Originally posted by Gdemami

[mod edit]

Except that the quoted article says "NA launch" not "NA publisher" NA Launch. What are they launching, if not a NA client?

Originally posted by asmkm22

Instances weren't for game developers' benefit.  That's what shards were for.  Not sure what that guy is smoking.

Instances were introduced purely as a way of letting players experience content without having to "wait in line" for other groups to finish.  At best, it meant literally forming a line and waiting your turn.  At worst, it meant you had to PvP just to be able to run through some content.

Maybe in EQ, but not in any other MMO I can think of. If its properly designed, this issue does not exist. But, designing is hard, hence why instances are a tool to make dev's lives easier. They don't benefit the player. Because, while they make sure that no one is ever camping content, it ruins a ton of other things vital to MMOs.

Originally posted by Gdemami

 

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Originally posted by DavisFlight

 

And all these problems can be solved WITHOUT instancing.

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Maybe the can, maybe they can't..in either way it does not imply there is a bad design or solution for said issues is bad.

They can, and have been, many many times, in many MMOs. And yes, you can outright say it is bad design, because games that have good design don't have these problems. Problems are not good things.

Originally posted by asmkm22

Originally posted by Burntvet

Originally posted by asmkm22

Instances weren't for game developers' benefit.  That's what shards were for.  Not sure what that guy is smoking.

Instances were introduced purely as a way of letting players experience content without having to "wait in line" for other groups to finish.  At best, it meant literally forming a line and waiting your turn.  At worst, it meant you had to PvP just to be able to run through some content.

Ummm... no.

Instances were invented because it is a hell of a lot easier, and thus cheaper, to program a given encounter, when it is cut off in its own little box not connected to anything.

Compare that to games made in the old days were everything was open world/no instances and everything had to work together.

Multiple shards/servers were the answer to the "waiting in line" deal.

Instances came about simply because they are easier to program, and game programmers/designers have been getting very lazy over the years.

 

As to this game, let's hope AV did a better job with the quality than with the original version of DF, which was a complete POS for at least the first year.

 

I must have missed the part where designing an open world and letting players fight it out over who gets to access what content is somehow harder on the dev's than designing an open world and then adding in the instantiation code that allows various players to access the same conent dynamically, and within their own unique "instance."

Yes, that's obviously designed to make the dev's life easier...

The difficult bit is designing it so that players NEVER HAVE TO FIGHT FOR CONTENT, WITHOUT USING INSTANCES.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

 

The difficult bit is designing it so that players NEVER HAVE TO FIGHT FOR CONTENT, WITHOUT USING INSTANCES.

There aren't exactly many ways to do it here.  You can use instances, let everyone zerg the content a-la GW2, or you can try and make the game world so incredibly huge that player density will never be a problem (and make sure that all zones are equal enough so that players aren't all just camping the same mobs in the same zone).

It's one thing for dev like Aventurine to talk the talk, but they've never actually had to deal with game worlds that were popular enough to make instancing an issue.  They're niche, and at the end of the day, if they truly knew what they were doing, they would have had a game that was more successful that Darkfall.

That doesn't mean instances are the answer for them.  Just that trying to discredit them they way he did (and the way the fanbois are doing) sounds a lot like a poor person acting like the troubles of wealthy person of somehow less real or relevant.

Originally posted by asmkm22

Originally posted by DavisFlight

 

The difficult bit is designing it so that players NEVER HAVE TO FIGHT FOR CONTENT, WITHOUT USING INSTANCES.

There aren't exactly many ways to do it here.  You can use instances, let everyone zerg the content a-la GW2, or you can try and make the game world so incredibly huge that player density will never be a problem (and make sure that all zones are equal enough so that players aren't all just camping the same mobs in the same zone).

But all three of those solutions are bad... I don't think you understand MMOs...

It's one thing for dev like Aventurine to talk the talk, but they've never actually had to deal with game worlds that were popular enough to make instancing an issue. 

Yup, suspicions confirmed. So I guess 10k peolpe logged in at once on the same server isn't enough to have to worry about instancing?

Jeesh...

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by asmkm22

Originally posted by DavisFlight

 

The difficult bit is designing it so that players NEVER HAVE TO FIGHT FOR CONTENT, WITHOUT USING INSTANCES.

There aren't exactly many ways to do it here.  You can use instances, let everyone zerg the content a-la GW2, or you can try and make the game world so incredibly huge that player density will never be a problem (and make sure that all zones are equal enough so that players aren't all just camping the same mobs in the same zone).

But all three of those solutions are bad... I don't think you understand MMOs...

It's one thing for dev like Aventurine to talk the talk, but they've never actually had to deal with game worlds that were popular enough to make instancing an issue. 

Yup, suspicions confirmed. So I guess 10k peolpe logged in at once on the same server isn't enough to have to worry about instancing?

Jeesh...

There's a big difference between 10k players in a large world, and 10k players in a small world.

It seems people are quick to forget that when the game first launched, we actually had queues to spawn at the stone. We were fighting over each others just to kill and loot those little goblins. It was chaotic, fun to some extent, but chaotic. At least fun until some clown decides to jump in front of you to have you hit him (exploiting alignment) and then every other greedy players jumps to kill you for the loot without penality, but I digress. 

Instancing is a wonderful design choice for PvE games. One that allows all players access to content they would've had to otherwise wait to access. This is not because of a bad design, but because PvE games generally have to deal with a much higher population and higher population density in certain areas. Areas are also built to hold a certain amount of population to better balance server load without affecting overall performance.

Of course for games like DarkFall which are PvP-oriented games, it makes a lot less sense to instance the game because it would reduce the amount of PvP encounter. On the other hand, large scale battles (and by large scale battle I don't mean the 20v21 "zerg" the community has grown used to, but  the 100v100+ we had at launch) can have a pretty heavy strain on the server. 

There are pros and cons to everything, and instancing is merely a design choice part of the larger design of an MMORPG. There is no "single best solution and everything else is a bad solution."

I hope future titles shirk the instancing trend that has been been the bane of MMO's. It's annoying, extremely annoying to play a game where you're sent to your own little world, thus disconnected from all the other inhabitants of that world except your own little party.

AV have made many mistakes, but they have always stood by their guns in making a real challenging player experience and that can only come from an open world.

UW may be a bit less brutal than DF1 in some area's, but it should still be a hair raising experience that forces a player to think to overcome, something i've not experienced in a game since Ultima and really the only reason i've put up with AV's shortcomings in the past, most likely the future too, is because I love their idea of open world, skill based gameplay.

So long live crazy devs like AV, without these nutters the mmo genre would be a big blob of carebear pink.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Today Tasos echoed something I have been saying for years. Something that always brings out the screaming themepark fans who just cannot see how games function without them.

Instances are there to help the developers, not the players.

 

Tasos says, roughly,

"On instances let me just say, we never had them, we don't have them, and we might never have them. They don't agree with our philosphy for a massively multiplayer game. ... We want player interaction to be at the major possible level and we don't want to limit it by instancing. Instancing is really not in our DNA...We don't want to take away from that. We don't like the instances, and if we ever do go to any form of instancing, it will be to improve our user experience, and not because they are more convenient to us. Because usually instance are used for technical reasons, for convenience of the developer."

 

I've always aid that instances are band aids for poor game design. Developers that rely on instancing do so because they can't figure out how to make a balanced MMO without it.

If you took instances out of WoW it would fall apart. EQ suffered without instances (in terms of camping rare spawns, not general leveling. General leveling flourished without instancing).

However, DAoC functioned perfectly without instances. I never waited in line for a mob spawn. Nobody ever stole my kills (which I always found to be a dumb objection anyway, because if someone were to go about stealing your kills, they could do it in the public zones just as easily)

 

If a dev adds instancing, it's because its sooo much easier to half ass a game and plop instances in, than think about an MMO as en entire ecosystem. Most MMOs are becoming a collection of side games all stapled together, seperated by instances. They are no longer big cohesive units.

 

I'm glad to see that Aventurine, one of the only companies that sees instances for what they are, a crutch, is also one of the ONLY MMO companies to GROW after launch in the last 8 years,

 

so, i guess darkfall has no dungeons then? ^^

uh and btw, catacombs has instances. nice refering of daoc. completely wrong tho, sorry ^^

ps: you actually think blizz didnt grow since they released wow? now that's cute.

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.

Woa! This is E X A C T L Y how I feel and why I also just walked away from a game last month. I just have zero desire to wait outside a door for help with a world/level that has absolutely nothing to do with my current adventure.

Originally posted by Fearum
Im gonna give it a shot, df 1 was a turd, I hope they polished up enough this time. Yeah its more like mortal combat/streetfighter than a rpg.

If you thought DF was a turd, then DF:UW is just a turd with glitter on it.

The core gameplay hasn't changed.

Originally posted by ShakyMo
Thane
Daoc did function perfectly well without instances

Catacombs came later and made the game worse.

i know, i played daoc.

still catacombs had instances, and catacombs was a part of daoc. 

just stating facts here.

uh and btw, it worked because of a mature community. nowadays this is just a historical legend.

in daoc people knew, when i was fighting a mob spawn, this was my spawn. they wouldn't just jump into it and steel the mobs.

if people did so, it could actually be reported (and got through).

nowadays. mobsteeling is concidered "cool".

seriously, you wanna throw those players in a non instanced world? gl with that

People are also missing the idea, that an instance dungeon, is all for YOUR group. Not for others but for your group. All the drops, all the mobs, all the bosses. That is why in GW2, they instanced the dungeons. Wouldn't you hate going into an open dungeon hoping to get a drop from a particular boss and the boss is dead already and the spawn rate is slow - so your group has to camp there and wait.

Originally posted by Thane

Originally posted by ShakyMo
Thane
Daoc did function perfectly well without instances

Catacombs came later and made the game worse.

i know, i played daoc.

still catacombs had instances, and catacombs was a part of daoc. 

 

just stating facts here.

 

uh and btw, it worked because of a mature community. nowadays this is just a historical legend.

 

in daoc people knew, when i was fighting a mob spawn, this was my spawn. they wouldn't just jump into it and steel the mobs.

if people did so, it could actually be reported (and got through).

 

nowadays. mobsteeling is concidered "cool".

 

seriously, you wanna throw those players in a non instanced world? gl with that

You seem to think that mob stealing is a new phenomenon, but it has been going since MMO's were born, the only difference in the early games players could react by either giving up the spawn, or attacking the player muscling in and that's what DF delivers, which is what many of us enjoy.

Having the ability to police in this way is a far better approach than telling the teacher someone stole your toy. I never played daoc and find it shocking that a gm would actually take someone serious if they reported such a thing, but then daoc had safe zones i believe where you couldn't deal with it yourself, which of course is why open pvp works in an open world.

Originally posted by botrytis

People are also missing the idea, that an instance dungeon, is all for YOUR group. Not for others but for your group. All the drops, all the mobs, all the bosses. That is why in GW2, they instanced the dungeons. Wouldn't you hate going into an open dungeon hoping to get a drop from a particular boss and the boss is dead already and the spawn rate is slow - so your group has to camp there and wait.

 

No, because I never played a game where the devs were dumb enough to design a dungeon that way. Why put a boss with a low respawn? Why put a single boss at all?

Instanced dungeons aren't like public dungeons in many ways.

Besides, a lot of the fun of public dungeons was having other people around to help, or help you.

Originally posted by Thane

Originally posted by ShakyMo
Thane
Daoc did function perfectly well without instances

Catacombs came later and made the game worse.

i know, i played daoc.

still catacombs had instances, and catacombs was a part of daoc. 

 

just stating facts here.

 

uh and btw, it worked because of a mature community. nowadays this is just a historical legend.

 

in daoc people knew, when i was fighting a mob spawn, this was my spawn. they wouldn't just jump into it and steel the mobs.

if people did so, it could actually be reported (and got through).

 

nowadays. mobsteeling is concidered "cool".

 

seriously, you wanna throw those players in a non instanced world? gl with that

If killstealing is such an epidemic, then how come there is no killstealing OUTSIDE of dungeons, in the public world?

Killstealing is the weakest argument for instancing. It only ever happened to me once in DAoC, and it happened in teh open world, not in a dungeon. I reported the guy and it never happened again.

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by Fearum
Im gonna give it a shot, df 1 was a turd, I hope they polished up enough this time. Yeah its more like mortal combat/streetfighter than a rpg.

If you thought DF was a turd, then DF:UW is just a turd with glitter on it.

The core gameplay hasn't changed.

The core gameplay is what was redesigned...

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by botrytis

People are also missing the idea, that an instance dungeon, is all for YOUR group. Not for others but for your group. All the drops, all the mobs, all the bosses. That is why in GW2, they instanced the dungeons. Wouldn't you hate going into an open dungeon hoping to get a drop from a particular boss and the boss is dead already and the spawn rate is slow - so your group has to camp there and wait.

 

No, because I never played a game where the devs were dumb enough to design a dungeon that way. Why put a boss with a low respawn? Why put a single boss at all?

Instanced dungeons aren't like public dungeons in many ways.

Besides, a lot of the fun of public dungeons was having other people around to help, or help you.

Yeah, I miss camps.

I miss having to form groups to try to spawn bosses, in hopes of picking up an item.  The joy of playing a game to earn gear.  I love having to roll for gear, and possibly losing, makes the gear seem valuable to me.  Opposed to just receiving the same gear everybody has for killing ten mobs or farming a dungeon boss that spawns 100% of the time.