Some people don't get the virtues of istances or sometimes the necessity to have them.
That's because we've seen numerous MMOs that functioned perfectly without it. While those who have never tried an MMO without instancing run around saying "nope not possible!" and pretend all MMOs without instances played like EverQuest.
I've never seen a city lag because there were too many people clogging it. Know why? Because the game had good design behind it. It's not about noticing the difference between 100 people and 150 people, its about knowing that everyone on that server is in one cohesive shared world. Not tons of tiny shards that mean nothing. If me and my friend are in the same city, we will ALWAYS see eachother. If MMOs in the 90s, with dial up, could handle hundreds of people in the same place, modern companies should be able to too. And they do. Just not WoW clone companies, because they never put in a slight effort into their games.
You seem to be very confident making that assumption - and assumption it is. Old games were much simpler. If you add physics, collision detection, direct controls and want to keep them responsive, it takes a lot of traffic between your client and server. Much more than a semi-turn-based which that relies on dicerolls rather than twitch mechanics.
You have to make concessions to get a high player count. It does not come free.
Old games were also a lot smaller than the games of today. They didn't have potentially millions playing them.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I hate channels in game, mmo is suppose to have alot of players around! Hate to zone in to cities, very stupid idea and hate to instances into another part of the continent.
That said , instances for dungeons is fine in a sense that players dont have to queue and wait for the first group to finish killing and elite mobs and hopefully its their turn.
But with instances dungeons you can straight away go into the encounter.
I wish more games follow War PQ or GW2 DE where everyone can come together and kill the world mob.
Since WoW in mop is bringing more World Boss, we shall see how it pans out...
Some people don't get the virtues of istances or sometimes the necessity to have them.
That's because we've seen numerous MMOs that functioned perfectly without it. While those who have never tried an MMO without instancing run around saying "nope not possible!" and pretend all MMOs without instances played like EverQuest.
I've never seen a city lag because there were too many people clogging it. Know why? Because the game had good design behind it. It's not about noticing the difference between 100 people and 150 people, its about knowing that everyone on that server is in one cohesive shared world. Not tons of tiny shards that mean nothing. If me and my friend are in the same city, we will ALWAYS see eachother. If MMOs in the 90s, with dial up, could handle hundreds of people in the same place, modern companies should be able to too. And they do. Just not WoW clone companies, because they never put in a slight effort into their games.
You seem to be very confident making that assumption - and assumption it is. Old games were much simpler Actually, most of them were far more complex than modern MMOs. If you add physics which most modern MMOs do not have, but several "old" MMOs did have (CoH anyone?), collision detection which MMOs have had since 1999, and which most modern MMOs do NOT have, save Planetside 2, Darkfall (neither of which have instances), and the occasional siege weapon, direct controls the majority of MMOs have always had direct controls and want to keep them responsive DAoC was very responsive, more than almost any modern MMO I can think of. The animations and damage actually synched up. I could tell I blocked because I saw the animation of a blade being blocked, not because of floating numbers. DAoC didn't have instances either. , it takes a lot of traffic between your client and server. And internet is much faster than it used to be, but old MMOs managed all of the things you mentioned on dial up, without instancing. Much more than a semi-turn-based which that relies on dicerolls rather than twitch mechanics. Almost no MMOs are twitch based, and of the ones that are, they aren't instanced.
You have to make concessions to get a high player count. It does not come free.
Old games were also a lot smaller than the games of today Wrong. Game worlds were actually quite a lot bigger. EQ, DAoC, SWG, AC? They all dwarf GW2 or WoW's game worlds. They didn't have potentially millions playing them. Neither do any modern themepark games. You don't solve "potentially millions" with instancing. You solve it with more servers.
I can't believe there are still some people that think it's tech related... it's purely developer game design skill related.
Which, is the point. That instancing is not necessary, and has rarely ever been used towards good purpose that wouldn't have been better solved through design.
How can you control a small group experience without explicity control the number of people in the dungeon?
How can you make a pvp "arena" fair without controlling the number of players on both side?
That said , instances for dungeons is fine in a sense that players dont have to queue and wait for the first group to finish killing and elite mobs and hopefully its their turn.
Instanced dungeons make just as little sense as instanced anything else. Well designed dungeons don't have people waiting in line. I never waited in line in DAoC. If there was an "elite mob" that was camped, I just went to one of the other elite mobs, because the designers made enough content for everyone.
That said , instances for dungeons is fine in a sense that players dont have to queue and wait for the first group to finish killing and elite mobs and hopefully its their turn.
Instanced dungeons make just as little sense as instanced anything else. Well designed dungeons don't have people waiting in line. I never waited in line in DAoC. If there was an "elite mob" that was camped, I just went to one of the other elite mobs, because the designers made enough content for everyone.
What is preventing you to jump in and attack the elite mob that the other group is already fighting? What is to prevent someone to aggro all the mobs and train it to you?
What if you WANT to kill this one but not the other one?
And a game that bank on there are not enough players to keep camping to a minimum is not good design. "Making enough content for everyone"? That is just plain impossible unless you just copy & paste content 10000 times.
That said , instances for dungeons is fine in a sense that players dont have to queue and wait for the first group to finish killing and elite mobs and hopefully its their turn.
Instanced dungeons make just as little sense as instanced anything else. Well designed dungeons don't have people waiting in line. I never waited in line in DAoC. If there was an "elite mob" that was camped, I just went to one of the other elite mobs, because the designers made enough content for everyone.
What is preventing you to jump in and attack the elite mob that the other group is already fighting? What is preventing anyone from doing that in any other zone in the game? It doesn't happen outside dungeons, it doesn't happen inside dungeons. If it did, I'd just report the player to a GM. I wouldn't get anything from attacking the elite mob, as the other group already has control over it, so it'd simply be harassment, which usually gets people suspended. Of course, there's the rare instance where your whole group is about to die, and you shout for help and another group comes in and saves you. What is to prevent someone to aggro all the mobs and train it to you? Same as above, banned.
What if you WANT to kill this one but not the other one? Then maybe you should be playing a singleplayer game instead of one that you share with other players, if you have the mentality that there is only one singular thing you can do, and if you don't do it, the world ends. Or, worst case scenario, go somewhere else in the dungeon for 3 minutes then come back and check to see if the mob is back. If a game is balanced properly, this is almost never an issue, because mobs don't get chain camped unless they give unbalanced loot.
And a game that bank on there are not enough players to keep camping to a minimum is not good design. No, a game that spreads its population out with balanced large and varied dungeons, is good design. Your "not enoug players" idea kind of came from nowhere. "Making enough content for everyone"? That is just plain impossible unless you just copy & paste content 10000 times. Uhhh no? No its not. Each server has a hard cap for how many players can be on it. You make enough content to house and spread out that many players. It's very VERY simple. But, you're one of the WoW generation of players who think its "IMPOSSIBLEE!!!11!!!" to exist without instances? And you ignore the voices of those who have seen games work without instances.
What if you WANT to kill this one but not the other one? Then maybe you should be playing a singleplayer game instead of one that you share with other players, if you have the mentality that there is only one singular thing you can do, and if you don't do it, the world ends. Or, worst case scenario, go somewhere else in the dungeon for 3 minutes then come back and check to see if the mob is back. If a game is balanced properly, this is almost never an issue, because mobs don't get chain camped unless they give unbalanced loot.
And why would i go somewhere for 3 min (a fight is that short?) .. when an instance will make sure i don't have to wait. And don't you think it is immersion breaking to wait in line for a mob, no matter how short the wait is?
And a game that bank on there are not enough players to keep camping to a minimum is not good design. No, a game that spreads its population out with balanced large and varied dungeons, is good design. Your "not enoug players" idea kind of came from nowhere. "Making enough content for everyone"? That is just plain impossible unless you just copy & paste content 10000 times. Uhhh no? No its not. Each server has a hard cap for how many players can be on it. You make enough content to house and spread out that many players. It's very VERY simple. But, you're one of the WoW generation of players who think its "IMPOSSIBLEE!!!11!!!" to exist without instances? And you ignore the voices of those who have seen games work without instances.
No. I am the UO/EQ generation who hate camping, and open world PVP. Spreading out players .. what is the difference between that and instances? Except instance is better because you will never encounter other groups, which may lead to problems.
You seem to be very confident making that assumption - and assumption it is. Old games were much simpler Actually, most of them were far more complex than modern MMOs. If you add physics which most modern MMOs do not have, but several "old" MMOs did have (CoH anyone?), collision detection which MMOs have had since 1999, and which most modern MMOs do NOT have, save Planetside 2, Darkfall (neither of which have instances), and the occasional siege weapon, direct controls the majority of MMOs have always had direct controls and want to keep them responsive DAoC was very responsive, more than almost any modern MMO I can think of. The animations and damage actually synched up. I could tell I blocked because I saw the animation of a blade being blocked, not because of floating numbers. DAoC didn't have instances either. , it takes a lot of traffic between your client and server. And internet is much faster than it used to be, but old MMOs managed all of the things you mentioned on dial up, without instancing. Much more than a semi-turn-based which that relies on dicerolls rather than twitch mechanics. Almost no MMOs are twitch based, and of the ones that are, they aren't instanced.
You have to make concessions to get a high player count. It does not come free.
Old games were also a lot smaller than the games of today Wrong. Game worlds were actually quite a lot bigger. EQ, DAoC, SWG, AC? They all dwarf GW2 or WoW's game worlds. They didn't have potentially millions playing them. Neither do any modern themepark games. You don't solve "potentially millions" with instancing. You solve it with more servers.
I can't believe there are still some people that think it's tech related... it's purely developer game design skill related.
Twitch-based MMOs aren't instanced? How 'bout GW1, DDO, Vindictus, Continent of the Ninth, Dragons' Nest and many more?
And your Internet connection is not the bottleneck. It is a source of latency but the biggest bottleneck are the servers. Instances is a sign of incompetence? Tell that to Arenanet who won dozens of technical awards for their game engine for GW1. That game is entirely instanced.
You look at Eve Online, and that game has no direct controls, no terrain to render, no physics, no collision detection, no aiming, "skills" are toggled on/off and combat is resolved through dicerolls. And hey presto you can have hundreds of players in the same battlefield. Because of those features you can suffer even from heavy lag and the game would be moderately playable.
On the other edge of the scale, compare games like Battlefield 3 with 32-64 players per server and Quake servers with 8-12 players per server and you'll see the difference in "sharpness". Quake, Unreal Tournament, Warsow and the like are much more fast-paced, much sharper, much more responsive and hence very allergic to lag. In BF you have take lag into account (to a great degree) when aiming in close quarters combat. To my understanding they've also moved the hit determination from the server to client side making it somewhat vulnerable to cheating. 128 player servers in BF wouldn't be playable anymore, I think. It is already quite unresponsive compared to those fast-paced FPSs.
GW2 had to purposefully drop bodyblocking from their feature list in order to accommodate large scale combat in WvW. They had it in their engine from GW1. They also dropped interrupt skills partly, I'm guessing, because the higher lag would make such skills nearly useless.
It is a design decision and very much tech related. I would probably include instances anyway, since they make some things possible you can't do otherwise.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
What if you WANT to kill this one but not the other one? Then maybe you should be playing a singleplayer game instead of one that you share with other players, if you have the mentality that there is only one singular thing you can do, and if you don't do it, the world ends. Or, worst case scenario, go somewhere else in the dungeon for 3 minutes then come back and check to see if the mob is back. If a game is balanced properly, this is almost never an issue, because mobs don't get chain camped unless they give unbalanced loot.
And why would i go somewhere for 3 min (a fight is that short?) .. when an instance will make sure i don't have to wait. And don't you think it is immersion breaking to wait in line for a mob, no matter how short the wait is? It's more immersion breaking to have an entire population vanish just because you've done through a very obvious portal. And why should you wait for 3 minutes? You chose to play a game with thousands of other people, yet you don't want them to have an impact on your game. Bit of a contradiction there. You could always just go up to the group and ask to join them. If a game is properly balanced, then the only reason you'd be so hell bent on killing that ONE mob would be for aesthetics. Implementing instancing for such a shallow reason is not worth it. You're splitting hairs.
And a game that bank on there are not enough players to keep camping to a minimum is not good design. No, a game that spreads its population out with balanced large and varied dungeons, is good design. Your "not enoug players" idea kind of came from nowhere. "Making enough content for everyone"? That is just plain impossible unless you just copy & paste content 10000 times. Uhhh no? No its not. Each server has a hard cap for how many players can be on it. You make enough content to house and spread out that many players. It's very VERY simple. But, you're one of the WoW generation of players who think its "IMPOSSIBLEE!!!11!!!" to exist without instances? And you ignore the voices of those who have seen games work without instances.
No. I am the UO/EQ generation who hate camping, and open world PVP Well you picked the wrong golden age MMOs then. Spreading out players .. what is the difference between that and instances? Um, the people will always be in the game world, can always be seen, and it better simulates a virtual world. Except instance is better because you will never encounter other groups, which may lead to problems. Yeah, dangerous problems like socializing and playing with other people!
You are finding a solution without a problem.
You've said a million times in the past that you don't like MMORPGs, so why do you keep hopping into these threads that discuss MMORPGs?
You seem to be very confident making that assumption - and assumption it is. Old games were much simpler Actually, most of them were far more complex than modern MMOs. If you add physics which most modern MMOs do not have, but several "old" MMOs did have (CoH anyone?), collision detection which MMOs have had since 1999, and which most modern MMOs do NOT have, save Planetside 2, Darkfall (neither of which have instances), and the occasional siege weapon, direct controls the majority of MMOs have always had direct controls and want to keep them responsive DAoC was very responsive, more than almost any modern MMO I can think of. The animations and damage actually synched up. I could tell I blocked because I saw the animation of a blade being blocked, not because of floating numbers. DAoC didn't have instances either. , it takes a lot of traffic between your client and server. And internet is much faster than it used to be, but old MMOs managed all of the things you mentioned on dial up, without instancing. Much more than a semi-turn-based which that relies on dicerolls rather than twitch mechanics. Almost no MMOs are twitch based, and of the ones that are, they aren't instanced.
You have to make concessions to get a high player count. It does not come free.
Old games were also a lot smaller than the games of today Wrong. Game worlds were actually quite a lot bigger. EQ, DAoC, SWG, AC? They all dwarf GW2 or WoW's game worlds. They didn't have potentially millions playing them. Neither do any modern themepark games. You don't solve "potentially millions" with instancing. You solve it with more servers.
I can't believe there are still some people that think it's tech related... it's purely developer game design skill related.
Twitch-based MMOs aren't instanced? Not the ones I've played. (AC, Darkfall, Planetside 1+2) How 'bout GW1 Not an MMO, DDO, Vindictus Not an MMO, Continent of the Ninth, Dragons' Nest and many more? Never heard of the last two. There are a lot of small scale lobby based games that have twitch combat, like League of Legends, but that doesn't mean they're MMOs. Nor does that mean that its impossible to have an uninstanced twitch based MMO.
And your Internet connection is not the bottleneck. It is a source of latency but the biggest bottleneck are the servers which are more powerful than they ever have been. Instances is a sign of incompetence? It is in an MMO.Tell that to Arenanet who won dozens of technical awards for their game engine for GW1. Which wasn't an MMO. That game is entirely instanced. Which wasn't an MMO.
You look at Eve Online, and that game has no direct controls, no terrain to render, no physics wrong, no collision detection wrong, no aiming wrong, "skills" are toggled on/off and combat is resolved through dicerolls wrong. And hey presto you can have hundreds of players in the same battlefield. Because of those features you can suffer even from heavy lag and the game would be moderately playable. But let's pretend you weren't wrong 4 times over, what about all the other games I mentioned that you're carefully avoiding?
On the other edge of the scale, compare games like Battlefield 3 with 32-64 players per server and Quake servers with 8-12 players per server and you'll see the difference in "sharpness". Quake, Unreal Tournament, Warsow and the like are much more fast-paced, much sharper, much more responsive and hence very allergic to lag. Darkfall has the same pace as Quake, and made with many of the same design principles. Not a single instance. Biggest battle I saw was 500 people together. In BF you have take lag into account (to a great degree) when aiming in close quarters combat. To my understanding they've also moved the hit determination from the server to client side making it somewhat vulnerable to cheating. 128 player servers in BF wouldn't be playable anymore, I think. It is already quite unresponsive compared to those fast-paced FPSs. That's great, for Battlefield. But that doesn't change the fact that many MMOs have larger twitch baesd fights than BF3.
GW2 had to purposefully drop bodyblocking from their feature list in order to accommodate large scale combat in WvW. Ok. Cool. Warhammer didn't and still managed comparable numbers in RvR. Darkfall has full colision detections as well as ballistics physics. Again. No isntances. They had it in their engine from GW1. They also dropped interrupt skills partly, I'm guessing, because the higher lag would make such skills nearly useless. Funny, there were interrupt skills in dark Age of Camelot, the game GW2 is based on, and they were used without any latency, despite hundreds of people being in the combat.
It is a design decision and very much tech related. If you have bad programmers I guess it would be tech related. But one way or another its either bad tech or bad design. I would probably include instances anyway, since they make some things possible you can't do otherwise. Like what? I've never seen instances do something that couldn't be reproduced in an open world game, other than a singleplayer cinematic storyline, which have no place in an MMO.
But thanks for ignoring all the MMOs I listed that have had the things that you call "impossible" and focusing on Eve, which I didn't mention even once.
You've said a million times in the past that you don't like MMORPGs, so why do you keep hopping into these threads that discuss MMORPGs?
What makes you an authority to dictate what belongs in an MMORPG?
MMOs are about massive multiplayer. Narius isn't a fan of multiplayer in general. Kind of the antithesis of what an MMO is at its core, don't you think?
I'm thinking here of instances with a variable cap.
Cities would have no cap obviously, so all the people in them can actually interract with one another.
Areas close to cities would have a pretty high cap, say 100 so it's pretty lively but never crowded as hell.
Really remote areas in the middle of nowhere in a hostile environment would have a cap as slow as the maximum number of people in a party is with some flexibility, so if the max party size is 5 and the area cap is 5 the party could still enter if the number of player in the instance was 4, the absolute cap would be then 9, so it's possible for everybody to meet at least one other soul in an area.
Obviously you would share instances with people you don't know, unlike say, the original Guild Wars.
I really think it would help with immersion, and as far as I know it's possible to create instances without loading screens (SWTOR did it IIRC) so you wouldn't even have to deal with tons of loading screens.
Thoughts? I think this idea is never going to make it in any mmo ever (unless I get rich and decide to make one) but hey.
Or developers could just design a game well so that the population is spread out where it should be and instances are never needed.
A lack of freedom is NEVER immersive. "Hey, I'm standing right next to you." "No you're not, I can't see you!"
There are always better ways of doing things than using instancing. Instancing is the first resort of a lazy, hack job ofa developer.
The problem is you can design assuming the server is full and when it isn't full everyone feels the place is empty. You can design for when the server is 75% full but then you still have the original problem but now also have that when the server is full areas feel too crowded.
Due to the variable nature of swings in concurrent players, finding a design where an area always feels populated enough but not overpopulated is all but impossible.
As far as immersion, games can already be smart enough so that friends/group members are phased into the same instance so you don't have that problem. Chat would be by instance only so you wouldn't have the effect with people you didn't know.
Phasing can be done really well to where it is hardly noticable at all. Even PvP can put an attacker flag on someone so if they run into the next zone, the attacker is made sure to be put into the same instance so that there isn't an escape route by running over zone boundaries.
The biggest thing is it needs to be seamless, which some games already do. GW2 went the other route and flat out tells you you're instanced in a different area and then later asks you if you want to be portalled into the main area. If they had done it with phasing and made it seamless, it would have felt a little nicer. In a couple more weeks it won't matter as it won't happen nearly as much.
You've said a million times in the past that you don't like MMORPGs, so why do you keep hopping into these threads that discuss MMORPGs?
What makes you an authority to dictate what belongs in an MMORPG?
MMOs are about massive multiplayer. Narius isn't a fan of multiplayer in general. Kind of the antithesis of what an MMO is at its core, don't you think?
Oh i am a fan of multiplayer. LFD is multiplayer .. i am a fan of that. QED. (Socialization .. i am not a fan of).
I'm thinking here of instances with a variable cap.
Cities would have no cap obviously, so all the people in them can actually interract with one another.
Areas close to cities would have a pretty high cap, say 100 so it's pretty lively but never crowded as hell.
Really remote areas in the middle of nowhere in a hostile environment would have a cap as slow as the maximum number of people in a party is with some flexibility, so if the max party size is 5 and the area cap is 5 the party could still enter if the number of player in the instance was 4, the absolute cap would be then 9, so it's possible for everybody to meet at least one other soul in an area.
Obviously you would share instances with people you don't know, unlike say, the original Guild Wars.
I really think it would help with immersion, and as far as I know it's possible to create instances without loading screens (SWTOR did it IIRC) so you wouldn't even have to deal with tons of loading screens.
Thoughts? I think this idea is never going to make it in any mmo ever (unless I get rich and decide to make one) but hey.
Or developers could just design a game well so that the population is spread out where it should be and instances are never needed.
A lack of freedom is NEVER immersive. "Hey, I'm standing right next to you." "No you're not, I can't see you!"
There are always better ways of doing things than using instancing. Instancing is the first resort of a lazy, hack job ofa developer.
The problem is you can design assuming the server is full and when it isn't full everyone feels the place is empty. You can design for when the server is 75% full but then you still have the original problem but now also have that when the server is full areas feel too crowded.
Due to the variable nature of swings in concurrent players, finding a design where an area always feels populated enough but not overpopulated is all but impossible. Funny... it worked in DAoC. And AC. And UO. And SWG. It's about designing the content in layers, and leaving enough room for variation. If the population is too spread out, you can rebalance item drops and rewards so that they focus on one area. Vanguard tried to create enough content for everyone. There's more content in that game than could ever be completed by one person in 2 years. However, with the population spread out, the world seemed empty. (funny, not understanding why pro instance people care about places seeming empty, they seem to love empty worlds). DAoC built layered content areas. Stonehenge was a massive dungeon ranging from level 30 to level 50. There was always enough mobs for everyone because the dungeon had many levels and many areas. As people moved to and fro in Stonehenge, you'd see them, interact with them, join them. Level 50s would pass level 30s as they marched deeper down into the dungeon, eventually getting to the spot where even level 50s couldn't fight past...
It's a great way to have a lot of people in one area with no crowding.
As far as immersion, games can already be smart enough so that friends/group members are phased into the same instance so you don't have that problem. Chat would be by instance only so you wouldn't have the effect with people you didn't know. Or they can take that effort and energy into designing a game so that it won't need instances.
Phasing can be done really well to where it is hardly noticable at all. Then why bother with it? Phasing is a very shallow gimmick. Thankfully, after GW2, maybe more companies will realize that quests that ACTUALLY impact the world feel a lot better than quests that change the shape of the world for only one person.
You've said a million times in the past that you don't like MMORPGs, so why do you keep hopping into these threads that discuss MMORPGs?
Who says i don't like MMORPGs? I like WOW. I like DCUO. I like DDO.
I like MMORPGs with LFD, LFR, and good group tools. I like those who play like ARPG with good combat.
In fact, I like the BIGGEST sub based MMORPG, WOW, and the direction it is going down ...
- more LFD/LFR
- individual roll of loot so no ninjaing
- x-realm groups
- real id friend list
.... in fact, i like its MULTIPLAYER features.
All features that exist in other genres. You like Diablo style games. Not MMORPGs. And with all these changes that WOW is doing, notice how its losing players?
You've said a million times in the past that you don't like MMORPGs, so why do you keep hopping into these threads that discuss MMORPGs?
Who says i don't like MMORPGs? I like WOW. I like DCUO. I like DDO.
I like MMORPGs with LFD, LFR, and good group tools. I like those who play like ARPG with good combat.
In fact, I like the BIGGEST sub based MMORPG, WOW, and the direction it is going down ...
- more LFD/LFR
- individual roll of loot so no ninjaing
- x-realm groups
- real id friend list
.... in fact, i like its MULTIPLAYER features.
All features that exist in other genres. You like Diablo style games. Not MMORPGs. And with all these changes that WOW is doing, notice how its losing players?
MMORPGs are turning into Diablo style games. WOW is like that. DCUO is like that. DDO is like that. Marvel Heroes is going to be like that.
Why can't i like Diablo style MMORPGs? It is not like they don't exist. Plus, i forget AH .. and only D3 has one. I probably need a MMO to have all the above and AH, right?
I believe what you are describing are essentialy "Public Instances". There are several games that use or have used this mechanism to some degree. One of the ones that pops to the top of my mind was Tabula Rasa.
It's an efffective mechansim to achieve certain things but (and especialy depending upon the size of the population cap) it does have some downsides as well. As a mechanic, I think you really need to match it to the style of game you want to make and the style of play you want to support.
Also, how large or small you set that population cap is going to have a major effect on game-play and they style as well.
There are other ways to deal with the "overcrowding" effects however. MMO's (especialy these days) are capable of supporting extremely large map sizes. So population density need not be as huge a concern. It's even technicaly possible (or so I've heard) to proceduraly generate terrain (maps) as players approach it. Of course there are downsides with those approaches as well.
Nothing wrong with either approach (IMO)....you just have to understand the type of game you are going to get with each.
I'm thinking here of instances with a variable cap.
Cities would have no cap obviously, so all the people in them can actually interract with one another.
Areas close to cities would have a pretty high cap, say 100 so it's pretty lively but never crowded as hell.
Really remote areas in the middle of nowhere in a hostile environment would have a cap as slow as the maximum number of people in a party is with some flexibility, so if the max party size is 5 and the area cap is 5 the party could still enter if the number of player in the instance was 4, the absolute cap would be then 9, so it's possible for everybody to meet at least one other soul in an area.
Obviously you would share instances with people you don't know, unlike say, the original Guild Wars.
I really think it would help with immersion, and as far as I know it's possible to create instances without loading screens (SWTOR did it IIRC) so you wouldn't even have to deal with tons of loading screens.
Thoughts? I think this idea is never going to make it in any mmo ever (unless I get rich and decide to make one) but hey.
Or developers could just design a game well so that the population is spread out where it should be and instances are never needed.
A lack of freedom is NEVER immersive. "Hey, I'm standing right next to you." "No you're not, I can't see you!"
There are always better ways of doing things than using instancing. Instancing is the first resort of a lazy, hack job ofa developer.
The problem is you can design assuming the server is full and when it isn't full everyone feels the place is empty. You can design for when the server is 75% full but then you still have the original problem but now also have that when the server is full areas feel too crowded.
Due to the variable nature of swings in concurrent players, finding a design where an area always feels populated enough but not overpopulated is all but impossible.
As far as immersion, games can already be smart enough so that friends/group members are phased into the same instance so you don't have that problem. Chat would be by instance only so you wouldn't have the effect with people you didn't know.
Phasing can be done really well to where it is hardly noticable at all. Even PvP can put an attacker flag on someone so if they run into the next zone, the attacker is made sure to be put into the same instance so that there isn't an escape route by running over zone boundaries.
The biggest thing is it needs to be seamless, which some games already do. GW2 went the other route and flat out tells you you're instanced in a different area and then later asks you if you want to be portalled into the main area. If they had done it with phasing and made it seamless, it would have felt a little nicer. In a couple more weeks it won't matter as it won't happen nearly as much.
Alternatively you could design a game environment to be a "vast dangerous unexplored wilderness". In other words, you don't plan to design the map to "just fit" server population. You design it to always be pretty much empty even at peak population. You set the expectation that if players moved far away from civilization they'd be in land that was pretty much empty unless they purposefully chose to travel into the wilderness with others...and then you give them a reason to want to travel into that wilderness together (danger, interdependance, etc).
It would be a very different game then is commonly being produced today....and would probably appeal to a different market segment (can you say explorer nirvana) .... and you'd probably have to use some different design methods. You'd probably have to proceduraly generate alot of your maps, with some custom designs here and there....but procedural generation of terrain is getting pretty darn sophisticated these days (or so I hear). However, it should be technicaly feasable to do.
Resource wise, there really shouldn't be much difference. If you are supporting X number of players at peak in the common model, most of whom are in private instances....you are still supporting X number of players at peak under this model, most of whom are on thier own maps. The game really doesn't have to load maps that the players aren't currently occupying...it just has to know which ones they can reach in the time it would take to load them....alternatively it could even make them wait a little bit to load one in....alot of people would trade loading screens for that breadth of territory to explore.
I believe what you are describing are essentialy "Public Instances".
There is no such thing as a public instance... A public instance is just a zone. Instance means one of many, and are designed to be exclusionary.
Going to disagree there. Look specificaly what Tabula Rasa did.... The had 5 different instances of "Stone Village" Zone (don't remember the actual names of any of the zones, just using a hypothetical as a placeholder).... you got placed in that instance randomly with maybe 50 other players...and you could chose to switch instances if you wished. Very different dynamic to the type of instancing you have in WoW questing for example, where you and your preselected group get wisked off to your own private instance, that nobody else has the ability to access.
I believe what the OP is describing is essentialy the same mechanic as what TR used....where you have the opportunity to meet and interact with players that are not part of your preselected group/party. That's a significant difference mechanicaly then what happens with WoW Questing/RAIDING.
I really don't see how it would be possible otherwise though, especially in the case of desolate areas that should be all but completely empty, how do you prevent people from going there en masse? Make it completely devoid of anything of interest? Make it unbelievable hard to get to (locking out contents because of player skill isn't a good idea)?
I really don't see a solution.
I am perplexed.. I'm confused by the part in green. What do you mean? Can you explain this better, or provide an example of how this has or has not impacted current MMOs?
Okay, imagine an mmo with an area that is a huge desert, think of it like Death Valley in California, nothing but barren wasteland for as far as the eye can see, a story quest though happens to send you in this area, as well as some other generic quests. What happens then is that tons of players go in that desert devoid of human life to accomplish their quests. The area then becomes extremely lively even though everything about it screams death and inhospitable.
And well, it doesn't make sense.
Death Valley has several research outposts in it, not to mention the daring adventurers that like to test their mettle by hiking through it. If the game is giving you quests to go there then there is something of value and it makes sense that you are not the only one in the location. Also SWTOR and Age of Conan both had multiple instances of individual zones. You could even go up to the options and change which instance you were in.
P.S. It is threads like this that make me question this community.
WildStar is like if Ratchet and Clank had a baby with Beyond Good & Evil and that baby was raised by World of Warcraft and Spore and babysat on the weekends by the aliens from Space Jam. It's an ugly bastard worth a few laughs but not much else.
Comments
You seem to be very confident making that assumption - and assumption it is. Old games were much simpler. If you add physics, collision detection, direct controls and want to keep them responsive, it takes a lot of traffic between your client and server. Much more than a semi-turn-based which that relies on dicerolls rather than twitch mechanics.
You have to make concessions to get a high player count. It does not come free.
Old games were also a lot smaller than the games of today. They didn't have potentially millions playing them.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I hate channels in game, mmo is suppose to have alot of players around! Hate to zone in to cities, very stupid idea and hate to instances into another part of the continent.
That said , instances for dungeons is fine in a sense that players dont have to queue and wait for the first group to finish killing and elite mobs and hopefully its their turn.
But with instances dungeons you can straight away go into the encounter.
I wish more games follow War PQ or GW2 DE where everyone can come together and kill the world mob.
Since WoW in mop is bringing more World Boss, we shall see how it pans out...
Personally? Love it!!!
RIP Orc Choppa
I can't believe there are still some people that think it's tech related... it's purely developer game design skill related.
How can you control a small group experience without explicity control the number of people in the dungeon?
How can you make a pvp "arena" fair without controlling the number of players on both side?
Instanced dungeons make just as little sense as instanced anything else. Well designed dungeons don't have people waiting in line. I never waited in line in DAoC. If there was an "elite mob" that was camped, I just went to one of the other elite mobs, because the designers made enough content for everyone.
What is preventing you to jump in and attack the elite mob that the other group is already fighting? What is to prevent someone to aggro all the mobs and train it to you?
What if you WANT to kill this one but not the other one?
And a game that bank on there are not enough players to keep camping to a minimum is not good design. "Making enough content for everyone"? That is just plain impossible unless you just copy & paste content 10000 times.
Twitch-based MMOs aren't instanced? How 'bout GW1, DDO, Vindictus, Continent of the Ninth, Dragons' Nest and many more?
And your Internet connection is not the bottleneck. It is a source of latency but the biggest bottleneck are the servers. Instances is a sign of incompetence? Tell that to Arenanet who won dozens of technical awards for their game engine for GW1. That game is entirely instanced.
You look at Eve Online, and that game has no direct controls, no terrain to render, no physics, no collision detection, no aiming, "skills" are toggled on/off and combat is resolved through dicerolls. And hey presto you can have hundreds of players in the same battlefield. Because of those features you can suffer even from heavy lag and the game would be moderately playable.
On the other edge of the scale, compare games like Battlefield 3 with 32-64 players per server and Quake servers with 8-12 players per server and you'll see the difference in "sharpness". Quake, Unreal Tournament, Warsow and the like are much more fast-paced, much sharper, much more responsive and hence very allergic to lag. In BF you have take lag into account (to a great degree) when aiming in close quarters combat. To my understanding they've also moved the hit determination from the server to client side making it somewhat vulnerable to cheating. 128 player servers in BF wouldn't be playable anymore, I think. It is already quite unresponsive compared to those fast-paced FPSs.
GW2 had to purposefully drop bodyblocking from their feature list in order to accommodate large scale combat in WvW. They had it in their engine from GW1. They also dropped interrupt skills partly, I'm guessing, because the higher lag would make such skills nearly useless.
It is a design decision and very much tech related. I would probably include instances anyway, since they make some things possible you can't do otherwise.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
You've said a million times in the past that you don't like MMORPGs, so why do you keep hopping into these threads that discuss MMORPGs?
What makes you an authority to dictate what belongs in an MMORPG?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
But thanks for ignoring all the MMOs I listed that have had the things that you call "impossible" and focusing on Eve, which I didn't mention even once.
MMOs are about massive multiplayer. Narius isn't a fan of multiplayer in general. Kind of the antithesis of what an MMO is at its core, don't you think?
The problem is you can design assuming the server is full and when it isn't full everyone feels the place is empty. You can design for when the server is 75% full but then you still have the original problem but now also have that when the server is full areas feel too crowded.
Due to the variable nature of swings in concurrent players, finding a design where an area always feels populated enough but not overpopulated is all but impossible.
As far as immersion, games can already be smart enough so that friends/group members are phased into the same instance so you don't have that problem. Chat would be by instance only so you wouldn't have the effect with people you didn't know.
Phasing can be done really well to where it is hardly noticable at all. Even PvP can put an attacker flag on someone so if they run into the next zone, the attacker is made sure to be put into the same instance so that there isn't an escape route by running over zone boundaries.
The biggest thing is it needs to be seamless, which some games already do. GW2 went the other route and flat out tells you you're instanced in a different area and then later asks you if you want to be portalled into the main area. If they had done it with phasing and made it seamless, it would have felt a little nicer. In a couple more weeks it won't matter as it won't happen nearly as much.
Oh i am a fan of multiplayer. LFD is multiplayer .. i am a fan of that. QED. (Socialization .. i am not a fan of).
Who says i don't like MMORPGs? I like WOW. I like DCUO. I like DDO.
I like MMORPGs with LFD, LFR, and good group tools. I like those who play like ARPG with good combat.
In fact, I like the BIGGEST sub based MMORPG, WOW, and the direction it is going down ...
- more LFD/LFR
- individual roll of loot so no ninjaing
- x-realm groups
- real id friend list
.... in fact, i like its MULTIPLAYER features.
All features that exist in other genres. You like Diablo style games. Not MMORPGs. And with all these changes that WOW is doing, notice how its losing players?
MMORPGs are turning into Diablo style games. WOW is like that. DCUO is like that. DDO is like that. Marvel Heroes is going to be like that.
Why can't i like Diablo style MMORPGs? It is not like they don't exist. Plus, i forget AH .. and only D3 has one. I probably need a MMO to have all the above and AH, right?
I see that you're a regular here. How many accounts have you had here so far?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
@Slheyas,
I believe what you are describing are essentialy "Public Instances". There are several games that use or have used this mechanism to some degree. One of the ones that pops to the top of my mind was Tabula Rasa.
It's an efffective mechansim to achieve certain things but (and especialy depending upon the size of the population cap) it does have some downsides as well. As a mechanic, I think you really need to match it to the style of game you want to make and the style of play you want to support.
Also, how large or small you set that population cap is going to have a major effect on game-play and they style as well.
There are other ways to deal with the "overcrowding" effects however. MMO's (especialy these days) are capable of supporting extremely large map sizes. So population density need not be as huge a concern. It's even technicaly possible (or so I've heard) to proceduraly generate terrain (maps) as players approach it. Of course there are downsides with those approaches as well.
Nothing wrong with either approach (IMO)....you just have to understand the type of game you are going to get with each.
There is no such thing as a public instance... A public instance is just a zone. Instance means one of many, and are designed to be exclusionary.
Alternatively you could design a game environment to be a "vast dangerous unexplored wilderness". In other words, you don't plan to design the map to "just fit" server population. You design it to always be pretty much empty even at peak population. You set the expectation that if players moved far away from civilization they'd be in land that was pretty much empty unless they purposefully chose to travel into the wilderness with others...and then you give them a reason to want to travel into that wilderness together (danger, interdependance, etc).
It would be a very different game then is commonly being produced today....and would probably appeal to a different market segment (can you say explorer nirvana) .... and you'd probably have to use some different design methods. You'd probably have to proceduraly generate alot of your maps, with some custom designs here and there....but procedural generation of terrain is getting pretty darn sophisticated these days (or so I hear). However, it should be technicaly feasable to do.
Resource wise, there really shouldn't be much difference. If you are supporting X number of players at peak in the common model, most of whom are in private instances....you are still supporting X number of players at peak under this model, most of whom are on thier own maps. The game really doesn't have to load maps that the players aren't currently occupying...it just has to know which ones they can reach in the time it would take to load them....alternatively it could even make them wait a little bit to load one in....alot of people would trade loading screens for that breadth of territory to explore.
Going to disagree there. Look specificaly what Tabula Rasa did.... The had 5 different instances of "Stone Village" Zone (don't remember the actual names of any of the zones, just using a hypothetical as a placeholder).... you got placed in that instance randomly with maybe 50 other players...and you could chose to switch instances if you wished. Very different dynamic to the type of instancing you have in WoW questing for example, where you and your preselected group get wisked off to your own private instance, that nobody else has the ability to access.
I believe what the OP is describing is essentialy the same mechanic as what TR used....where you have the opportunity to meet and interact with players that are not part of your preselected group/party. That's a significant difference mechanicaly then what happens with WoW Questing/RAIDING.
Death Valley has several research outposts in it, not to mention the daring adventurers that like to test their mettle by hiking through it. If the game is giving you quests to go there then there is something of value and it makes sense that you are not the only one in the location. Also SWTOR and Age of Conan both had multiple instances of individual zones. You could even go up to the options and change which instance you were in.
P.S. It is threads like this that make me question this community.
WildStar is like if Ratchet and Clank had a baby with Beyond Good & Evil and that baby was raised by World of Warcraft and Spore and babysat on the weekends by the aliens from Space Jam. It's an ugly bastard worth a few laughs but not much else.