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Looking to understand why certain people are highly turned off by instancing

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  • TibernicuspaTibernicuspa Member UncommonPosts: 1,199
    Originally posted by Tibernicuspa

    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.

    You say unqualified disdain for instancing? Here is my very qualified and quantified reason for disdaining instances.

  • Angier2758Angier2758 Member UncommonPosts: 1,026

    EQ1's dungeon design was amazing... if you weren't really competing or people treated each other nicely....  

     

  • LoktofeitLoktofeit Member RarePosts: 14,247
    Originally posted by Tibernicuspa
    Originally posted by Tibernicuspa

    [stuff]

    So, that's part of why I don't like instancing.

    You say unqualified disdain for instancing? Here is my very qualified and quantified reason for disdaining instances.

    Cool. Unfortunately, you're a little unclear on the difference between 'many' and 'all'. [mod edit]

    There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
    "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre

  • LoktofeitLoktofeit Member RarePosts: 14,247
    Originally posted by Angier2758

    EQ1's dungeon design was amazing... if you weren't really competing or people treated each other nicely....  

    I think a good part of that was the players and the culture they both developed and accepted. Behaviour reached to all extremes of the spectrum but the important thing was that everyone was generally on the same page as to the expectations of what could happen and what does happen, good or bad. The community, possibly due to background or even that they all started anew at the same general time, was rather homogenous in that regard.

    There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
    "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre

  • DeivosDeivos Member EpicPosts: 3,692

    Seems some of the bigger points have already been covered, and then subsequently buried for the sake of semantic argument.

     

    What are instances? Well, they more more or less just server fragments. The basic intention is balance and/or stability depending on where you see it's use.

     

    In general gameplay, segments of the game world might be instanced so that the zone won't hit a number too high for the individual server to stably support.

    The thing instancing the game world like this does also assists with, aside from load balancing, is managing player to mob density.

    In the non-dynamic world that constitutes most MMOs, it's the notion of spawn camping, as others have previously commented on, that the instancing of the game world tries to help alleviate as well. By limiting the total head count a zone can see at any given time before splitting off a new zone, it allows the amount of players to be distributed more evenly in an area and experience less competition to try and complete the same objectives.

     

    The problem with instancing the game world for either of these solutions? It's not necessary.

     

    Blizzard for example opted to make the physical server hardware for WoW capable of merging and partitioning off so that as a given zone increased in population density, the servers supporting it would get bigger by drawing on unused ones from less populated zones. This solution came after the early experiences of WoW chugging in the major cities, it was not an initial concept, but it worked as a solution that kept players together, but lightened the impact on the playability.

    They eventually implemented phasing as well, which let players migrate through a zone and experience a progressive narrative as well as controlled player count when moving through the environments by stepping the visibility and interactivity they had with assets within the zone as well as with other players depending on where they were in their progress.

     
    GW2 similarly has used a solution to the other problem, player to mob density, by eliminating the concept of 'locking' mobs when players attack them. By giving individual reward to people based on participation rather than who hit first or simply did the most damage, it allows players to cooperatively approach most any of the game's content rather than acting upon it competitively.
     
    Firefall has it's own solution as well to this dilemma, and that's a reactive AI coupled with a fluid mob spawning system. Rather than set a fixed spawn for everything, the game tracks player density and individual behavior to a degree so that it can generate more appropriate competition (similar in concept to the 'Director' AI from Left 4 Dead).
     
     
    Fundamentally, instancing the game world is a solution used because the game world is likely in a large part static and can't adapt to player density and activity, the engine won't run stably on the servers past a certain headcount, and/or the content is designed to be completed on an exclusive basis.
     
     
     
    The other major aspect of instancing, dungeons, is a similar situation that's more focused in on tailored player and group experiences as well as delivery of narrative on a non-global scale.
     
     
    The dungeon instance more or less serves to create a controlled environment within which the developers can much more finely tune the given experience a player will have based on the controlled headcount and scale of the area. It's an attempt in part at trying to keep that previously mentioned situation player density versus mob density, from being a factor that could easily get out of hand in a finite space.
     
     
    The other big attribute is the storyline. Given a preset narrative that a player is lead through, instanced dungeons were a good solution to leading a player through the narrative of games without the obstruction of or to other players, letting each one see the whole game's story at their own pace. Sometimes the instance is used to tell a pivotal aspect of the overall game's narrative, sometimes it's just a side quest and isolating it's mostly just a means to make it a controlled and repeatable experience.
     
     
    The issues that may be levied against the instanced dungeons is perhaps more to do with their prevalence and impact on the nature of a game's narrative (and consequently how that makes a player perceive their place in the game world).
     
     
    Less about community directly, the problem that instanced dungeons present is the question of how much of the content they constitute in an MMO. When the bulk of the activity to be had is within an instance, it means that the overall world tends to be perceived as more finite.
     
     
    WoW is again a decent example of this, because it's a game that has a pretty large open game world, yet when the focus is/was driven onto the dungeon finder, that aspect of the game figuratively shrank away from a large chunk of the community in favor of treating the title like a lobby based game.
     
    And then the more extreme case. When an MMO almost entirely foregoes a shared world to create what is essentially a lobby game. Neverwinter, DDO, STO, Global Agenda. These are all titles that treat the shared environments of the game more simply as a 'hub' for players to organize themselves on a personal and communal level before heading off to their instanced dungeons and quests.
     
    It's at this point that people also have a tendency to bring into question whether or not the game really merits being regarded as an MMO anymore, because it's effectively pushed all the 'massive' aspects out of itself.
     
     
    This isn't a notion I am entirely against, but it does bring that notion to the forefront when examining such titles. IT's not abnormal for games to use the framework for MMOs in their production any more. It's perhaps a fond solution because it tends to mean that the company can theoretically keep online play balanced and reduce the impact people modifying or hacking their games might have on one another. Obviously that doesn't always work out as intended.
     
     
    The narrative complaint rests squarely on the notion of consequence and impact. When every pivotal choice a player makes in the game is placed into an instanced activity, it means that your actual impact on the game is generally non-existent. This shares a home with the notion 'When everyone's the hero, no one is.' and consequently the problem that the only progress you ultimately see in such a game rests squarely on the numerical progress of one's avatar instead of any form of external impact.
     
    The common example, announcements from finishing Onyxia or any other major boss from WoW with global announcements or a cut-scene depicting something major supposedly changing only for it to be the exact same as it was after the instance, or how the game still does announcements when players create a death knight.
     
    Or how you can make so much progress helping the city of Neverwinter, but whenever you're there rather literally nothing is going on.
     
     
    It all ultimately feeds into the question of  'What kind of game is one trying to make or play?'
     
    When the game is meant to be relatively controlled, finite, and scripted, then mechanics such as instancing has less impact on the experience a player will have.
     
    When the game wants focus on collaborative, shared, or dynamic elements, then instancing becomes an inhibiting trait.
     
    So to some it's a problem, because it combats the kind of game they ultimately wish to play, while for others it's perfectly acceptable, as it may very well cater to the experiences they want out of a title.

    "The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay

    "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin

  • LoktofeitLoktofeit Member RarePosts: 14,247
    Originally posted by Deivos

     
    It all ultimately feeds into the question of  'What kind of game is one trying to make or play?'
     
    When the game is meant to be relatively controlled, finite, and scripted, then mechanics such as instancing has less impact on the experience a player will have.
     
    When the game wants focus on collaborative, shared, or dynamic elements, then instancing becomes an inhibiting trait.
     
    So to some it's a problem, because it combats the kind of game they ultimately wish to play, while for others it's perfectly acceptable, as it may very well cater to the experiences they want out of a title.

    imageimage I'd go as far as to say that when the game is meant to be relatively controlled, finite, and scripted, then mechanics such as instancing often has a more effective impact on the experience a player will have, as it retains a greater level of control over each scene and event. Other than that, I think you've presented instancing pretty succinctly from both sides of the fence with those four lines.

    There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
    "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre

  • Ender4Ender4 Member UncommonPosts: 2,247


    Originally posted by Loktofeit

    Originally posted by Tibernicuspa

    Originally posted by Loktofeit I'm wondering how many people in this thread actually know what an instance is and how many are just raging about group dungeons.
    All of us do. I know you have a history of derailing threads with your computer science definition of instances, and arguing that individual servers are all instances, but we're not taking that BS here. We're discussing instances as they are known to MMO gamers, meaning, copies of zones that lock out other players within the same server.
    You say all of us do and Ender says all of us do, but Ender's post points out that isn't the case at all, as many of the people posting here have an unqualified disdain for instances, indicating they either do not feel the way you and Ender do or they do not really understand what an instance is.

    However, I do thank you for confirming my suspicion that yours was a particular alt account.  Cheers!

    EDIT: As an aside, I don't believe I ever argued that when discussing instances we should consider servers as instanced content. If you misconstrued that from any of my posts, that's on your end. ;)

     


    The only person in this thread who doesn't understand what an instance is within the confines of a MMOPRG is you sadly.

  • StilerStiler Member Posts: 599
     Originally posted by olepi

    A good case for #2 is a personal house. It makes sense that a player would have to "open" the door to get into their house, and this can cause a new instance to be loaded. You are no longer in the outside world, but are in your own little inside world. Each player has one, but each one is a separate instance. This does not break immersion, and is no problem.

     

    Except:

     

    1. Houses with porches/balconies/outside area's.

    2. What if the door is left open?

     

    In UO there were many times I'd randomly come across people at their houses doing things, rather it making making armor, decorating it, guilds having a meeting on their balcony, just randoml people getting together.

     

    If you take away that and make houses each instanced you will get rid of that sense of "random" community that can happen because the houses exist within the world and aren't instanced in any way shape or form.

  • TibernicuspaTibernicuspa Member UncommonPosts: 1,199
    Originally posted by Deivos

     
     
    It all ultimately feeds into the question of  'What kind of game is one trying to make or play?'
     
    When the game is meant to be relatively controlled, finite, and scripted, then mechanics such as instancing has less impact on the experience a player will have.
     
    When the game wants focus on collaborative, shared, or dynamic elements, then instancing becomes an inhibiting trait.
     
    So to some it's a problem, because it combats the kind of game they ultimately wish to play, while for others it's perfectly acceptable, as it may very well cater to the experiences they want out of a title.

    On top of all this is the question: What is an MMO?

    Because the term MMO was invented for a reason, no other genre existed like it at the time. It was made to describe games that fit your second description, collaborative, shared, dynamic.

    There was already a genre for the scripted controlled small games, they were singleplayer games with optional COOP, or they were games like Diablo, or even Neverwinter Nights. Those weren't MMOs and they weren't retroactively called MMOs.

    So when a game bills itself as an MMO, it carries with it the expectation to craft a big meaningful shared world. But that is entirely undermined whenever instances get used. You can script and instance the hell out of an MMO and the end result will NEVER be as good as if you had made a full blown Diablo game or singleplayer game. Or, you can focus on what makes MMOs MMOs, improve the strengths instead of wasting resources on trying to make them what they aren't.

  • BMBenderBMBender Member UncommonPosts: 827
    Originally posted by swarmofseals

    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.

    Ok let me see if I can address why some instance approaches are un popular for some people.

    1St the technical side, instancing the lions share of your content lets you skimp and save a bit on the engine, however it's impossible to instance the entire game and not become battlenet.  Because of that in the portions of the game not instanced the game often has "issues" with high local populations.   The more extreme recent example of this would be SWTOR back when they still had a lot of it's player base.

    2nd more instances = more load screens / more load screens = lessened immersion.  I'll again reference SWTOR since they give such good examples.  The space station transit point place thingies( I forgot what they were called) to goto another planet you had to go through a loading screen, run down an empty hall get a cut scene and another load screen(did I get that right, can't quite remember please correct if mis spoke)

     

    3rd exploration, in the 1st and 2nd gen mmo's this was the third pillar of longevity.  People were actually able to become lost on landscape, or see things no one else had. Instances have walls, you hit them, you don't get lost(unless it's a maze instance) or see something few else have.

    4th social comfort. people like people around them. We are clannish creatures by nature.  Even if you hate dealing with people(I soloed more often than not in UO EQ EQ2 ect go down the list) it still is a subconscious "warm fuzzy" to see others even if you have no intention of interacting with them.

    5th random social interaction/bonds,  with everyone in one big melting pot one is much more likely to be doing your own thing, see someone else nearby doing much the same, decide do it together, begin friendships(often lifelong even outside game).  This is where the concept of guilds in mmo's actually started from.

    6th Social isolation, as stated earlier we get that warm fuzzy seeing people around even if we are sociopaths.  All mmos have population cycles sometimes higher sometimes lower depending on the season, the weather the phase of the moon, whether the wife's around or not... well anyway it cycles naturally; and sometimes unnaturally if  an unpopular feature/change gets added.  Most early gen mmo's never had the mass cascade effect die offs we see today.  Part of that was with everyone in one big melting pot, you needed one hell of a low cycle to notice it.  The more instanced a game is however low cycles become MUCH more visible and personally impacting.  As we see in heavy instanced mmo's cascade mass exoduses are the norm not the exception.

     

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