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the curse of phasing / instances
blueshadow
Member CommonPosts: 146
One of the most intriguing aspects of a MMORPG is obviously all the people you interact with. From the start, when playing MMORPGS, the fact that you are in a "living" and breathing world full of other people created a special atmosphere despite the negative sides of it (overcrowded areas, too few quest mobs, possible lag etc.)
I play WOW, and what I loved about that game was (and is) the world. Exploring and feeling you are in a big mysterious world is just one of the things I love about MMORPGS and make me play them.
That said. I hate when they instance games. Dungeons OK - but when you suddenly can't see your partymate because they have completed a quest earlier, or they are in a different instance of the same Zone, its just over and out for me. It totally kills my immersion.
EQ2 was of no interest to me because of all the instanced zones. "Hey are you in Antonica 1, 2, 3 or 7 ?.. bah."
WOWs phasing is in my opinion one of the worst ideas they had. That game still has relatively few instanced areas though (not counting dungeons and raid zones) compared to the worst games.
SWTOR is a massively instanced game and that is one of the major reason why that game is totally out of the question for me.
So, my very personal and egoistical humble opinion about MMORPG is .. Do not evolve backwards into Single player games again..
and I do not want game designers to tell the story for me.. if I want that, I rent a movie. I want to make my own story in a MMORPG.
Sorry for the rant.
Comments
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
i understand what he means check perfect world they go at it differently ,they have channel so you might have only 3 server but rthere are say 25 channel and event happen all the time ,and are shown while you re gaming so you might be in server 20 and a warning will popup ,event :go dance with justin bieber (on channel number 3 is about to begin)so yes it is still seperated but nobody can get lost for that event because of fazing they just to channel number 3 and have a blast at that event!
i think this way of doing is the futur ,phazing might sound nice but at the end of the day it really isnt!
It all comes down to what is the intent of the MMORPG.
With the advent of WOW.....who popularized instances & phasing.....the main objective of MMORPGs has changed. It's LESS about living in a virtual world with other living breathing people you have to co-exist with (by blade or by branch) and MORE about the individual player's combat experience. Hack n' Slash is the term I think is appropriate.
So if your aim is to maximize the combat experience of the individual player....instances are GENIOUS. A player can experience the content of a dungeon crawl un-interupted by other players looking to get at the same area or resources. NO COMPETITION
With that said, there are some drawbacks of heavily instancing a MMO. It completely removes any kind of meaningful real world PvP....and relegates PvP to Arena play. If EVERYONE has their own personal access to the monsters that drop the Sword of One Hundred Truths....then there is no competion, and therefore no opprotunity for players to compete over valueable territory or resources.
It also gives players the ability to *Hide* from other players on the servers. If the best way to maximize your leveling process is to run a dungeon....players will perpetually be in queue to run instanced dungeons. If players are always inside instanced dungeons......other players in the open world have NO CLUE they exist.
When I played MMOs with no instances, I knew the names of my friends & enemies. It crated a more personal connection with these folks. When I played WOW.....I couldn't tell you a single name of another player outside my guild, muchless outside my faction. There is something inpersonal about that.
To the OP, I agree with you whole heartidly. Just recognize that the face of the average MMO player has changed since WOW has entered the market. It's not that instances are failed mechanics in general (they work rather well for what they are intended to do), its just that instances are failed mechanics for what MMORPGs USED to be.
Well said.
Players here do not recognize that the MMO landscape has changed. It is about a coop combat (hack & slash) experience. Very few cares about open world, virtual world, world pvp and stuff like that.
In fact, world pvp was taken AWAY from WOW because not only it was NOT popular, it detract from the PvE experience.
WOW has become a MUCH better hack-n-slash game with the LFD, LFR tools. It really cuts out the parts most are not interested in. Most are quite content seeing a lot of other toons in Orgrimmar, or whatever city, but do their 5,10, 25 man dungeons.
Prefer the SWG model myself. When one got a tell that X and Y are overt in Bestine you knew who X and Y where and you knew they were in Bestine so to speak.
No it got much better for people who wanted the wow MMORG to be turned into a hack and slash action game. Maybe we should no longer have mmorgs developed, just invest in hack and slash/PFS Games who needs diversity.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I'm fine with what ever model.
But dungeons and raids are such huge part of many mmmorpg. And it's hard to design dungeon for an unknown amount of people rather than a fix x amount of people.
Not sure where you got that from :P
Never been a guild wars fan at all.. bought it but threw it away after a few hours, never looking back at it.
Instances and sometimes even phasing can be a great too to tell a story.
It isn't a problem until you start use it too much, just like cut scenes.
The problem of course is when they add a little the players are happy and saying it works great and then the devs overdo it, which turn our MMOs into not so massive anymore.
Multiplayer online games can be fun as well, no doubt there but the massive thing is a kinda special MMO thing and it is sad if it dissapear.
Phasing and instancing is a great tool when used correctly. It can mean the difference between an unplayable game and a playable game.
Then again, the worst examples are Age of Conan and SWTOR where the instance population cap is way too low and the zones just feel dead.
About phasing .. maybe phasing is too small?
If you have 'infinite ' quests and space you would not need phasing I guess?
As that is not really possible maybe new phasing 'instances should be persistent places' you unlock after doing something and which may disappear after a week of unlocking or so?
There is a BIG difference between FPS and progression based hack-n-slash ARPG (i.e. Diablo).
And whatever they are called, many MMORPGs are moving towards a hack-n-slash lobby like Diablo 3 game. I have no problem if they are still called MMORPGs. It is just a name. Just like computer RPG is very different than the original table top RPG now and no one gives a damn about using another name.
Sorry, there are no ways to have a coherent, meaningful storyline in an MMO without instancing areas. Unless you can come up with a better way to insure that the right enemies will always be available in quests for the right number of opponents, developers will continue to use instancing to make their games functional.
Yes, i would like to know how you come to the conclusion he is a GW fan? He mentions nothing about GW and you accuse him of being a GW fan lol.
Yeah, before you say it ill say it for you,i am a GW2 fan.
Maybe that's the problem.
Perhaps there's too much focus on trying to cram pre-scripted story down player's throats. Trying to make everyone feel like the "hero", when all they're doing is the same pre-scripted content that thousands before them have done, and thousands of people after them will also do.
Maybe there should be morefocus on creating and presenting meta-story through world events that bring context to player's actions, and letting them make their own choices about what actions they take, instead of handing them pre-scripted "kill 10 rats and you'll be our savior" quests.
Not really,Vanguard was designed with non instanced dungeons.Before you say it Vanguard had bugs,it was nothing to do with dungeons at all.
Dungeons in Vanguard are great just like they were in EQ1.Nothing better than heading into a dungeon and meeting other groups or player,it really gives that real world feel instead of being boxed off in your own special room.
No. Nothing beats when you get to the boss, he is actually there for you to fight.
It is 10x worse if what you find is 20 people lining up to kill him and asked you to take a number.
And a "REAL world" feel in a dungeon? I dont know what you are smoking. It is a FANTASY game. Dungeon are supposed to be visited very rarely by people. It should NOT feel like a mall before Xmas.
Oh, i highly doubt any developers would be silly enough to go back to the non-instance days.
Real world dungeons meaning,open world dungeons in MMOs,i am sure you know what i mean, that's okay if you didn't grasp it.
Where do you get that dungeon are supposed to be visited very rarely by players lol,what a crock of BS.Think you will find that some devs will have no problem going back to open world dungens especially,some even do both.
to rollback. Short sighted crude design choice.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
People who say hacknslash is better than mmorpgs don't upset me. Thats fine, its popular and they like that game style. What pisses me off is if they want to turn the mmorpg genre which is not the hacknslash genre into that genre.
Lets just call hacknslash games that and only call actual mmorpgs mmorpgs. Its just a name? Seriously? Its a label. Labels are supposed to describe things. I don't call trees herbs and then say I'm not wrong, tree and herb are just words! Trees are not herbs. If you admit you want hacknslash, then no one cares because people have different likes, but don't mix coop hacknslash with mmorpgs. Leave them alone...
A lot of times it comes down to resources and world design. There is just not enough mobs or mats in a given zone to accommodate all the players at a given time (note: the lack of channels during launch day of Aion). Yes channels can be an inconvenience but having hundreds of players fighting over a few quest mobs or mats is even worse.
The better game developers know how to manage the system and know when to turn them off (pvp area's or world boss zones). A game can still have open world dungeons with the final boss instanced inside the dungeon or not instanced but that would depend on the size of the open world dungeon.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Open world dungeon is an artificial thing. Dungeons, in the first table top RPGs, are always visited only by a small group.
And it is just not fun to have 100 players in a dungeon camping for a boss. I am glad that is behind us.
Sure, there may be some niche game still use it. Don't count me in playing those games.
No one turns any genre into anything else.
Every player buy games they like. The market sort out what is popular, what is money-making, and what is not.
If developers respond to the market and put more hack-n-slash features into MMOs, well, you can go argue with them.
If they make it more like diablo eventually it crosses the line into lobby based hacknslash and its not an MMO anymore.
You are some authority who says whats MMO and whats not? This is what MMORPG means today. There's plenty of words that don't mean what they originally meant in every language. You're getting upset for nothing. They're MMOs. Deal with it.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky