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Instancing
calanorn
Member Posts: 3
What is the deal with all the ranting about instancing? i for one think this is one of the best moves they made for this game DnD never was and never will be a 500 players in 1 place game apart from towns which if im wrong correct me are not instanced.
as for the fee's GW was free that was what made that game not great content or story line or any of the other huge factors which will make this game great it was free with good graphics that was all and maybe the chance for school kids to pvp there friends for free.
It seems to be that alot of people are bashing this game for being 1 to much like GW which from what i have seen it is nothing alike and 2 for being a sub game with instancing i will happily pay £10 a month to play a story driven well executed immersive game.
cal
Comments
Instancing allows for massively more flexible quests and gameplay and I don't think any major MMORPG will be released from this point forward that doesn't use instancing to some extent. Even in genres you'd think were inappropriate, space mmorpgs for instance, there's going to be some point where it just makes sense. Housing for instance is becoming a feature that players expect, and that fits into just about any genre.
How far it'll go I really don't know. You could say Neverwinter Nights was a 100% instanced MMORPG, you could technically put any game online and make it available for tens of thousands of players to join, even though only a few dozen would be able to enter -- In Guildwars between all the different city instances there'd be tens of thousands of players to join your party, but only 7 or so could at a time. NWN was as instanced as any MMOG can get as far as I'm aware. It was =so= heavily instanced that characters were not universal though, which many would site as the defining factor of MMOGs as we know them, there WAS continuity between play sessions but only so long as they accepted your character file.
I think a big deal will be made about instanced things become non-instanced though, a lot of people are looking past the horrors of UO and SWG ("Would you please not camp monsters on my back porch? This is a nice quiet neighborhood."), and are expecting in larger and larger worlds they can get "real" game-space of their very own to own.
The D&D tradition is a quest with a number of adventurers, usually between 3 and 6, who do dangerous quests in a fantasy world. In town, they were able to talk with a lot of others but the group going out was certainly not larger than 6 heroes.
Now how else could a designer realise this than with instancing?
Of course in town, you can talk and meet with other players, NPCs, chat in taverns or guild houses, and instances are perfect for dungeons.
D&D never was a massive battlefield game, so why make DDO such a game? It wouldn't make any sense!
Cast your vote: The importance of character customisation
I'm an old school roleplayer.
When I first started playing MMORPG's I was forever complaining that it wasn't what I was after.
I wanted to go on adventures with a small group of friends, following an in depth quest plotline that allowed me to become immersed in the game and feel that we were the heroes of the world. If you think about it this is also where computer games started from and where single player games still are. Think back to when you last completed a non online game, the sense of achievement on reaching the end of the game and saving the world/rescuing the girl or whatever plot was involved.
I don't want to be tank number 654 running around a town full of 1000's of heroes. How does that make me special? Hence mmorpg's have evolved into power gaming and uber loot as everyone goes out of there way to become that extra special person in the community.
DDO is trying to address what it perceives as the poisoned chalice that mmorpg's have become over the last few years and I hope we will be driven back to the holy grail that is a personalised experience where we are the heroes and feel special in our own group. Turbine should be applauded for trying to break from what has become a stale market place filled with the wrong sort of people and trying to give us that personalised experience.
Instancing is really a blessing, it center everything around the player!
They are opening some public zones to do stuff more than the central city, this is great. On this topic I can't argue or say anything, it is plainly perfect!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
So why play an MMORPG and pay monthly for it when games (like Diablo, GW, NWN, and the like) all offer the same thing. To me, instancing is not MMO. I like running into live people all over the game world. I like the RL person dynamics. Hopefully not every so-called MMO will become a 1-64 player game with a 3D chat room.
My opinion, of course.
-W.
I think we have all exhausted this subject, but here are a few more of my unwritten comments:
FYI im not "for" or "against" the game yet as I havnt played it...but I try to be optimistic...
-First off, I don't see a correlation between a fee and instancing. The monthly fee is for server support, GMs, new functionality as time goes on. Like any MMO I have played, over tiem new features get implemented- this is one of the things you pay for.
-It is an MMO simply because there are places in the game you can go to interact with everyone else- with reason. The city will offer great opportunities to role-play, allow people to trade, etc. Since there is no PvP it also makes sense...
-If the instancing is anything like COV, I will urinate in my pants. It is not very good at engaging people into a story, and dosnt seem to foster any need or desire to RP- its bland.
Man I need more info on this game- skills and feats info etc etc. Anyone have a good link?
So why play an MMORPG and pay monthly for it when games (like Diablo, GW, NWN, and the like) all offer the same thing. To me, instancing is not MMO. I like running into live people all over the game world. I like the RL person dynamics. Hopefully not every so-called MMO will become a 1-64 player game with a 3D chat room.
My opinion, of course.
You are more a "MMO" fan than a D&D fan at any rate. You doesn't meet many new RL players in a D&D games. Now it ain't bad to meet them, as long as it doesn't ruin the gameplay (non-instance ruin the gameplay in a game like EQ).
Interaction and grouping can be done inside a MMO with tons of instancing much better than in others games.
A MMO with a perfect soloing system would rake the market, as nobody would pick a game where they can't group...they would not have to group, but the option would be there and they could solo...but that is something folks like you, Smedley or McQuaid can't understand, I prolly have more chances to convince a wall.
Marks my words, the MMO who would beat WoW with an insane rating (like 10+ millions players) will be composed of 90% soloers. A big part of those soloers would also group, PvP or raid from time to time...and solo uberness will be acquired by soloing, group uberness would be acquired by grouping and so on.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Here is my take on this subject...
I have read that DnD is all about dungeons and such, and that DDO is pertect with it being an almost all instanced game. I am not sure how all of you play/played DnD, but when I play with a group we always had to travel to the "dungeon" we were supposed to investigate. And sometimes ran into wandering monsters. That was part of the fun... Getting to where we were supposed to go.
I mean come on... You really played DnD and went from city/town to dungeon instantly when you played the PnP game? How boring. Sounds more like a Monty Haul game instead of a DnD game.
Anywany just my 2 cents worth...
Every PnP session I ever participated in we RP the travelling overland also. But not in a way that detailed every step we took, moreso a brief description of the area we travelled through, and either "the day passes uneventfully and you have travelled x miles" or you actually encounter something to RP with, or kill / be killed by.
But I wouldnt want an in depth description of every hill and valley I walked in without anything happening, for day after day of tedious travel. DMs in PnP do gloss over that kind of detail, and that is what DDO is trying to replicate.
If you are going on a mission outside the city, you will not always arrive at the dungeon entrance every time. Instead, you will sometimes be jumped to wilderness somewhere near the entrance, because there are some encounters there. Likewise, the insta-travel device can easily be made to be interrupted by a wandering encounter. But you will not have to wander time after time after time through the same boring, bland, pointless landscapes to get somewhere, ala GW style.
Instead it will be more as it is in PnP, you will only have to deal with areas in which there are actually relevant things for you to do, rather than pointlessly wasting time wandering through areas you have seen a hundred times before and killing monsters that you have killed countless amounts of already, and that have absolutely nothing to do with the quest you are on. That's the way I see it anyway...
Cheers,
Sirac
You are right. I do not play DnD paper style, but I love MMO's. As for solo- again I agree. There is nothing worse than standing around calling out LFG- that just means I'm not actually playing the game. But I do think you can have solo content in a consistant world.
Either way, I am not against instancing so long as it is not the entire world (a la Guild Wars).
-W.
Standing around grinding mindless mobs is not content, it's filler.
You are right. I do not play DnD paper style, but I love MMO's. As for solo- again I agree. There is nothing worse than standing around calling out LFG- that just means I'm not actually playing the game. But I do think you can have solo content in a consistant world.
Either way, I am not against instancing so long as it is not the entire world (a la Guild Wars).
You are right, we never got a step by step account of our journey. But we Never went from town to dungeon instantly either. We almost always had random encounters along the way, and even had stop-offs in towns along the way. Again, I may be wrong, but from what I have read/heard DDO is going to be a leave town and instantly be in the dungeon. And to me that is just wrong.
Like I said, for adventures outside of stormreach, you will often arrive in wilderness areas near the entrance, and have to make your way to the dungeon from there. That is not something I suspect to be the case, but an example one of the dev's gave on the official forums.
Likewise it is easy to script in "random" wilderness encounters for people travelling to x place.
All a LOT better in my book than having to wander through the same areas, and fight the same pointless mobs, time after time to get to certain areas. This way your "adventure" is always different, and not as repetitive and mind numbingly boring as games like GW became very quickly.
Cheers,
Sirac
Who say the mobs have to be standing there and be mindless? You did.
Mobs giving XP is the very foundation of D&D, Turbines goes to far by removing that key part of the working system.
All this mob hunting could happen in an instance...see you hit the "patrol" option, an instanced load, you see a countdown (for lag and loading issue) or a start button and you may be caught off-guard with mobs on you and a zone wide aggro for all of them. This is all in the devs camps. If a lowly little me can think of that, I suppose great devs should think many steps further to make it FUN, not to enforced dumb missions. I mean, it can be FUN and based around the D&D basics, rather than take lousy shortcut who will aggravated the fanbase. D&D is about killing monsters! The story is great, but most players see it as a bonus, an extra, yes you can be level 20 just doing story and quests, but the majority of players will not level up that way, I can assure you of that.
Folks who doesn't deserve a group may be happy, but the D&D fanbase in general can't be happy to be enforced to group with lame folks. If someone is lame, I doesn't play with him, MMO or not.
Bearing the lame folks inside a group is not content nor skill either. A group doesn't have to bear those folks and solo always should be an option and killing mobs should be a solo option, this is the very root of D&D. I never have to play with my retarded neighbor when I play D&D, and if DDO is about that...it would be a fatal mistake.
Sirac: It is easy to add random encounters while the group process to an instance...you just throw them another instance for the random encounter, like all D&D product did in the past. This is something I am confidant will be ajusted in time. Random encounter can't be avoided or it is not a D&D product anymore...and since it is extremely easy to add, I rather focus on the points that annoy me, like no XP for killing mobs, enforced grouping, raiding, real time with no alternate option for GBT lovers, Eberron, no Blood Wars (*cry*) and so on.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
The game and world design is already deeply flawed, it should never have made it to alpha with the "city of doors" concept, but here we are very late in development and we have a system that would have been considered too lame back when EQ first came out, let alone in the current MMORPG market. (For the "City of Doors" thing to have any chance, the city itself would have to be absolutely spectacular, where as Stormreach is absolutely dreadful and uninspired.)
I'd be all for instancing of dungeons if it was like Anarchy Online i.e. A real explorable world dotted with "doors" to instances and things to do outside of just running instances. However, here we have a very "dead" city (Nothing about Stormreach makes it feel like a realistic, living city, it feels like an artificial environment with no other purpose than to host the doors to the instanced quests). They honestly could have just given us a 20 mile long corridor of doors with an inn and some shops every mile and not have lost anything off the current level of game world immersion!
At this point, the only viable commercial prospect for the game is to be a really, really good and accurate PnP DnD simulator, but they have abandoned or fudged too many elements, for the most part the worst ones they could have fudged, for it to be viable in that regard.
I find this game an interesting object lesson, usually if an MMO is this bad off in over all design prior to beta, the game get's scrapped. Here, we get to see the dirty laundry before someone decided to burn and bury it.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
So why play an MMORPG and pay monthly for it when games (like Diablo, GW, NWN, and the like) all offer the same thing. To me, instancing is not MMO. I like running into live people all over the game world. I like the RL person dynamics. Hopefully not every so-called MMO will become a 1-64 player game with a 3D chat room.
My opinion, of course.
I agree with you.
Also Instancing is nice for a game like guild wars with no monthly fees, but its not very good. a instanced game is not a MMORPG and it never will be. games like GW and DnD that are 100% instanced, should never have a monthly fee.
Its alot more fun to be able to meet people out in the world as you travel quest mission and adventure. In true MMORPGS that are not 100% instanced you can have friends meet you as you're out in the world and you can meet them. you're not limited to meeting in towns and having to team to go out of the towns together.
its nice to run across other real people out in the world as you adventure and whatever. its sad to be in a instanced world and never meet other people out side of towns.
In instanced games its not as easy to meet people and make friends, everyone is always to busy out in the instanced world. In a instanced world you can not run across other players in the world that need help and help them out. you can't do alot of fun things. like you can do in a none instanced world.
I'll never pay a monthly fee for a game that is instanced.
this is my opinion of it all.
In 90% of the MMO's out ther (i.e. EQ1, EQ2, AO, AC1, AC2 and WoW, and I'm sure many others) that's exactly what the mobs do...they stand around and wait to get slaughtered so someone can get a tick towards their next level. That is their sole purpose of existing.
The mobs do give XP in DDO, you just get it at the end of the module. it's way more like PnP than giving the player XP every time they kill 1 mob would be. And from what I've read on the DDO forums there will be a chance to have random encounters when travelling to missions outside of the city.
D & D is not just about killing monsters, it's about completing the given quest using all of your abilities, including and often more importantly your brain. If your play sessions are mostly centered around killing everything that moves then I'd say you've missed the point of D & D entirely.
Someone just posted an excerpt from the PC Gamer article about DDO on the official boards that described one of the level 10 quests that players would have access to near the end of the game.
read it here http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17015 and then tell me that doesn't sound like fun to you.
DnD online is just a new version of guild wars with a monthly fee added. try true MMORPG gamers will not like it.
if it was not a instanced world and instanced everything but towns then it would be alot better. Instancing is stupid. when its done like guild wars and this.
With Turbine making it thats even worse. Turbine is not a good company at all.
I get a mental picture of you with your hands over your ears while you scream that first bit at the top of your lungs. Exactly what defines a tru MMORPG gamer? I bought UO and was on the first day the servers were up, I've played almost every MMO that has come out since then. Does that not make me a true MMORPG gamer? Is it cause I'm not against instancing or because I can put forth arguments with out sounding like a spoiled little child throwning a temper tantrum?
And quit comparing the instances in GW to the instances in DDO they are two completely different ways of using instancing, and DDO's is far superior. If you are just basing this on blind assumptions and haven't actually tried the game then kindly STFU cause you are just spouting nonsense.
Oh and from what I've been told the DDO stress test will be open to ALL fileplanet members today, so if you want to actually see what the game is like for yourself then go get into the stress test.