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Looking to understand why certain people are highly turned off by instancing
swarmofseals
Member Posts: 16
I've played a ton of MMOs in my day, with EQ1 being my first experience with the genre back in 1999 when the game was originally released. When WoW was released, one of the key features that got me interested was the idea of instanced dungeons. For me, one of the absolute worst things about EQ was the need to camp rare spawns for loot (often for hours if not days) in order to get many items. Clearing to a boss in a dungeon only to find another group sitting there was the worst. I never actually made it to end game raiding in that game, but from what I have read it seems fairly typical for uberguilds to essentially lock down the content on a given server such that a player's only chance to raid would be to join that specific guild.
I do get that instances break immersion, but for me having to metagame by joining an uberguild or camping a specific spot for hours on end waiting for a rare spawn also breaks immersion.
I know that a lot of you feel very differently about this. I'd love to hear some detailed explanations from those that hate instancing as to why you prefer an uninstanced world and how you deal with (or dealt with) the problem of other players hogging content.
Comments
Instancing itself is bad, but it also encourages lazy game design and influences where the game's development goes.
First thing you have to understand that a lot of people don't seem to be able to. Just because your game has no instancing does not mean the game becomes about camping spawns.
EverQuest's design was flawed, and instancing was kind of needed to fix the spawn camping issue. WoW, which took the core of EQ's bad design and turned it into a new MMO, used instancing as a band aid, and kept the same flawed dungeon raid and loot systems.
Other MMOs, like DAoC, managed to design a game that allowed people to experience public dungeons without constant camping and fighting over "rare spawns". But that's a whole different story how they did that.
To answer your question, I hate instancing because it encourages soloing, forming cliques, removes people from the game world, forces you to do quests and group with very specific people, breaks immersion, encourages developers to release more instanced solo linear content, rather than try to simulate a game world, and several other slightly different reasons. Because the end result of abusing instances (which all devs do eventually, you can't just use A LITTLE instancing it seems) is SWTOR, with no day and night cycle, no real game world, just a bunch of instances pretending to be a bad singleplayer game.
I play an MMO to socialize with other people as we adventure TOGETHER in a living virtual world. I've met most of my lasting MMO friends randomly in dungeons. One of my favorite experiences was this: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/xkhlt/why_we_like_old_mmos_dark_age_of_camelot/ and that is not possible with instances. You can't randomly meet other people, decide to group, help other groups, and explore at your own pace. You have your pace dictated to you by the game, and you have only one path, to get to the end.
Raph Koster said something about the social glue that holds MMOs together... every time players are forced to interact with one another, they share ideas, experiences, and other things that a player might never come across if they never came across those other people. So old MMOs were designed to get people to cross paths a lot. At the bank, at the market, at your class trainer, in the dungeons, and you'd get experiences and friends from these things. And because of these friends, you'd stick to your MMOs longer. (It's no wonder modern themeparks collapse within 3 months).
So, that's part of why I don't like instancing.
it's pretty simple, instancing kills community. if everyone can just go off into their own little corner and never have to see anyone else in a supposedly "massively multiplayer" game, there is a problem with the fundamental design of the game. instances caught on because of the reason you described and it sounded like a good idea at the time because nobody had tried it before (sounds a bit like F2P model doesn't it?). The problem? There is now little to no accountability for your actions. Back in EQ, if you were a jerk or acted like an idiot people would blacklist you. There were people everybody on the server knew to never group with because of their behavior. Now, with cross-server dungeon finders and almost everything being instanced you can get away with acting as depraved as you'd like with no repercussions.
instancing is really just based on hardware limitations so hopefully going forward we will start to see larger worlds with more content and less of a need to instance things.
No it isn't... we've had massive worlds capable of seamless zoning without instances since 1998.
The worlds in all MMORPG today are pretty tiny, even old ones like EQ. Imagine a world where instead of 4 dungeons for a level range you had 40. In a world like that your issue with instancing would no longer exist.
Instances happen because devs don't want to make as much content and because they haven't come up with good ways to create dynamic content yet. It is turning the games into a bunch of tiny boxes that we all play in instead of a real world.
Yes, my issues with instances would still exist. As for what you're describing, Vanguard has more dungeons than you could ever hope to find, much less complete at any given level. All unzoned and uninstanced.
Instances happen because devs don't look at how previous MMOs designed their games without instancing. They don' tlook at DAoC and figure out how there were never any camping issues. They look at WoW and clone it.
I didn't have a huge problem with it when LDoN came out for EQ, figured at the time that it was one expansion and it gave some people alternate ways to play....
Then every expansion that came out afterwards seemed to be built upon instancing, and it made the game feel more like a lobby game/multiplayer game where you made groups with 6 people.
The dungeon/quest instances just felt empty/hollow, and what really drove my hate for instances was doing some Hive one for people to get gear like 50 times, and my wife did it almost 100 times....I just find instances boring.
All content being instanced, and say the temple of SSRA, where they instanced the final boss fight, because it use to be called as the wyrm turns, like a soap or something close to that, because guilds had it on lockdown, but they didn't instance it, till it was not the very top of raid content, if I remember right. So I thought that was a decent compromise for people, and I find that to be a different issue, from instance dungeon content.
I personally like big open worlds, open dungeons, other people in those dungeons, trains (yes they can be a pain and suck, but they also add danger, surprise, and every once in a while a very memorable moment, like doing your normal pulls, and being trained by 8 additional mobs in a hard dungeon, and the cleric/chanter keeping everyone alive and killing it all)....I miss that type of stuff, when it is a instance, it is almost robotic...
I know instances aren't going anywhere, and yes, I did hope and pray they would, but they aren't, so I was hoping someone would atleast come out with a game that half the dungeons were open world or such.
I play standard mmos, for the massive multiplayer, and no matter what people say, a game with pairings of massive amounts of people, into 6 people content is not a mmorpg to me. I also am not a big fan of something being too railed and quest driven. I really wanted to like GW2, but I dislike the classes I played and the world felt too cluttered with hearts/quests, or whatever they are all called. NW, I couldn't log out of it fast enough, felt simple and I hated the controls/ui... The most modern mmo that I surprised myself and liked was TSW (just ran out of content).
I like games that are like LoL, Civ IV, StarCraft, FPSs....When I play those, I know what I am getting, but I do not play a mmo, looking for 6 person pairings for closed off content.
correct, but population, average file sizes and amount of bandwidth needed have increased exponentially since then.
I don't like instanced worlds because they feel small, disjointed and make me feel like I'm in some glorified co op game. I do like instanced dungeons because I enjoy the tailor made content for the group I'm with.
I wouldn't be sad to see an end to worlds like neverwinter, that are just little pockets. But I would like to see both types of dungeons get put into the same open world. Real caves you can explore and run into whatever else is in there as well as instanced dungeons for a very different type of adventure.
Er, no they haven't. Not a lot more data is being transmitted server side than was before. And population is dependent on server size, different from instancing. AND modern MMOs without instancing exist, like Vanguard, Planetside 2, and Darkfall. The latter two have REAL TIME COMBAT without instancing, which DOES need more bandwidth.
Let's not pull punches. Modern use of instancing is because WoW uses instancing, because it is built on broken early design from EverQuest. It's lazy.
I love how people say instancing kills the community.
So, let's examine that. MMO A has the traditional setup of 20 "world" servers, and all overland/city zones are forced to run as single instances. MMO B has a single "world" server, which overland/city zones being instanced as population exceeds hardware capacity.
In the case of MMO A, I will never be able to play with all my friends at once. It's inevitable that some of them will pick different world servers than I will, because THEY also have friends, or maybe they joined the server their co-workers are on, etc. In MMO B, I can play with *ALL* my friends, and all I need to do is shift what zone instance I'm in so I can group with them.
In the case of MMO A, the central auction house will be a lag fest during peak hours, since the single hardware instance of that city zone has to hold the 500 to 1000 people who are all sitting in town trading. I will get to enjoy trying to find a quest giver amidst a sea of players and all their glowing armor and weapon effects. In MMO B, each zone has a controlled upper-bound population, meaning if 250 people is what the client can render nicely, 250 is the most you'll see... even if there's 20,000 standing there. Again, to interact with anyone in particular, I can just switch instances.
In MMO A, if I'm trying to quest in a PvP zone, and a hunting pack is griefing me, I get to log out and go do something else for a few hours and hope they go away, or that their parents force them to go to bed. Fighting back may be tricky if the zone is heavily populated, due to server lag. In MMO B, I *might* be able to switch instances and maybe have more fair PvP fun, rather than a death loop.
In MMO A, if I need to harvest things, or kill a particular rare mob spawn, and others are doing the same thing, I can log out and hope they'll be gone later, or I can try to cheat and use third-party triggers or bots to try to "beat" them to the punch. In MMO B, I *might* be able to flip instances and perhaps the things I need will be there.
Note that when I say *might*, I mean it depends on how many people are playing in those zones. If there's only one instance, MMO B works identically to MMO A... but the possibility is there if it's busy.
So, the question is... divide up the community on a temporary basis, via instanced zones, or divide them up permenantly, via world servers? Personally, I like being able to tell my friends about a game and know they can ALL join me if they feel like it, rather than having to decide which group I'll play this game with, and which ones I'll not see until the next new game.
Playing exclusively with real life and pre established friends in private hubs is EXACTLY what kills community. You did more help for the opposite side of your speech. Instances encourage cliques, soloing, and small groups. Open dungeons give people the chance to meet other people and form a community. A community != people from work or friends from high school who hop on a FTP game with you, play ONLY with you, then log out.
even WoW only has instanced dungeons and continents. once on a continent its a free open roam. admittedly each zone is walled in by ridiculous 'geographic' barriers, but still its there.
i don't think there's a single mmo that's come out in the last 5 years that has a real open world.
as to the question at hand: i want a virtual world, not a lobby game. instanced zones make it feel much more like a lobby game.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
bandwidth needed and increased population go hand in hand. there are hardware limitations with today's games and developers use instancing to help alleviate some of the problem. you can only fit so much stuff through a hose before it starts to plug up and bandwidth is the same way. it all comes down to cost efficiency. it is cheaper to buy/rent 10 cheap servers with a somewhat low max capacity and run instances than it is to buy/rent 1 server with a huge capacity and run a single seamless environment. it isn't as simple as just adding more sticks of ram to your servers if you want to upgrade and servers aren't anywhere near cheap, even the cheap ones.
Vanguard, Darkfall Unholy Wars, Planetside 2, Salem, Mortal Online, Wurm
Its pretty simple MASSIVELY multi player online game. There is nothing massive about an instance or separate zone. My perfect mmo would have 0 instances, everything open world. If I wanted to play a lobby based game I would play any one of the million out there. If I am playing a mmo I want a giant open world, populated with other players to interact with, whether positively or negatively. Again if I wanted to play in my own personal or group instance I could play any lobby based game.
Instances are an easy, cheap way for Devs to expand their game world, unfortunately it is also the dumbed down way that detracts from game immersion, interaction and ultimately contributes to me losing interest or straight up hating a game.
For me instances suck, the more they are used the more the overall game play suffers and at a certain point becomes simply another lobby game. FYI I consider games like swtor, wow, or even gw2 as having too many instances.
You're slightly off.
Populations of servers and MMOs in general have not gone up drastically.
You used to fit maybe 1500 people on a Dark Age of Camelot server in 2001. with dial up modems.
The population got up to 250k people. That was all spread evenly across servers. As population increased, it didn't exponentially increase the amount of data that had to go through one pipe, it just increased overall how many connections were being made, and those were accomodated by more servers. This style could sustain easily. Suddenly if population was 500k, you just add more servers.
Today's MMOs are, more or less, dealing with the same number of players as before across MORE servers, but internet speeds have gotten faster and faster, and server farms are cheaper every year.
Besides, if indie companies in Greece can release a massive world MMO that holds 10k people a server on a shoestring budget, big publisher MMOs could easily do the same for the same amount of money it would cost them to chuck out a misleading CGI trailer.
PS2 has zones rather than instances, the world isn't seamless. DFUW is seamless minus its dungeons but it's set up in sort of a haphazard way (certain tiles lagging like crazy because of player concentration, etc). I can't comment on salem or wurm as i havn't played either of those but their populations are rather small so they can get away with no instancing.
anyway, i'm hoping eqN keeps instancing to a bare minimum if they don't just kill it off all together. i can deal with zoning since everyone ends up in the same area (again, hardware limitations) but instances need to die off.
Aye, in today's mmo's you just instance into a dungeon with a group while sitting in a city waiting, then you run the dungeon barely even saying a word to one another, then leave the group once you've completed it...rinse, repeat....
In older Mmo's I remember running or riding to the dungeon I wanted to go to. It was an adventure, and each time was something new. I may run across someone along my way that is about to die or had died from a mob and needed a rez or needed help finishing it off...boom potential new friend to play online with. Once inside dungeons there were people all throughout the dungeon, in groups and solo'ing. In older mmo's if you were an a$$hat to people or you stole from them, you were blacklisted and weren't welcome for groups or able to get crafted goods again on that server. You had to be accountable for your actions, not like in today's mmo's where you can be a turd to people and get away with it cause you won't see them again.
I met more people that I've stuck with gaming with than any in today's mmo's. I still play mmo's with those people from Ultima Online, Asheron's Call 1, and Dark Age Of Camelot (Pre-ToA). That should say something.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Vanguard, MO, and Wurm i was pretty sure are older than 2009.
PS2 isn't really an mmo, but i can see what you're getting at.
and i was wrong in forgetting about DFUW and Salem.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
We had camping issues on my DAoC server, Guinevere/Hibernia. Many of the most efficient camping spots in the 45-50 range were camped regularly, and many groups fell apart due to a lack of good spots. Sure, this changed a bit with SI, but even many of the best spots in SI were pretty well camped out during prime time. Holy hell, don't even get me started on the mob train griefing that happened in dungeons if you were in a hotly contested camping spot.
If there weren't issues with camping in the older games, instancing wouldn't have been as welcomed as it was when introduced. Whole lotta rose colored glasses are worn when people are talking about the "good ol' days". Some of the shared dungeons, like Darkness Falls in DAoC, were really good examples of how to make dungeons properly. Those were few and far between though.
I share the same feelings
EQ2 fan sites
I remember doing dungeons in games before they had lfg tools as well. I seem to remember spending a lot of time sitting waiting for people as they made their way to where the dungeon was. It also " killed community" because I got so sick of Dbags taking their time I stopped pugging and only did things with guilds.
I don't think any of these things people are toting as community killers does anywhere near as much damage to a real community as the general nature of people and how selfish many of them are. Old games appealed to a very narrow section of people. Those people are what made good communities. The mass market mmo appeals to a much wider group of people...and many of those people are the real reason communities died.
World Of Warcraft did it right first of all. There was a bit of everything.
The main content was accessible to everyone who wanted to experience it except for raids where you required good guild to progress. Instances and everything else was accessible and you just required a decent group to play in the dungeons.
But there were spawn points. Just not for loot, but for rare/legendary PETS/ Mounts or other rare miscellaneous stuff and that's where Blizzard won again.
EQ1 failed to do it right. Except for giving content for everyone they just gave it to the best guilds on the server. The only thing that saved them is that leveling up was too hard and while you leveled up there was a lot of stuff to do in the game beyond just grinding.
But, it is. More so than SWTOR and other instanced lobby games. You have massive 500+ man battles going on in a persistent world.