I hate it, well that seems a bit extreme but I really dont like it. For those of you who played EQ back then, imagine if Karnor's Castle was instance. That would have been a terrible zone. Why dont we see non-instanced dungeons anymore? I understand that instancing has its uses for CERTAIN things. Like if your doing a quest and there is a timeline and what not, that makes sense. I mean look at these games today. I hate going into a dungeon and only having my party there.
Now the flamers will say that instances help us from not having to camp spawns and instead we all get our of zone and the mob is already spawned for us! bah to that. I think that is dungeons/castles whatever were made with "named" mobs all over that had decent respawn rates with not to many place holders, then it would work.
please explain the popularity AMONG players for instancing. I know that devs love it because it uses up less bandwidth on thier servers or w/e
Thanks!
SWOOGIE MCDOOGIE
Easy... to avoid things like this....
/shout TRAIN INC!!!! MOVE OR DIE!!!!
or
/shout lvl 45 Cleric LFG PST (and then waiting up to an hour in a player-made queue because of lack of viable areas to level.)
or
Camping special items that are highly contested for, and an uberguild decides to train you into oblivion so they can get your spot.
But yeah, mainly CAMPING... camping... and more camping... which may take away from the whole "realism" of everyone being in the same place... I thought it was equally unrealistic that the mobs magically "pop" back into existence.
Don't get me wrong... in the day classic EQ was fun in some aspects... but no... not the camping part... or the boat part either, hated that goddamned boat.
Did you even read my post before you quoted me?
1) In ever game I have played since EQ, the mobs are teathered. Therefore; training doesnt matter
2) I said if there are named mobs with decent spawn rates and only a few place holders, then it would work. Think about it 2 place holders with a 15 min respawn. The rare loot can vary like it normally does ( well lesser)
3) There is nothing wrong with waiting to get a group. Go solo or find another place. It is not that hard. Its pretty whinny if you ask me. I mean its full get over it. <-- sounds harsh but its true
1) You can train people in WoW. It certainly isn't as easy as a necromancer standing next to you while while you fight. Sicking his pet on the ghoul lord and then feign deathing next you as the huge train arrives. Did you ever play WoW? Outdoor mobs are NOT tethered, just gotta tap them every once in a while. Training people as a paladin is good times and so unpaladin like. Other classes have a pretty easy time at it too. At least in WoW it doesn't matter much unless you're on a pvp server (good times). But, this is just an odd example of possibilities not practicality as people are very spread out in WoW even back in the early days. But if dungeons were not instanced, woooo, that would be good times and things would probably get tethered pretty quick.
2) Do you know how many mobs my paladin could tank at the same time in RoTLK heroic dungeons? Bawahaha. It is like the hayday of EQ chanter/wizard groups destroying entire zones in a single pull. WoW dungeons are not difficult enough. WoW dunegons also do not have tethered npcs. They just keep on following even if you don't hit them unlike the outdoor npcs. This issue of being able monopolize more than excepted is a rather common problem in MMOs. Not really sure what my point is here.
3) The problem is when every single place is full because the number of players at any particular level range vastly exceeds the amount of content available. There are solutions to this. Some involve instancing. Another category involves creating even more dungeons/content which has some rather nasty pitfalls.
While a better version of EQ would be successful, it will likely never be crazy successful like WoW and the other MMOish games. Most people do not seem to want it, but only time will tell. It is amazing what a little polish can do to the success of even bad things.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
Originally posted by SignusM They don't know any better. They didn't play MMORPGs back when they could still be considered MMORPGs. They hare heavy casual people who's only experience is with WoW. Now that would be fine... if it hadn't affected the rest of us core MMORPG players. It IS lazy programming. There are almost no benefits to instancing really that outweigh how much it takes away from the game. Perhaps if Blizzard innovated a new feature for once in their ENTIRE career they'd have come up with a creative solution isntead of ripping instances from another game and making them even worse.
I know better. I tried out a ton of early MMORPGs. They weren't fun. I tried to stick it out with a few of them (AC1 and DAOC) but inevitably they just weren't fun games. WOW was fun.
It took MMORPGs which were boring simulations, and made it a full-fledged game.
Avoiding asshattery and superior content quality are reasons enough to want instancing.
It's like I always say, I play games to play games, not to sit and wait for a spawn or some equally nonsenical tedium a developer has placed in front of me (like having a train inflicted upon me.) I won't stand for that sort of non-gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Just wanted to copy paste this from some site offering runs of dungeons:
Average time of completing one Normal Dungeon Run is 2 hours. As for Heroic Dungeon Runs, it is much longer because there is a lockout time restriction in the game of 1 day per heroic instance dungeon, meaning we can only do the Heroic dungeon once every 24 hours. And guys are pro runners, so I guess that you can not actually do anything good in 2 hours per day.
Hey Dax, which game are you referring to that takes 2 hours to complete on normal mode?
Sorry, forgott to say, World of warcraft. It is from site that offers WOW runs.
Because for some reason the casual WoW generation loves to pay 15 bucks a month for a semi single player game that doesn't even have a persistent world.
MMORPGs are social games. There is nothing more that I hate than finding an awesome cave and trying to enter "You do not have the right quest!" Or going into a cavern that should be filled with adventurers fighting their way down, but instead... I'm alone. Bad and lazy programming right there. But thats basically all Blizzard is, insanely lazy.
You're right, due to lazy programming and a "lack of a social aspect", almost nobody plays WOW or has fun with it.
...er, wait a sec, millions of players play it and have fun with it.
Yet another post claiming MMOs "should be this way", that fails to realize MMOs should be whatever way people have fun (and the WOW model is clearly one of those ways.)
They don't know any better. They didn't play MMORPGs back when they could still be considered MMORPGs. They hare heavy casual people who's only experience is with WoW. Now that would be fine... if it hadn't affected the rest of us core MMORPG players.
Personally, I don't think dictating to players how they should and should not have fun in a video game is a terribly sound business model.
I tend to think the individuals who are exclusively looking for that extreme hardcore experience (by this I mean you are committed to playing in at least 6 hour chunks, there is no "safe" place to play, etc) are roughly the same set of individuals that don't have careers or responsibilities such as wife & kids. Of course, there are exceptions, but I tend to consider this set of players to be largely students and the unemployed, or perhaps working part-time / "non career" jobs.
I remember old school MMOs, and to be perfectly honest in order to be competitive it pretty much became a full-time job. Which is fine, if you don't already have one. Remember all the lives that EQ ruined?
Ultimately, making a $30 million dollar product which is least attractive to your customers with the greatest disposable income isn't the path to getting a good return on the investment.
In the past, I used to dislike instancing, but after playing a game that is mainly instanced (and am still playing it in fact) I have come to realise that instancing is not such a bad concept after all. I'm a huge fan of games with a storyline, and I find that games with instancing actually makes me feel as if I'm part of the storyline instead of just watching everything play out, and I enjoy that feeling. However, there has to still be a sense of community, otherwise I might as well play a single player rpg, and that's where Guilds come in. I can still chat with my guild while I'm wandering around, and sometimes, we end up getting so carried away with our conversations that we literally forget what we're doing.
Originally posted by SignusM They don't know any better. They didn't play MMORPGs back when they could still be considered MMORPGs. They hare heavy casual people who's only experience is with WoW. Now that would be fine... if it hadn't affected the rest of us core MMORPG players. It IS lazy programming. There are almost no benefits to instancing really that outweigh how much it takes away from the game. Perhaps if Blizzard innovated a new feature for once in their ENTIRE career they'd have come up with a creative solution isntead of ripping instances from another game and making them even worse.
I know better. I tried out a ton of early MMORPGs. They weren't fun. I tried to stick it out with a few of them (AC1 and DAOC) but inevitably they just weren't fun games. WOW was fun.
It took MMORPGs which were boring simulations, and made it a full-fledged game.
Avoiding asshattery and superior content quality are reasons enough to want instancing.
It's like I always say, I play games to play games, not to sit and wait for a spawn or some equally nonsenical tedium a developer has placed in front of me (like having a train inflicted upon me.) I won't stand for that sort of non-gameplay.
That's fine for you. You aren't a core MMORPG player, because you only found solace with the wave of casual MMOs. You don't like seamless realistic worlds, you don't like the multiplayer aspect, that's fine. The only problem is when the abuse of instances spreads to real MMOs.
And its not even the players really that love instancing. Well, not the new ones. The old ones usually vehemently hate any instancing.
But instances have become so widespread ,that in totally noninstanced games it is more common to call a dungeon an instance or (now this one is just freakin sad) a PUBLIC instance, instead of a dungeon.
Its just a very easy and lazy solution to something thats not even a really big problem, and most developers take this easy route out.
Because for some reason the casual WoW generation loves to pay 15 bucks a month for a semi single player game that doesn't even have a persistent world.
MMORPGs are social games. There is nothing more that I hate than finding an awesome cave and trying to enter "You do not have the right quest!" Or going into a cavern that should be filled with adventurers fighting their way down, but instead... I'm alone. Bad and lazy programming right there. But thats basically all Blizzard is, insanely lazy.
You're right, due to lazy programming and a "lack of a social aspect", almost nobody plays WOW or has fun with it.
...er, wait a sec, millions of players play it and have fun with it.
Yet another post claiming MMOs "should be this way", that fails to realize MMOs should be whatever way people have fun (and the WOW model is clearly one of those ways.)
Or perhaps millions of people responded to Blizzards superior marketing, who can say for sure what all those millions really think? You can't say that instancing is any more fun than not, just because WoW has the most subs and happens to use some instancing. I think seamless worlds are more fun than instances, and I played WoW for a couple years and enjoyed myself, so your little rule obviously doesn't apply.
It boils down to the instance consistently delivering solid, fun gameplay. World dungeons don't really have a lot to offer. For starters, they're pretty bland. They have to be: they're in the world. Existing in a persistant world automatically imposes several harsh limitations on the types of things the developer can do with characters and monsters in that space. Also, camping mobs is retarded. As far as player interaction goes, there's a very high chance other players will harm your fun (camped bosses) and only a small chance of them adding to your fun (world PVP, which is so frequently vastly imbalanced as to not be enjoyable the vast majority of the time.) This thread got me thinking again about how I still don't see games match Guild Wars' scripted dungeon content. GW put you and your party at the heart of a storyline and had a much higher quality bar than other games at the time. It was really ahead of its time, because games to this day struggle to provide that sort of experience (and it's likely a tragic result of how much backlash GW got over instancing.) But I'm a guy who prefers gameplay over simulation. I'm in it for a fun game, and whether a game is immersive or believable is secondary (still important, but secondary.)
You can still have a dungeon entered through a load screen that isn't part of the "world" to get around what you are saying.
It just isn't a "private" dungeon and you may encounter other players.
I've always found instanced dungeons with group/elite areas surrounding them as the most ideal. That way you can meet random people on your way there to form groups or be forced to fight your way in. But once you're in, no more competing.
Originally posted by SignusM They don't know any better. They didn't play MMORPGs back when they could still be considered MMORPGs. They hare heavy casual people who's only experience is with WoW. Now that would be fine... if it hadn't affected the rest of us core MMORPG players. It IS lazy programming. There are almost no benefits to instancing really that outweigh how much it takes away from the game. Perhaps if Blizzard innovated a new feature for once in their ENTIRE career they'd have come up with a creative solution isntead of ripping instances from another game and making them even worse.
I know better. I tried out a ton of early MMORPGs. They weren't fun. I tried to stick it out with a few of them (AC1 and DAOC) but inevitably they just weren't fun games. WOW was fun.
It took MMORPGs which were boring simulations, and made it a full-fledged game.
Avoiding asshattery and superior content quality are reasons enough to want instancing.
It's like I always say, I play games to play games, not to sit and wait for a spawn or some equally nonsenical tedium a developer has placed in front of me (like having a train inflicted upon me.) I won't stand for that sort of non-gameplay.
I feel the EXACT opposite of this. I had WAY more fun in both AC1 and DoaC then I ever did in WoW. I am not saying wow is a bad game but those two games felt more alive then WoW does.
I will say there were a lot of things I complained about in both those games, like having to get my corpse for the gear I dropped. Or the lack of a quest menu. To me I feel like Wow took all the things people complained about in Ac1, EQ1, and DoaC and made a quality game but one that just doesn't feel alive. I also think they took it too far and made the game failry brainless, which ruined the feeling of the game being alive. There doesn't feel like there is ANY risk in the game and you always no where to go and what to do.
The WoW generation is going to have a hard time in real life there isn't always someone telling what to do hehe.
I feel like game developers are extremists the game is either WAY to hard or WAY to easy/brainless. The game is either PVP to the extreme (kill anyone any where with full loot) or PvP carebear. There could be PvP middle ground or a game that is some what complicated. They do the same thing with how complex a game is.
The best thing Wow had to offer for me was the instanced BGs. This was an instance I actually liked. But I am not sure if you can have both intanced PvP and open world PvP and the instanced not taking to many players away from the open world leaving little fighting going on there. But I do like the idea of some instanced PvP CTF, control, etc. and open world city control or some other reason for it in the open world.
The instanced PvE was just boring to me and didn't feel alive. I lived running a long dungeon and running into a group or two. It made the game feel alive. After all if I wante to play a game with 5 or six friends I could simply play a game like Diablo or Baldur's gate.
Intances are not all evil. For LotRO, the storyline quests are great becuase they are intstanced private enoucnters, but as i said in my example, instancing of regular zones like say the Deadmines from WoW or the Barrows in LotRO seems to unreal to me. Instanced dungeons that just funnel you through and spit you out the other end isnt how it should be. I want to feel as though Im in the dungeon doing waht ever I want with other people coming and going and all the mobs respawning whenever. Why cant we even see a few of these in this generation of games?
Originally posted by stux I feel like game developers are extremists the game is either WAY to hard or WAY to easy/brainless. The game is either PVP to the extreme (kill anyone any where with full loot) or PvP carebear. There could be PvP middle ground or a game that is some what complicated. They do the same thing with how complex a game is. The best thing Wow had to offer for me was the instanced BGs. This was an instance I actually liked. But I am not sure if you can have both intanced PvP and open world PvP and the instanced not taking to many players away from the open world leaving little fighting going on there. But I do like the idea of some instanced PvP CTF, control, etc. and open world city control or some other reason for it in the open world.
You sure it's not you who's extremist? We have games like WAR which focus on PVP, have captureable PVP objectives, and even give you open world PVP on top of the PVP zones and instances. I don't know if there's any granularity between that and corpse looting (maybe 10% gold looting?)
Also, the difficulty of the game (too easy, too hard) is separate from the death/PVP flag mechanics, so referring to a hardcore perma-death+full-loot game as "hard" is wrong. If you take a game and make it perma-death, you haven't changed the odds that you'll succeed or fail (the difficulty), you've only changed the punishment for failure (the penalty.)
Instanced PVP is almost required for a game to have truly competitive PVP. I've never understood the type of MMORPGer who is both an avid PVPer and only wants World PVP (which is some of the most consistently uninteresting PVP.) Even with balance population on each side, games with instanced PVP don't get epic fights that often -- when population is free to be drastically imbalanced its even more rare to get a solid, fun fight.
Perhaps to some people, the "game" is the social intercourse and logistics required to mobilize large groups of players, and the inevitable landslide victory is the reward to them. Personally I like decisions made during the fight to matter.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Just wanted to copy paste this from some site offering runs of dungeons:
Average time of completing one Normal Dungeon Run is 2 hours. As for Heroic Dungeon Runs, it is much longer because there is a lockout time restriction in the game of 1 day per heroic instance dungeon, meaning we can only do the Heroic dungeon once every 24 hours. And guys are pro runners, so I guess that you can not actually do anything good in 2 hours per day.
Hey Dax, which game are you referring to that takes 2 hours to complete on normal mode?
Sorry, forgott to say, World of warcraft. It is from site that offers WOW runs.
Hate to break it to you, but those numbers are seriously off. With a full group of 5 we can clear any lvl 80 5-man heroic instance in WoW in under 30 minutes with the exception of the Oculus and The Old Kingdom. There are groups clearing Heroic UK in 10 minutes and CoT has a 25 minute timer on it with a flying mount as the reward.
Two hours a day is plenty of time to accomplish many things.
Because for some reason the casual WoW generation loves to pay 15 bucks a month for a semi single player game that doesn't even have a persistent world.
MMORPGs are social games. There is nothing more that I hate than finding an awesome cave and trying to enter "You do not have the right quest!" Or going into a cavern that should be filled with adventurers fighting their way down, but instead... I'm alone. Bad and lazy programming right there. But thats basically all Blizzard is, insanely lazy.
You're right, due to lazy programming and a "lack of a social aspect", almost nobody plays WOW or has fun with it.
...er, wait a sec, millions of players play it and have fun with it.
Yet another post claiming MMOs "should be this way", that fails to realize MMOs should be whatever way people have fun (and the WOW model is clearly one of those ways.)
They don't know any better. They didn't play MMORPGs back when they could still be considered MMORPGs. They hare heavy casual people who's only experience is with WoW. Now that would be fine... if it hadn't affected the rest of us core MMORPG players.
I did. I started with UO & EQ. WOW >> EQ because of instances. No camping, better boss fight, more sense of danger, more challenges to down the boss.
I highly any current WOW player would even consider EQ if they spend several hours in it. I won't go back for sure.
Because for some reason the casual WoW generation loves to pay 15 bucks a month for a semi single player game that doesn't even have a persistent world.
MMORPGs are social games. There is nothing more that I hate than finding an awesome cave and trying to enter "You do not have the right quest!" Or going into a cavern that should be filled with adventurers fighting their way down, but instead... I'm alone. Bad and lazy programming right there. But thats basically all Blizzard is, insanely lazy.
You're right, due to lazy programming and a "lack of a social aspect", almost nobody plays WOW or has fun with it.
...er, wait a sec, millions of players play it and have fun with it.
Yet another post claiming MMOs "should be this way", that fails to realize MMOs should be whatever way people have fun (and the WOW model is clearly one of those ways.)
Or perhaps millions of people responded to Blizzards superior marketing, who can say for sure what all those millions really think? You can't say that instancing is any more fun than not, just because WoW has the most subs and happens to use some instancing. I think seamless worlds are more fun than instances, and I played WoW for a couple years and enjoyed myself, so your little rule obviously doesn't apply.
I can say for sure that WOW instance dungeon is 100x more fun for me than take-a-number-camping dungeons in EQ. I played both.
Originally posted by plaguess I cancelled immediately when I discovered Age of Conan and Champions use that sharding junk. Clearly they did that because those games are slated for console release (or so they say, aoc is having issues making it for console) and cryptic apparently is going to use this sharding for Star Trek Online. This saddens me because that game was at the top of my watch list, no longer.
Well the main payout for sharding is being a unified server. It's pretty retarded that I can talk with friends in RL who play WOW but not be able to play with them because they're on some other server.
It's really not done for consoles. It's done for sanity. I think WOW probably still crashes when you get too many people in one place (and at the very least there were 3+ years of it crashing anytime that happened.) And most players aren't terribly pleased at the lag in Dalaran resulting from so many people crammed into such a tight space.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
ya, just try imagine wow instance not being instanced. player 1> > hey, I want to kill the boss. player 2> > Ok, there are 100 people wanting to kill this boss too. You need to wait in line.
Don't have to imagine. That exactly happened to me in EQ many years ago. I wait SIX HOURS .. got to kill the boss like TWICE. Nothing good dropped.
It is a huge failure as a game. WOW instance dungeon is 1000x better. If i want to stare at a screen and chat, i went on MSN.
ya, just try imagine wow instance not being instanced. player 1> > hey, I want to kill the boss. player 2> > Ok, there are 100 people wanting to kill this boss too. You need to wait in line.
Don't have to imagine. That exactly happened to me in EQ many years ago. I wait SIX HOURS .. got to kill the boss like TWICE. Nothing good dropped.
It is a huge failure as a game. WOW instance dungeon is 1000x better. If i want to stare at a screen and chat, i went on MSN.
But imagine if the boss had a great spawn rate (5 mins) and only 2 place holders. Therefore; every 3rd spawn is the boss. Every 15 minutes you get the boss spawned. It takes longer to get to a boss in a "tunnel" style instance that is used in MMO's now. This would work. Doing this allows the game to still feel alive AND you dont have to wait for a boss to spawn for 2 days.
ya, just try imagine wow instance not being instanced. player 1> > hey, I want to kill the boss. player 2> > Ok, there are 100 people wanting to kill this boss too. You need to wait in line.
Don't have to imagine. That exactly happened to me in EQ many years ago. I wait SIX HOURS .. got to kill the boss like TWICE. Nothing good dropped.
It is a huge failure as a game. WOW instance dungeon is 1000x better. If i want to stare at a screen and chat, i went on MSN.
But imagine if the boss had a great spawn rate (5 mins) and only 2 place holders. Therefore; every 3rd spawn is the boss. Every 15 minutes you get the boss spawned. It takes longer to get to a boss in a "tunnel" style instance that is used in MMO's now. This would work. Doing this allows the game to still feel alive AND you dont have to wait for a boss to spawn for 2 days.
ya, just try imagine wow instance not being instanced. player 1> > hey, I want to kill the boss. player 2> > Ok, there are 100 people wanting to kill this boss too. You need to wait in line.
Don't have to imagine. That exactly happened to me in EQ many years ago. I wait SIX HOURS .. got to kill the boss like TWICE. Nothing good dropped.
It is a huge failure as a game. WOW instance dungeon is 1000x better. If i want to stare at a screen and chat, i went on MSN.
But imagine if the boss had a great spawn rate (5 mins) and only 2 place holders. Therefore; every 3rd spawn is the boss. Every 15 minutes you get the boss spawned. It takes longer to get to a boss in a "tunnel" style instance that is used in MMO's now. This would work. Doing this allows the game to still feel alive AND you dont have to wait for a boss to spawn for 2 days.
EvE Online has no instancing... its so fun having your loot stolen and salvaged on a long mission especially when it happens every time in the populated systems, players even recommend it for some quick money ah how we love those ninja looters who steal from you, especially on those 2h ones. Loot nah thats for suckers, I do missions for sport, really.
Comments
Easy... to avoid things like this....
/shout TRAIN INC!!!! MOVE OR DIE!!!!
or
/shout lvl 45 Cleric LFG PST (and then waiting up to an hour in a player-made queue because of lack of viable areas to level.)
or
Camping special items that are highly contested for, and an uberguild decides to train you into oblivion so they can get your spot.
But yeah, mainly CAMPING... camping... and more camping... which may take away from the whole "realism" of everyone being in the same place... I thought it was equally unrealistic that the mobs magically "pop" back into existence.
Don't get me wrong... in the day classic EQ was fun in some aspects... but no... not the camping part... or the boat part either, hated that goddamned boat.
Did you even read my post before you quoted me?
1) In ever game I have played since EQ, the mobs are teathered. Therefore; training doesnt matter
2) I said if there are named mobs with decent spawn rates and only a few place holders, then it would work. Think about it 2 place holders with a 15 min respawn. The rare loot can vary like it normally does ( well lesser)
3) There is nothing wrong with waiting to get a group. Go solo or find another place. It is not that hard. Its pretty whinny if you ask me. I mean its full get over it. <-- sounds harsh but its true
1) You can train people in WoW. It certainly isn't as easy as a necromancer standing next to you while while you fight. Sicking his pet on the ghoul lord and then feign deathing next you as the huge train arrives. Did you ever play WoW? Outdoor mobs are NOT tethered, just gotta tap them every once in a while. Training people as a paladin is good times and so unpaladin like. Other classes have a pretty easy time at it too. At least in WoW it doesn't matter much unless you're on a pvp server (good times). But, this is just an odd example of possibilities not practicality as people are very spread out in WoW even back in the early days. But if dungeons were not instanced, woooo, that would be good times and things would probably get tethered pretty quick.
2) Do you know how many mobs my paladin could tank at the same time in RoTLK heroic dungeons? Bawahaha. It is like the hayday of EQ chanter/wizard groups destroying entire zones in a single pull. WoW dungeons are not difficult enough. WoW dunegons also do not have tethered npcs. They just keep on following even if you don't hit them unlike the outdoor npcs. This issue of being able monopolize more than excepted is a rather common problem in MMOs. Not really sure what my point is here.
3) The problem is when every single place is full because the number of players at any particular level range vastly exceeds the amount of content available. There are solutions to this. Some involve instancing. Another category involves creating even more dungeons/content which has some rather nasty pitfalls.
While a better version of EQ would be successful, it will likely never be crazy successful like WoW and the other MMOish games. Most people do not seem to want it, but only time will tell. It is amazing what a little polish can do to the success of even bad things.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
I know better. I tried out a ton of early MMORPGs. They weren't fun. I tried to stick it out with a few of them (AC1 and DAOC) but inevitably they just weren't fun games. WOW was fun.
It took MMORPGs which were boring simulations, and made it a full-fledged game.
Avoiding asshattery and superior content quality are reasons enough to want instancing.
It's like I always say, I play games to play games, not to sit and wait for a spawn or some equally nonsenical tedium a developer has placed in front of me (like having a train inflicted upon me.) I won't stand for that sort of non-gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Hey Dax, which game are you referring to that takes 2 hours to complete on normal mode?
Sorry, forgott to say, World of warcraft. It is from site that offers WOW runs.
You're right, due to lazy programming and a "lack of a social aspect", almost nobody plays WOW or has fun with it.
...er, wait a sec, millions of players play it and have fun with it.
Yet another post claiming MMOs "should be this way", that fails to realize MMOs should be whatever way people have fun (and the WOW model is clearly one of those ways.)
They don't know any better. They didn't play MMORPGs back when they could still be considered MMORPGs. They hare heavy casual people who's only experience is with WoW. Now that would be fine... if it hadn't affected the rest of us core MMORPG players.
Personally, I don't think dictating to players how they should and should not have fun in a video game is a terribly sound business model.
I tend to think the individuals who are exclusively looking for that extreme hardcore experience (by this I mean you are committed to playing in at least 6 hour chunks, there is no "safe" place to play, etc) are roughly the same set of individuals that don't have careers or responsibilities such as wife & kids. Of course, there are exceptions, but I tend to consider this set of players to be largely students and the unemployed, or perhaps working part-time / "non career" jobs.
I remember old school MMOs, and to be perfectly honest in order to be competitive it pretty much became a full-time job. Which is fine, if you don't already have one. Remember all the lives that EQ ruined?
Ultimately, making a $30 million dollar product which is least attractive to your customers with the greatest disposable income isn't the path to getting a good return on the investment.
Instancing is a mechanic that can be used to good or evil. There is nothing wrong with instancing in general.. but when left in the wrong hands...
"World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this genre." - Hilmar Petursson. CEO of CCP.
In the past, I used to dislike instancing, but after playing a game that is mainly instanced (and am still playing it in fact) I have come to realise that instancing is not such a bad concept after all. I'm a huge fan of games with a storyline, and I find that games with instancing actually makes me feel as if I'm part of the storyline instead of just watching everything play out, and I enjoy that feeling. However, there has to still be a sense of community, otherwise I might as well play a single player rpg, and that's where Guilds come in. I can still chat with my guild while I'm wandering around, and sometimes, we end up getting so carried away with our conversations that we literally forget what we're doing.
Main characters:
Jinn Gone Quiet (Guild Wars)
Princess Pudding (Guild Wars)
I know better. I tried out a ton of early MMORPGs. They weren't fun. I tried to stick it out with a few of them (AC1 and DAOC) but inevitably they just weren't fun games. WOW was fun.
It took MMORPGs which were boring simulations, and made it a full-fledged game.
Avoiding asshattery and superior content quality are reasons enough to want instancing.
It's like I always say, I play games to play games, not to sit and wait for a spawn or some equally nonsenical tedium a developer has placed in front of me (like having a train inflicted upon me.) I won't stand for that sort of non-gameplay.
That's fine for you. You aren't a core MMORPG player, because you only found solace with the wave of casual MMOs. You don't like seamless realistic worlds, you don't like the multiplayer aspect, that's fine. The only problem is when the abuse of instances spreads to real MMOs.
And its not even the players really that love instancing. Well, not the new ones. The old ones usually vehemently hate any instancing.
But instances have become so widespread ,that in totally noninstanced games it is more common to call a dungeon an instance or (now this one is just freakin sad) a PUBLIC instance, instead of a dungeon.
Its just a very easy and lazy solution to something thats not even a really big problem, and most developers take this easy route out.
Darkfall Travelogues!
You're right, due to lazy programming and a "lack of a social aspect", almost nobody plays WOW or has fun with it.
...er, wait a sec, millions of players play it and have fun with it.
Yet another post claiming MMOs "should be this way", that fails to realize MMOs should be whatever way people have fun (and the WOW model is clearly one of those ways.)
Or perhaps millions of people responded to Blizzards superior marketing, who can say for sure what all those millions really think? You can't say that instancing is any more fun than not, just because WoW has the most subs and happens to use some instancing. I think seamless worlds are more fun than instances, and I played WoW for a couple years and enjoyed myself, so your little rule obviously doesn't apply.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
You can still have a dungeon entered through a load screen that isn't part of the "world" to get around what you are saying.
It just isn't a "private" dungeon and you may encounter other players.
I've always found instanced dungeons with group/elite areas surrounding them as the most ideal. That way you can meet random people on your way there to form groups or be forced to fight your way in. But once you're in, no more competing.
I know better. I tried out a ton of early MMORPGs. They weren't fun. I tried to stick it out with a few of them (AC1 and DAOC) but inevitably they just weren't fun games. WOW was fun.
It took MMORPGs which were boring simulations, and made it a full-fledged game.
Avoiding asshattery and superior content quality are reasons enough to want instancing.
It's like I always say, I play games to play games, not to sit and wait for a spawn or some equally nonsenical tedium a developer has placed in front of me (like having a train inflicted upon me.) I won't stand for that sort of non-gameplay.
I feel the EXACT opposite of this. I had WAY more fun in both AC1 and DoaC then I ever did in WoW. I am not saying wow is a bad game but those two games felt more alive then WoW does.
I will say there were a lot of things I complained about in both those games, like having to get my corpse for the gear I dropped. Or the lack of a quest menu. To me I feel like Wow took all the things people complained about in Ac1, EQ1, and DoaC and made a quality game but one that just doesn't feel alive. I also think they took it too far and made the game failry brainless, which ruined the feeling of the game being alive. There doesn't feel like there is ANY risk in the game and you always no where to go and what to do.
The WoW generation is going to have a hard time in real life there isn't always someone telling what to do hehe.
I feel like game developers are extremists the game is either WAY to hard or WAY to easy/brainless. The game is either PVP to the extreme (kill anyone any where with full loot) or PvP carebear. There could be PvP middle ground or a game that is some what complicated. They do the same thing with how complex a game is.
The best thing Wow had to offer for me was the instanced BGs. This was an instance I actually liked. But I am not sure if you can have both intanced PvP and open world PvP and the instanced not taking to many players away from the open world leaving little fighting going on there. But I do like the idea of some instanced PvP CTF, control, etc. and open world city control or some other reason for it in the open world.
The instanced PvE was just boring to me and didn't feel alive. I lived running a long dungeon and running into a group or two. It made the game feel alive. After all if I wante to play a game with 5 or six friends I could simply play a game like Diablo or Baldur's gate.
Intances are not all evil. For LotRO, the storyline quests are great becuase they are intstanced private enoucnters, but as i said in my example, instancing of regular zones like say the Deadmines from WoW or the Barrows in LotRO seems to unreal to me. Instanced dungeons that just funnel you through and spit you out the other end isnt how it should be. I want to feel as though Im in the dungeon doing waht ever I want with other people coming and going and all the mobs respawning whenever. Why cant we even see a few of these in this generation of games?
You sure it's not you who's extremist? We have games like WAR which focus on PVP, have captureable PVP objectives, and even give you open world PVP on top of the PVP zones and instances. I don't know if there's any granularity between that and corpse looting (maybe 10% gold looting?)
Also, the difficulty of the game (too easy, too hard) is separate from the death/PVP flag mechanics, so referring to a hardcore perma-death+full-loot game as "hard" is wrong. If you take a game and make it perma-death, you haven't changed the odds that you'll succeed or fail (the difficulty), you've only changed the punishment for failure (the penalty.)
Instanced PVP is almost required for a game to have truly competitive PVP. I've never understood the type of MMORPGer who is both an avid PVPer and only wants World PVP (which is some of the most consistently uninteresting PVP.) Even with balance population on each side, games with instanced PVP don't get epic fights that often -- when population is free to be drastically imbalanced its even more rare to get a solid, fun fight.
Perhaps to some people, the "game" is the social intercourse and logistics required to mobilize large groups of players, and the inevitable landslide victory is the reward to them. Personally I like decisions made during the fight to matter.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The answer is simple !!
You can do FAR more advanced quests and gameplay vise interessting dungeons and/or locations if they are instanced...
plus you also get rid of a few illogical things that happen in a open world/dungeon
But sure an open dungeon hack can be fun aswell.
Hey Dax, which game are you referring to that takes 2 hours to complete on normal mode?
Sorry, forgott to say, World of warcraft. It is from site that offers WOW runs.
Hate to break it to you, but those numbers are seriously off. With a full group of 5 we can clear any lvl 80 5-man heroic instance in WoW in under 30 minutes with the exception of the Oculus and The Old Kingdom. There are groups clearing Heroic UK in 10 minutes and CoT has a 25 minute timer on it with a flying mount as the reward.
Two hours a day is plenty of time to accomplish many things.
You're right, due to lazy programming and a "lack of a social aspect", almost nobody plays WOW or has fun with it.
...er, wait a sec, millions of players play it and have fun with it.
Yet another post claiming MMOs "should be this way", that fails to realize MMOs should be whatever way people have fun (and the WOW model is clearly one of those ways.)
They don't know any better. They didn't play MMORPGs back when they could still be considered MMORPGs. They hare heavy casual people who's only experience is with WoW. Now that would be fine... if it hadn't affected the rest of us core MMORPG players.
I did. I started with UO & EQ. WOW >> EQ because of instances. No camping, better boss fight, more sense of danger, more challenges to down the boss.
I highly any current WOW player would even consider EQ if they spend several hours in it. I won't go back for sure.
You're right, due to lazy programming and a "lack of a social aspect", almost nobody plays WOW or has fun with it.
...er, wait a sec, millions of players play it and have fun with it.
Yet another post claiming MMOs "should be this way", that fails to realize MMOs should be whatever way people have fun (and the WOW model is clearly one of those ways.)
Or perhaps millions of people responded to Blizzards superior marketing, who can say for sure what all those millions really think? You can't say that instancing is any more fun than not, just because WoW has the most subs and happens to use some instancing. I think seamless worlds are more fun than instances, and I played WoW for a couple years and enjoyed myself, so your little rule obviously doesn't apply.
I can say for sure that WOW instance dungeon is 100x more fun for me than take-a-number-camping dungeons in EQ. I played both.
ya, just try imagine wow instance not being instanced.
player 1> > hey, I want to kill the boss.
player 2> > Ok, there are 100 people wanting to kill this boss too. You need to wait in line.
Well the main payout for sharding is being a unified server. It's pretty retarded that I can talk with friends in RL who play WOW but not be able to play with them because they're on some other server.
It's really not done for consoles. It's done for sanity. I think WOW probably still crashes when you get too many people in one place (and at the very least there were 3+ years of it crashing anytime that happened.) And most players aren't terribly pleased at the lag in Dalaran resulting from so many people crammed into such a tight space.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Don't have to imagine. That exactly happened to me in EQ many years ago. I wait SIX HOURS .. got to kill the boss like TWICE. Nothing good dropped.
It is a huge failure as a game. WOW instance dungeon is 1000x better. If i want to stare at a screen and chat, i went on MSN.
Don't have to imagine. That exactly happened to me in EQ many years ago. I wait SIX HOURS .. got to kill the boss like TWICE. Nothing good dropped.
It is a huge failure as a game. WOW instance dungeon is 1000x better. If i want to stare at a screen and chat, i went on MSN.
But imagine if the boss had a great spawn rate (5 mins) and only 2 place holders. Therefore; every 3rd spawn is the boss. Every 15 minutes you get the boss spawned. It takes longer to get to a boss in a "tunnel" style instance that is used in MMO's now. This would work. Doing this allows the game to still feel alive AND you dont have to wait for a boss to spawn for 2 days.
Am I wrong?
Don't have to imagine. That exactly happened to me in EQ many years ago. I wait SIX HOURS .. got to kill the boss like TWICE. Nothing good dropped.
It is a huge failure as a game. WOW instance dungeon is 1000x better. If i want to stare at a screen and chat, i went on MSN.
But imagine if the boss had a great spawn rate (5 mins) and only 2 place holders. Therefore; every 3rd spawn is the boss. Every 15 minutes you get the boss spawned. It takes longer to get to a boss in a "tunnel" style instance that is used in MMO's now. This would work. Doing this allows the game to still feel alive AND you dont have to wait for a boss to spawn for 2 days.
Am I wrong?
Short Answer
Yes
I dont love instancing.
Don't have to imagine. That exactly happened to me in EQ many years ago. I wait SIX HOURS .. got to kill the boss like TWICE. Nothing good dropped.
It is a huge failure as a game. WOW instance dungeon is 1000x better. If i want to stare at a screen and chat, i went on MSN.
But imagine if the boss had a great spawn rate (5 mins) and only 2 place holders. Therefore; every 3rd spawn is the boss. Every 15 minutes you get the boss spawned. It takes longer to get to a boss in a "tunnel" style instance that is used in MMO's now. This would work. Doing this allows the game to still feel alive AND you dont have to wait for a boss to spawn for 2 days.
Am I wrong?
Short Answer
Yes
Why? Can I have the long answer?
EvE Online has no instancing... its so fun having your loot stolen and salvaged on a long mission especially when it happens every time in the populated systems, players even recommend it for some quick money ah how we love those ninja looters who steal from you, especially on those 2h ones. Loot nah thats for suckers, I do missions for sport, really.
No instancing is so great!?!