Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Seronys

 EQ suffered without instances (in terms of camping rare spawns, not general leveling.

EQ flourished without instances, finding good gear was hard, and you had to be prepared to fight for it, everyone wasn't running around with the same easily obtained gear.

The leveling portion, as I said, was great without instances. But waiting in a virtual line for a spawn is not a game mechanic many people want to see return. Fighting the monsters should be enough challenge to get gear. There's no challenge to waiting in line, that's just "who has more time to waste"

Originally posted by Seronys

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Seronys

 EQ suffered without instances (in terms of camping rare spawns, not general leveling.

EQ flourished without instances, finding good gear was hard, and you had to be prepared to fight for it, everyone wasn't running around with the same easily obtained gear.

The leveling portion, as I said, was great without instances. But waiting in a virtual line for a spawn is not a game mechanic many people want to see return. Fighting the monsters should be enough challenge to get gear. There's no challenge to waiting in line, that's just "who has more time to waste"

 

except when you kill the person infront of you, then things get intresting. this is darkfall.

Correct, in a FFA PVP environment, this issue solves itself.

im sorry but i find it kinda funny that these idiot devs have any comments about any other company since they had to redesign their own game which was on life support and remake the entire thing and rerelease it. Some people here put way to much faith in companies these days and come here to talk about it like they are some savior. This game will be a niche just like the last one because one thing that devs do not seem to get is full loot pvp games do not last long except for the few here that love them. People get emotionally attached to their gear and loot and have egos , to have someone come along and wreck that pisses off people over time and they leave. I remember the screams so loud on this forum for a full pvp server in AOC and they got what they wished and look at how dead that server is right now .

Also DAOC did have instances after catacombs and people enjoyed doing them , also the entire new frontiers was instanced , you zoned to go into it.  I can agree here that handholding in games is bad and casual players can ruin a game faster than a full loot pvper can , but at the same time Advertine doesnt "get" it , they are spinning this game to make money and i bet there is going to be a lot of disappointed players in the end when this is out for awhile.I played the first and hated it myself and have no intention of even trying this until at least 6 months after its out and see if its really what everyone here is trying to make it out to be because im pretty damns sure it wont be.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by kartool

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by kartool

Originally posted by Arglebargle

Yeah, a lot of back-patting in this thread.   'Someone agreed with me!  It must be true for all!'

 

Instances are easier on developers,  because they solve certain problems.   Denying the problems exist does not solve them.  

Adventurine hasn't even had to deal with a high population so dude's opinion on instancing is kind of moot. It's like the guy who walks to work everyday bitching about the train he doesn't have to take...

If I recall correctly they were so inept at launch that it was basically a lottery to buy the game because they couldn't handle the population. 

 

You remember incorrectly. The server was full at launch, so yes, they had to deal with a high population. The server could handle about 11k people logged in at the same time, with no instancing.

The problems that instancing solves are derived from bad game design. A good developer will properly balance their game so that they never need instancing. A bad developer will slap instancing over the problem and then walk away.

So yes, the problems exist, but instancing is the worst way to fix them.

 

So, what you're saying is Adventurine is a bad developer because they weren't able to balance their game, and they refused to use instancing which made it so people who wanted to buy the game couldn't. That's my take away from your comments anyway.

....uh... what?

did you like... read...a single thing in this thread?

Darkfall works fine without instances. Instances wouldn't have suddenly enabled the server to hold more people. I don't think you understand what you're talking about.

Considering you're actually involved in the conversation I'm surprised you can't follow along. I'm talking about launch. Darkfall at launch was forced to sell limited numbers of the game because the devs couldn't figure out how to make their game support the number of players who wanted to play it. Now, the guy who created the game is slamming other devs for their choices when his choices caused a lot of people to pass over his game because they simpy couldn't buy it without playing the F5 lottery.

Instancing changes how you develop a game. If all the players don't need ot be in the same place at the same time it can help with game balance, performance and depending on the type of instancing you can even offload portions of the game world to different servers.  The core design decisions that the makers of DF made hurt their game at launch. 

I'm not saying instancing is the answer for every game or even DF. Looking back at the launch of DF why should people be listening to this guy on the proper way to build a game? His couldn't even handle 11k players at launch.

Originally posted by cronius77

im sorry but i find it kinda funny that these idiot devs have any comments about any other company since they had to redesign their own game which was on life support and remake the entire thing and rerelease it.  You say idiot devs, and yet Aventurine is one of the only MMO companies in the last 8 years to GROW after launch. If they had failed, and if the game had been on "life support" they wouldn't have had the chance to entirely remake their game and fix their flaws. Out of all the things they did change, guess what they didn't? That's right, DF1 didn't have instances, and DF2 won't either, because it was a good design decision and didn't need to be changed.

Also DAOC did have instances after catacombs and people enjoyed doing them By the time Catacombs released barely anyone was playing the game. The instances they added in Catacombs killed off the last of the population and destroyed the PvE portion of the game. It essentially became a WoW clone. , also the entire new frontiers was instanced It wasn't, actually. , you zoned to go into it.  Zoning is not instancing. There was no limit to the number of players that could be in the frontiers. The entire population of the server could all go there if they wanted to. But thanks for signaling that you have no idea what you're talking about. I can agree here that handholding in games is bad and casual players can ruin a game faster than a full loot pvper can , but at the same time Advertine doesnt "get" it , And neither do you, you can't even get the company name right, it's Aventurine. You obvious has some weird stigma against FFA PVP.  they are spinning this game to make money then why aren't they charging for it, if you already owned DF1?

You need to hire a fact checker.

 I really don't understand why everyone is singing AV's praises, has the community forgotten the last few years of Darkfall so quickly? I fully intend on trying this new launch out, but I won't simply forget the failings of the developers. I also question why anyone would consider AV a sucessful studio, certainly when comparing it to other games. It's had as much population fluxuations as most modern mmo's, with the exception that DF's population was always lower than standard fair. I'm not implying numbers mean sucess, simply that they had a spike in Df and like every other game it tapered off ... hard. The DF servers prior to the announcement of Unholy Wars were ghost towns, thats not a sucessful game. There is enough that DF does correctly, but equally as much as they do wrong or not at all. We should all be approaching this new launch with a critical eye, this is a second chance for AV. They have an agreeable stance in regards to instances and a few other hot button issues, but the lack of clarification on crafting and multiple other issues which plagued DF can't be ignored.

TL/DR : Temper your Hype.

Originally posted by kartool

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by kartool

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by kartool

Originally posted by Arglebargle

Yeah, a lot of back-patting in this thread.   'Someone agreed with me!  It must be true for all!'

 

Instances are easier on developers,  because they solve certain problems.   Denying the problems exist does not solve them.  

Adventurine hasn't even had to deal with a high population so dude's opinion on instancing is kind of moot. It's like the guy who walks to work everyday bitching about the train he doesn't have to take...

If I recall correctly they were so inept at launch that it was basically a lottery to buy the game because they couldn't handle the population. 

 

You remember incorrectly. The server was full at launch, so yes, they had to deal with a high population. The server could handle about 11k people logged in at the same time, with no instancing.

The problems that instancing solves are derived from bad game design. A good developer will properly balance their game so that they never need instancing. A bad developer will slap instancing over the problem and then walk away.

So yes, the problems exist, but instancing is the worst way to fix them.

 

So, what you're saying is Adventurine is a bad developer because they weren't able to balance their game, and they refused to use instancing which made it so people who wanted to buy the game couldn't. That's my take away from your comments anyway.

....uh... what?

did you like... read...a single thing in this thread?

Darkfall works fine without instances. Instances wouldn't have suddenly enabled the server to hold more people. I don't think you understand what you're talking about.

Considering you're actually involved in the conversation I'm surprised you can't follow along. I'm talking about launch. Darkfall at launch was forced to sell limited numbers of the game because the devs couldn't figure out how to make their game support the number of players who wanted to play it. It's not so much "couldn't figure it out" it's that the demand was much larger than the product. The solution is simple, make more servers, but actually making more servers is a huge task. Now, the guy who created the game is slamming other devs for their choices when his choices caused a lot of people to pass over his game because they simpy couldn't buy it without playing the F5 lottery. Are you dense? How would instancing have enabled the server to hold more players? You don't know ANYTHING about how MMOs work it seems.

Instancing changes how you develop a game. Yes, instancing means you can not care about game design and just instance everything that conflicts with things. If all the players don't need ot be in the same place at the same time it can help with game balance, performance and depending on the type of instancing you can even offload portions of the game world to different servers.  The core design decisions that the makers of DF made hurt their game at launch. Then how come Unholy Wars won't have instancing? If it was such a detriment to the game, don't you think people would be complaining about it? Or, perhaps, it's because literally no one has a problem with the lack of instancing in Darkfall?

I'm not saying instancing is the answer for every game or even DF. Looking back at the launch of DF why should people be listening to this guy on the proper way to build a game? Because his company is one of the only successful MMO companies of the last 8 years? But no, go, show me another game that has servers that can hold 30k people each, and let 11k of them play at the same time.

 

The former vaporware trolls are strong in this thread.

Originally posted by Redemp

 I really don't understand why everyone is singing AV's praises, Because the majority of MMO veterans agree with their philosphy on instancing?

I also question why anyone would consider AV a sucessful studio

Because their company went from 20 devs at launch, to 60 devs now. They're in a bigger building, they opened another server, whereas most MMOs close servers after launch. They now have enough money to self publish? They're releasing a new game? You don't do that when you haven't been successful.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Redemp

 I really don't understand why everyone is singing AV's praises, Because the majority of MMO veterans agree with their philosphy on instancing?

I also question why anyone would consider AV a sucessful studio

Because their company went from 20 devs at launch, to 60 devs now. They're in a bigger building, they opened another server, whereas most MMOs close servers after launch. They now have enough money to self publish? They're releasing a new game? You don't do that when you haven't been successful.

 You do understand the game was dead in the water, stalled out, with no information on the release of Darkfall 2010 ( ....) right up until they announced their new investors in Feb of this year?

 They had two servers, the EU server is now dead. They lacked a substantial amount of subscribers to justify opening more servers, its a niche market the same standards of success and failure do not apply here.

There are other reasons to be happy with AV, but declaring them one of the most sucessful studios in the last eight years is grasping at straws.

Well yeah maybe.  I still won't play DFO because it seem like an mmorpg concentrated almost only on pvp in one big deatchmatch edition with other features being half-assed.   This comes from ex-UO player back in late 90 / early 00.   DFO when I played it for a short bit seemed like game created by ex-UO reds for other ex-UO reds.     Maybe not bad, but definately not for me. 

Also don't like FPS combat and even more MOBA-like combat skills mechanics DFO:UW feel that comes from their dev videos.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Seronys

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Seronys

 EQ suffered without instances (in terms of camping rare spawns, not general leveling.

EQ flourished without instances, finding good gear was hard, and you had to be prepared to fight for it, everyone wasn't running around with the same easily obtained gear.

The leveling portion, as I said, was great without instances. But waiting in a virtual line for a spawn is not a game mechanic many people want to see return. Fighting the monsters should be enough challenge to get gear. There's no challenge to waiting in line, that's just "who has more time to waste"

 

except when you kill the person infront of you, then things get intresting. this is darkfall.

Correct, in a FFA PVP environment, this issue solves itself.

  No, it compounds on itself.  Now the winning group also has the best gear.  That is to say, the group that already had the advantage in a firefight just got handed an atom bomb for the next one.  This is the same problem I had with CoD and its killstreak system.  If a guy can already kill, with regularity, 15 people before dying...he didn't need the attack dogs...the loser did.  Which is why Mario Kart is so much fun.  If you are losing, your odds of getting the best weapon is higher.  Its an equalizer, and it pushes the leaders to be the best instead of progressively needing less skill to do the same job.

Originally posted by Redemp

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Redemp

 I really don't understand why everyone is singing AV's praises, Because the majority of MMO veterans agree with their philosphy on instancing?

I also question why anyone would consider AV a sucessful studio

Because their company went from 20 devs at launch, to 60 devs now. They're in a bigger building, they opened another server, whereas most MMOs close servers after launch. They now have enough money to self publish? They're releasing a new game? You don't do that when you haven't been successful.

 You do understand the game was dead in the water, stalled out, with no information on the release of Darkfall 2010 ( ....) right up until they announced their new investors in Feb of this year? The game wasn't "dead in the water" The devs were working on a huge update, which became the new game. Which is what we're getting, for free. If the game was dead in the water, AV's staff wouldn't be increasing, thats the opposite of how business works.

 They had two servers, the EU server is now dead. No kidding, both servers have been shut down. They lacked a substantial amount of subscribers to justify opening more servers, its a niche market the same standards of success and failure do not apply here. By all metrics, the game was a success.

There are other reasons to be happy with AV, but declaring them one of the most sucessful studios in the last eight years is grasping at straws.

Reality must hurt you for some reason. If we look at growth, the vast majority of MMOs and MMO companies have been shrinking and CLOSING servers. AV did the opposite.

Originally posted by Gishgeron

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Seronys

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Seronys

 EQ suffered without instances (in terms of camping rare spawns, not general leveling.

EQ flourished without instances, finding good gear was hard, and you had to be prepared to fight for it, everyone wasn't running around with the same easily obtained gear.

The leveling portion, as I said, was great without instances. But waiting in a virtual line for a spawn is not a game mechanic many people want to see return. Fighting the monsters should be enough challenge to get gear. There's no challenge to waiting in line, that's just "who has more time to waste"

 

except when you kill the person infront of you, then things get intresting. this is darkfall.

Correct, in a FFA PVP environment, this issue solves itself.

  No, it compounds on itself. Uh, no, the problem of "waiting in line for a mob" is gone in FFA PVP MMOs because there won't be any lines.  Now the winning group also has the best gear.  Not if the MMO is properly designed and gear doesn't only come from one place. Best gear in Darkfall came from the players.

---

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Yeah because I'm sure a genre that is built around MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER should constantly be striving to cut off players from one another and put them in small non massively multiplayer dungeons?

---

I have no doubts you are sure about it...however, as pointed out before, it is not enough to make it true.

"Massive Multiplayer" does not imply that everyone needs to be crowded on single spot. That is your interpretation only.

I agree 100% ,however just because he gets it,does not mean his team/staff will produce a good game,it just means their head is on straight.

I do however predict a mistake or two.

I remember watching that video that he said something about epic encounters,i assume for LOOT.That eventually means tons of camping,which could incite pvp,however it also makes for easy backstabbing.So many things can go wrong if Epic encounters are not random.Example you can't make predictable spawn points.You also need to create a versatile AI so that epics do not become easy mode after one win.

I also cringe a bit when i hear Tasos tal kabout mounted combat like it is still in the thinking stage.You cannot create a game day by day,you need to design the entire game and it's future from day 1 before creating it.I see down the road when they bring in full fledged mounted combat,tons of players crying foul.

One concern i have in ANY type of pvp is cheating and i don't feel they are taking it serious.If they do not take preventitive measures before the game starts,it will create an unbalanced game for those that get away with it early on.

Just like any game i have seen where cheating is rampant,if it happens once,it is likely to never be stopped.It is one of two major reasons i don't like mixing pvp in my rpg's.I actually loved the COD series but have quit it forever and will never support it again just because of cheating.

Bottom line is he says 2 years,NOT enough time.It sounds a lot like a GW2 rushed out combat design.that means you spend months after tweaking and nerfing and changing and then everyone is unhappy.I do hope for the best,i hope Tasos has this game planned out or it will end up dying off,possibly forever and the AV team will be done.

Originally posted by LizardEgypt

Exactly. Anyone trying to take the Massive out of MMO is in the wrong genre.

Why?  I mean, they took the "RPG" out of "MMORPG" just fine.

Surgical extraction.  It was easy.  Turns out, very few people even noticed.

"MO" seems to produce better titles.  And before you know it, we'll just be down to "O".  And who doesn't like a good "O"?

Originally posted by ste2000

Originally posted by Schockey
That is goodstuff! My friend and I left one of the last big titles because the instancing was so inconvenient and the load screens took away so much from immersion.

To be honest, there are portals that get you inside the dungeon, but tecnically the dungeons are not instanced as everyone can get inside.

Let's say AV is right in the middle an instanced and a non instanced dungeon

Only seamless world is Vanguard  where dungeons are connected with the rest of the map with no portals

Not even close bro, instancing is instancing, period. the portals to the dungeons make them "zones". But like Tasos said, the dungeons are actually a part of the world they're just real deep for technical issues. My guess would be sound, at least that would be the issues in DF 1.

Originally posted by Siveria

Sadly they don't get that open world greif/gank fests won't survive in the mmo world of casuals. They should restrict all pvp to one big zone with land control and such, DAoC did it and it worked great, why can't others follow their examples? Not to mention most of these gankfest/greif mmo's don't even have any advancement tied to the pvp. DAoC worked so well because it let the pve people play in peace, but it also provided a nice pvp system for those into that. No other mmo has provided such a well done pvp system to this date, the closest I think would be Eq2, because you can gain some Alternate advancment points thru pvp.

I myself love pvp when it is done right, but other than daoc, and maybe less-so eq2, no one else has gotten it right, or even close to right. To me arena garbage does not count as pvp, but neither does gankfest where max lv chars can prey on new players. For a mmo to survive it constantly needs new players coming in but I notice in these open world pvp mmo's that the games own community ends up killing the game they love by chasing new players away. Its also why I say the playerbase for most open world pvp mmo's are possibly the most immature of any games playerbase. I get the feeling I will be flamed for this, but what I said here is true, and it has been the downfall of many open world pvp titles.

Good man, thats why theres...every other mmorpg ever made out there for people like you.

Some of us enjoy the aspect of "theres always risk" as well as "that risk is more than a free trip to your bind with a stat nerf thats up by the time you return"

Your fantasy of DF being a gank/grief fest held true for a few weeks after launch, when everyone was fighting over the handful of nooby spawns near NPC towns...the remaining life of DF was more clan vs clan politics and clan holding harassment.  There was TONS of space to sneak in 40min farm sessions and GTFO back to a bank.

Only idiots get griefed.  People who refuse to accept that the more you keep going back and doing the same thing over again, the more that person/people will be there waiting for you to make the same obvious mistakes again.  This holds true for people who refused to figure out how long on average it takes before pvp arrives, and to bank prior to that time limit getting reached.  Also, i know its strange...but...did you ever think of fighting back?  One missed shot by a vet negated all his advantages, and it was very possible and did happen, for good player who was new to take down a maxed out vet.

I do however love the fantasies people create about this game...most new players were given loot bags, offerd clans, of if ganked, conversed with about what he did wrong and a notification that his tombstone was there unlooted (occasionally consumables and gold was taken)

Keep living the dream in your pvp-free themepark where you can afk all day out in the open and never have to worry about zero risk pvp....let alone losing easily replacable items like in DF.

Let me clarify and simplify:

Darkfall doesn't have instances because it doesn't need them. In a game with 100k - 200k players at a time you need instances and multiple servers. That was never an issue with Darkfall because it is unlikely to have ever had more than 15k people at one time.

I am not knocking the game, I loved it. I am just saying that his statement is absurd and borders on lying.

Originally posted by huskie77

Let me clarify and simplify:

Darkfall doesn't have instances because it doesn't need them.  In a game with 100k - 200k players at a time you need instances and multiple servers. No, you don't. You need multiple servers, but not instances. There is only ONE MMO on the market that has a single server with 300k players on it (and they don't use instances). All the other MMOs have much smaller numbers per server. Darkfall has one of the largest, 10k per server, and it doesn't use instances. DAoC in its prime didn't have instances, and didn't need them. That was never an issue with Darkfall because it is unlikely to have ever had more than 15k people at one time. Incorrect on two counts. Overall game population has NOTHING to do with whether or not a game needs instancing. 10k players logged in at once and instances were not needed.

I am not knocking the game, I loved it. I am just saying that his statement is absurd and borders on lying.

And you obvious have no idea how games work.