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Thank you for not instancing.
anarchyart
Member Posts: 5,378
Instancing takes away from the community as players are secluded off in their private dungeon parlor instead of "interacting" like we should be. Why should 17 different groups all have their own private copy of a dungeon? I want to play in a place that I can enter and leave and it still exists without me being there. not created on my group entering like I'm playing some interactive novel: I want to be in the novel.
A pervasive world should not have instances, it should be one big world that everyone plays in. This is what an MMORPG is.
Thanks Sigil for making a real MMORPG for us who enjoy a challenge.
Comments
I have many "reserves" on what Vanguard propose on this aspect, but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this aspect.
What they propose is intriging and until I try it, I can't judge it. I am a strong supporter of instancing however, yet, can always give a try to a noble effort. I really like when I improve the chances of meeting others players, and this is exactly doing that.
Of course Vanguard is prolly sticking to the raiding mistake on every server, but that is hardly surprising.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
lol im sorry but why is it that every post i read of yours, you talk about wanting a server without raiding? i am not trying to flame you but seriously....do you have to put it in every post?
and your sig is killin me....i have a sig for ya.....
"A real grouper will be perfectly happy in a setting where grouping give edges inside groups only(useless outside of groups). Peoples saying otherwise are to grouping what Gankers are to PvP.''
or exhange groups for solo in that quote
im not trying to flame you but dude...give it a rest we know how you feel about the subject
read this http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1044304#post1044304 then come back and talk to me about the vanguard/soe fiasco.....
The main thing I hate about instancing is that every game that uses it flaunts it. It's like, "Look at us, we have instancing. EVERYWHERE!" Why can't someone make a game where instances are used extremely sparingly? Where it isn't unusual for someone to level all the way up without ever coming across one. Make it some random, one time spawn that gives you a key to a secret location where no one else can go (except your group). Maybe even make it only happen durring GM controlled events.
But alas, I have no doubt that if a game company had the technology available to them that they would push ahead and end up with instances everywhere. So better safe than sorry and go with no instances instead.
I'm going with the only instance the raid zone stance. You already have 40 people crowding you. The last thing you need is another 40 man raid to come in and ks everything. In fact I would even like to see 15 man places instanced also. Anything that is below that is just flaunting technical capabilites of your coders. Unless you are from the school of thought of "Waiting for boss spawn", or "Farmers united", or "Bloody massacre we are all going to die" I can't see how your wouldn't gree to having some of the really large scale zones instanced.
(This is a discussion. Not a flame.)
(You in the above paragraph refers to all posters on all forums in all of mmorpg.com)
It's a zoneless game, so you can't really instance any particular 'zone'.
Many of the raid targets are triggered spawns, and specific mobs (like raid targets) will often be attackable only by the raid or group that triggered them.
There will still be contestable mobs. But the mobs needed for progressions or quests will often be triggered and protected.
-Feyshtey-
Instancing does take something away from the game ... I hope they keep it out permenantly and make the world large and diverse enough so that we never get bored
Instancing really does take away from the submersive feel of a game. MMORPG's are about playing in a world with other real people. When you begin instancing zones, it begins feeling more like just another game than it does its own new world, IMO.
For me, there is a little excitement in knowing another group might be just around the corner. And something ominous about stepping over the corpse of another player on your way down into the depths of a dungeon...
There is a far more interesting discussion here:
http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=29572&mode=linear&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
Comments from some leading devs too.
This was NEVER a problem in EQ. Guilds, as a whole, are very respectful to one another regarding this issue. Large guilds usually have members who are friends with another guild and most often know ahead of time what guild is raiding where and when. Whoever gets there first is the guild who gets the raid the zone and latecomers are always more than accomodating and will move on to another target.
Guilds always have more than one choice of target for a raid and will adjust accordingly.
EDIT:
Eh, never mind. What may or may not have happened in EQ is pretty much water under the bridge. V:SoH isn't EQ, after all. Just in the same spirit, many of us hope.
Triggered bosses seems to be a good solution, imo.
...
This is where I draw the line: __________________.
EDIT:
And my husband needs to log into his own account and stop posting from mine!
...
This is where I draw the line: __________________.
LOL busted!
read this http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1044304#post1044304 then come back and talk to me about the vanguard/soe fiasco.....
Guild Wars must be laughing so hard. Oh wait then again, the only reason people play guild wars is cause their broke butts cant afford a REAL MMO.
(get out of your moms basement, and get a job, so you can play real games again)
Nah definantly, If vanguard had instances, I would of overlooked htis game months ago, this Dev team really know whats up and what real gamers want, Content, Community, and a sense of accomplishment. I have high hopes for this game, Hopefully they dont do raiding as they did in EQ, although fun, very tiring and old, i'm sure they will kick in some spice. Like heres an idea, make a raid zone, The Whole zone, make it a city par say? But most of all to make it interactive, such as if there is a building with a wooden roof/straw, and you have a torch in your inventory, to be able to torch the home, causeing panic to the mobs, ie* feared* thus spawning the Boss to come and kill you, instead of the same enter zone, gather, set the plan, rinse wash repeat. Little things like that to start off a raid would be fun IMO.
Um, bull? My girlfriend used to be a guide and she had to deal with this kinda thing alot. Sorry, it wasn't as rosey as you seem to remember. It was a problem and after SOE took their new "everyone must share nice, camps are no longer acknowledged" rule it got 10 fold worse.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Um, bull? My girlfriend used to be a guide and she had to deal with this kinda thing alot. Sorry, it wasn't as rosey as you seem to remember. It was a problem and after SOE took their new "everyone must share nice, camps are no longer acknowledged" rule it got 10 fold worse.
wow really? i never had a problem either... *shrugs*
you can always play on a pvp server (assuming there will be one) and it eliminates that problem..
read this http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1044304#post1044304 then come back and talk to me about the vanguard/soe fiasco.....
Instancing is one topic that I feel is not good on either extreme. Instancing is an important feature, but one that should be used properly. I personally think instancing helps for immersion more than it hurts. Why? Because I don't find it very immersive to be in a group working on a challenging quest, only to end up in the last parts and find tons of people at the <boss mob's house>. It just ruins the feeling of being on an important quest for your city when you have to sit there in line while the mob is killed over and over before it's your turn. Or watching people run around trying to retrieve corpses. Or people yelling looking for groups. The whole atmosphere to me is much less immersive than if your group enters the castle alone to challenge the <big nasty thing>.
I do think that few entire dungeons should be instanced. I also like the occasional solo gauntlet type challenge or something similar.
If such a place has quite alot of people - for say a quest, then that shows the game is lacking content or the server is over crowded.
Its nice to be in a dungeon alone with your group. But its also nice to experiance content knowing that some people are around - near or far away. Instancing well, the thing is, this is not what virtual worlds are about. How can you have any impact on a world if you're only using it as a portal to a first-person shooter? How do you interact with people if they're battened down in an inaccessible pocket universe? Where's the sense of achievement, of making a difference, of being someone?
Most players, Id argue, see instancing as a cure to the prime evils of MMOs. After all, instancing reduces competition for items and mobs within the instance and all but eliminates the MMO bogies of kill-stealing and spawn-camping. Of course, that other perennial favourite, ninja-looting, is not, and perhaps cannot, be eliminated by instancing. In fact, ninja-looting may be exacerbated by instancing in that players plagued by a ninja-looter are often faced with having to repeat the entire instance to regain that ninjad item, rather than merely waiting for a mob to respawn, or a chest to be reset. The ninja, meanwhile, has disbanded, been automatically ejected from the instance, and is making his way to the nearest merchant or Auction House to pawn his ill gotten gains for gold.
Oddly enough, the part of the above experience that the players involved are most likely to reminisce about later is the ninja-looter, not the instance. Perhaps that's because no one likes a ninja looter, but maybe its because, virtual worlds are not about being isolated in pocket universes, theyre about interaction, and the most exciting form of interaction is often unregulated contact with other players. Remember them? Other players? The people outside the instance that cant come in unless they agree to play by the rules
Mostly taken from this
http://www.mmorpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1172&sid=107b3ba5ee4c8cee0ec0b8194abbc901
Where instancing has gone wrong, and why it was / is needed
Instancing is never a good thing in a game where you are trying to create the feeling of being a fantasy world. Notice the word world, in these games youre supposed to be simulating a fantasy world. I dont see and havent seen an argument on how instancing helps to create this feeling.
Instancing does nothing to create the illusion of immersion, if anything it destroys this feeling players will get form a game. I cant see how people can argue that instancing makes the world seems more immersive, when you have 2 or more groups or players doing the same exact thing your doing at the same exact time, without the chance to interact or see what the other person is doing. You cant walk to the store with a friend to by Vanguard: SoH with a friend and not see them doing the same thing your doing.
Instancing was created as a byproduct of over crowding and competition, it was not created as a means of making a game more immersive or less convincing. When you have worlds as small as the ones created today in our MMOGs you will have issues with over crowding and over population with even just a thousand player (other factors lead to this that will be discussed later in this writing) to a few thousands of players.
You need to work on creating larger worlds with more options for players in order to get rid of a lot of the issues discussed for the need to instance zones. Players should have the choice of races and classes to play, but they should also have the choices of locations in which to begin the game also. In larger worlds, there would be room to put multiple Dwarven Kingdoms, or Elven Forests, Human settlements. But in todays games, it is a pretty bare bone character creation system. EverQuest II took a step backwards on this and put multiple races in the same location, which almost forced them to have to instance the game world.
Wish (RIP) was on to something great, even though the world was not very large, it was larger feeling in that characters didnt move rapidly over the landmass. They gave characters many options for starting locations (giving them the chance to get closer to their friends that has chosen a different race to play). When you were picking your starting location it would give some vitals on this location and which classes would benefit from this location the most, but it was not that a certain race / class combo would really have only on beneficial starting city, they still give options, so that each race / class combo would still have choice of starting cities that would benefit them greatly, and then they could pick other areas that would not give them the greatest benefits, but did give them that choice.
Creating larger worlds, with different areas that each race and class combination could use as a starting location is a good model to use for quite a few reasons. It helps get players closer to friends whove picked different race / class combinations in your game world. It spreads out the player base so that you have much less over population issues that lead to a great deal of competition. It also creates a world that has a much greater replay value than small worlds you will see completely with one character (usually your main).
Instancing removes some of the reasons to allow a player character to feel like a Hero or to feel like youve done things others havent. With instances, you will give players the ability to go through the same exact content at the same exact time, not allowing the game to give proper rewards for this activity since it will be done multiple times with in a shorter period of time. You cant make players feel like a Hero while allowing the content to be instanced. If a player or group completes the instance first, they will be treated like a hero until the next player or group completes the same instance zone within a very short period of time, and now they are the heroes of the quest, event, or city task.
The sense of accomplishment is also diminished as you will always know that what your doing can and most likely is being done by multiple people as the same time. Who really will care if you just killed Naggy, there are other killing him right now also. It will also leave players with the ability to repeat content with little time waiting in between.
<Completed killing Naggy>
What should we do next?
Hey, let kill Vox!
Ok
Zone
Zone
Zone
Zone
<[character, group, or raid] Enters instance 4 to Voxs Lair>
Wow, not that many people killing Vox tonight L
I feel the major thing developers should be doing is creating larger worlds and with many more choices for their players if they wish to take the genre in to the next generation. While I feel that Sigil Games is doing a lot more good for the genre as a whole, there are still design flaws in the Vanguard game that will not allow for an immersive or the feeling of being in a world simulation to the game. But also give Sigil a lot credit for going down the road less traveled in order to help move the genre forward instead of backwards and thanks to Microsoft for also seeing the potential in the Vision.
Only the dead have seen the end of War! ~ Plato
I agree with you.
I also hate instancing so Far Aanarchy-Online has been my favroite game it was very instance free. I hate games that have alot of instancing. It makes it hard to meet other players out in the world and hard to make new firends. and help or get help out on you're adventures.
a instanced free world is a True MMORPG. Instancing ruins everything.
I think do to Guild Wars being so poplur is what made alot of designers want to do instancing. What the other designers are not noticing is that Guild Wars is a Free play game not a monthly pay to play game.
Had Guild wars been a pay to play it would not of been very poplur at all.
Bottum line, Instancing is stupid.
very nicely put. to the poster above me.
A real game does not need a fake world to survive on, i mean its a fake world already...
So, by something real you mean what? Is there one? Using UO as the basis for a "real" mmo is a joke. To say there were no hacks or bots there.. wow.. did you even PLAY UO?
For any MMORPG to survive today, it has to have all the bells and whistles.. instancing included. Its not about what technology they use. Its how.