I like the way they are done in Fallen Earth. No loading screen but a very fluent transition. You enter a cave/building which then is an instance just because a window popped up with a ' reset instance ' button. These are usually in a building that always can be entered without being instanced, but become instanced if you have a certain quest active.
This is a method that doesnt take away story immersion. I really like it.
I like the way they are done in Fallen Earth. No loading screen but a very fluent transition. You enter a cave/building which then is an instance just because a window popped up with a ' reset instance ' button. These are usually in a building that always can be entered without being instanced, but become instanced if you have a certain quest active. This is a method that doesnt take away story immersion. I really like it.
agreed to this - its very obvious that you enter an instance, due to alittle load time, but atleast they removed the load screen, is very nice made
Since phasing was invented, instances are just lazy programming. STO really has led this to new heights with their "Age of Loadscreen". The less instances the better. With good programming you can make even bosses and stories phased without putting people via a loadscreen into another part of the game. Its possible, but its the lazy way just to make instances. I hate them.
The thing about "phasing" is it does not fix the problem it says it fixes. "Phasing" claims to solve the problem of emptied out low-level zones, but all it does is further divide the player base into instancing.
So, where before a low level zone might be emptied out of all but a very few players, with "Phasing" it separates out even those. If you are high level in a "phased" area, do you think you are going to see low level noobs running about? I don't think so.
Folks used to complain about "instancing" and I can see instancing as a necessary evil for dungeons. But "phasing" is a 1,000 times worse and for really no benefit. There is just no gain in separating folks in such an artificial manner.
However, like all bad MMO ideas, I expect "phasing" will be tried ad nauseum until folks drop out of games. I know I am quitting WOW primarily because of "phasing" and the likelihood it will be overused in the next expansion.
If I had a choice I would prefer open world but none of the games I tried that were instance heavy bothered me either. I can think of some other facets of those games that I didn't care for but the level of instancing done in those games didn't bother me.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Dungeons, boss fights..ect = good for instances Everything else = frustrating and immersion breaking.
I think that about sums it up. Use "instancing" where "needed", but they should stay away from force-feeding us storylines via "phasing".
What if the storyline works best as an instance? What if you walk into a big dungeon, but some lake squid closes the doors behind you permanently. Thats an instance. Its called for by the plot. Heck, alot of Star Treks shows screamed of instances.
Originally posted by Marcus- Can it at times? Certainly.. Yet, I've been in a premade in WoW where we spent 3 hours on a Thurs night and just wiped the floor with PuGs. I'm sure they didn't feel it was very balanced. I've also been on the recieving end. Thats all I'm saying.
Sure, but that's hardly the ideal implementation. WOW doesn't do things perfectly.
Better games match premades with premades (ideally with a rating system matching similarly-skilled/geared teams), or at the very least try to equalize skill.
League of Legends gives everyone an ELO rating, and matches teams with an intended 50/50 win ratio. Even though LOL is a game very susceptible to landslide victories (due to how its mechanics work), many battles end up very close. This dramatically improves the fun of the game.
It even matches PUGs with Premades, giving an ELO bonus to the premade team. Because I only ever "casually premaded" (grouping up with random people from my friends list who were good players), I've lost ~95% of my games as a premade. Because the system expects premades to work closely together, so it matches you with much higher-skilled opponents than you would normally get if you PUGged. Partial premades are handled similarly.
So WOW's system is actually pretty bad in allowing premades to stomp random PUGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Dungeons, boss fights..ect = good for instances Everything else = frustrating and immersion breaking.
I think that about sums it up. Use "instancing" where "needed", but they should stay away from force-feeding us storylines via "phasing".
What if the storyline works best as an instance? What if you walk into a big dungeon, but some lake squid closes the doors behind you permanently. Thats an instance. Its called for by the plot. Heck, alot of Star Treks shows screamed of instances.
Traditionally, an MMORPG is not about the "storyline", but about the "world". Storylines feel artificial and forced. What works in a book or movie does not necessarily work in a living, breathing, dynamic game world.
Do you need a "plot" to tell you what to do next, or can you jump into a vast and dangerous mysterious fantasy world, choose your own goals and set out upon your own adventure?
I say if the goal is to have a tight storyline plot, instances to separate other players, then you are really one step away from playing an offline single player RPG, and probably not a very good one at that.
MMORPG's thrive when they are of a free range design, an open world. Not an aimless world, an open world, with enicements to lure you into many directions.
I enjoy instanced content, usually because it forces players to really step up their game and work as a group. The open world is just that, an open world, but people are retarded.
There's no interaction or adventure anymore, because, like, 80% of people are slightly retarded (when it comes to playing video games). With WoW introducing millions of people into the genre, rather than UO's 200k or so, instead of maybe 30k idiots, we now have a good 4 million idiots (talking english/US game and subscribers, here)
Idiots don't think - period. They are like cattle, constantly chewing on grass, grazing in the paddock, happy, content, with whatever we give them. They are the things that intelligent people turn into meat and complain about the smell of.
(the analogy is, there, that they will happily repeat any given task if it is even remotely enjoyable, and they're generally less capable than the smarter/nerdier people of old that would, say, play UO)
Anyway, you can tell when people are a little more retarded than what would be good for the game, when you're in an instance and people die. Instances have gotten easier and easier, players have gotten more powerful talents (making WoW's TBC content really easy) and if anyone's dying, someone did something wrong. And they're stupid, or their computer/internet is terrible.
That's basically it - you, the computer, or your service provider. They are the only people responsible for failure in that content.
Anyway, I enjoy instanced content because it's a bit tougher and practically forces players together. With cross server instances, you can now play in this slightly harder content pretty fast - I enjoy that. I remember, once, waiting for a tank for three hours. That was about the time I quit WoW (the first time).
However, if there was an open area where elites just wandered around in groups, that was hazardous enough to force players to group in that particular zone, I would have no problems with that. I would probably enjoy it, particularly if there was a point to having random elites wandering around... a stronghold of sorts, perhaps.
---
I personally enjoy the idea of instanced fights, in the case of, say, boss fights. Say there is an open world zone that has a whole bunch of elites, everywhere. Groups of five level 80 elites, with fears, stuns, silences, healers, all that jazz. Many 25 man raids could encounter this content at once (on any one server), and there is a boss in a room, once a player enters the room, they get a non-destroyable buff, an aura, perhaps (which I believe Blizzard uses for their phasing, but could probably hide it), that makes you only able to see players in your raid group, and the boss can only interact with players in your raid group.
Think back to the Bowser fights in Super Mario 64 - a room of lava, large spiked balls around the place. What I would give to hurl a dragon at a large spiked ball a la Super Mario, haha. But the point is that it would perhaps add some atmosphere to a fight, and still prevent people screwing with your raid boss, while keeping in a relatively open world.
I'ma end the large wall of text now.
I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.
For me, its a "grass is always greener on the other side" take on the issue. I liked the way EQ did LDoN back in the day because it was sort of annoying having to camp certain spots instead of actually steadily crawling through a dungeon, which is more similar to the PnP D&D games.
After having played WoW for so long, I sort of miss the open dungeons, especially on PvP servers. It was annoying to get ganked if you were trying hard to accomplish something, sure, but the drama and the fights that ensued could be quite phenomenal if not comical at the very least. It added another dimension to the game, that I sometimes miss.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Instances make a lot of sense in some situations; I liked how PoTBS did it, you could chase a guy across the map, and if you were fast enough, you could catch him and then engage, that triggers an instance. You and him.
I only want to see instances when it makes sense for the story, and the rest of the time it should be open world.
Instances are fun. For me it's one of the things I look forward to in an MMO. Plus you get to run with all kinds of people. And heaven forbid that you accidentally aggro causing mass nerd rage. You get the guys who wipe once and just leave. Either way it's fun and at some points, amusing.
I'd say it is all in how they are implemented by the developers. You can make a game with really annoying instances that make players hate you, or you can make some that have acceptable uses. Take WoW for example, even though comparing has been done to death, they at least didn't make zone to zone load screens. Would you have liked WoW as much if you had to zone into SW, or any other major city (even after a transport loading screen?). Jus timagine a load screen while flying on a gryphon for goodness sakes. And this is what I mean when I say how it is all implemented! So they stuck with transport, dungeons, and raids.
STO could have done things differently with how they use instances. They could have made the transition from space to sector space more fun somehow. Or perhaps they could have left out all the sector block load screens, but they did not. Right now many people are trapped in DS9 or the k7 sector and can't leave it, so it doesn't seem to be helping them out their.
Instead of using load screens for turbolifts and doors inside bases in STO they could have just made working doors and turbolifts which would have reduced a little frustration.
The creative talent required to make instances viable and an accepted part of any MMO is a monumental task I bet, and should never be taken lightly.
Do not try to be a great gamer, just be a gamer. Cause, I don't care how good you are anyway.
He came off as saying balanced, what he said, and what you say he meant, are two different things.. As i said in my post, allow queuing for pre-made vs pre-made, and i agree with him completely, though i have yet to see a MMO do that, though as i also said, I have only played WOW and WAR in this aspect.
As a matter of opinion only, I'd rather be fighting 15v50, than 10vs10 against a premade vs my pug (as an example), that is camping my spawn point, and not even doing the BGs objectives. That is a whole lot more frusteratring to me.
@ Marcus: in the upcoming CATA, Blizzard introduces rated BG's to have a PvP competition with premades. I believe 2/3 of the players need to be of the same guild to be validated.
That will be the system you talk about. I don't know how it will be linked to the old system of individual PvP titles (scrapped in 2006 and now re-introduced in Cata), but they mentioned a seperate queing system for these daily or weekly themed rated BG's (one at a time).
We shall see how it works out (some negative feelings about how "hardcore" it could become), but in this case the "instance" is the only solution to rate things more objectively and "balanced".
World PvP looks great but it mostly destroys realm balance and can kill game mechanics in the long run.
Potential good ideas never make for great games. It is the game experience that counts and the more control you have over the settings, the more control you have in balancing the gaming fun.
Most people like to have that. Some don't like it. No one agrees on all points.
Edit: First condition for an MMORPG is a big open world with the least possible loading screens. Afterwards you can create instances for game balancing puposes only. In ST those 2 conditions were not met (loading screens to load content).
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
I'd say it is all in how they are implemented by the developers. You can make a game with really annoying instances that make players hate you, or you can make some that have acceptable uses.
Well that's how it is for you and me, and even the majority of gamers (who just want fun.) But clearly this thread indicates that of the MMORPG players out there, there's at least a solid minority of them who strongly prefer a non-instanced game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by pencilrick Traditionally, an MMORPG is not about the "storyline", but about the "world". Storylines feel artificial and forced. What works in a book or movie does not necessarily work in a living, breathing, dynamic game world. Do you need a "plot" to tell you what to do next, or can you jump into a vast and dangerous mysterious fantasy world, choose your own goals and set out upon your own adventure? I say if the goal is to have a tight storyline plot, instances to separate other players, then you are really one step away from playing an offline single player RPG, and probably not a very good one at that. MMORPG's thrive when they are of a free range design, an open world. Not an aimless world, an open world, with enicements to lure you into many directions.
The earliest games may not have been about the storyline for the quest, but games from DAOC and afterwards all had storylines for quests. The quests are dictated by the world, and they all come together.
Some storylines may be forced, but it all depends on the writers. Some can be fun, neat. Do i need a plot? Not necessarily. But if the world does't have a plot, then my character wouldn't need to do anything. A bland world without storylines is not interesting. Going out and searching for an adventure would be mostly fruitless if the world had no storylines going on.
Sorry you are wrong, having a tight storyline that makes use of instances is not 'one step away', and most certainly adds to the game.
Like it or not, instances (or temporarily closed off areas) happen in the real world, if the game doesn't have them, it feels artificial.
Originally posted by Marcus- Can it at times? Certainly.. Yet, I've been in a premade in WoW where we spent 3 hours on a Thurs night and just wiped the floor with PuGs. I'm sure they didn't feel it was very balanced. I've also been on the recieving end. Thats all I'm saying.
Sure, but that's hardly the ideal implementation. WOW doesn't do things perfectly.
Better games match premades with premades (ideally with a rating system matching similarly-skilled/geared teams), or at the very least try to equalize skill.
League of Legends gives everyone an ELO rating, and matches teams with an intended 50/50 win ratio. Even though LOL is a game very susceptible to landslide victories (due to how its mechanics work), many battles end up very close. This dramatically improves the fun of the game.
It even matches PUGs with Premades, giving an ELO bonus to the premade team. Because I only ever "casually premaded" (grouping up with random people from my friends list who were good players), I've lost ~95% of my games as a premade. Because the system expects premades to work closely together, so it matches you with much higher-skilled opponents than you would normally get if you PUGged. Partial premades are handled similarly.
So WOW's system is actually pretty bad in allowing premades to stomp random PUGs.
Thats fine then, and I suppose quite a bit more balanced.
As i said in my original post on this thread, my experience with PvP type instances is limited to WoW and WAR, i found in those two games, they were far from balanced. I can also see why someone would like the scenerio you described, I might even like it to an extent, but i'd still much prefer a game without instances
The first five MMOs i played didnt have them, and I believe WoW was the first one i played with them, it just felt very confining, a product of my enviorment perhaps.
I also felt, and this is a matter of opinion only, it secluded and cut off the community aspect of the game (to an extent). Theres something to be said for meeting people out in the wilds, as opposed to standing by a bank screaming "LFG!1!!".
Originally posted by pencilrick Traditionally, an MMORPG is not about the "storyline", but about the "world". Storylines feel artificial and forced. What works in a book or movie does not necessarily work in a living, breathing, dynamic game world. Do you need a "plot" to tell you what to do next, or can you jump into a vast and dangerous mysterious fantasy world, choose your own goals and set out upon your own adventure? I say if the goal is to have a tight storyline plot, instances to separate other players, then you are really one step away from playing an offline single player RPG, and probably not a very good one at that. MMORPG's thrive when they are of a free range design, an open world. Not an aimless world, an open world, with enicements to lure you into many directions.
The earliest games may not have been about the storyline for the quest, but games from DAOC and afterwards all had storylines for quests. The quests are dictated by the world, and they all come together.
Some storylines may be forced, but it all depends on the writers. Some can be fun, neat. Do i need a plot? Not necessarily. But if the world does't have a plot, then my character wouldn't need to do anything. A bland world without storylines is not interesting. Going out and searching for an adventure would be mostly fruitless if the world had no storylines going on.
Sorry you are wrong, having a tight storyline that makes use of instances is not 'one step away', and most certainly adds to the game.
Like it or not, instances (or temporarily closed off areas) happen in the real world, if the game doesn't have them, it feels artificial.
The world is the environment, and has it's lore, factions, and such going on. The "plot" of a world is simply to be. The players are the drivers of their own destinies, and their "stories" unfold from their own choices. This is the "magic" of MMORPG's. When players tried EQ, for example, they had a map and they landed in a starting zone. And from their they explored and adventured, and there was a mystery and fascination mixed with a sense of danger about everything. The gameplay was quite exhilirating.
Now, fast forward to WOTLK with it's contrived and meaningless cutscenes and phasing, and the hideous "Looking For Zerg" tool tha has trivialized dungeoning to the point of blandless. The clueless instant-gratification crowd is driving the MMORPG genre into the ground and fast, and this is proven out with WOW, which appears to be waning fast due its own false design changes.
Forcing players down some poorly written linear plot is lame and artificial. How you can say that "not being forced down a contrived storyline" feels artificial is beyond me, when it is the other way around. The demands for instant-gratification has gone beyond the extreme of welfare epics to the point of having the game tell you what to do next and worse only allowing you to do what it tells you.
I think you you are wrong on all of your points and wonder if you missed early MMO gaming. If you did, you missed out on quite an experience.
They are the worst. Nothing less massive than taking players in a MMORPG out of the world. I like one big open world with no instances, or zones with no instances especially on dungeons. I am a huge fan of non instanced open world dungeons. WoW dungeons can be fun, but repetitive. I wouldn't be hugely against a mix of WoW like dungeons for story and open world dungeons.
Instanced PvP bg's/scenarios make me very sad.
With all that said I understand some games have to have instances. The Secret World being set in the real world for instance or Conan's graphical areas and tortage lean towards instanced play. It isn't ideal, but I do like these types of games I just wouldn't really call them massive.
FFXI was zoned with no instances outside of story quests and some BCNM boss fights and that system worked very well. Especially the open world dungeons.
WoW my main complaint is that dungeons and PvP is almost 100% instanced making end game the least massive thing out there.
Cryptics games... we don't even need to go there. EQ2 was a pretty good setup. It felt massive enough. Vanguard and Darkfall are both amazing in this regard.
Nothing wrong with instances, it is the over use of them which plagues some of the newer MMO's. A MMO is supposed to be played with other players, what is the point if you are constantly playing instanced quests you never see anyone else until you go to town.?
Nothing wrong with instances, it is the over use of them which plagues some of the newer MMO's. A MMO is supposed to be played with other players, what is the point if you are constantly playing instanced quests you never see anyone else until you go to town.?
Agreed. The main thing is that instances are sometimes a necessary evil, but never much more than that. Their use should be minimized. MMO's are about playing around other players.
Well, as many of you I started playing single player games. Then I felt bored so I moved to multiplayer games (LAN parties was fun). Still it wasn't enough for me so I moved to mmorpgs to fell the massive living worlds. Now tell me, why MMOS seems to progress backward? First there was massive worlds, then mmorpgs became multiplayer games with "world" becoming 3d graphic big chat (WoW, I'm looking at you) and in new games on horizon (SWOTOR) you even don't need to play with other people (henchman ftw! ).
Is it something bad with my view of progression or the whole mmorpg market is going backward?
I guess when I am playing a MMO I want to be in the story with a small group, that old PnP feel. So instances work for me, in fact I haven't really seen anything open world that didn't water that down to the point of general sameness. I can see how open world would be needed for PvP though, not that it holds any interest for me.
Comments
I like the way they are done in Fallen Earth. No loading screen but a very fluent transition. You enter a cave/building which then is an instance just because a window popped up with a ' reset instance ' button. These are usually in a building that always can be entered without being instanced, but become instanced if you have a certain quest active.
This is a method that doesnt take away story immersion. I really like it.
agreed to this - its very obvious that you enter an instance, due to alittle load time, but atleast they removed the load screen, is very nice made
The thing about "phasing" is it does not fix the problem it says it fixes. "Phasing" claims to solve the problem of emptied out low-level zones, but all it does is further divide the player base into instancing.
So, where before a low level zone might be emptied out of all but a very few players, with "Phasing" it separates out even those. If you are high level in a "phased" area, do you think you are going to see low level noobs running about? I don't think so.
Folks used to complain about "instancing" and I can see instancing as a necessary evil for dungeons. But "phasing" is a 1,000 times worse and for really no benefit. There is just no gain in separating folks in such an artificial manner.
However, like all bad MMO ideas, I expect "phasing" will be tried ad nauseum until folks drop out of games. I know I am quitting WOW primarily because of "phasing" and the likelihood it will be overused in the next expansion.
Indifferent myself mostly.
If I had a choice I would prefer open world but none of the games I tried that were instance heavy bothered me either. I can think of some other facets of those games that I didn't care for but the level of instancing done in those games didn't bother me.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Dungeons, boss fights..ect = good for instances
Everything else = frustrating and immersion breaking.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
this topic made me miss vanguard... damn you!!!
I think that about sums it up. Use "instancing" where "needed", but they should stay away from force-feeding us storylines via "phasing".
I think that about sums it up. Use "instancing" where "needed", but they should stay away from force-feeding us storylines via "phasing".
What if the storyline works best as an instance? What if you walk into a big dungeon, but some lake squid closes the doors behind you permanently. Thats an instance. Its called for by the plot. Heck, alot of Star Treks shows screamed of instances.
Sure, but that's hardly the ideal implementation. WOW doesn't do things perfectly.
Better games match premades with premades (ideally with a rating system matching similarly-skilled/geared teams), or at the very least try to equalize skill.
League of Legends gives everyone an ELO rating, and matches teams with an intended 50/50 win ratio. Even though LOL is a game very susceptible to landslide victories (due to how its mechanics work), many battles end up very close. This dramatically improves the fun of the game.
It even matches PUGs with Premades, giving an ELO bonus to the premade team. Because I only ever "casually premaded" (grouping up with random people from my friends list who were good players), I've lost ~95% of my games as a premade. Because the system expects premades to work closely together, so it matches you with much higher-skilled opponents than you would normally get if you PUGged. Partial premades are handled similarly.
So WOW's system is actually pretty bad in allowing premades to stomp random PUGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think that about sums it up. Use "instancing" where "needed", but they should stay away from force-feeding us storylines via "phasing".
What if the storyline works best as an instance? What if you walk into a big dungeon, but some lake squid closes the doors behind you permanently. Thats an instance. Its called for by the plot. Heck, alot of Star Treks shows screamed of instances.
Traditionally, an MMORPG is not about the "storyline", but about the "world". Storylines feel artificial and forced. What works in a book or movie does not necessarily work in a living, breathing, dynamic game world.
Do you need a "plot" to tell you what to do next, or can you jump into a vast and dangerous mysterious fantasy world, choose your own goals and set out upon your own adventure?
I say if the goal is to have a tight storyline plot, instances to separate other players, then you are really one step away from playing an offline single player RPG, and probably not a very good one at that.
MMORPG's thrive when they are of a free range design, an open world. Not an aimless world, an open world, with enicements to lure you into many directions.
I enjoy instanced content, usually because it forces players to really step up their game and work as a group. The open world is just that, an open world, but people are retarded.
There's no interaction or adventure anymore, because, like, 80% of people are slightly retarded (when it comes to playing video games). With WoW introducing millions of people into the genre, rather than UO's 200k or so, instead of maybe 30k idiots, we now have a good 4 million idiots (talking english/US game and subscribers, here)
Idiots don't think - period. They are like cattle, constantly chewing on grass, grazing in the paddock, happy, content, with whatever we give them. They are the things that intelligent people turn into meat and complain about the smell of.
(the analogy is, there, that they will happily repeat any given task if it is even remotely enjoyable, and they're generally less capable than the smarter/nerdier people of old that would, say, play UO)
Anyway, you can tell when people are a little more retarded than what would be good for the game, when you're in an instance and people die. Instances have gotten easier and easier, players have gotten more powerful talents (making WoW's TBC content really easy) and if anyone's dying, someone did something wrong. And they're stupid, or their computer/internet is terrible.
That's basically it - you, the computer, or your service provider. They are the only people responsible for failure in that content.
Anyway, I enjoy instanced content because it's a bit tougher and practically forces players together. With cross server instances, you can now play in this slightly harder content pretty fast - I enjoy that. I remember, once, waiting for a tank for three hours. That was about the time I quit WoW (the first time).
However, if there was an open area where elites just wandered around in groups, that was hazardous enough to force players to group in that particular zone, I would have no problems with that. I would probably enjoy it, particularly if there was a point to having random elites wandering around... a stronghold of sorts, perhaps.
---
I personally enjoy the idea of instanced fights, in the case of, say, boss fights. Say there is an open world zone that has a whole bunch of elites, everywhere. Groups of five level 80 elites, with fears, stuns, silences, healers, all that jazz. Many 25 man raids could encounter this content at once (on any one server), and there is a boss in a room, once a player enters the room, they get a non-destroyable buff, an aura, perhaps (which I believe Blizzard uses for their phasing, but could probably hide it), that makes you only able to see players in your raid group, and the boss can only interact with players in your raid group.
Think back to the Bowser fights in Super Mario 64 - a room of lava, large spiked balls around the place. What I would give to hurl a dragon at a large spiked ball a la Super Mario, haha. But the point is that it would perhaps add some atmosphere to a fight, and still prevent people screwing with your raid boss, while keeping in a relatively open world.
I'ma end the large wall of text now.
I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.
You all need to learn to spell.
For me, its a "grass is always greener on the other side" take on the issue. I liked the way EQ did LDoN back in the day because it was sort of annoying having to camp certain spots instead of actually steadily crawling through a dungeon, which is more similar to the PnP D&D games.
After having played WoW for so long, I sort of miss the open dungeons, especially on PvP servers. It was annoying to get ganked if you were trying hard to accomplish something, sure, but the drama and the fights that ensued could be quite phenomenal if not comical at the very least. It added another dimension to the game, that I sometimes miss.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Instances make a lot of sense in some situations; I liked how PoTBS did it, you could chase a guy across the map, and if you were fast enough, you could catch him and then engage, that triggers an instance. You and him.
I only want to see instances when it makes sense for the story, and the rest of the time it should be open world.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
Instances are fun. For me it's one of the things I look forward to in an MMO. Plus you get to run with all kinds of people. And heaven forbid that you accidentally aggro causing mass nerd rage. You get the guys who wipe once and just leave. Either way it's fun and at some points, amusing.
Getting too old for this $&17!
I'd say it is all in how they are implemented by the developers. You can make a game with really annoying instances that make players hate you, or you can make some that have acceptable uses. Take WoW for example, even though comparing has been done to death, they at least didn't make zone to zone load screens. Would you have liked WoW as much if you had to zone into SW, or any other major city (even after a transport loading screen?). Jus timagine a load screen while flying on a gryphon for goodness sakes. And this is what I mean when I say how it is all implemented! So they stuck with transport, dungeons, and raids.
STO could have done things differently with how they use instances. They could have made the transition from space to sector space more fun somehow. Or perhaps they could have left out all the sector block load screens, but they did not. Right now many people are trapped in DS9 or the k7 sector and can't leave it, so it doesn't seem to be helping them out their.
Instead of using load screens for turbolifts and doors inside bases in STO they could have just made working doors and turbolifts which would have reduced a little frustration.
The creative talent required to make instances viable and an accepted part of any MMO is a monumental task I bet, and should never be taken lightly.
Do not try to be a great gamer, just be a gamer. Cause, I don't care how good you are anyway.
@ Marcus: in the upcoming CATA, Blizzard introduces rated BG's to have a PvP competition with premades. I believe 2/3 of the players need to be of the same guild to be validated.
That will be the system you talk about. I don't know how it will be linked to the old system of individual PvP titles (scrapped in 2006 and now re-introduced in Cata), but they mentioned a seperate queing system for these daily or weekly themed rated BG's (one at a time).
We shall see how it works out (some negative feelings about how "hardcore" it could become), but in this case the "instance" is the only solution to rate things more objectively and "balanced".
World PvP looks great but it mostly destroys realm balance and can kill game mechanics in the long run.
Potential good ideas never make for great games. It is the game experience that counts and the more control you have over the settings, the more control you have in balancing the gaming fun.
Most people like to have that. Some don't like it. No one agrees on all points.
Edit: First condition for an MMORPG is a big open world with the least possible loading screens. Afterwards you can create instances for game balancing puposes only. In ST those 2 conditions were not met (loading screens to load content).
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
Well that's how it is for you and me, and even the majority of gamers (who just want fun.) But clearly this thread indicates that of the MMORPG players out there, there's at least a solid minority of them who strongly prefer a non-instanced game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The earliest games may not have been about the storyline for the quest, but games from DAOC and afterwards all had storylines for quests. The quests are dictated by the world, and they all come together.
Some storylines may be forced, but it all depends on the writers. Some can be fun, neat. Do i need a plot? Not necessarily. But if the world does't have a plot, then my character wouldn't need to do anything. A bland world without storylines is not interesting. Going out and searching for an adventure would be mostly fruitless if the world had no storylines going on.
Sorry you are wrong, having a tight storyline that makes use of instances is not 'one step away', and most certainly adds to the game.
Like it or not, instances (or temporarily closed off areas) happen in the real world, if the game doesn't have them, it feels artificial.
Sure, but that's hardly the ideal implementation. WOW doesn't do things perfectly.
Better games match premades with premades (ideally with a rating system matching similarly-skilled/geared teams), or at the very least try to equalize skill.
League of Legends gives everyone an ELO rating, and matches teams with an intended 50/50 win ratio. Even though LOL is a game very susceptible to landslide victories (due to how its mechanics work), many battles end up very close. This dramatically improves the fun of the game.
It even matches PUGs with Premades, giving an ELO bonus to the premade team. Because I only ever "casually premaded" (grouping up with random people from my friends list who were good players), I've lost ~95% of my games as a premade. Because the system expects premades to work closely together, so it matches you with much higher-skilled opponents than you would normally get if you PUGged. Partial premades are handled similarly.
So WOW's system is actually pretty bad in allowing premades to stomp random PUGs.
Thats fine then, and I suppose quite a bit more balanced.
As i said in my original post on this thread, my experience with PvP type instances is limited to WoW and WAR, i found in those two games, they were far from balanced. I can also see why someone would like the scenerio you described, I might even like it to an extent, but i'd still much prefer a game without instances
The first five MMOs i played didnt have them, and I believe WoW was the first one i played with them, it just felt very confining, a product of my enviorment perhaps.
I also felt, and this is a matter of opinion only, it secluded and cut off the community aspect of the game (to an extent). Theres something to be said for meeting people out in the wilds, as opposed to standing by a bank screaming "LFG!1!!".
The earliest games may not have been about the storyline for the quest, but games from DAOC and afterwards all had storylines for quests. The quests are dictated by the world, and they all come together.
Some storylines may be forced, but it all depends on the writers. Some can be fun, neat. Do i need a plot? Not necessarily. But if the world does't have a plot, then my character wouldn't need to do anything. A bland world without storylines is not interesting. Going out and searching for an adventure would be mostly fruitless if the world had no storylines going on.
Sorry you are wrong, having a tight storyline that makes use of instances is not 'one step away', and most certainly adds to the game.
Like it or not, instances (or temporarily closed off areas) happen in the real world, if the game doesn't have them, it feels artificial.
The world is the environment, and has it's lore, factions, and such going on. The "plot" of a world is simply to be. The players are the drivers of their own destinies, and their "stories" unfold from their own choices. This is the "magic" of MMORPG's. When players tried EQ, for example, they had a map and they landed in a starting zone. And from their they explored and adventured, and there was a mystery and fascination mixed with a sense of danger about everything. The gameplay was quite exhilirating.
Now, fast forward to WOTLK with it's contrived and meaningless cutscenes and phasing, and the hideous "Looking For Zerg" tool tha has trivialized dungeoning to the point of blandless. The clueless instant-gratification crowd is driving the MMORPG genre into the ground and fast, and this is proven out with WOW, which appears to be waning fast due its own false design changes.
Forcing players down some poorly written linear plot is lame and artificial. How you can say that "not being forced down a contrived storyline" feels artificial is beyond me, when it is the other way around. The demands for instant-gratification has gone beyond the extreme of welfare epics to the point of having the game tell you what to do next and worse only allowing you to do what it tells you.
I think you you are wrong on all of your points and wonder if you missed early MMO gaming. If you did, you missed out on quite an experience.
HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE RAGE HATE HATE RAGE.
They are the worst. Nothing less massive than taking players in a MMORPG out of the world. I like one big open world with no instances, or zones with no instances especially on dungeons. I am a huge fan of non instanced open world dungeons. WoW dungeons can be fun, but repetitive. I wouldn't be hugely against a mix of WoW like dungeons for story and open world dungeons.
Instanced PvP bg's/scenarios make me very sad.
With all that said I understand some games have to have instances. The Secret World being set in the real world for instance or Conan's graphical areas and tortage lean towards instanced play. It isn't ideal, but I do like these types of games I just wouldn't really call them massive.
FFXI was zoned with no instances outside of story quests and some BCNM boss fights and that system worked very well. Especially the open world dungeons.
WoW my main complaint is that dungeons and PvP is almost 100% instanced making end game the least massive thing out there.
Cryptics games... we don't even need to go there. EQ2 was a pretty good setup. It felt massive enough. Vanguard and Darkfall are both amazing in this regard.
Nothing wrong with instances, it is the over use of them which plagues some of the newer MMO's. A MMO is supposed to be played with other players, what is the point if you are constantly playing instanced quests you never see anyone else until you go to town.?
Agreed. The main thing is that instances are sometimes a necessary evil, but never much more than that. Their use should be minimized. MMO's are about playing around other players.
Well, as many of you I started playing single player games. Then I felt bored so I moved to multiplayer games (LAN parties was fun). Still it wasn't enough for me so I moved to mmorpgs to fell the massive living worlds. Now tell me, why MMOS seems to progress backward? First there was massive worlds, then mmorpgs became multiplayer games with "world" becoming 3d graphic big chat (WoW, I'm looking at you) and in new games on horizon (SWOTOR) you even don't need to play with other people (henchman ftw!
).
Is it something bad with my view of progression or the whole mmorpg market is going backward?
I guess when I am playing a MMO I want to be in the story with a small group, that old PnP feel. So instances work for me, in fact I haven't really seen anything open world that didn't water that down to the point of general sameness. I can see how open world would be needed for PvP though, not that it holds any interest for me.