Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Debate: Contested vs. Instanced Raids
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Darren Bridle and Robert Fitzgerald square off in this Saturday's debate. The two look at the issue of instanced raids - think WoW - vs. contested raids - think EverQuest. Once you've seen what they have to say, let us know what you think in the comment thread.
| Darren Bridle: Contested mobs are bad for games that have instancing available to them. The only players that seem to argue for contested mobs are those in the top 1% of the game, what about the other 99%? Instancing has made smaller guilds capable of having fun and experiencing raid content that was never before seen let alone attempted.
In Everquest one, back in the early days, I remember the feeling of being beaten to Trakanon, it was a gut wrenching feeling to be sitting there prepping for the kill, when another more experienced guild walked in and took the kill. Where is the spirited racing to kill the raid mob first in that? Only one set of players can get glory leaving everyone else to feel dejected and unworthy. If content developers spent more time creating varied and challenging instanced encounters, there is no need. |
You can read the debate here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Howdy everyone, first I would like to give a bit of background.
I have been playing MMORPG's since before they were called this. My experiences date back to the Long forgotten INN GAMES NETWORK.
---------------Generation ZERO
Twinion
Yserbiuos
Cawadour
--------------- Generation One
Meridian 59
UO
UO 2
EQ
Shadow Bane
Lineage
----------------- Generation Two
EQ 2
DDO
WOW
Horrizons
Lineage 2
---------------- Generation Three
VanGuard (awsome game btw)
So with this experience, I say these words. I feel that Instancing has fixed some problems, and caused some problems. Nothing was more fun than knowing a dungeon well enough that when you heard "TRAIN" shouted out you knew were to hide, for that moment. Nothing was more annoying that this factor as well.
INDOOR:
Lets say keep the Upper Guk of Ever Quest 1 as an open dungeon (non instanced), while proceeding through this dungeon you are gathering information for a spaciffic strike on say the Froglock King, or such. This would then turn into an Instancing of the Lower Guk. This in my mind would be a prime reason to have both types of dungeons.
OUT DOOR:
Its awsome to see a world boss out doors, And its a rush to be killing the boss while you have spectators all around going OMG OMG OMG.
Overall:
My overall opinion is that EQ coulda used some instancing far earlier than it recieved it, and WOW has over instanced to the point of micro managment. Lets be honest, theirs about 30% or more of the WOW population that will never see, Molten Core, Black Wing Lair, AQ 20/40, Zul-Grub. Most will only see screen shots.
VanGuard will amaze all
---Retired---
WAR - Lots
Vanguard - Lots
---Live---
WoW - LOTS
EQ - LOTS
Rather strange to see the main opposer to Instancing versus contested as saying that instancing alienates ppl from the MMO world when it in fact it is what binds a community together thru the need for solo players to actively look for Guilds that are doing this content, they MUST be part of a larger community to be able to achieve things within the game much as you had to have a large group of ppl to contemplate attacking contested boss mobs, show me the solo player that is able to kill contested spawns of importance?
Instancing opens up different avenues of content for guilds to explore within a controlled enviroment, you are given set goals and you will have a reasonable idea of how long this instance will take, your guild has something to look forward to each week rather than the chance to attack a boss mob that is on a random timer and who will be heavily camped if they should ever materialize, what a waste of a few hours that would be and where is your value for money for this type of content, you guild will be denied this content thru no fault of it's own, First in Force has always been the rule of thumb.
MMO's can live with both types of content to keep all players happy but no game should just be made up of one type of content.
*Start firing at will*
Whatever I hit, it is a raider, raid content or raid-oriented!
Honestly, in PvE, it should be instanced. Contested zones should be for PvP, I mean in PvE you can have contested zones, but they should all have a possibility to be instanced.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
them. The only players that seem to argue for contested mobs are those
in the top 1% of the game, what about the other 99%?
This may be true, but in my experience everyone eventually reaches that top 1%. Most every mmo released has a level cap, a spiritual end to the game. What are players supposed to do when they only have an hour or two to play? Instancing allows developers an easy way out of some of the tougher problems facing designers namely: How are we going to keep people around to pay us the billions of dollars we expect for this game?
"Griefing" and "Botting" have caused havoc in these open zones with
hundreds of players forcing groups into instanced dungeons just to get
away from it.
Again this is because of lazy companies. They have terms of service/use which clearly, in most every game, say griefing and botting are actions which will result in temporary and or permanent bans. The problem is is that companies want people's money regardless of whether or not the rules are broken. Also, CS staff across the board are inept and incompetent when it comes to servicing the people that abide by the rules within the game. Instances do not even alleviate all of these problems because it isnt overly difficult for groups of people to bot their way through instances. Robert you hit the nail on the head with your response: "Instancing areas has become an alternative to good customer service.
Developers have chosen to separate players through content rather than
creating harmony through policy enforcement."
Now onto the second topic of raiding, I really can’t think of a good
way to avoid instances with raiding. Contested mobs are demoralizing
for raids. Only the elitist manage to mobilize and take down contested
mobs fast enough.
This is true, but raiding in and of itself can be demoralizing. They demand huge chunks of time for organization, execution and loot distrobution. On top of that with random loot tables people can run instances for weeks even months at a time and get nothing for the effort. Yes, they can feel good that they have killed Boss X, but that doesnt pay for the repairs incrued on the path to boss x. Not to mention how many times they kill boss X, its just a cheap way of adding "content" and adding longevity to the games without really adding anything of substance. It's the carrot on the stick and something I personally find less than enjoyable. You start off every game killing hundreds of wolves/rats/owls etc, mid way through the game you are killing hundreds of super wolves/rats/owls etc. Then when you reach the endgame, well, you are now tasked with getting large numbers of people together to go into an instance and kill extra super wolves/rats/owls hundreds of times.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
There is greifing and lag in our PvE because people are interacting...let's just remove player interaction!
NO!
The answer to fixing a feature is never removing it. Instancing Tears apart the community and ruins my able to meet new players.
Why is instancing so bad for server communities, surely I as a player am not expected to play with and get to know the thousands of other players that will share my play experience, that is being unreasonable, building relationships within an MMO should be left to guilds who will utilise that bond best.
Getting to know a servers population thru contested spawns is unrealistic, however being part of a guild of about 100 ppl is still testing the limits of being able to know everyone you choose to play with but it is still about the only realistic means of building a lasting community.
Has anyone thought that there could just be code put in that covers a specific area of a contested mobs zone begining with a staging area once a guild makes it here all they need then is to keep 6 players of there guild here and with the right coding only members of this guild can proceed . What this means is no body running by you because they had a buffed force ready to run and attatck , if the guild which is after the mob leaves 6 people in the staging area they can hold the rights untill they either win or give up (after this hit me I think it would be better if coders created a spell that let a guild set a totem that counted the amount of times the guild leaves the zone and after the second time is depleted allowing anyone waiting the chance to move in the choice of whos next can be decided by a second staging area sort of like queue rooms) anyways my punctuation sucks as well as my grammar but I think you see what I am getting at.
!. A way the system can compute who has the first shot at the mob be it a totem warding the area from non guildies or whatever
2. a way to give the guild who has first chance a resonable chance at the mob as i said 2 attempts then whoever was second on the scene is up but this is up to debate.
3. A way to make sure the number 2 guys dont get jumped
4. a way for a the guild who has claim to pass there claim on to the next if they find they are not up to the task , and or a way for them to invite the second group to join in if things are going bad and the mob is one that depops after its engaged and not killed.
Blizzard and WoW kis caught in a really nasty dilemma.
The formula of WoW leans heavily on Instanced gaming, especially after level 50. At level 60 you can grind for petty cash, but anything meaningful ends in instanced dungeons and sooner or later every player must either (a) create a new character, (b) do crazy high level instances like Zul Gurrub or Molten Core or (c) Quit.
You can keep busy with PvP in battlegrounds for a while - but to me my conclusion is Blizzard is not interested in / or incapable of providing an alternative.
Personally I like developing, growing worlds. That is why I gravitate to SL a lot and find myself playing WoW less and less. Right now I am starting over, playing together with my wife on 2 PC's, and that choice keep revenues flowing towards Blizzard for a while, but eventually I will bump into the same old High Instance barrier again.
I simply can't handle it. Maybe it's because I have an attention/concentration disorder. Maybe I'm an old coot of 41. Maybe I'm lazy. But whereas I do like WoW I hate the high level instances. I hate em, hate em, hate em.
And my belief is that many, many players drop off once they reach level 60 and hit that same barrier. That stuff is just too insane.
I can *easily* think off new content in WoW that would keep me playing; new continents, new races, new classes, new low level instances. I can even contemplate whole new PvP based interactions, across all level ranges.
I guess it would take a marked drop in subscribers for Blizzard to change its stratagy. Right now I am a minority of complainers and of no consequence. But if I am right they'll start to notice real fast when the competition does get it.
Well the idea of a raid area being pvp is interesting except an elite guild that regularly takes down a mob like say what a good one hrmm lets go with quarm from the plane of time. If they are just doing the rounds and come to a mob that they want the loot from and its at 45% and the guild fighting it is just barely a match for the mob this elite guild if allowed to pvp would just tear through the other guild in seconds and then take the kill from the other guild after allowing it to heal up to over 51% life as when they kill it and do more then half its life they get the loot. So pvp would not be good as a great guild wont even be neccessary to cause another guilds grief as all it would take is say a few groups of griefers loaded with wizards enchanters and anything else that could be used to destroy your raids healers. Basically 10 wizards blasting away on the healers while enchanters charm mez fear etc and the others bash and interupt there protectors and the griefers get to have fun again.
So no I believe pvp would =Bad for everyone if the server isnt already pvp as the regular player will not be ready of even thinking of an ambush like the seasoned pvp player
Even if you are a raider, I promise I won't hurt you...too much!
Hehe, nicely explain again!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Difficult can mean many things. In your case, Difficult means: takes lots of time.
This is exactly what the "Vision" is all about. If they make it "difficult" (aka massive time sink), they get your money for more months without having to add any new content. You're playing right into the hands of people who want your money, for no effort.
There's nothing in MMORPG's that is "difficult" as in, takes skill. These games can be played by monkeys, or, simply programmed bots. That's pretty obvious. Since they can't make the game TAKE skill (that'd weed out 95% of the game's population), they make it take longer. Naked corpse runs, no fast travel, huge xp grinds/debts/loss.... sound familiar? That's the Vision, that's what Vanguard is going to be.
I was in the "top dog" guild in EQ1 for a year or so. We killed everything when we wanted to. If the 2nd place guild showed up, sometimes the guild I was in would grief them, cause them to lose, and we'd kill the boss.
Is that fun for anyone who isn't in the top guild? Nope.
That kind of contention rips apart the community far more than instancing ever will. Instancing doesn't do anything negative to the community. If you're in a small guild and need more people for say, Molten Core, you can ask other guilds for help... I know. I was in one such guild that partnered up for MC. In EQ1, such alliances were rare, and mostly extremely temporary (till one side got screwed by the other).
EQ1 also loved 72 minute respawn timers with rare spawns and only the rare drop from the rare spawn was the quest item you needed.... timesink? Useless? Frustrating? Yep! Fun? Nope.
Instancing can be good thing. DDO in a way took it too far... all instanced worlds like that (group only instances) should be free to play games, not pay to play (aka Guild Wars).
In EQ1, I grouped with more people I didn't know for LDON's than I *ever* have done in every other game combined. One of the best reasons: You knew you could be done soon, 30 minutes, an hour, and if the group stunk, that was it. If the group was good, you kept going. Very nice. In a contested dungeon situation, it might take 2 hours to fight your way to your "camp" so you can sit on your buns waiting for respawns, and if the group stinks.... well.... a 2 hour naked corpse run is in your future!
Err, that's not possible by definition
To those of you that said, in some form or another, that instancing is bad for the community interaction, I am truly baffled.
Using WoW as an example, in the earlier instanced dungeons, it isnt too difficult to put together a solid PUG. (pick-up-group). And picking up people you dont know for a dungeon gives you an hour or to to meet and interact with a few new people every time you wanna run an instance.
As for high-end, it's hard to find people who are PUGging ZG/MC/AQ-20/etc...
The solution is to join a raid guild. Even if not every member is an active level 60 who takes part in raids, you have an opportunity to interact in some form or another with over half a hundred people you've never played with before.
I joined a guild on one of the older servers and it had around 50 active 60s who regularly took part in raids. I remember on one occasion, just a few weeks after 1.7(ZG was launched in that patch) launched, we had nearly 50 60s online. We got groups together for ZG, one for UBRS, and 2 for Scholomance. Everyone who had a mic connected to our Vent server and we went at it. It was by far my most enjoyable gaming experience and it clearly had plenty of interaction between players.
I don't mean to sound rude, but If that isnt enough social interraction for you, I think you need to look for an alternative. Try Myspace, online dating, or maybe just turn off the computer and get out of the chair and go meet some real people.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Besides, I'm fairly certain that most people don't spend their time gaming because they wanna meet new people, they don't meet new people because they spend their time gaming.
Dislike raiding
Dislike instancing
Contested solo/group content FTW
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
I agree with the rest of your post, yet not this point.
A 72 minutes can happen in an instance just as well as in the world, yet in an instance it is GOOD IMO. Removing the achievement from the game would remove the reason to play. However, the achievement must be related to what the player enjoy and care for. If someone enjoy grouping, then a 72 minutes camp (and longer as well) can be fine for grouping. I don't say it must take the time path however, it is one alternative I wouldn't discard. Also, I wouldn't go as far as requesting this from ALL groupers. I think it is overdue to have many activities that bring various specific rewards, some are purely challenging (think of AE group), some are time consuming, but they are only affecting their side of the game. See, where MMOs fail is that they put timesink that are NOT RELATED with what the players enjoy, as long as the players enjoy the timesinks they are welcome/acceptable, but a foreign timesink?
Game loses themselves in complex mechanics about raiding, when what peoples want is more option on the grouping/soloing level, not on some other foreign gameplay. Having 2 end-game resolving about grouping, both exclusives, would be a LOT more beneficial than having raiding, RvR or whatever nonsense the players don't really want anyway. Heck, you may even add a 3rd end-game resolving about soloing and exclusive with the grouping end-games. By exclusive I really mean: have no impacts whatsoever on the other aspect of the game. So a player can master 1 end-game or more, at his own convenience, he will be ghetto in those he doesn't master, yet he may be completely mastering his end-game of choice, the one he enjoys.
But I am disgressing and I was about to start talking about level cap and in-zone rewards to break that level cap...which have little to do with the Instanced/Non-instance topic beside been about accessing the ressources and the high spots of the game. (This feature is a MUST for the peoples with less time, more casuals or less motivated, you want them interested in the game and been the best in Crushbone is something, especially if most hardcores jumps it to level up faster and never master Crushbone, thereby increasing the value of mastering Crushbone for more casuals oriented-players)
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I think the whole discussion is one of the past.
MMO's are no longer one genre but multiple genres. Some are better off with instancing, some are far better off without it.
And example ? Imagine WoW without instances. Would it have 6m subscribers then ? No, because it is geared towards the casual/arcade style player.
On the other hand, Eve Online. Accoridng to some griefer paradise, but according to it's 130K (not a bad count at all compared to some titles with many times it's budget) Western subscribers and it's 500K chinese beta entrants, it is a game that offers competition and freedom over RL-based moraility. Intoruce widespread instancing here and the intricate and complex player driven world economic balance is shattered in the blink of an eye.
Clearly, either possibility works. But where it works for one title it may not for another.
Personally, I detest the very notion that a game knows no competitive play. That there is no way in which players can influence eachother in a meaningfull way that has actual impact on their gameplay options.I've yet to find a title using widespread instances that I don't dislike strongly.
I was referring to the more silly long respawn timers that EQ of old loved.
Such as this one:
http://eqbeastiary.allakhazam.com/search.shtml?id=4609
36 hours for one guy, etc... that's 1.5 days of sitting in a room watching for one guy to spawn in one corner.
THIS kind of thing is just silly/stupid/unfun.
Sample post:
playing lineage2 my world has only contested content to offer.
im ok with it because it gives me a much more realistic feel instead of a 100 mirrored pockets.
what i miss is:
1. ingame-mechanisms to prevent power concentration
there are to few ingame mechanics that prevent those power-guilds to happen and in term it is the high lvl guild(s) that controlls the content in a non-instanciated world.
if the guilds/fractions would be more equally powered fighting over the content would be more fun.
2. exploration, randomness
with a raidtimer of 24h (+/- maybe a few) people can easily keep up a scout at the fixed location a raid spawns.
this should be replaced by:
- much more random timers when the bosses appear
- much more randome locations where the bosses appear
- boss movement thrue the land
- variations in what powers/weaknesses/loot a boss may bring to the raid table
3. suspense and adventure
the raids became like a resource in my game. you go to a webpage, look up the raids strength and find the raids location and loot table. fighting a scourge to the land in an epic battle becomes a farming operation
i hope to see both in the next generation where game mechanics spread power (high lvl/high active players) more even thrue guilds and static content is replaced by dynamic content with explorationand hunting
if your bored, visit my blog at:
http://craylon.wordpress.com/ dealing with the look of mmos with the nvidia 3d vision glasses
Contested
Iffy
- Camp stealers
- Kill stealers
- Loot stealers
- Rude players trying to get your group to breakup
- Intended camp/boss/mob/location might be taken by another group
- Respawns are a bit wierd (didnt you just kill them all, their family and their relatives? Poof they are baaaaack).
Spiffy
- True one world feel.
- Easy to join group allready out there.
- Social interaction with other players/groups outside of guild looking for groups in that location/camp/mob/boss.
- Easier to meet new people.
- Groups merging or working together to reach intended goal through randomness of running into each other and having the same objective.
- Exploration feel
- Large chance of meeting and befriending people outside your guild you wouldnt have had the chance to meet otherwise.
Instanced
Iffy
- Often boring and repetitive.
- Discourages social interaction due to lack of random meet and greets.
- Through it's confined nature encourages Guild grouping only behaviour.
- Encourages leetness because of optimum group setups for each raid/instance.
- Online players not physically visible in the world since they are in instances.
- Turns a MMORPG into a RPG with multiplayer functionality (DDO anyone?).
Spiffy
- No issues with out of group anti social and respectless behaviour.
- Storylines can be told in a unique way (but looses it's uniqueness when you go out to help another player do it and find that the story doesnt react to you having been there and done it at all but is exactly the same).
- Private areas mean you can go afk and such without worrying about your camp or respwans.
- Actual clearing an area, dead = dead and not a dead = don't worry ill be back in one minute.
Conclusion
While instancing solves a much complained issue it creates an entire new one, that of hurting the community feel and sense and promoting singularity through solo play or guild play only.
The Developers Challenge
Be smart... use both techniques into one. Invent dynamic instancing. Dynamic instancing? What gives? Define!
Combine the best of both to solve the anti-social issues involved with Contested and the anti-social issues of Instancing into a variation that provides the classic community feel and enjoyment pre-instancing with the advantages of instancing. Explain! Examples!
Make it so that monster/boss camps aren't location bound but region bound and once discovered and claimed by a group/individual that the small area around that mob/monster/camp is an instance within the world that is transparent allowing passerby to actually see what is happening. Give groupleaders option to lock / unlock their instances allowing other individuals to help or not be able to help but everyone in the neighboorhood will be able to see the players in there. Using this technique you'd also be able to travel from A to B and experience a total different journey then someone else who made the journey, plus prevent players from getting content more then once, ever, creating true story, world impact feel, yes true RPG feel like single player RPGs are able to deliver and MMORPGs fail to. Also this means that mobs can be given a purpose and destiny instead of just being respawning xp whores. Ok now I'm rambling... You get the idea...
I will give you the single most cause of instancing.
Wow, Azgalor Server (PvP), World Dragon in Ashara - Pickup group lead by one of the major guilds.
Even being a PvP server, there are limits to what I consider acceptable. Again this is my own personal opinion, but one that makes me glad there is instancing.
While fighting the dragon, some alliance came along and started to mess with the event. Mind you we were already into the event when these alliance showed. They continued to mess with the raid until such time that they caused the raid to fail. They didn't do it out of any justification other than the fact that they could.
I am sorry, but the writer who said that innovation shouldn't be driven by the few, has not played a MMORPG in a while because it has gone from a few in the Generation I days to quite a few in Generation 2/3 days. It is ever increasing as those who were afraid of retribution find out just how silly the consequences are for violating the EULA. It is just like modern politics. The majority of people are not involved in politics due to apathy about their ability to change the outcome. This leave the special interest groups and lobbyists (can view them as gankers and griefers) dictating how the policies of government are shaped. Gee, see any similarities????
Hey if I wanted to socialize, I wouldn't be in my room, alone, playing a game that is basically a glorified chat. I play to have some form of escape from the mundane life I lead. If I want social interaction, I go out.
While it's all well and good to say that companies should be enforcing their ELUAs where griefing, ganking and bad behavior are concerned, the true fact is that they won't cut off any subscriptions because they represent money in the company's coffers and that's why they make these games. They also worry about the spin-off effect...the banned griefers will then go to all the sites (like this one) that they can and start bad-mouthing the game, the devs, the mods, the company, etc., leading some potential new money to look elsewhere. And the accounting hassle: if the banned griefer has a longer-term sub, then they have to GIVE BACK money, something NO company will do (cf, SWG-NGE...how many folks' one-year or 6-mo account was billed 2 weeks before NGE?).
I like instancing myself. And there are some other interesting and creative uses of instancing for storytelling. The Bloodfarm instance in Auto Assault is one that really sticks out in my mind, though there's no fighting at all involved. Likewise Echo Canyon in the same game. A really different kind of instancing. And I'm not sure just how much "socializing" you lose with instancing. I read a lot of these reviewers talk about how many new people they meet doing contested mobs but, really, honestly, just how many have you met once you've gotten involved in a reasonably sized guild? When you go out to hunt, you're mostly there to HUNT. You wanna socialize, you do it in a town or other rest area. If you're busy chatting in a mob-heavy area, you're probably gonna be dead really quickly.
Role Playing and Socializing are two of the biggest non-issues reviewers/editors always bring up and it's getting pretty canned. I've been playing MMOs for 7-8 years now, and I've made a lot of friends in the games I've played. I mostly PvE and Craft, but I've rarely gone more than a week into a game before I've magically run into a member of a guild of like-minded people, even though I tend to be a quiet loner type, and then get involved in the Guild. Maybe I'm lucky, but I've never found it a problem meeting new folks in MMOs no matter what my playstyle might be. My problem with getting more involved with PvP is that THERE is where the trouble starts with the griefing, ganking, insults, etc. and that's when it stops being fun. So I just don't.
If we COULD limit exposure to the bad elements, which I DO believe are more than just a tiny group, I'm all for it. I think Instancing is a very good way to accomplish that.
-- Xix
"I know what you're thinking: 'Why, oh WHY, didn't I take the BLUE pill?'"