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Where do you stand on the game being instanced?
daylight01
Member Posts: 2,250
We all know that the game will be heavily instanced but what are your thoughts on this.
My own thoughts are it comes with good and bad aspects.
The main bad point..
Must be of course the social aspect,I love meeting new people in mmos and socialising with them,now if I am in an instance which could just be me on away missions then I wont be bumping into to many people,of course I could click the icon to let people join my team but it is hardly the same as bumping into some player needing a hand or just chatting with them as I pass them.
The main good..
When I want to do a quest I can get it done with no fuss or annoyance,When I tried Aion it really got to me with there "tag" system when fighting an enemy in pve,I played a cleric and if there was a few people going for the same quest I could spend ages just trying to get it done with all the kill stealing,Alot of the quests in the game I had to bypass as I just could not out damage the nukers in that game,A few of them I had to persevere with as they part part of a chain quest and it would take me such a long time it just dragged the fun out of it.
to sum up.
I guess for me it is not to much of a problem as I could always socialise in the main hub areas and I belive that quite a few parts of space are also open,I have to say the good out weighs the bad ...at least for me.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
Comments
I am not sure... I have played 3 games in the last 3 or so years
COX which is instanced but I did not mind too much.
LORO There were some instance aspects.
Lineage2 no instance just a wide open world (well.. some instance.. )
I was hoping STO would be a wide open MMO but I guess it falls more in the line of COH/COV Which I guess is ok, will be trying it out on Tues so I will know more what it feels like then.
For me heavy instancing kills the mmo..i dont even consider it an mmo...nothing massive about an instance with 1 to 10-20 players in it
Instancing is the number 1 reason I will not be buying the game. Even if they had just a little open world PvP, I would try it, but arenas and battlegrounds are a no-go for me.
It really depends if we're talking about just "having a lot of instances" or "being completely made up of instances". In other words, if there is pretty much no open world/space aspects, then yeah, that would be kinda crappy. With space, I don't see why they can't have sectors set up that you can travel to that are non-instanced for things. I can see why the ground/ship missions would need to be instanced though as I'm not quite sure how else they would implement a bunch of varied areas supposedly on different planets/locations otherwise. They would need to basically make an MMO world for each planet otherwise, which, while cool, would be fucking staggering. So as far as ground stuff goes, I don't mind instancing. However, I would hope space is a bit more open with the exception of the massive encounters and such.
Personally, I'm going to take a look at the beta and see how it goes from there.
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well every MMo is instanced to some degree, even if it doesnt seem like it. ( lot of smoke and mirrors) i got the pre order, so ill be finding out if this game does it for me or not come the 12th of january.
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Based on what I've seen so far it doesn't bother me. That could change once I'm actually playing the game. But for now it looks like instances don't kill the immersion.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
I think instancing works fine with space games, but it needs to be done right.
- No artificial boundary that players bounce off of. If they move far away from the populated portion of the instance it is just nothingness, aka you can't move to the next instance w/o warping.
- Allow players to " warp " to the next instance from anywhere on the map. Do not make freaking portals.... well maybe ones that would allow players to jump " several " instances or maybe between important instances.
- Allow players to be intercepted while warping from one instance to the next. Don't make it an instant warp.
Well it depends on whether you're talking about zoning or instancing. I find zoning works fine in space games (ala EvE) with the 'warp' justification, but is completely stupid in fantasy type games (ala AoC)
Instancing also depends on how its done. If every single part of the game is instanced, and you can tell its instanced (like CO or AoC) that kills a lot of the fun for me. I understand and appreciate instancing in specific quest areas, but if I'm in a tavern or lounge (Ten Forward) i expext to be able to seamlessly interact with every other player who may walk in.
Instanced games have not worked for me in the past but alot of up comming mmos that I am waiting on are instanced so all I can say is you wont know if you like it till you play it. Also there is a difference between a game having instances and a game being instanced.
Instances do detract from the immersion somewhat but I've always felt they were a necessary evil to combat asshats who would try to boss steal while you clear trash. Spawn camping simply sucks, and if it takes instances to avoid such, I'm all for it.
I don't like zones or instances generally speaking, but I can see why they went that direction. In the past I've been critical with my comments regarding this aspect, but I think I'll take a step back and see how it plays out in STO.
In regards to kill stealing, I think Fallen Earth handles it rather well. If there is a boss battle and you need the boss but are not grouped with the person who tagged it first, just join in the fight and you get credit. You don't even have to do substantial amount of damange to get credit, just tap it. I've seen this mechanic quite a few times in action in Fallen Earth and it works well. As long as no one is 'technically' kill stealing, people are happy for the help.
I think instancing is the way to go for a Star Trek game anyways as it will make sure you never run into too many ships in one area. When this MMO was first announced by the former company that had the IP the one thing that I thought would be detrimental to immersion in the Star Trek universe would be going anywhere and running into 200+ ships all trying to get at one location (Planet, Space station, etc... ). This to me would be more immersion breaking for Star Trek than any amount of instancing could be. If done right instancing can be a good thing.
Bren
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Instanced open world is so 90's and should disappier from MMOs. Why, because its technical problem nothing else. Ever since WoW came popular I been wondering why some companies still use instanced open worlds, it ruins feeling and just proofs they didn't evolve. I don't mind instanced battlefields or pve instances, but open world should be just one instance.
It's extremely lame. Just like everything else Cryptic does it is a shortcut meant to whore out this IP and push a mediocre fluff game out the door as soon as possible with lifetime subs, and a cash shop. Thanks Cryptic for getting your un-original soulless hands on another great IP and flushing it down the toilet.
If you can't tell I might be biased. I think Cryptic has the shittiest vision, mission, and any other statement imaginable when it comes to MMORPG's. I hope companies like this fail and people start taking some chances and putting some more love into these games. As much as I don't really like WoW's design this is something Blizzard would never do, and companies like them are becoming more and more scarce.
Clearly some people haven't researched enough of this game, yes there will be huge amounts of instances but there will be open world areas too.
The OP suggests that instancing has a negative effect on the social aspect of a game and I would suggest that the exact opposite is true. With STO having in effect one single server (cluster, cluster of clusters, whatever) then there will not be issues with population on one server being too low or too high and instead as you move about you will bump into many people that you would normally never meet. The fact that STO will use instances to control the population within a specific zone or area is fine and considering the potential contention issues between players for limited resources and the potential latency issues in highly crowded systems it makes a lot of sense.
Given the choice between having 10 servers that are lightly instanced and one big universe to play in I will take the big one every time.
Some people are implying that Cryptic is taking the easy way out by using an instanced universe but the easy way out is the WoW way. WoW is in effect instanced as each server is a different instance but not only that there is no way to move between the instances (unless you want to pay $$ for a server transfer). Which is harder to do? Roll out more servers and figure out how to make everything and everyone work together at the same time?
Trying to get 10,000 or 20,000 people into one zone at the same time and actively do something that interacts in a timely and responsive manner simply isn't possible with the current technology that is readily available. That being the case you can create island ghettos where players are isolated from each other with no easy way to interact or you can create one big system that then splits people and groups off as the load and demand requires it.
With STO it looks like there won't be any of that which server are you going to choose nonsense and it looks like there won't even be an issue for the NA and EU markets either. It should be fun.
In general, I agree. I have never been an opponent of instancing, frankly, and this sharding system has some real plusses.
One downside, though, is that you can't have servers with variant rulesets (like RP, or full PvP). Another is that if the server goes down - the entire game goes down, unlike most MMOs where you can switch to an alt on another server.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Instancing is a very tricky subject in MMO's partly as everyone has a different experience and like / dislike of them but also because they are rarely done well. For me personally, instancing itself is not an issue but rather the frequency of hoppng in and out of instances and the level of disruption to the immersion.
WOW and EQ2 both have instancing but the main world itself is not and therefore feels like a huge landscape for adventure and exploration. Games such as AoC where instancing is used much more makes a player feel like you are boxed into small pieces of a jigsaw and the loading screens typically pull you out of your "game mindset" far too often.
STO has a unique benefit in that the nature of the ship to planet transport makes the use of instancing logical and can be hidden easily in "teleporting" which maybe could be a randomised QTE scene(?)
The movement around a planet or around your own ship should be as non-instanced as possible as that is your core game world.
STO will run a very sensitive line as it is a mainstream recognised IP and that is far more difficult to appease your player base than a new IP and therefore anything that distracts from a smooth playing experience will catch them a cold far faster than it would in other games.
To err is human....to play is divine
While I prefer open worlds, instancing doesn't always mean a game can't be fun at the same time.
I thought AOC and GW's were a bit over the top, but I never minded WOW's dungeon instances.
And though in EVE they are zones and not instances, fact is there's never more than about 100 people in the zone I'm in except when I have to visit a trade hub or fight in a major battles, so I don't need to be able to access all 35K+ players at the same time.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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In general, I agree. I have never been an opponent of instancing, frankly, and this sharding system has some real plusses.
One downside, though, is that you can't have servers with variant rulesets (like RP, or full PvP). Another is that if the server goes down - the entire game goes down, unlike most MMOs where you can switch to an alt on another server.
True variant rulesets can be interesting at times but depending on if you like it or not RP is pretty much dead anyway outside or a small group of players. As to if a server goes down actually depending on the problem it is the other way around if it is a simple server failure then really it is likely to be a component of the cluster which means that while yoru instance might go poof everyone else's will continue along fine and potentially you could just be thrown into a new instance on a new server. But, if there is some software problem that takes the entire cluster down then yes it would be a problem assuming that the problem wouldn't have existed on all the other servers too.
The result is it doesn't feel like an MMO.
I disagree completely. I think the Shard instancing of the areas is a fantastic way to organize and control the problems that plague most MMo's and what frustrates the Casual Player. Hardcore Players will always lean towards the "One Server, One World, All At Once" because it adds to their gameplay and gives reason for their 40+ hours of gaming each week. Whereas the Casual Player suffers in that environ due to things like "Ganking, Killstealing, Powerplaying, yada...yada."
Cryptic has always done two things right, Scaling and Ease. If you are a Hardcore Player, you find your fun in the more immersive and difficult aspects of the game(such as the Open Arena PVP and fightign the good fight with your (guild/fleet/clan/cabal/coterie/whatevername you call it). If you are the Casual Player you end up having fun and not being disappointed when you dump that extra 2 hours into a game to only have some asshat come by and fuck it up for you.(I've had this happen in WoW and EVE and I will always call myself a Casual Gamer*).
End result? I think the way in which they are managing the population is fine and I can tell you from experience, I've played in such games with open grouping and the end result is I make some pretty cool friends in game because you really only get to know someone by how useful they are in the missions and in your interactions(And lets be honest people, those of us who will play this game, will be using the Lingo and interacting both in controlling our ships and in saying things like "Enemies dead ahead, Coming About, Firing all weapons...etc.).
I can't wait to try it out, I've pre-ordered and I'm holding out my candle, I liked COX but some of the problems with it that I dislike have been addressed in STO as far as I know. the Problems I had in EVE are being addressed, and I don't feel like I'm selling my soul by playing WoW.
Those of you who play STO, keep an eye out for me, I'd be happy to group up and help with any mission or pvp. May we bodly go where few have gone before.(And start remembering its a game
)
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For sure. Total population should be no problem, and that is a big plus, but Warhammer had far more of an issue with faction balance, and this game might have a huge problem with this, as the Klingons have very little PvE content. Imagine if Warhammer had had no quests or PQs for one side at launch.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Well, I hope there is at least group instancing, such as are common on Wow. I'm not particularly thrilled regarding singular person instancing, because I usually play games with two accounts, for leveling toons, etc. Not being able to drag both into an area would not be good.