers!!!
The reason those of us who dislike instancing dislike it is because the world that has instances isn't persistant. Persistance is why I bother to play these games at all. One player games just don't do it for me anymore. Nor does hanging around in a hub showing off my new shoulder pauldrons. Why I play Vanguard is because it is one big world. If you're in a dungeon, you are in that dungeon, not some romper room private idaho copy of it.
For those who like instancing there are other games to play, like every other freaking new MMORPG made. I personally think instancing is the death of MMORPG's, or at least the watering down of them. Just my personal opinion, no need to get all angsty.
The reason those of us who dislike instancing dislike it is because the world that has instances isn't persistant. Persistance is why I bother to play these games at all. One player games just don't do it for me anymore. Nor does hanging around in a hub showing off my new shoulder pauldrons. Why I play Vanguard is because it is one big world. If you're in a dungeon, you are in that dungeon, not some romper room private idaho copy of it. For those who like instancing there are other games to play, like every other freaking new MMORPG made. I personally think instancing is the death of MMORPG's, or at least the watering down of them. Just my personal opinion, no need to get all angsty.
Im not trying to start a flame war with you or anything I am really just trying to see your point. How is having instances make a game not persistent? Things are still happening in the game while you are in an instance. Just because I dont see other people than my group the game doesnt stop. Maybe we just have a different definition of what a persistent world is. I like this onehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_world it seems to sum up what a persistent world is pretty well.
As far as immersion goes I cant see how a non instanced dungeon could be as good as an instanced one. Waiting in line to kill a boss doesnt make a whole lot of sense when it comes to immersion. My group watching you kill a boss just to see it respawn again isnt very immersive. Maybe if the bosses would spawn in different places for different groups it would work a lot better. The boss should also only spawn and be attackable if you have the quest and once you kill it it is over. You shouldn't be able to wait 30 seconds and kill it again. That just doesnt make any sense.
That being said I dont believe that over instancing is a very good thing either. DDO kind of proved that to me anyways. WoW's end game instances (and i do hate WoW's end game) atleast have timers. It kind of makes sense. I would love to see instanced bosses that you can only do once and then its closed to that toon. It would of course create problems finding groups and the game would have to have a lot of content so Im sure that will never happen. I just think if you could only do it once (if you killed the boss) people would take more time and try to enjoy it more. Seems these days everyone is in a rush to go no where.
IMHO Having no instances shows just how simple and out of time VG:Soh is (I'll try not to turn this into a VG is crap post), Sigil and fans say "no instances makes it more immersive", but what is so immersive about watching 1 group kill a boss and just waiting there for the boss to repawn?
Issue with no instancing IMHO.
Players running around agro'ing the place and wiping your group.
If your on a FFA server some jerk could come along and gank your healer during a boss fight.
The boss fights will be simple, no room for scripted or complex fights because of the nature of the encounter. 1 group camping a boss over and over and maybe ganking your group.
Mobs respwning on your party becuase a group cleared them a few min before. If you die, you have to run naked into the dungeon, passed mobs that respawned that will kill you again and again and again.
Sigil have gone backwards on many if its so called key features, no teleportation, slow leveling etc that im sure they will add instancing soon, but for me a game with on instances makes any boss fight a ZZZzzzz feast, dont expect fancy dungeons and boss fights like you find WoW, the encounters you'll find are the same you'll find in EQ1 (an 8 year old game).
IMHO
how is no instancing a step backwards? if you only say this cuz of the way mmo's are now and they are mostly instanced now a days, whose says those aren't a step backwards? as one poster said already instancing is the easy way out on creating a game world. No instancing is actually not a step backwards but a step back in the right direction.
Just for the record EQ1 started instancing with the LDoN release. It was considered a very innovative technique at the time. WoW and EQ2 are probably a result of it's popularity with Users.
I think it is easy to forgot how bad the contested content was in EQ1. Now, I am not saying that everything should be instanced like in EQ2, DDO, and WoW but some instancing is required for a fun gaming experience.
It may seem nice now but once everyone is at the max level you will be cursing the game and the people that are taking your Named MOB or training you. Trains are back with Vanguard. I have been trained just standing around Renton Keep. Just try to remember the "bad ole days" in EQ1. EQ1 was a great game but it had many flaws. The lack of instancing was one of them.
I bet if the game had a huge population there would be many problems with camping and griefing but since there are so few people playing it doesn't matter if the dungeons are instanced or not.
I assume the argument against instances has to do with immersiveness. Is that correct?
I have to ask: What is so immersive or even remotely realistic about a boss monster that not only keeps coming back after it's been killed, but that respawns on a reliable schedule?
A dungeon where the things I've killed stay dead is a much superior experience in my opinion.
When it comes to the arguement of which is more "immersive," it really depends on what immersive means to you. To some, being able to cooperate and compete with other groups is immersive. To others, having more dynamic experiences is what it means.
I personally prefer some instancing in my MMOs. Not too much, but not too little. WoW is both a good, and bad, example of instancing. 1-59, the majority of players spend most of their time in a persistant environment, and instancing is just a fun diversion. You get to go after a more structured questline, there are objectives toe completed, and you can interact with the environment somewhat. Then there's the endgame bait-and-switch. Everything meaningful takes place in an instance.
Ideally, instancing should be an occasional thing. I'm interested in what LotRO will do with instances. Supposedly, they are more story based, with interactive enviromental puzzles, plots, and a sense that everything is happening to YOU, not just whomever happens to stumble in.
Seriously. It's Are'el. This forum doesn't allow apostrophes in usernames.
Just for the record EQ1 started instancing with the LDoN release. It was considered a very innovative technique at the time. WoW and EQ2 are probably a result of it's popularity with Users. I think it is easy to forgot how bad the contested content was in EQ1. Now, I am not saying that everything should be instanced like in EQ2, DDO, and WoW but some instancing is required for a fun gaming experience. It may seem nice now but once everyone at the max level you will be cursing the game and the people that are taking your Named MOB or training you. Trains are back with Vanguard. I have been trained just standing around Renton Keep. Just try to remember the "bad ole days" in EQ1. EQ1 was a great game but it had many flaws. The lack of instancing was one of them.
I can't help but think that a lot of misplaced nostalgia is part of this anti-instancing stuff.
The worst, most annoying times in the original EverQuest were when one group would spend ages getting everyone together and getting set up for a dungeon crawl, fighting your way through to the end, only to find another group spawn camping/farming the big named mob for whatever piece of gear they dropped. Or having to wait in line with four other groups for the same spawn. Or fighting your way as a guild through a raid, only to have someone who wasn't even part of the raid sneak in and ninja loot the big boss.
Another issue was trains. Even at lower levels, like in Blackburrow, for example, trains were a way of life. Either you had the people ahead of you who wiped out or got in over their heads bringing a train on top of your head, or the jackasses who wanted to leapfrog your group by training a bunch of mobs on top of you from behind. In either case, it wasn't fun.
Most of the drama and infighting in the original EQ, especially among guilds, could easily be traced to the dungeons and high end raids, with people arguing over things like this. Instanced dungeons solve most of those issues entirely. I'm pretty sure it's why LDoN was ultimately released.
Is instancing a perfect system? No, of course not. But given the alternative, and all the drama and wankery that the old system wold cause, it's a major improvement.
I bet if the game had a huge population there would be many problems with camping and griefing but since there are so few people playing it doesn't matter if the dungeons are instanced or not.
If the game is sooo empty can you tell the other 5 guys killing MY Kaons that the game is empty and they shouldnt be there?
Im not trying to start a flame war with you or anything I am really just trying to see your point. How is having instances make a game not persistent? Things are still happening in the game while you are in an instance. Just because I dont see other people than my group the game doesnt stop. Maybe we just have a different definition of what a persistent world is. I like this onehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_world it seems to sum up what a persistent world is pretty well. As far as immersion goes I cant see how a non instanced dungeon could be as good as an instanced one. Waiting in line to kill a boss doesnt make a whole lot of sense when it comes to immersion. My group watching you kill a boss just to see it respawn again isnt very immersive. Maybe if the bosses would spawn in different places for different groups it would work a lot better. The boss should also only spawn and be attackable if you have the quest and once you kill it it is over. You shouldn't be able to wait 30 seconds and kill it again. That just doesnt make any sense. That being said I dont believe that over instancing is a very good thing either. DDO kind of proved that to me anyways. WoW's end game instances (and i do hate WoW's end game) atleast have timers. It kind of makes sense. I would love to see instanced bosses that you can only do once and then its closed to that toon. It would of course create problems finding groups and the game would have to have a lot of content so Im sure that will never happen. I just think if you could only do it once (if you killed the boss) people would take more time and try to enjoy it more. Seems these days everyone is in a rush to go no where.
Perhaps our opinion of what persistant means is different. When you leave the main world and go into an instance, in my opinion, you are going into a different world. One I can't follow you into unless I'm in your group or raiding party. That is not one persistant world to me. That is a bunch of different ones attached to each other.
Vanguard is one world.
About the waiting in line to kill a boss mob thing. Have you experienced this in Vanguard?
I assume the argument against instances has to do with immersiveness. Is that correct?
I have to ask: What is so immersive or even remotely realistic about a boss monster that not only keeps coming back after it's been killed, but that respawns on a reliable schedule?
A dungeon where the things I've killed stay dead is a much superior experience in my opinion.
That's why we're individuals.
I have to ask: What is so immersive or even remotely realistic about 300 different groups going through a single magic door that takes them to 300 different exact same personal dungeons?
Arguments can be made for both sides supporting immersion. It's about preference. I think instancing sucks, you are entitled to disagree.
Non-instancing in Vanguard is GOOD - if for no other reason than it gives the MMO genre some variety.
Not everyone is going to like the same things, so I think it's good that there are some games that do things a lot differently than other games. This thread is a good example of what each of us like and don't like.
There are already plenty of MMO games out there that do instancing, so what does it hurt for this one game - Vanguard to do it differently, with non-instancing?
It's o.k. for us all to not like the same games, really it is. It gives us as gamers a lot more variety and more choices. More variety and more choices will ultimately bring in even more gamers. On the other hand, if all the games used the same formula for their design process, it becomes a stagnant genre and there will be a lot less gamers overall in the long run.
Call it a niche game, call it limiting your market potential, that's fine. Anything that gives us more variety in the end is a good thing. I'm perfectly fine with Vanguard being a smallish type MMO along the lines of EQ, EQ2, EvE, CoH, or DAoC.
I assume the argument against instances has to do with immersiveness. Is that correct?
I have to ask: What is so immersive or even remotely realistic about a boss monster that not only keeps coming back after it's been killed, but that respawns on a reliable schedule?
A dungeon where the things I've killed stay dead is a much superior experience in my opinion.
That's why we're individuals.
I have to ask: What is so immersive or even remotely realistic about 300 different groups going through a single magic door that takes them to 300 different exact same personal dungeons?
Arguments can be made for both sides supporting immersion. It's about preference. I think instancing sucks, you are entitled to disagree.
Instances do one thing, and one thing only-- they take a vast majority of the arguing and infighting that normally would happen in dungeons or on raids, and get rid of them.
A game as large as World of Warcraft needs instanced dungeons. With millions of players logging in at any given time, Blizzard could either: (a) instance every dungeon and raid, so that groups of players can access that content at will, or (b) have their GM's spend all their time mediating conflicts between all those very same groups as people fight over spawns, yell at each other over being trained, etc.
Instances are a great convenience for a more casual player base, which is what WoW has. People can get what they want or need at any time. You don't have to wait around all day to try and get a group together for an hours-long dungeon crawl, only to end up having to compete with five other groups for the same mobs. And you don't have to worry about some l33t gamer behind you deciding that he's bored and tired of waiting for his turn, so he's going to round up all of the re-spawns and train them on your head.
The same system works in City of Heroes. Because every mission and Task Force is instanced to your group, you've always got thing to kill. And because spawns are dependent on both your group size and on the difficulty slider setting, you're given as much or as little challenge as your heart desires. For a more casual player, that may not have 6-8+ hours a day to play, these types of things are ideal.
MMO's have changed since the days of the original EverQuest. Gamers have changed, both in playstyle and expectations, as the subscription numbers show. The fact is, instances are popular with people. They go over well, for the simple reason that it makes the playing field level, allowing people to go after that very same content without having to deal with all the headaches of yore.
Im not trying to start a flame war with you or anything I am really just trying to see your point. How is having instances make a game not persistent? Things are still happening in the game while you are in an instance. Just because I dont see other people than my group the game doesnt stop. Maybe we just have a different definition of what a persistent world is. I like this onehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_world it seems to sum up what a persistent world is pretty well. As far as immersion goes I cant see how a non instanced dungeon could be as good as an instanced one. Waiting in line to kill a boss doesnt make a whole lot of sense when it comes to immersion. My group watching you kill a boss just to see it respawn again isnt very immersive. Maybe if the bosses would spawn in different places for different groups it would work a lot better. The boss should also only spawn and be attackable if you have the quest and once you kill it it is over. You shouldn't be able to wait 30 seconds and kill it again. That just doesnt make any sense. That being said I dont believe that over instancing is a very good thing either. DDO kind of proved that to me anyways. WoW's end game instances (and i do hate WoW's end game) atleast have timers. It kind of makes sense. I would love to see instanced bosses that you can only do once and then its closed to that toon. It would of course create problems finding groups and the game would have to have a lot of content so Im sure that will never happen. I just think if you could only do it once (if you killed the boss) people would take more time and try to enjoy it more. Seems these days everyone is in a rush to go no where.
Perhaps our opinion of what persistant means is different. When you leave the main world and go into an instance, in my opinion, you are going into a different world. One I can't follow you into unless I'm in your group or raiding party. That is not one persistant world to me. That is a bunch of different ones attached to each other.
Vanguard is one world.
About the waiting in line to kill a boss mob thing. Have you experienced this in Vanguard?
Honestly I never experienced it in VG having only played the beta but I went through it all the time in SWG. It is not pleasent. Infact I really hated it. This is just my experience and my opinions and Im not saying that yours should or would be the same. It doesnt matter though if its in VG, SWG or any other game it is still the same. Once VG gets all polished up and the majority of people hit level cap and the population increases (and I believe it will) the problems of having a non instanced boss will become more obvious.
I think Granado Espada has one of the best solutions for this problem. They only instance the boss not the whole dungeon. Seems to me to be the best of both worlds.
Ya’ll are overlooking a major selling point of instances in WoW, which is to limit the group size. Any boss in Vanguard can be taken down provided you simply throw enough firepower at it. WoW instances aren’t like that, you are limited on the size of your group. That makes strategy and tactics an absolute necessity rather than simply an option to get past that encounter. And for those of you who like the immersion factor, well WoW has that too. There are several non instanced bosses in WoW as well.
What I like about Blizzard is they let you decide. If you like the strategy and tactics required for instanced bosses, you can do that. If you prefer non instanced encounters, they have that too. That’s what a game should do, give you options, not force you one way or the other. That’s why WoW has 8.5 million subscribers. Choices.
Instances are great if you want to mix a single player game and a mmorpg. But for mmorpgs they suck. The aren't immersive; they take away from community, and they unbalance loot. That's why everything is soulbound in WoW and EQ2, so much loot comes into the world in order to keep the 'gimmee' crowd happy. The 'gimmee' crowd also can't handle competition for spawns, so they definitely love instances.
I hated EQ2 with its timers for all the dumb instances; as well as using the same zones for different instances. Keep the same geography and location, just change the mobs and loot and call it a new zone! Pathetic.
IMHO Having no instances shows just how simple and out of time VG:Soh is (I'll try not to turn this into a VG is crap post), Sigil and fans say "no instances makes it more immersive", but what is so immersive about watching 1 group kill a boss and just waiting there for the boss to repawn?
Issue with no instancing IMHO.
Players running around agro'ing the place and wiping your group.
If your on a FFA server some jerk could come along and gank your healer during a boss fight.
The boss fights will be simple, no room for scripted or complex fights because of the nature of the encounter. 1 group camping a boss over and over and maybe ganking your group.
Mobs respwning on your party becuase a group cleared them a few min before. If you die, you have to run naked into the dungeon, passed mobs that respawned that will kill you again and again and again.
Sigil have gone backwards on many if its so called key features, no teleportation, slow leveling etc that im sure they will add instancing soon, but for me a game with on instances makes any boss fight a ZZZzzzz feast, dont expect fancy dungeons and boss fights like you find WoW, the encounters you'll find are the same you'll find in EQ1 (an 8 year old game).
IMHO
I could not disagree more !
To me....instancing IS the simple and easy way out for a mmorpg. You have it backwards.
Maintaining and managing a persistant world is developers nightmare. It takes much more time to develope, maintain, and hardware to have a persistant world with no instancing.
To me....instancing is bad. It reminds me that I am playing a video game...which...in an environment designed to draw one into it's world....is bad. If I wanted to just play a video game many xbox and ps3 games would do much better.
Instancing is more co-op than mmorpg. Competition with massive amounts of other players is PART of the game.
You're not suppose to die. That's the whole point of the death penalty....to add some meaning to a battle..make you sit up and really pay attention to whats going on cause dying sucks. You do not have to run all the back to your corpse if you do die...however. You can summon your gear back at the alter and suffer a xp penalty.
The only problem I've encountered in Vanguard is people trying to " help" ..too much at times. Since there is not mob stealing or loot stealing in game players will sometimes jump in on a battle to " help" you with said mob...without checking to see if you actualy "need" the help. Thats a problem I can live with though. You still get yur xp and loot...it's just annoying at times.
I think this poster got his butt kicked alot in game.
Well we both have a point of view, but you cant compare a WoW dungeon to a VG dungeon, I just find WoW dungeons 10x more fun, interactive and challenging than VG dungeons. Take Zul'gurub (best dungeon in WoW), no way will you find a dungeon as fun/complex in VG.
I guess the OP should get a 10 day pass and see for him self, but my money is on WoW (and BTW I dont play WoW any more.. LOTRO FTW).
I found wow dungeons the total opposite, i thought they were to noninteractive and easy and i see vg dungeons more immersive and challenging but of course that is just my opinion.
I'd love to hear why you believed WoW's dungeons were non-interactive and VG dungeons were more immersive and challenging. Is this defining challenge with competing for overcamped content and immersive with being among the people you're competing with? That isn't much a game mechanic, merely over population. Nothing akin to even WoW's Onyxia encounter which is just a small demonstration of environment and AI interactivity (lava spewed from cracks, egg pits, different phases, etc.)
I understand that some people like that old style of playing, if for no other reason than nostalgic value. But what you're describing is competition for content and the annoyances that go along with it; hardly anything that was coded in, just an incident.
That said, I agree completely with cupertino. Resurgence of old first-generation problems like semi-circle camping spawn points, trains and overall tug-o-war of content aside; instancing offered tailor fitted encounters that could employ scripted encounters utilizing as much space as required.
Vanguard was supposed to use AES to erase all of the cons of no instancing, while preserving the pros of seamlessness. Obviously that didn't make it, so it's all merely a step-backwards with the additional downfall of being a quest-driven game which incites even more quest target camping.
I remember reading some pretty good stories about AES from as early as Beta 2 though, so I believe somewhere Sigil has a lot of AES ready. It just needs to mature into a feature that permeates the game from top to bottom just as instancing does in other games.
So it's not like Vanguard fosters these problems some of you see as features, it's just one more thing they're behind on. The system you are refering is not there indeed. But I never fought with another group for a "boss" mob. Never. What can happens is that another group "steals" the mob with ownership.
Originally posted by GreenHell I think Granado Espada has one of the best solutions for this problem. They only instance the boss not the whole dungeon. Seems to me to be the best of both worlds.
Now THAT is a great idea. I can totally accept a boss being instanced to deal with camping and yet it is less immersion killing in my opinion. I'll definitely give GE a spin when it comes to town.
Instances do one thing, and one thing only-- they take a vast majority of the arguing and infighting that normally would happen in dungeons or on raids, and get rid of them.
A game as large as World of Warcraft needs instanced dungeons. With millions of players logging in at any given time, Blizzard could either: (a) instance every dungeon and raid, so that groups of players can access that content at will, or (b) have their GM's spend all their time mediating conflicts between all those very same groups as people fight over spawns, yell at each other over being trained, etc.
Thank heaven for individuality. What you want in an MMO and what I want in an MMO are two different things honey. I don't want any freaking instances period. You can have them. I happen to enjoy having to get along in one world instead of everyone having their little gaming cubicle to finish a massively multiplayer single group dungeon.
With instances I'm sorry, but the massively gets thrown out the window.
Instances do one thing, and one thing only-- they take a vast majority of the arguing and infighting that normally would happen in dungeons or on raids, and get rid of them.
A game as large as World of Warcraft needs instanced dungeons. With millions of players logging in at any given time, Blizzard could either: (a) instance every dungeon and raid, so that groups of players can access that content at will, or (b) have their GM's spend all their time mediating conflicts between all those very same groups as people fight over spawns, yell at each other over being trained, etc.
Thank heaven for individuality. What you want in an MMO and what I want in an MMO are two different things honey. I don't want any freaking instances period. You can have them. I happen to enjoy having to get along in one world instead of everyone having their little gaming cubicle to finish a massively multiplayer single group dungeon.
With instances I'm sorry, but the massively gets thrown out the window.
First off, thanks for the condescending "honey" comment. No, really. I enjoy having my intelligence insulted because of my gender.
Second, instances only take out the "massively" part of an MMO when it comes to dungeons. I still see plenty of people around Azeroth, or in Paragon City. And my toons in both games still deal with plenty of non-instanced, outdoor content, and with other players. In fact, in WoW, most of my time is spent outdoors, doing quests, or hunting in level-appropriate areas. Apart from my Paladin weapon quest, which required items from four different dungeons across the world, I tend to just fight out in the open.
The greatest thing about instances is that they're entirely optional. If you choose to go into a dungeon, or to a mission map, then it will be instanced for you when you and your friends are ready to play. But it's entirely up to the player. I had a guildmate who leveled up from start to finish in City of Heroes without ever setting foot inside an instanced mission. His attitude was that there was enough crime on the streets to do the job, so that's what he did. And a bunch of us joined him, because at the time, the experience outside of missions was actually higher, and it helped us work on our skills as a team.
You may not want any instances in a game at all, but so far, just based on the sales of games like WoW and Guild Wars, people seem to like them, so they exist.
With Vanguard, I don't think Sigil will ever put them in unless a lot of the same problems and drama that came to plague the original EverQuest suddenly came to Telon at a high enough frequency that it became an issue for the devs.
I assume the argument against instances has to do with immersiveness. Is that correct?
I have to ask: What is so immersive or even remotely realistic about a boss monster that not only keeps coming back after it's been killed, but that respawns on a reliable schedule?
A dungeon where the things I've killed stay dead is a much superior experience in my opinion.
It doesn't bother me much, but I've heard some people complain a bit. There are a bunch of quests to kill a particular boss, but there are also a lot of quests that do not have a specific singular target. I've found you can stock up on enough quests in an area to keep you busy. Some areas tend to be quite heavily populated compared to others, as well, probably because they are the most logical destinations in the easiest progression from the newbie areas. I've found other areas with quest-givers and very few takers. Maybe these areas aren't as good as the more populated areas, but I haven't determined that for myself yet.
I think that you will outgrow the quests in an area before you complete them all, if you are grouping consistently. Soloers tend to have to adventure without benefit of quest guidance (aka grind) more, but even so travelling out of the area to find appropriate-level quests is an alternative to grinding in a familiar area. All the same, if you are looking for a game where NPCs always hand you your next assignment after you complete your previous one, you are not going to find it in VG.
Comments
I urge you to find a buddy key and try the game for yourself before you waste $50 on the box. You'll be glad you did.
How soon people forget. If anyone played everquest one to high levels should remember the raids. Getting 50 or more people together at a set time to go kill a mob only to have someone else bet you to it. I do not play vanguard, but if the timers for the mobs are anything like in everquest one waiting a week per spawn is crazy. No instancing just leads to alot of people getting frustrated not being able to get to the content they are paying for. Give it time as guilds get to high levels the fighting will start for high level mobs.
I'll start my own SWG... with Black Jack... and Hookers!!!
In fact, forget the SWG!!!!
The reason those of us who dislike instancing dislike it is because the world that has instances isn't persistant. Persistance is why I bother to play these games at all. One player games just don't do it for me anymore. Nor does hanging around in a hub showing off my new shoulder pauldrons. Why I play Vanguard is because it is one big world. If you're in a dungeon, you are in that dungeon, not some romper room private idaho copy of it.
For those who like instancing there are other games to play, like every other freaking new MMORPG made. I personally think instancing is the death of MMORPG's, or at least the watering down of them. Just my personal opinion, no need to get all angsty.
Im not trying to start a flame war with you or anything I am really just trying to see your point. How is having instances make a game not persistent? Things are still happening in the game while you are in an instance. Just because I dont see other people than my group the game doesnt stop. Maybe we just have a different definition of what a persistent world is. I like this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_world it seems to sum up what a persistent world is pretty well.
As far as immersion goes I cant see how a non instanced dungeon could be as good as an instanced one. Waiting in line to kill a boss doesnt make a whole lot of sense when it comes to immersion. My group watching you kill a boss just to see it respawn again isnt very immersive. Maybe if the bosses would spawn in different places for different groups it would work a lot better. The boss should also only spawn and be attackable if you have the quest and once you kill it it is over. You shouldn't be able to wait 30 seconds and kill it again. That just doesnt make any sense.
That being said I dont believe that over instancing is a very good thing either. DDO kind of proved that to me anyways. WoW's end game instances (and i do hate WoW's end game) atleast have timers. It kind of makes sense. I would love to see instanced bosses that you can only do once and then its closed to that toon. It would of course create problems finding groups and the game would have to have a lot of content so Im sure that will never happen. I just think if you could only do it once (if you killed the boss) people would take more time and try to enjoy it more. Seems these days everyone is in a rush to go no where.
how is no instancing a step backwards? if you only say this cuz of the way mmo's are now and they are mostly instanced now a days, whose says those aren't a step backwards? as one poster said already instancing is the easy way out on creating a game world. No instancing is actually not a step backwards but a step back in the right direction.
Just for the record EQ1 started instancing with the LDoN release. It was considered a very innovative technique at the time. WoW and EQ2 are probably a result of it's popularity with Users.
I think it is easy to forgot how bad the contested content was in EQ1. Now, I am not saying that everything should be instanced like in EQ2, DDO, and WoW but some instancing is required for a fun gaming experience.
It may seem nice now but once everyone is at the max level you will be cursing the game and the people that are taking your Named MOB or training you. Trains are back with Vanguard. I have been trained just standing around Renton Keep. Just try to remember the "bad ole days" in EQ1. EQ1 was a great game but it had many flaws. The lack of instancing was one of them.
I have to ask: What is so immersive or even remotely realistic about a boss monster that not only keeps coming back after it's been killed, but that respawns on a reliable schedule?
A dungeon where the things I've killed stay dead is a much superior experience in my opinion.
When it comes to the arguement of which is more "immersive," it really depends on what immersive means to you. To some, being able to cooperate and compete with other groups is immersive. To others, having more dynamic experiences is what it means.
I personally prefer some instancing in my MMOs. Not too much, but not too little. WoW is both a good, and bad, example of instancing. 1-59, the majority of players spend most of their time in a persistant environment, and instancing is just a fun diversion. You get to go after a more structured questline, there are objectives toe completed, and you can interact with the environment somewhat. Then there's the endgame bait-and-switch. Everything meaningful takes place in an instance.
Ideally, instancing should be an occasional thing. I'm interested in what LotRO will do with instances. Supposedly, they are more story based, with interactive enviromental puzzles, plots, and a sense that everything is happening to YOU, not just whomever happens to stumble in.
Seriously.
It's Are'el. This forum doesn't allow apostrophes in usernames.
The worst, most annoying times in the original EverQuest were when one group would spend ages getting everyone together and getting set up for a dungeon crawl, fighting your way through to the end, only to find another group spawn camping/farming the big named mob for whatever piece of gear they dropped. Or having to wait in line with four other groups for the same spawn. Or fighting your way as a guild through a raid, only to have someone who wasn't even part of the raid sneak in and ninja loot the big boss.
Another issue was trains. Even at lower levels, like in Blackburrow, for example, trains were a way of life. Either you had the people ahead of you who wiped out or got in over their heads bringing a train on top of your head, or the jackasses who wanted to leapfrog your group by training a bunch of mobs on top of you from behind. In either case, it wasn't fun.
Most of the drama and infighting in the original EQ, especially among guilds, could easily be traced to the dungeons and high end raids, with people arguing over things like this. Instanced dungeons solve most of those issues entirely. I'm pretty sure it's why LDoN was ultimately released.
Is instancing a perfect system? No, of course not. But given the alternative, and all the drama and wankery that the old system wold cause, it's a major improvement.
Perhaps our opinion of what persistant means is different. When you leave the main world and go into an instance, in my opinion, you are going into a different world. One I can't follow you into unless I'm in your group or raiding party. That is not one persistant world to me. That is a bunch of different ones attached to each other.
Vanguard is one world.
About the waiting in line to kill a boss mob thing. Have you experienced this in Vanguard?
That's why we're individuals.
I have to ask: What is so immersive or even remotely realistic about 300 different groups going through a single magic door that takes them to 300 different exact same personal dungeons?
Arguments can be made for both sides supporting immersion. It's about preference. I think instancing sucks, you are entitled to disagree.
Not everyone is going to like the same things, so I think it's good that there are some games that do things a lot differently than other games. This thread is a good example of what each of us like and don't like.
There are already plenty of MMO games out there that do instancing, so what does it hurt for this one game - Vanguard to do it differently, with non-instancing?
It's o.k. for us all to not like the same games, really it is. It gives us as gamers a lot more variety and more choices. More variety and more choices will ultimately bring in even more gamers. On the other hand, if all the games used the same formula for their design process, it becomes a stagnant genre and there will be a lot less gamers overall in the long run.
Call it a niche game, call it limiting your market potential, that's fine. Anything that gives us more variety in the end is a good thing. I'm perfectly fine with Vanguard being a smallish type MMO along the lines of EQ, EQ2, EvE, CoH, or DAoC.
That's why we're individuals.
I have to ask: What is so immersive or even remotely realistic about 300 different groups going through a single magic door that takes them to 300 different exact same personal dungeons?
Arguments can be made for both sides supporting immersion. It's about preference. I think instancing sucks, you are entitled to disagree.
Instances do one thing, and one thing only-- they take a vast majority of the arguing and infighting that normally would happen in dungeons or on raids, and get rid of them.
A game as large as World of Warcraft needs instanced dungeons. With millions of players logging in at any given time, Blizzard could either: (a) instance every dungeon and raid, so that groups of players can access that content at will, or (b) have their GM's spend all their time mediating conflicts between all those very same groups as people fight over spawns, yell at each other over being trained, etc.
Instances are a great convenience for a more casual player base, which is what WoW has. People can get what they want or need at any time. You don't have to wait around all day to try and get a group together for an hours-long dungeon crawl, only to end up having to compete with five other groups for the same mobs. And you don't have to worry about some l33t gamer behind you deciding that he's bored and tired of waiting for his turn, so he's going to round up all of the re-spawns and train them on your head.
The same system works in City of Heroes. Because every mission and Task Force is instanced to your group, you've always got thing to kill. And because spawns are dependent on both your group size and on the difficulty slider setting, you're given as much or as little challenge as your heart desires. For a more casual player, that may not have 6-8+ hours a day to play, these types of things are ideal.
MMO's have changed since the days of the original EverQuest. Gamers have changed, both in playstyle and expectations, as the subscription numbers show. The fact is, instances are popular with people. They go over well, for the simple reason that it makes the playing field level, allowing people to go after that very same content without having to deal with all the headaches of yore.
Perhaps our opinion of what persistant means is different. When you leave the main world and go into an instance, in my opinion, you are going into a different world. One I can't follow you into unless I'm in your group or raiding party. That is not one persistant world to me. That is a bunch of different ones attached to each other.
Vanguard is one world.
About the waiting in line to kill a boss mob thing. Have you experienced this in Vanguard?
Honestly I never experienced it in VG having only played the beta but I went through it all the time in SWG. It is not pleasent. Infact I really hated it. This is just my experience and my opinions and Im not saying that yours should or would be the same. It doesnt matter though if its in VG, SWG or any other game it is still the same. Once VG gets all polished up and the majority of people hit level cap and the population increases (and I believe it will) the problems of having a non instanced boss will become more obvious.
I think Granado Espada has one of the best solutions for this problem. They only instance the boss not the whole dungeon. Seems to me to be the best of both worlds.
I hated EQ2 with its timers for all the dumb instances; as well as using the same zones for different instances. Keep the same geography and location, just change the mobs and loot and call it a new zone! Pathetic.
Vanguard is completely lacking good group encounters/boss fights. The result of not having instances? Good chance.
I could not disagree more !
To me....instancing IS the simple and easy way out for a mmorpg. You have it backwards.
Maintaining and managing a persistant world is developers nightmare. It takes much more time to develope, maintain, and hardware to have a persistant world with no instancing.
To me....instancing is bad. It reminds me that I am playing a video game...which...in an environment designed to draw one into it's world....is bad. If I wanted to just play a video game many xbox and ps3 games would do much better.
Instancing is more co-op than mmorpg. Competition with massive amounts of other players is PART of the game.
You're not suppose to die. That's the whole point of the death penalty....to add some meaning to a battle..make you sit up and really pay attention to whats going on cause dying sucks. You do not have to run all the back to your corpse if you do die...however. You can summon your gear back at the alter and suffer a xp penalty.
The only problem I've encountered in Vanguard is people trying to " help" ..too much at times. Since there is not mob stealing or loot stealing in game players will sometimes jump in on a battle to " help" you with said mob...without checking to see if you actualy "need" the help. Thats a problem I can live with though. You still get yur xp and loot...it's just annoying at times.
I think this poster got his butt kicked alot in game.
Well we both have a point of view, but you cant compare a WoW dungeon to a VG dungeon, I just find WoW dungeons 10x more fun, interactive and challenging than VG dungeons. Take Zul'gurub (best dungeon in WoW), no way will you find a dungeon as fun/complex in VG.I guess the OP should get a 10 day pass and see for him self, but my money is on WoW (and BTW I dont play WoW any more.. LOTRO FTW).
I found wow dungeons the total opposite, i thought they were to noninteractive and easy and i see vg dungeons more immersive and challenging but of course that is just my opinion.
I'd love to hear why you believed WoW's dungeons were non-interactive and VG dungeons were more immersive and challenging. Is this defining challenge with competing for overcamped content and immersive with being among the people you're competing with? That isn't much a game mechanic, merely over population. Nothing akin to even WoW's Onyxia encounter which is just a small demonstration of environment and AI interactivity (lava spewed from cracks, egg pits, different phases, etc.)I understand that some people like that old style of playing, if for no other reason than nostalgic value. But what you're describing is competition for content and the annoyances that go along with it; hardly anything that was coded in, just an incident.
That said, I agree completely with cupertino. Resurgence of old first-generation problems like semi-circle camping spawn points, trains and overall tug-o-war of content aside; instancing offered tailor fitted encounters that could employ scripted encounters utilizing as much space as required.
Vanguard was supposed to use AES to erase all of the cons of no instancing, while preserving the pros of seamlessness. Obviously that didn't make it, so it's all merely a step-backwards with the additional downfall of being a quest-driven game which incites even more quest target camping.
I remember reading some pretty good stories about AES from as early as Beta 2 though, so I believe somewhere Sigil has a lot of AES ready. It just needs to mature into a feature that permeates the game from top to bottom just as instancing does in other games.
So it's not like Vanguard fosters these problems some of you see as features, it's just one more thing they're behind on. The system you are refering is not there indeed. But I never fought with another group for a "boss" mob. Never. What can happens is that another group "steals" the mob with ownership.
eqnext.wikia.com
Now THAT is a great idea. I can totally accept a boss being instanced to deal with camping and yet it is less immersion killing in my opinion. I'll definitely give GE a spin when it comes to town.
Thank heaven for individuality. What you want in an MMO and what I want in an MMO are two different things honey. I don't want any freaking instances period. You can have them. I happen to enjoy having to get along in one world instead of everyone having their little gaming cubicle to finish a massively multiplayer single group dungeon.
With instances I'm sorry, but the massively gets thrown out the window.
Thank heaven for individuality. What you want in an MMO and what I want in an MMO are two different things honey. I don't want any freaking instances period. You can have them. I happen to enjoy having to get along in one world instead of everyone having their little gaming cubicle to finish a massively multiplayer single group dungeon.
With instances I'm sorry, but the massively gets thrown out the window.
First off, thanks for the condescending "honey" comment. No, really. I enjoy having my intelligence insulted because of my gender.
Second, instances only take out the "massively" part of an MMO when it comes to dungeons. I still see plenty of people around Azeroth, or in Paragon City. And my toons in both games still deal with plenty of non-instanced, outdoor content, and with other players. In fact, in WoW, most of my time is spent outdoors, doing quests, or hunting in level-appropriate areas. Apart from my Paladin weapon quest, which required items from four different dungeons across the world, I tend to just fight out in the open.
The greatest thing about instances is that they're entirely optional. If you choose to go into a dungeon, or to a mission map, then it will be instanced for you when you and your friends are ready to play. But it's entirely up to the player. I had a guildmate who leveled up from start to finish in City of Heroes without ever setting foot inside an instanced mission. His attitude was that there was enough crime on the streets to do the job, so that's what he did. And a bunch of us joined him, because at the time, the experience outside of missions was actually higher, and it helped us work on our skills as a team.
You may not want any instances in a game at all, but so far, just based on the sales of games like WoW and Guild Wars, people seem to like them, so they exist.
With Vanguard, I don't think Sigil will ever put them in unless a lot of the same problems and drama that came to plague the original EverQuest suddenly came to Telon at a high enough frequency that it became an issue for the devs.
It doesn't bother me much, but I've heard some people complain a bit. There are a bunch of quests to kill a particular boss, but there are also a lot of quests that do not have a specific singular target. I've found you can stock up on enough quests in an area to keep you busy. Some areas tend to be quite heavily populated compared to others, as well, probably because they are the most logical destinations in the easiest progression from the newbie areas. I've found other areas with quest-givers and very few takers. Maybe these areas aren't as good as the more populated areas, but I haven't determined that for myself yet.
I think that you will outgrow the quests in an area before you complete them all, if you are grouping consistently. Soloers tend to have to adventure without benefit of quest guidance (aka grind) more, but even so travelling out of the area to find appropriate-level quests is an alternative to grinding in a familiar area. All the same, if you are looking for a game where NPCs always hand you your next assignment after you complete your previous one, you are not going to find it in VG.