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Phasing (instanced areas), Mega Server, and community
Zaskar70
Member UncommonPosts: 27
First let me begin by saying that I am not 100% against some form of instancing in MMORPG's, if done correctly you hardly know they are there.
This "phasing is not anything new as far as MMO's are concerned, the term is new but the overall mechanic is very old and has always been a hot topic in the genra. Many people here the word instanced along with MMORPG and it makes them cringe so I can understand why Zen created this new term "phasing" as a sort of disguise yet it is still just the same old mechanic.
I am going to compare ESO in this post to DAOC as the two games are very similar in a lot of ways, 3 seperate realms, safe PVE areas for each realm, 1 large contested zone split 3 ways for conflict with the other realms.
When DAOC first came out there were no instances, each realms entire map was open world and could be walked from the northern most point to the southernmost point without a loading screen to be seen, there were however 3 instances in the game, each realms main city was instanced but there werent multiple copies or channels of these instanced cities, it was just the one you were either in it with everyone else who was in it or you were not.
The enemy frontiers were also instanced in the same way the main cities were, not your own frontier just the enemies, this later changed with a reworking of the frontier map that placed all 3 realms frontiers into one large instanced area, also done with no copies or channels, you were either in it with everyone else who was in it or you were not.
When playing DAOC you would often see the same people day in and day out within your realm as you leveled, you would get to know their names and in a lot of cases make new friends as you all progressed through the world, this fostered a great community along the way and ended up making the conflict with the other realms a lot more personal in the end.
There was a chat channel called realm chat that anyone could see no matter where in the realm they happend to be, it was in this channel that calls to arms would generaly go out as other realms encroached on your realms frontier by taking your keeps and threatening your realms relics. The community would usually all rally up in the frontier to go to war and defend what was yours.
Out in the frontiers you would also learn the names of your enemies, at least the most feared ones. After having leveld with your realm mates for so long you knew everyone at least by name if not ever having played with them you would have seen them many many times in passing, this turned out to be a very very important component to realm vs realm warfare in DAOC, it made it much more personal.
Those people in that besieged keep were not just random realm mates but people you knew, those people the enemy were killing were not just random realm mates but people you grouped and leveled with, this made RvR very very exciting and it also made heroes out of some players and guilds due to their actions on the field.
DAOC had many servers, each server ended up being like a family, with villians and heroes, master crafters and raid leaders that everyone knew. I can still remember the sadness when some servers were merged, a very strong sense of community fostered the bittersweet mergers.
TESO has now gone a different route by using a "mega server" approach and heavy instancing all through out the leveling process. I can understand why in some cases a mega server would be a good idea.
The good aspects:
1. there will never be server merges if the games population starts to dwindle, good for marketing.
2. there will always be people in the world thus it can make the game seem more populated.
3. quests and mob spawns should never become "camped" preventing you from completing something or making you wait a bit.
4. there should be a lot more competition for selling wares thus bringing prices for things down.
5. alliance vs alliance should always be populated (see #2)
The bad aspects:
1. you will probably rarely see the same people twice, very very bad for community building.
2. you may end up feeling isolated and not really a part of the realm, very very bad for alliance vs alliance.
3. grouping with other players will run from difficult to impossible depending on what quests you are on very very bad for community.
4. the game could end up feeling more like a single player RPG than an MMORPG, bad for the game.
5. alliance vs alliance may end up being just either red guys, yellow guys, and blue guys there may end up being little to no familiarity with either your enemies or your realm mates, very bad for community and AvA.
All in all I think the heavy instancing and the Mega Server will do more harm than good to the gameplay and the game over all. Even though I can understand why they did it i'm not sure why someone who was previously heavily involved with DAOC would have been the one to implement it given the screams of rage when anything instanced was brought into DAOC along with the iron clad communities that existed due to the way DAOC was set up.
Anyways that is my 2 cents on the heavy instancing we are all about to experience in ESO.
Comments
I like it for the most part. The more the merrier for having people there. Of course, I am focused more on the AVAVA stuff.
As far as knowing people and having a sense of community; thats what having guilds is for. You can have 5 of them, but I don't think I need that. Just having my main guild is good for my tight nit group and then we have become familiar with other guilds on our side in just a weekend from fighting along side of them. If you really want to see them again, you can get to know them.
None of us really know how this will work once they implement the pre-log-in options menu that lets's you pick preferences about what type of phase you want to play in (RP, Guild mates, etc.) It will also default to putting you in with people in your friend's list.
Campaigns will be permanent (subject to costly - in Alliance points - changes of campaign ). You will be fighting with and against the same people for as long as you play the game. Campaigns act like servers do in other games. And there is an option to turn nameplates on. You'll get to know people worth knowing pretty quickly.
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Fair concern. It's certainly a wait and see right now.
edit - I can a strong community forming in and around Cyrodiil. Heck you may even be able to identify friends and foes on appearance.
The enemy frontiers weren't really instanced either.
It was exactly like your realm - with it connecting to the home realm, but separated by a giant wall with a massive load of guards protecting it. You just had to zone over to the enemy realm to reach their frontier but just on the other side of their massive wall was their realm (i.e. beyond the wall by Castle Excalibur was Albion's Camelot Hills region).
With New Frontiers expansion pack they blocked off the old Frontier Zones to each realm and made everyone port to a massive zone that then contained all 3 Frontier Realms within.
The funniest part about the capital cities zones was that it could be bright and the middle of the day outside in Camelot Hills but inside Camelot be the middle of the night. LOL
SWTOR was a decent MMO, so was WAR. Flawed? Hell yes, but they were no more flawed than e.g. STO or CO.
Both games started with a massive population influx - in the case of WAR partly due to some mix-up in pre-orders, in the case of SWTOR it was simply a hugely popular theme.
Both games expanded rapidly, queues built, and new servers were ordered and opened at a lightning pace.
Then, as with every MMO (excluding WoW), the population dropped off... As the population dropped, people on servers found that everything died - the bustling cities/daily PvP became wastelands, trade stopped, everyone that made stuff lost their customers and their customers lost their suppliers, the auctionhouse crashed/went crazy. People left on the server then had less reason to stay - and the population drops became more severe.
The only solution is aggressive server merges, something that is highly unpopular with the playerbase (the positive aspect of 'building a server community' is lost when you split it apart for server merges).
IMHO, in 2014, "servers/shards" are fundamentally broken concepts for a new MMO.
Sounds like the OP is extremely concerned about the effects of phasing on the ESO "community".
What "community", lol ?
The only strong "server community" that exists in any MMORPG nowadays is in EVE. That's the only game where you'll get to know the names of well-known characters in the game, and learn what makes them tick, as well as who you can trust.
Most modern MMO's don't have communities, they have large (or small) amounts of random players. Other than RL friends or guildmates, you'll not get to know many other players by name. Most of them you'll never see more than once or twice, mostly due to leveling speed, instance grinding and instant travel.
In the older server-based MMO's, you played with a relatively small set of players, all of whom were bound to one specific server. The "cross-realm" dungeon finders and LFG started the inevitable erosion of server communities, and "megaservers" put an end to the concept.
Darkfall: Unholy Wars is another. Two servers (NA and EU) with no instancing and one character per account. People in that game are known. A sense of community is no minor thing. Phasing, while a great technical feat, is detrimental to MMO's.
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Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
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There were no "cross-realm" dungeons in DAOC as you could not go into another realm's PVE areas at all. There was however LFG in DAOC, I'm not sure how you think LFG had anything to do with the erosion of community. The only cross realm dungeon was in the frontier, Darkness Falls, however you could not group with anyone from an enemy realm, heal them or even speak to them .
There were also thousands of players in each realm on DAOC so im not sure why you would think people were playing with a small number of people.
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The reviewer has a mishapen head
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Just to clarify.
OP, you kinda seem confused over the difference between Phasing, Instancing, Zones, and how these 3 fit into the Mega Server tech.
ESO makes use of all 3, but the Mega Servers aren't phasing. In a way they ARE instancing, but in much the same way as having multiple servers are all instances of the same game.
The difference being that the mega servers are fluid, allowing players to transverse servers as needed. Which is a strength. When Zenimax talks about phasing, they are talking about quests. This is where the game actually has phasing. If you saved those houses from burning down, they remain saved on your screen, However, to everyone else who hasn't done that yet, they are still burning, and still need saving. Same deal with the thousands of objects you pickup around the world. You pick them up, they disappear for your client, but to others' games they can still see them. That is what phasing is, and ESO has a lot of it.
Outside of the Mega Servers, the game actually has fairly minimal instancing. You see this mostly when it comes to zoning into dungeons, and Cyrodiil. Outside of that, it's mostly based around server clusters. You mention not seeing the same people twice. I can say that so far (in beta), I have absolutely ran into some of the same people. This will also improve once they implement their tech which is basically designed to profile players into the same servers. Things like who's on your friend's list, guild list, and people who answered similar on a questionare will be more frequently paired up.
- The only problem so far that I have seen from this mega servers, when it comes to interacting with players, is the chat. No one seems to know how this is going to work at launch, but trading with strangers seems like it could be a big issue. This game has all the groundwork to have a very robust economy. But I haven't seen any mechanics inplace to make it easier to trade the market w/ other players. Guild markets are supposed to help w/ this, but who knows how that'll actually work. Especially considering how often keeps get taken in Cyrodiil currently.
Outside of the Mega Servers, the game actually has fairly minimal instancing. You see this mostly when it comes to zoning into dungeons, and Cyrodiil. Outside of that, it's mostly based around server clusters.
Actually there was a lot of instancing going on. I had a lot of bugged quests that required me to log out then log back in immediatly to change the instance I was in to an instance where the quest was not bugged.
You could tell it was a new instance because sometimes I had to relog multiple times to get a non bugged instance and when I did I would be surrounded by different people or no people at all when I changed instances to being back with the original instance and the same people. These are what are called instances of the game world, not inside dungeons or tunnels or caves but out in the game world.
Several times when grouped with other people and not on quests we would end up in defferent instances of the game world, choosing travel to other player would put you in the same instance of the game world as your group mate.
Tera does this with channels like some other games, ESO only allows you to change the instance your currently in by traveling to a grouped player or relogging.
Make no mistake when your out in the game world there are several other instances of that game world running at that same time with different people in it. The instances are NOT confined to dungeons, caves and certain quest locations.
The phasing is when you and a groupmate are in the same instance but he or she can still vanish because they go into a quest phase that you are not a part of.