Originally posted by Axehilt

The sad part is the more baseless and devoid of logic a thread is, the more posts and discussion it typically gets (when the inverse should be true.)

WTB forums with a "Post but don't bump the thread" feature.

Bump. This is the Internet. Logic is not required.

Originally posted by jackeccs

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by jackeccs

Ok, so anyone saying anything about waiting hours for people to complete a dungeon is dumb. True, 90% of MMO's are that shallow to only have a single dungeon for a certain level range. But, a smart MMO would have a lot of dungeons for all level ranges. Not just a single one where everyone has to wait and get camped.

Instances are noob. A real MMO has a large world and is seamless. Before anyone starts to say anything about ohh dur what about a small world with lots of detail. Well, this is where it comes down to having a company with enough money to make something unique that works, than a lot of companies making the same damn thing that fails every time.

 

 

Stupid rant with no idea of how expensive content is. Even the richest company would not afford to build so many dungeons. There are a few THOUSAND people on each shard of a standard MMO at any time. Do you think they can build HUNDREDS of dungeons? You are dreaming. Not even blizzard can afford that.

 

Then don't go into the market. How many game companies wished they wouldn't have? Blizzard could easily do that, if there's any stupid rant it's what you just said there. Look how many games their working on, and how many people they have on their teams. They could easily make a game with hundreds of dungeons. So tell me, aside from the salary every employee gets anyway, how much extra does content cost? It's whether the content is junk or not.

I will not get into a discussion about software engineering with a guy who uses the word "noob". You have strong opinions about this and you've clearly made up your mind.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Einstein-DF

 I agree 100%

 

Everyone who disagrees are carebears, you know who you are.

 

I disagree 100%.

Everyone agrees are no-lifers that like to stand in line for 10 hours to spend 1 min to kill the boss, you know who you are.

Agree 100%. Also people who use the term carebear are most likely basement warriors. Only tough when they are fighting pixels. I spent time in the military and working in a state prison I have dealt with enough casualties of puberty in RL to not want to relive the horror of EQ dungeons ever again. EQ dungeons with people going afk at the entrance keeping others out is  a reason I hope for a massive increase in the number of sterile people.

Originally posted by Axehilt

The sad part is the more baseless and devoid of logic a thread is, the more posts and discussion it typically gets (when the reverse should be true.)

WTB forums with a "Post but don't bump the thread" feature.

Have we been invaded by trolls, perchance?

Originally posted by pencilrick

If your gameplay is "instanced" or separated from the community by "phasing", you might as well be playing offline.  And if you are with a group, then okay, the group might as well be playing offline, maybe at a LAN party at someone's house.

MMO's are about many players sharing a world, and not meant to be about isolated segregated experiences.  The player who brags about having spent 10,000 gold on his instanced housing makes no more sense than someone bragging that they have an offline castle.  If you cannot see it, it does not exist (in the gameworld).  The player who goes into and comes out from an instanced dungeon, might as well have been logged off the whole time, as far as the community knows or cares.  The player who "phases" into some solo quest against an 80 Elite mob and uses some gimme item that is part of the quest chain and which zaps the creature into a non-elite mob that is easily defeated, has no more bragging rights than if he had been offline.

If it didn't happen in the greater shared gameworld, it didn't happen. 

"Instancing", "phasing", "linear story quests" and such all serve to isolate the player from the community and reduce the call load of customer service, since minimized player contact equates with minimized number of player complaints.  And I really think these "instancing" game design methods are more about the latter.  The whole "instancing" movement is really equivalent to sedating an entire psychiatric ward so the patients will all shut up and go to sleep.

"Instancing" and its forms have no place in great MMO's.  PERIOD.

i disgree with OP. i think instances are good thing. heres examples. in WoW it's bad enough putting up with players camping or teaming same mobs yours is. but popular instances like say Deadmines would suk if other teams kept coming thru clearing things. now look at city of heroes the instances keep you alone keeping the hero and villian feel. sometimes instances are there to keep the fun up you don't like oh well theres those like me who want time away from those not in my group ot just need time alone. should instances be offline not at all not one bit. i pay to play mmo and i like to have instance option live with it.

Originally posted by karat76

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Einstein-DF

 I agree 100%

 

Everyone who disagrees are carebears, you know who you are.

 

I disagree 100%.

Everyone agrees are no-lifers that like to stand in line for 10 hours to spend 1 min to kill the boss, you know who you are.

 

Agree 100%. Also people who use the term carebear are most likely basement warriors. Only tough when they are fighting pixels. I spent time in the military and working in a state prison I have dealt with enough casualties of puberty in RL to not want to relive the horror of EQ dungeons ever again. EQ dungeons with people going afk at the entrance keeping others out is  a reason I hope for a massive increase in the number of sterile people.

sound like you got pwnt by afk-ers LULZ

Originally posted by Harabeck

Originally posted by Ruyn

I absolutely agree with OP.  An MMO ceases to become an MMO if it's under a heavy influence of instancing.  You might as well play a 64 player map of BF2 or counterstike because you play with more people at a time and you don't pay a monthly fee.

That's an absurd comparison. Do I really need to point out he differences between a counterstrike match and running instanced dungeons in an MMO?

Please do explain it.

Because I have trouble seeing the difference myself at times - and I do have some background computer knowledge and game design knowledge.

I agree with the OP for the most part.  There is 'appropriate instancing' IMHO.  Some games have that - to enable everyone to enjoy the game - kill bosses without having to wait for respawning NPC Monsters etc.

But more and more recently are just instanced 'Graphical Lobby Games' with a hub or lobby which really is only a waiting room while you wait to go into a game instance.

MMORPG.com really need to look at this - because games like Farm Town on facebook are MMOs too if these games make the grade.

Originally posted by heremypet

Originally posted by karat76

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Einstein-DF

 I agree 100%

 

Everyone who disagrees are carebears, you know who you are.

 

I disagree 100%.

Everyone agrees are no-lifers that like to stand in line for 10 hours to spend 1 min to kill the boss, you know who you are.

 

Agree 100%. Also people who use the term carebear are most likely basement warriors. Only tough when they are fighting pixels. I spent time in the military and working in a state prison I have dealt with enough casualties of puberty in RL to not want to relive the horror of EQ dungeons ever again. EQ dungeons with people going afk at the entrance keeping others out is  a reason I hope for a massive increase in the number of sterile people.

 

sound like you got pwnt by afk-ers LULZ

Collision detection on a PVE server is a horrible thing ;p

Raiding guilds would park players near the entrance (sometimes just 1 ogre) to block access to the zone or region of the zone while they brought their raid into the zone via summons and killed the bosses unhindered (LOL contested zones).

Just read this:

Joshua Drescher, Warhammer Online Associate Producer, Mythic Entertainment:

"Seventy-five percent of the titles on the market that claim to be 'MMO' are actually single-player or limited group-oriented games that just happen to have lots of other people running around, doing the same things and having no impact on one another. In my view, to truly be a 'massively multiplayer' experience, the extant population of the game world has to have some sort of impact on you – regardless of whether or not they're in your raid group or guild. Otherwise, you're basically just regarding those thousands of other people as window dressing and they might as well be NPCs at that point...

"I certainly think we need a new term for all the things that are currently being called 'MMO' that aren't actually doing anything interesting with those massive populations. For other, 'proper' MMOGs, I think the term is perfectly acceptable as-is."

http://www.massively.com/2009/09/24/redefining-mmos-developers-weigh-in/#continued

What if 90% of the time the impact other people have to your gameplay experience is bad or indifferent at best. Is that 10% worth it. -No. Yeah being griefed is a fun social experience. So is ninja looting, kill stealing... Fun for eveyone right? ...

All these purists need to get out of the box where they live in and see the whole picture. The label MMO or true-MMO does NOT make it instantly a good game.  When compared to other games, a great majority of MMOs are vastly inferior in terms of gameplay and quality content. For some people the social aspect of MMOs does not surpass the fact that MMO content is abundant in quantity but is of questionable quality - even in many big titles.

Instances are here to stay because they bring the much needed quality to the genre. You wouldn't be whining if you were playing a game that has seamless instancing. That, I bet, would be the next money-maker. The devs would just have to be hush-hush about their instancing so the purist-crowd would even try it.

Instances... Its called co-op. It let the devs actually make a PVE game without having to worry about respawns, worse graphics, and seemingly everything thats good in RPG games gets watered down just to accomodate a 3d chatroom. Guild Wars is a perfect example. A co-op rpg where the PVE story was for you and your party, not this 100 heroes running around doing the same quest waiting for the same boss to come back to life. How does anyone even call that an RPG game?

The way I look at it PVE games should concentrate on making a good PVE game. That means players vs evironment, with good AI, nice backdrop, good story, a beginning and an end. You cant have this in sandbox game with 1000 other people doing the same thign as you. The best solution for this is co-op which means a private instance of the game for you and your party. This doesnt fit the sandbox idea, but it cant. PVE and sandbox dont go together. Once people that arent invited are invovled its not PVE anymore its PVP. Thats a different game not many want to play. Myself included, well not without a gun atleaste.

Thanks for all the good comments.  What I have resolved in my own head about this is that "sometimes" you need "some" instancing.  To prevent over-camping of boss mobs, for example.

Still, I see instancing as a necessary evil at best and not a desired feature to implement in the absence of a compelling reason.  For example, you would not want to instance a zone only for the reason of separating players, without over-camping being a mitigating factor. 

And remember, "stepping on toes" a bit can be fun.  The noobs who pull a zone-wide train that everyone has to dodge can be quite entertaining and adds an element of risk (and fear) to dungeons.  And the sharing of gaming space with others is not always a negative; sometimes the last minute intervention by a healer from outside your group can be quite welcome.

EQ may have needed some instancing for its boss mobs.  Age of Conan (and LOTRO to some degree) went overboard with instancing.  WOW is leaning, IMO, on the "too much instancing" side of things and needs to pull back a bit.  Maybe WOW should continue to instance dungeons, but forego that new "phasing" nonsense it is doing with outdoor zones. 

In fact, maybe only the boss encounters in dungeons should be instanced.  I miss the public dungeons and ususally felt relief when happening upon another group in a dungeon.

Just opinions, but I still insist that "if it happens in an instance, it might as well have happened offline", at least as far as the rest of the server community is concerned.

Originally posted by pencilrick

Still, I see instancing as a necessary evil at best and not a desired feature to implement in the absence of a compelling reason.  For example, you would not want to instance a zone only for the reason of separating players, without over-camping being a mitigating factor. 

And remember, "stepping on toes" a bit can be fun.  The noobs who pull a zone-wide train that everyone has to dodge can be quite entertaining and adds an element of risk (and fear) to dungeons.  And the sharing of gaming space with others is not always a negative; sometimes the last minute intervention by a healer from outside your group can be quite welcome.

Compelling reason?

Let's rate a game by "fun points."  Boss killing is rated 9/10 on average by players, and waiting for respawns is rated 2/10 on average.   Two groups in an instanced game results in 11 total fun (9+2), whereas a non-instanced game is 18 total fun (9+9).  Simple math doesn't fully explain the situation, but it indicates the trend and the major reason players have less fun.  Because sure, 11 isn't zero.  And sure, one group had plenty of fun.  But the net fun total is worse.

Stepping on toes?

That's fine.  Implement it in an enjoyable way and it will be fun.  WOW: Control Wintergrasp, lock control of a raid instance for a while.  (and I assume DAOC's Darkness Falls was similar?) Basically I'm all in favor of giving players PVP Objectives to fight over, which yield concrete benefits.  Anytime they exist, that's "stepping on toes" because now my enemy took something that I don't get anymore.  Whether it's locked, or whether I can immediately fight to take it back doesn't matter to me.  What matters is I don't have to wait for respawns. :P

I agree. I tend to make most of my friends in game by happening upon each other in a dungeon and one of us helps to save the other. Usually a conversation starts up, we decide to work together and an online "friendship" develops.

That being said, instances do have some place in the game I think if done well. I don't think it should be an excuse for everyone to have access to a dungeon boss... Life isn't fair, period. If someone else gets their first you lose.

Of course I would change the whole typical loot, binding loot, boss drops etc. system so that killing the boss wasn't some major, major goal of most players. Maybe he just drops the best gear more frequently than other mobs in that dungeon. Or maybe kiling the boss earns you a title or fame points to turn in for "extras" but it's the random chests in the dungeons at various guarded spots that randomly drop that particular dungeons loot. I'd still have randomly spawning, wandering named mobs in the game that drop particular gear (those are exciting when found, like them or not) but I wouldn't tie a particular loot table to one, static mob (ie. the boss). At least not the best gear  that you couldn't get by other means such as crafting. Don't make it so that the "uber guilds", farmers, exploiters etc. can block other players and hinder their experiences by monopolizing access to some key, static mobs.

Using instances for progressing a story though like in LOTRO is a great though but this shouldn't happen too often.

Well, considering that people find gear and whatnot in instances, and that gear is usable in the non-instanced world, then that makes you wrong in every way.  Try again.

I agree and disagree with you OP. I don't think MMORPGs should reply on instancing as a crutch in order to substitute for content. Although, I do think that instancing is a good way to bring immersion and acomplishment on a personal level.

 Lord of the Rings did a decent job of instancing, for example. When you start the game, all the quests begin with solo instances, but as you follow the storylines, they require you to group for the harder questlines in order to complete them. The one thing that bothers me is that you aren't able to have an instance of more than 12 people (If I am correct about that number). I think that is just plain stupid. What's the point of having a guild (or kinship as it is called in LOTR) with 50 or 150 other players if you can't quest as a guild.

As I said though, not every single quest should for you to need to reply on somone else. Although, I don't believe that not having personal instances should be disregarded all together. It sucks when there are 30 people sitting around waiting in line for the same NPC to respawn so everyone can finish thier quest.

Maybe WOW should continue to instance dungeons, but forego that new "phasing" nonsense it is doing with outdoor zones.

Given up a perfect good technology is nonsense. Phasing is great. I love to see the world changes around me. Who cares if everyone is at the same phase. There are people on other servers anyway.

In fact, maybe only the boss encounters in dungeons should be instanced. I miss the public dungeons and ususally felt relief when happening upon another group in a dungeon.

Nah .. i don't want anyone to fight for spawns. Party of 5 is good enough.

Just opinions, but I still insist that "if it happens in an instance, it might as well have happened offline", at least as far as the rest of the server community is concerned.

Who cares about the distinction? As long as i can adventure with my group and it  is fun, it matters ZERO whether it is offline or not, as long as I can sell my loot on the AH.

I absolutely agree with OP. An MMO ceases to become an MMO if it's under a heavy influence of instancing. You might as well play a 64 player map of BF2 or counterstike because you play with more people at a time and you don't pay a monthly fee.

Who cares about the distinction is the game is fun. If it has a fantasy setting, the amount of content of wow (including all the diff mechanics) and I can sell my stuff to other players on AH, count me in, MMO or not.

Hopefully Diablo 3 will be like that.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

...

Who cares about the distinction is the game is fun. If it has a fantasy setting, the amount of content of wow (including all the diff mechanics) and I can sell my stuff to other players on AH, count me in, MMO or not.

...

Thank god we are all exactly like you then! ??

The distinction is important to many of us because "MMO" is supposed to offer a different style of play.
In fact - you contradict yourself in that very sentence by saying "and I can sell my stuff to other players on AH" so it does matter to you too.
If a game said "Excellent Economic AI with NPC Buyers and sellers in a dynamic market system..." would you still be interested?

For many of us, one of the attractions of MMOs is the interaction with other players.
I play WWIIoL.  Why?  It's not like there aren't hundreds of very good WWII games on the market?
Because WWIIoL puts me against hundreds of other real players who want to win... who will be sneaky... who will work together... who have varying skill (which I won't know until I try to beat them)... who will make supid mistakes and who will wait for me to make stupid mistakes.
No AI yet written even comes close to that.
 

So yeah, the distinction matters.
 

Originally posted by pencilrick go to sleep.

"Instancing" and its forms have no place in great MMO's.  PERIOD.

Well good luck starting a new game where nothing is instanced and everone on that server is trying to kill this one boss. Sounds like a lot of fun to me, lol  not...... Oh shit I just said it. While I do like open big worlds I really don't mind instances here and there as long as they are done right.

This is a dumb post ..... there is nothing wrong with instances. they keep content from being tainted by other gamers and make it better for groups to hunt. no one can steal your kills.

FYI .... If you are hunting in a group then you have already isolated yourself from the rest of the game. so freakin what

I'm going to have to strongly disagree with the OP as well. What the OP does not seem to realise is the fact that the reason why people play MMOs that, yes, have instancing in them as compared to a single player game is because of the community. Towns are normally not instanced, and that is where a player can go to interact with other people and find groups to party with. Hence, a single player rpg and an MMO is completely different because of the community. And because of the presense of a community, an MMO that uses instancing cannot be considered a single player rpg.

Personally, I used to dislike instancing, but after playing a game that uses a lot more instancing than the average MMO (and yes, I'm still playing it), I have come to realise that instancing is not such a bad concept at all, especially if the focus is more on the storyline rather than grinding and dungeon raiding. I have a huge weakness for MMOs with storylines, and I find that instacing actually makes me feel as if I'm part of the world, and that what I do actually has an impact on the storyline. In other words, I'm actually taking part in the story itself, not just a spectator, and I love games like that. If this is made possible thanks to instancing, then hell, I'll gladly support instancing.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to customer satisfaction. Just because some people prefer their playstyle does not mean that everyone else who does not follow it is inferior in any way. People are wired differently, and these 'elitists' have to realise it, otherwise they are just laughable at best.

Originally posted by cukimunga

Originally posted by pencilrick go to sleep.

"Instancing" and its forms have no place in great MMO's.  PERIOD.

 

Well good luck starting a new game where nothing is instanced and everone on that server is trying to kill this one boss. ...

So don't have "bosses".  Problem solved.

Originally posted by Aladyleyna

...

Personally, I used to dislike instancing, but after playing a game that uses a lot more instancing than the average MMO (and yes, I'm still playing it), I have come to realise that instancing is not such a bad concept at all, especially if the focus is more on the storyline rather than grinding and dungeon raiding. I have a huge weakness for MMOs with storylines, and I find that instacing actually makes me feel as if I'm part of the world, and that what I do actually has an impact on the storyline. In other words, I'm actually taking part in the story itself, not just a spectator, and I love games like that. If this is made possible thanks to instancing, then hell, I'll gladly support instancing.

...

I agree with this.  Instancing does make story telling easier and allow 'boss fights' that everyone apparently loves?  (Personally I think it's a little overdone.)

But the big problem seems to be that lately MMO Designers are stuck in a bit of a rut and they seem fixated on;

Levels (XP based).

Plot Lines (Single Player story lines)

Boss Fights (Kill 20 minions per Lieutenant and a Boss at the end of the Dungeon)

It's getting a bit old.  There are other ideas out there.  Please...use them.