General Discussion

I have talked about this in another fourm but I thought I would make a topic about instances themselfs.

Does anyone else think that MMO's have taken instaces to far? I feel they have..

Take DAoC for example.. There was always people everywhere doing stuff in the world.. when they put in all the instances.. BAM.. the whole game world was a ghost town, no one ever went to any of the original dungeons or did anything in the rest of the world. Seemed like everyone just stoped playing untill you did a /who and saw 1000 people locked themselfs away in instances. Sorry but I feel instances defeat the point of a mmo. A few instances are fine.. but dont turn it into GuildWars.. dont get me wrong its a ok game but I hated the fact the whole world was basicly an instance. I play a MMO to play with 100 or 1000 other people.. not just a small group of people.. might as well play a non-mmo networked game like AoE, Unreal, Warcraft 3, ect ect.  Well you get the point.

I'm not sure, but I take it by "too far" you mean that instances isolate players too much from the other characters.  I don't know if that's true or not, it may be.  But it doesn't really matter, I don't like instances, even if it's not true.  I think instances hurt the immersion experience, that's why I am against them.  Whether or not its the result isolation, I couldn't say.

Some instancing may be OK in very limited cases, but I prefer none.

I don't like instances. They don't make sense in a MMO... When I decide I want to play a MMO it's because I want to play with other people. Don't really care about camping monster x, if I want to kill boss monsters to advance a story line I play single player RPGs, far more enjoyable in that regard.

Btw, camping could be solved with a pretty simple addition. When a boss monster dies, he disapears. Companies should seriously invest in Campaign Managers, people who develop the game story based on the actions of the players. Of course, it'd help if games would be made in a way that combat would make a more realistic contribution to the overall game... In other words, people aren't fighting ALL the time, not even in novels or movies.

Originally posted by Itzcoliuhqui

I don't like instances. They don't make sense in a MMO... When I decide I want to play a MMO it's because I want to play with other people. Don't really care about camping monster x, if I want to kill boss monsters to advance a story line I play single player RPGs, far more enjoyable in that regard.

Btw, camping could be solved with a pretty simple addition. When a boss monster dies, he disapears. Companies should seriously invest in Campaign Managers, people who develop the game story based on the actions of the players. Of course, it'd help if games would be made in a way that combat would make a more realistic contribution to the overall game... In other words, people aren't fighting ALL the time, not even in novels or movies.

I agree. Camping results from poorly designed game mechanics. The same creatures spawn in the same spot and do not move.... wow, why would anyone sit and wait for them to spawn? that is just ludacris. A truly dynamic game won't need instances because the game world will have enough "randomness" (nothing is random for a computer really...) that people stop camping mobs and actually explore and adventure.

Thats one thing I loved about UO and hated about EQ back in the day. in UO things had a spawn point but they roamed around. You only had to go to a general area to find something an just run around an kill. In EQ most things stood around in the same spot and OMG if you had to kill a named for anything then get in line because half the people playing needed to kill it too and the damn things sometimes only spawned once every so many DAYS at some points. wtf.. glad they phased that kinda stuff out in games for the most part.

I liked old SWG, where the only instance in the entire game was the corvette runs, and they obviously has to be instanced because of the nature of the quests. 

Then I play a game like CoV and the entire game is instanced; felt weird because the only interaction you had now were with the people in your group.  In SWG(old) you could run missions and there would be other obstacles in your way, houses, other mobs, enemy faction npcs and players, etc... 

You lose all that when you instance a large part of a game, it then no longer becomes an MMO, more of a LAN party on steroids.

I don't mind instancing, depending on the game.  I do think a lot of MMOs go too far.  Some of the more recent MMOs are nothing but instancing.  I like wandering around and watching people do things.  It's the same reason I watch some reality TV shows.  It satisfies the nasty, perverted, voyeuristic side of me without the risk of prison.

People/avatar watching is interesting. Yeah, I'm against heavily instancing things. More/bigger open environments = better player immersion imo.

I don't have a problem with random events and random battles, but instances are anything but random.  It's the camping that bugs me, people sitting around waiting for this supposedly "random" thing to happen.  I've suggested it before, get rid of all of the pre-programmed instances and have them occur in random locations and random times.  Make it something that you encounter while you're doing something else, not something you wait for because you know it's coming.

Even if you set up 100 locations where the instance can possibly happen, there's only a 1% chance of it happening at a particular location at any given time.  Nobody is going to sit around waiting for it.  Even after all 100 locations are mapped out it won't matter and the MMO should move the locations regularly to keep them from being known.  This is supposed to be a game, not "we're sitting around waiting for a target".