... for me (because fun is personal, right?).

Story instances can make "quests" much more interesting with scripted staged events, and change of environment (because you are in your little world) and there won't be a bunch of other players breaking your immersion.

I have been playing some STO the last few days, and some of the episodes are a lot of fun with multiple location, and different stuff to fight while moving a mini-story ahead. I wish WOW (not that i play it anymore) has more story/event focus dungeons, instead of boss focus dungeons.

DDO also have pretty good story instances (some even have puzzles).

Some of these settings are MUCH more suited (Star Trek in particular) for episode type story missions. Of course aside from interesting missions, combat needs to be good .. and that is probably easier to control in an instance.

Now some may ask .. why do you need a MMO for story instances? I think the answer is .. you don't .. but MMOs fit the bill well. Think about it .. there is no recent Star Trek RPG in the last few years, and STO is the place to be if you want to play story missions, particularly in MP, in the trek universe. Ditto for Dungeons & Dragons.

Exactly. People at this site must love Mob Fields (ie. fields of mobs just standing around for miles on end doing nothing except waiting to be killed) because they sure want to go back to them/continue with em.

Look at single player offline games with large open worlds, like GTA or Red Dead Redemption. They have vast open areas that are just EMPTY of enemies, and then all the action takes place in special story missions around the ame, unless you want to cause chaos or whatever.

Just because you have an open world. DOES NOT MEAN YOU HAVE TO FILL IT WITH MOBS.  There may be a lot of gangsters in mos eisley, but that doesn't mean every single one of them wants your head. 

Originally posted by Kyleran
If they ever get it launched Citidel of Sorcery might be the MMO for you. As I understand it, the entire game can be played in your own private reflected world (or you can let in only your friends) and the game generates virtually never endinng personal story content.  Yes, I know, seem a bit too good to be true, but still, if they pull it off, great.

CoS sounds interesting. I wonder if they can pull it off.

The core concept is not that uncommon though. D3 does it. Borderlands does it. STO does it. DDO does it. DCUO does it. TOR does it (though i don't like TOR ... too much talking, and combat is not as fun as these other games).

I think the key difference doing this in a MMO, instead of a online SP/MP game, is that there is more content, and updates are expected to be more frequent.

instances belong to single player games IMO, or co-op games.

real mmorpgs shouldnt have any instances, not even for dungeons, but thats just MY personal opinion. 

and npc-questing is also questionable. at least when it comes that the same npc is giving the same quest to everybody. this is something a real mmorpg should avoid. quests should be given by players or random dynamic events.

grinding is also not the right way of gaining experience. 

And you have openly admitted several times you aren't a fan of MMORPGs. Can you just like, stop making threads already? They're just troll baiting at this point.

So those of us who LIKE MMORPGs can carry on discussing them?

Yes and I wonder at times why so few are not calling for those isntance story/themepark/handrail to just be "outside" the main world.

Main world, sandbox. completely open.

story, themeparks. instanced, outside the main world.

It would allow the main world to be very large, open for exploration and allow real world housing. With the instanced story and dungeons it would also allow for easy expansion of the game by allowing them to add additions to the game easily due to being able to place anything almost anywhere. By keeping the two MMO game types seperate in this way it would allow companies to make games for a larger audience. It IS possible beacuse when it comes down to it a sandbox world is EASY to make. SWG had worlds created by a RANDOM GENERATOR... and once that world is made, its DONE and they can work on the instanced parts.

One that I think did storyline instancing well is Guild Wars.  Although personal, it was always groupable because players who joined in would play or re-play that event.

Worst, from my perspective, was WOTLK style phasing in WoW.  Out of phase with someone who wants to group with you?  Grouping became impossible.  In my opinion, killing grouping opportunities should not be a design objective in an MMORPG.

In retrospect, it's pretty sad that a game that isn't even an MMORPG had more flexible grouping than a game that is an MMORPG.

Originally posted by jtcgs

Yes and I wonder at times why so few are not calling for those isntance story/themepark/handrail to just be "outside" the main world.

Main world, sandbox. completely open.

It doesn't matter what you call it, the two cannot exist together in a balanced game. Basic game design.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by jtcgs

Yes and I wonder at times why so few are not calling for those isntance story/themepark/handrail to just be "outside" the main world.

Main world, sandbox. completely open.

It doesn't matter what you call it, the two cannot exist together in a balanced game. Basic game design.

 They can and they have.

Asherons Call 1 was a sandbox game, all of its dungeons were instanced and it had a storyline that could be followed or ignored.

SWG was a sandbox game, it had a story which could be followed or ignored and it had random generated quests from a damn BOX in town.

As long as the main world remains sandbox and any and all storylines/themeparks do NOT inhibit it, it remains a sandbox.

Originally posted by BigAndShiny

Exactly. People at this site must love Mob Fields (ie. fields of mobs just standing around for miles on end doing nothing except waiting to be killed) because they sure want to go back to them/continue with em.

 

I love hunting grounds, yes. best thing in Lineage 2 for me.

Originally posted by jtcgs

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by jtcgs

Yes and I wonder at times why so few are not calling for those isntance story/themepark/handrail to just be "outside" the main world.

Main world, sandbox. completely open.

It doesn't matter what you call it, the two cannot exist together in a balanced game. Basic game design.

 They can and they have.

Asherons Call 1 was a sandbox game, all of its dungeons were instanced and it had a storyline that could be followed or ignored.

SWG was a sandbox game, it had a story which could be followed or ignored and it had random generated quests from a damn BOX in town.

As long as the main world remains sandbox and any and all storylines/themeparks do NOT inhibit it, it remains a sandbox.

Dungeons in Asheron's Call were NOT instanced. And you really can't call something a full sandbox if it has instances. The whole point of a sandbox is to influence the people and world around you. Instances are the exact opposite.

Originally posted by Kyleran
....the game generates virtually never endinng personal story content.  Yes, I know, seem a bit too good to be true, but still, if they pull it off, great.

That would be really cool but I don't see how that is even remotely realistic.

I got tired of "mob fields" long ago, Coming to games like meridian 59 and then EQ from muds it was a shock, in muds some of the quests and npcs were so well done that nothing in mmo games compares even now, even back then story became important, we had the basic mob fields but also instances with fully scripted stories. Maybe it was because we lacked the visual shiney shiney that the story was so much more important.

Imagine my suprise when joining my first mmo I found the npc to be so generic and souless as if the game developement had took a step back.

I do not need to kill the same creature 500 times to feel important and 99% of the loot from most of the mmo games I have played in the last 16 years have gone from my mind but I still remember the quests and stories that stood out.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Dungeons in Asheron's Call were NOT instanced. And you really can't call something a full sandbox if it has instances.

 Yes they were instances back when instances were called "Zones". They were handled by a server other than the server the main world was on and was PROVED to be true shortly after the olthoi queen instance was added to the game, the instance server crashed and you couldnt "portal" into any of the dungeons being handled by the same server.

As for the last part of your comment...whatever, YOU put that limitation on the definition of sandbox, not the industry.

I always thought Eve's complexes and missions might as well be instances. Yeah, you can probe people out and "invade" like you do in Dark Souls, but you could do a lot more with instances, and you could get a performance boost too. If you can load up the assets while the "invader" is in warp that is. There is this odd crowd who think loading screens are cyanide or something...

I would recommend using instances whenever the dev can get away with it. Always if the end result is the same.

In every game I've played, instanced content has been the best content in the game. Its always on a level higher than the world content. World content is usually just padding. And if its just padding, I tend to skip it and go for the little islands of good content in the game. There is no reason for me to stay with the game after that because I've already experienced the best it can offer.

And then there's this abhorrent static world syndrome... In instances, what you do can have a permanent effect while in world content, something has to reset at some point for the other guy to have a chance at being the hero. The guy who wants boar hides never has enough.

And the curious expectation that just because something can happen it will happen? -They forget that overwhelming majority of times, nothing happens, and when it does, it is usually very underwhelming and uninteresting. Yeah you might get ganked by "bandits" on the way, but even if they did, a gank is just a gank among many more just like it. Even if its performed by players there is only a handful of ways it can go down. Just like a scripted random encounter. And often its merely a nuisance too, not something you wish for. Its not worth it. Its not. So far, for me, never has been.