I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
Really having +200 plus players standing around in a small in or house is immersive? havinf a thousand players all camping the same rabbit spawn or boss is fun???
Eve is a different type of game and even then you get ebnough players in the same spot and the lagfeast will make the game unplayable with actions taking 30 seconds or more just to fire off. you want more of that???
Personally i don't need hundreds of other players in every small town or dungeon i visit. With every twit dancing on the mailboxes or making every lost secret dungeon into grandcentral station.
Originally posted by MyTabbycat I do ask: What's the difference between having the population on 15 different shards (that's 14 shards worth of people you can't see) versus having the population in 15 different phased zones (that's 14 phased zones worth of people you can't see)? Is it just the ability to hop from one phase to another without having to buck up and pay a fee to transfer to another shard to play with your friend?
I will answer that. In a Single Server you eventually get to know other players, that creates a community. In Megaservers, you are just a number who plays together with another number. This is not why MMORPGs came about. This is more a Multiplayer design. I finally gave up on WOW because the Megaservers. Personally I hate them, they are so community unfriendly and I believe it will harm any MMO who abuse it.
This pretty much nails it.
In FFXI I used to regularly bump into the same players on my server when I was out adventuring. This led me to eventually get to know them and form some friendships that have spanned multiple games. The 'top players' on the server also became well known and recognisable as you would see them regularly and stare in envy at their equipment.
That doesn't happen in modern MMOs because the way the servers are designed you never really meet the same player more than once unless you already knew them. In WoW or any MMO since I have never built a lasting friendship with any player whereas the games before that introduced me to dozens of friends-to-be.
Isolated servers or worlds without phasing, instancing or overflow systems are simply better for the game community. In my opinion that's worth sacrificing the 'convenience' those systems may otherwise offer.
(A lot of people often respond to this with the 'join a guild' argument as well. This doesn't hold up though because a guild basically isolates you from the rest of the community by giving you no reason to interact with anyone outside of the guild and serves to only compound the problem).
Originally posted by ste2000 Originally posted by MyTabbycatI do ask: What's the difference between having the population on 15 different shards (that's 14 shards worth of people you can't see) versus having the population in 15 different phased zones (that's 14 phased zones worth of people you can't see)? Is it just the ability to hop from one phase to another without having to buck up and pay a fee to transfer to another shard to play with your friend?
I will answer that. In a Single Server you eventually get to know other players, that creates a community. In Megaservers, you are just a number who plays together with another number. This is not why MMORPGs came about. This is more a Multiplayer design. I finally gave up on WOW because the Megaservers. Personally I hate them, they are so community unfriendly and I believe it will harm any MMO who abuse it.
You're describing the difference between DAoC and WoW, not the difference between ESO with servers and ESO with channels. The player experience is going to be the same in both cases. At most 100 to 150 people that each player "knows", and thousands of faceless strangers running around. Short of limiting the population to 500 players or less per server, there's nothing ESO could do about this.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The statement does not mean the gameworld is split by instances and even then is that not how TES is build anyway? Caves, cities and even houses are instanced in the singleplayer version of the game.
Originally posted by MyTabbycat I do ask: What's the difference between having the population on 15 different shards (that's 14 shards worth of people you can't see) versus having the population in 15 different phased zones (that's 14 phased zones worth of people you can't see)? Is it just the ability to hop from one phase to another without having to buck up and pay a fee to transfer to another shard to play with your friend?
I will answer that. In a Single Server you eventually get to know other players, that creates a community. In Megaservers, you are just a number who plays together with another number. This is not why MMORPGs came about. This is more a Multiplayer design. I finally gave up on WOW because the Megaservers. Personally I hate them, they are so community unfriendly and I believe it will harm any MMO who abuse it.
This isn't necessarily true. You can meet people just as easily with a phasing setup than with a standard server setup. The people are still there to be met. I think it's more that games so far that have seen heavy phasing have also been plagued with what I call "canned content." with canned content you either wait in a line or stumble upon something scripted and the players that are chosen to or happen to be around just go until the script is over and then you leave. Nine times out of ten, no one asks to go deeper into a dungeon or further along, or to something more challenging. They just keep their mouths shut and either go again or leave.
In fact, we know so little about how this will actually work, it's just as easy to praise it as genius as it is to condemn it as evil. Let's just make a little list of things that I can imagine won't happen because ZOS chose this direction. Well, you'd never have to discover a friend plats the game but on a different server so one of you has to start over. You'd never have to play an alternate because your server was down for maintenance but others weren't. You wouldn't have to play with people under the age of 25. You wouldn't have to play with non-role players or role players.To be honest, with their setup, it's sounding more and more likely that I'll meet someone that I will actually want to talk to.
And really, I fail to see any argument that having people still split up, but on inaccessible servers is somehow more immersive or conducive to community building. Sure, you won't hear the phrase,"I played Daggerfall on the Mehrunes Dagon server," but it should be more about the people than anything. So how exactly is having different phases of the world completely split more conducive to community building? I maintain that it isn't, necessarily. Especially if TSO stays away from canned content, which they seem to at least in PvP.
And really, I fail to see any argument that having people still split up, but on inaccessible servers is somehow more immersive or conducive to community building. Sure, you won't hear the phrase,"I played Daggerfall on the Mehrunes Dagon server," but it should be more about the people than anything. So how exactly is having different phases of the world completely split more conducive to community building? I maintain that it isn't, necessarily. Especially if TSO stays away from canned content, which they seem to at least in PvP.
I think the OP hasn't thought this one through.
I agree and like the statement in the OP. The system is smart about putting you with your friends. So if your about community building and meet people you like you befriend them and the server will try to keep you with as many friend as possible and the friend of you friend will also be there and there friend might also join that automaticly.
The changes you like the friends of your friends are bigger then that you like some random people.
Originally posted by MyTabbycat I do ask: What's the difference between having the population on 15 different shards (that's 14 shards worth of people you can't see) versus having the population in 15 different phased zones (that's 14 phased zones worth of people you can't see)? Is it just the ability to hop from one phase to another without having to buck up and pay a fee to transfer to another shard to play with your friend?
Originally posted by ShakyMo Look at what planetside 2 can handle
You don't need to do all this immersion breaking instancing nonsense.
Yes you do, PS2 dont' have shitload of NPCs, PS2 dont have shitload of mobs, PS2 don't have breathtaken vista like awesome deep forrests, cool swamps, nice small hamlets. what PS2 do have a is poor toon customization and a desert planet with some snow and some woodland area with some grass.
That's why you can have big battles in that game beacuse the game dosen't have to render as much so you can have an enjoyable experince and not a lag fest.
Originally posted by ShakyMo Look at what planetside 2 can handle
You don't need to do all this immersion breaking instancing nonsense.
Yes you do, PS2 dont' have shitload of NPCs, PS2 dont have shitload of mobs, PS2 don't have breathtaken vista like awesome deep forrests, cool swamps, nice small hamlets. what PS2 do have a is poor toon customization and a desert planet with some snow and some woodland area with some grass.
That's why you can have big battles in that game beacuse the game dosen't have to render as much so you can have an enjoyable experince and not a lag fest.
"Yes you do" - Regarding a statement claiming you do not need immersion breaking nonsense. It seems this man here does not wish for immersive games. So I ask why he is here and what is intentions are.
I will remind you among vocal MMO veterans you are a minority, we're seeing a trend where the over-board conveinence is seeing it's negatives. Mainly that the games bear no weight and die instantaneously.
Currently playing - FF14ARR Previous games - SWG, World of Warcraft, ShadowBane, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall, Planetside Asheron's Call, Everquest, Everquest 2, Too many.
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
Indeed, it feels so backward.
It's lazy design, not just for bandwidth and server structure (hello folks, Ultima Online and EVE have been doing this for the last decades and both are alive, though the first one has different servers) but also for content, especially if you're using a themepark design. You'd need to keep these areas interesting and when the world is just about combat quest hubs, making a game world large enough to not need instancing would be quite inefficient.
So, if a player starts out in "Instance 1", can they farm the copper vein node in front of them and then switch to "Instance 2" to farm it's copper vein? And so on to Instances 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc? Then come back to Instance 1 and start all over again?
Or do the same with MOBs?
How easy will it be for players to switch instances?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
You guys responding to my "well look at planetside 2" post.
Yes planetside 2 cuts down on the character creation options
But....
It has to also do stuff tab Target mmos don't like trace bullet arcs, calculate momentum physics and what have you.
If Sony can pull off what they've done with planetside 2. And ccp with eve and to a lesser extent arenanet with gw2.
Then devs that make these highly instanced games like swtor are either A) bad at coding lazy and think they can get away with it C) for some bizarre reason think its actually better that way.
Planetside 2 proves you can make a modern mmo with modern graphics (and a shitload if other stuff going on that most mmos won't have to worry about) while having ZERO instancing and minimal zoning (really minimal like wow level of zoning)
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
Indeed, it feels so backward.
It's lazy design, not just for bandwidth and server structure (hello folks, Ultima Online and EVE have been doing this for the last decades and both are alive, though the first one has different servers) but also for content, especially if you're using a themepark design. You'd need to keep these areas interesting and when the world is just about combat quest hubs, making a game world large enough to not need instancing would be quite inefficient.
Ultima Online had simple 2D graphics and EVE has vast amount of emtyness AND instances (solarsystems) and if you are a EVE player and you have been into fleet battles with 600+ players you should know it lags a lot for many people.
It's simple
Great graphics=instances
Poor graphics= almost none instance
Personly I really like this mega server structure no more play a toon up to lvl 30 and my friends tries to join after a few weeks on my full server they can't so they roll on another server so either I have to pay for a server transfer or reroll a new toon.
I can't imagine Elder Scrolls fans being happy with a game that allows for very little customization and very little graphical quality just to fit more players in a map. It would ruin the immersion even more so than phased instancing ever could. If that's what it would take to make the megaserver work without instancing, no thank you.
Originally posted by ShakyMo You guys responding to my "well look at planetside 2" post.Yes planetside 2 cuts down on the character creation optionsBut....It has to also do stuff tab Target mmos don't like trace bullet arcs, calculate momentum physics and what have you.If Sony can pull off what they've done with planetside 2. And ccp with eve and to a lesser extent arenanet with gw2.Then devs that make these highly instanced games like swtor are eitherA) bad at codingB) lazy and think they can get away with itC) for some bizarre reason think its actually better that way.Planetside 2 proves you can make a modern mmo with modern graphics (and a shitload if other stuff going on that most mmos won't have to worry about) while having ZERO instancing and minimal zoning (really minimal like wow level of zoning)
When Planetside 2 does all that stuff, in addition to everything else that happens in a traditional MMORPG, then you'd be right. It doesn't do anything but that stuff. It's really not doing anything much more advanced than Unreal Tournament, but with more players. It really shouldn't be a surprise that it works.
** edit ** PS2 works because there's a minimal amount of object information being sent and received from the clients, and there's a minimal amount of object information that needs to be juggled by the client. Increasing the number of objects and the object information that needs to be managed is what bogs down most clients. It's not the graphics themselves, it's the graphics that are applied to the individual objects that does it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
Maybe if you looked at it a different way.
Are you enraged that many games have people on multiple servers? you might be and that could be where this ends.
However, if you can live with the idea that many games have different servers then you can think of these different instances as "different servers where you are matched with like minded people and where you can easily switch to another "server" if a friend usually plays differently than you but you want to team up on occasion.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Not only that, but within those shards there will be phasing based on quests you've done, and many dungeons will be instanced. It's a damn shame really.
And I've reached out for a response from the devs and none of them have been able to tell me how the hell RvR works without multiple unique servers. (hint, it doesn't)
Not only that, but within those shards there will be phasing based on quests you've done, and many dungeons will be instanced. It's a damn shame really.
And I've reached out for a response from the devs and none of them have been able to tell me how the hell RvR works without multiple unique servers. (hint, it doesn't)
I don't think we have enough information about the system to fully praise or condemn it yet. On one hand, phasing can be really jarring when you complete a world event and suddenly some players appear out of nowhere and some disappear into oblivion. On the other hand, it's nice to have choices in a game with visible outcomes and consequences, even if they are arbitrary choices (though obviously it's better if they're not arbitrary).
It could be that the phasing would be implemented poorly. As an above poster noted, it would be lame if you were in phase 1 and mined some ore, then just swapped through phases mining the same piece of ore because you're in a new version of the same world. That makes the world less unique and it makes the game less immersive. But what if it's not implemented like that? What if, instead of phases containing players, each player is a layer on top of one world, and some things, like a dock being on fire from an attack versus a fort being on fire from an attack are also layers that are attached to a player. And all players that enjoy PvP, role-playing, and are over the age of 25 are layered onto your layer, but anyone with a name containing xx, drizzt, death, or painsauce is removed.
There are a lot of little things to take into account and I don't have solutions or answers to the many problems, pros, and cons involved in the system, but then, Zenimax Online Studios doesn't pay me a salary.
Now, regarding RvR, I believe they have some sort of ongoing "campaign" system. A player joins a campaign and it creates a version of Cyrodiil. I suppose it's an effort to keep some semblance of balance and permanence. I think a campaign isn't a completely permanent choice, but more adamant than say, a phase filter such as those outlined above. This doesn't sound that great to me, but hopefully Zenimax figure it out.
I still have to agree that a phased world is hardly different than several versions of a world in the form of separate servers. To me, it seems to have a lot more pros than cons.
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
Maybe if you looked at it a different way.
Are you enraged that many games have people on multiple servers? you might be and that could be where this ends.
However, if you can live with the idea that many games have different servers then you can think of these different instances as "different servers where you are matched with like minded people and where you can easily switch to another "server" if a friend usually plays differently than you but you want to team up on occasion.
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
So all of that is the fault of the game companies, none of the blame can be put on the players?
I have yet to find a game that forces me NOT to interact and forces me to RUSH to "end game", thats all bulls**t. All of that is the players themselves.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Comments
Really having +200 plus players standing around in a small in or house is immersive? havinf a thousand players all camping the same rabbit spawn or boss is fun???
Eve is a different type of game and even then you get ebnough players in the same spot and the lagfeast will make the game unplayable with actions taking 30 seconds or more just to fire off. you want more of that???
Personally i don't need hundreds of other players in every small town or dungeon i visit. With every twit dancing on the mailboxes or making every lost secret dungeon into grandcentral station.
This pretty much nails it.
In FFXI I used to regularly bump into the same players on my server when I was out adventuring. This led me to eventually get to know them and form some friendships that have spanned multiple games. The 'top players' on the server also became well known and recognisable as you would see them regularly and stare in envy at their equipment.
That doesn't happen in modern MMOs because the way the servers are designed you never really meet the same player more than once unless you already knew them. In WoW or any MMO since I have never built a lasting friendship with any player whereas the games before that introduced me to dozens of friends-to-be.
Isolated servers or worlds without phasing, instancing or overflow systems are simply better for the game community. In my opinion that's worth sacrificing the 'convenience' those systems may otherwise offer.
(A lot of people often respond to this with the 'join a guild' argument as well. This doesn't hold up though because a guild basically isolates you from the rest of the community by giving you no reason to interact with anyone outside of the guild and serves to only compound the problem).
I will answer that.
In a Single Server you eventually get to know other players, that creates a community.
In Megaservers, you are just a number who plays together with another number. This is not why MMORPGs came about. This is more a Multiplayer design.
I finally gave up on WOW because the Megaservers. Personally I hate them, they are so community unfriendly and I believe it will harm any MMO who abuse it.
You're describing the difference between DAoC and WoW, not the difference between ESO with servers and ESO with channels. The player experience is going to be the same in both cases. At most 100 to 150 people that each player "knows", and thousands of faceless strangers running around. Short of limiting the population to 500 players or less per server, there's nothing ESO could do about this.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
This isn't necessarily true. You can meet people just as easily with a phasing setup than with a standard server setup. The people are still there to be met. I think it's more that games so far that have seen heavy phasing have also been plagued with what I call "canned content." with canned content you either wait in a line or stumble upon something scripted and the players that are chosen to or happen to be around just go until the script is over and then you leave. Nine times out of ten, no one asks to go deeper into a dungeon or further along, or to something more challenging. They just keep their mouths shut and either go again or leave.
In fact, we know so little about how this will actually work, it's just as easy to praise it as genius as it is to condemn it as evil. Let's just make a little list of things that I can imagine won't happen because ZOS chose this direction. Well, you'd never have to discover a friend plats the game but on a different server so one of you has to start over. You'd never have to play an alternate because your server was down for maintenance but others weren't. You wouldn't have to play with people under the age of 25. You wouldn't have to play with non-role players or role players.To be honest, with their setup, it's sounding more and more likely that I'll meet someone that I will actually want to talk to.
And really, I fail to see any argument that having people still split up, but on inaccessible servers is somehow more immersive or conducive to community building. Sure, you won't hear the phrase,"I played Daggerfall on the Mehrunes Dagon server," but it should be more about the people than anything. So how exactly is having different phases of the world completely split more conducive to community building? I maintain that it isn't, necessarily. Especially if TSO stays away from canned content, which they seem to at least in PvP.
I think the OP hasn't thought this one through.
I agree and like the statement in the OP. The system is smart about putting you with your friends. So if your about community building and meet people you like you befriend them and the server will try to keep you with as many friend as possible and the friend of you friend will also be there and there friend might also join that automaticly.
The changes you like the friends of your friends are bigger then that you like some random people.
This.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
Yes you do, PS2 dont' have shitload of NPCs, PS2 dont have shitload of mobs, PS2 don't have breathtaken vista like awesome deep forrests, cool swamps, nice small hamlets. what PS2 do have a is poor toon customization and a desert planet with some snow and some woodland area with some grass.
That's why you can have big battles in that game beacuse the game dosen't have to render as much so you can have an enjoyable experince and not a lag fest.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
"Yes you do" - Regarding a statement claiming you do not need immersion breaking nonsense. It seems this man here does not wish for immersive games. So I ask why he is here and what is intentions are.
I will remind you among vocal MMO veterans you are a minority, we're seeing a trend where the over-board conveinence is seeing it's negatives. Mainly that the games bear no weight and die instantaneously.
Currently playing - FF14ARR
Previous games - SWG, World of Warcraft, ShadowBane, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall, Planetside Asheron's Call, Everquest, Everquest 2, Too many.
Indeed, it feels so backward.
It's lazy design, not just for bandwidth and server structure (hello folks, Ultima Online and EVE have been doing this for the last decades and both are alive, though the first one has different servers) but also for content, especially if you're using a themepark design. You'd need to keep these areas interesting and when the world is just about combat quest hubs, making a game world large enough to not need instancing would be quite inefficient.
So, if a player starts out in "Instance 1", can they farm the copper vein node in front of them and then switch to "Instance 2" to farm it's copper vein? And so on to Instances 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc? Then come back to Instance 1 and start all over again?
Or do the same with MOBs?
How easy will it be for players to switch instances?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Yes planetside 2 cuts down on the character creation options
But....
It has to also do stuff tab Target mmos don't like trace bullet arcs, calculate momentum physics and what have you.
If Sony can pull off what they've done with planetside 2. And ccp with eve and to a lesser extent arenanet with gw2.
Then devs that make these highly instanced games like swtor are either
A) bad at coding
C) for some bizarre reason think its actually better that way.
Planetside 2 proves you can make a modern mmo with modern graphics (and a shitload if other stuff going on that most mmos won't have to worry about) while having ZERO instancing and minimal zoning (really minimal like wow level of zoning)
Ultima Online had simple 2D graphics and EVE has vast amount of emtyness AND instances (solarsystems) and if you are a EVE player and you have been into fleet battles with 600+ players you should know it lags a lot for many people.
It's simple
Great graphics=instances
Poor graphics= almost none instance
Personly I really like this mega server structure no more play a toon up to lvl 30 and my friends tries to join after a few weeks on my full server they can't so they roll on another server so either I have to pay for a server transfer or reroll a new toon.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
ZONING is something you might do to improve performance
2 different things.
When Planetside 2 does all that stuff, in addition to everything else that happens in a traditional MMORPG, then you'd be right. It doesn't do anything but that stuff. It's really not doing anything much more advanced than Unreal Tournament, but with more players. It really shouldn't be a surprise that it works.
** edit **
PS2 works because there's a minimal amount of object information being sent and received from the clients, and there's a minimal amount of object information that needs to be juggled by the client. Increasing the number of objects and the object information that needs to be managed is what bogs down most clients. It's not the graphics themselves, it's the graphics that are applied to the individual objects that does it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Maybe if you looked at it a different way.
Are you enraged that many games have people on multiple servers? you might be and that could be where this ends.
However, if you can live with the idea that many games have different servers then you can think of these different instances as "different servers where you are matched with like minded people and where you can easily switch to another "server" if a friend usually plays differently than you but you want to team up on occasion.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Not only that, but within those shards there will be phasing based on quests you've done, and many dungeons will be instanced. It's a damn shame really.
And I've reached out for a response from the devs and none of them have been able to tell me how the hell RvR works without multiple unique servers. (hint, it doesn't)
I don't think we have enough information about the system to fully praise or condemn it yet. On one hand, phasing can be really jarring when you complete a world event and suddenly some players appear out of nowhere and some disappear into oblivion. On the other hand, it's nice to have choices in a game with visible outcomes and consequences, even if they are arbitrary choices (though obviously it's better if they're not arbitrary).
It could be that the phasing would be implemented poorly. As an above poster noted, it would be lame if you were in phase 1 and mined some ore, then just swapped through phases mining the same piece of ore because you're in a new version of the same world. That makes the world less unique and it makes the game less immersive. But what if it's not implemented like that? What if, instead of phases containing players, each player is a layer on top of one world, and some things, like a dock being on fire from an attack versus a fort being on fire from an attack are also layers that are attached to a player. And all players that enjoy PvP, role-playing, and are over the age of 25 are layered onto your layer, but anyone with a name containing xx, drizzt, death, or painsauce is removed.
There are a lot of little things to take into account and I don't have solutions or answers to the many problems, pros, and cons involved in the system, but then, Zenimax Online Studios doesn't pay me a salary.
Now, regarding RvR, I believe they have some sort of ongoing "campaign" system. A player joins a campaign and it creates a version of Cyrodiil. I suppose it's an effort to keep some semblance of balance and permanence. I think a campaign isn't a completely permanent choice, but more adamant than say, a phase filter such as those outlined above. This doesn't sound that great to me, but hopefully Zenimax figure it out.
I still have to agree that a phased world is hardly different than several versions of a world in the form of separate servers. To me, it seems to have a lot more pros than cons.
Most mmos don't have to trace bullets
I think your underestimating just how much network load that is.
Most mmos don't have to trace bullets
I think your underestimating just how much network load that is.
this guy gets it.
Although it is a good way to avoid having to spin doctor server merges at a later date.
So all of that is the fault of the game companies, none of the blame can be put on the players?
I have yet to find a game that forces me NOT to interact and forces me to RUSH to "end game", thats all bulls**t. All of that is the players themselves.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!