Originally posted by battleaxe

One solution is to drastically increase the respawn rate.  This means one mistake by anyone in the area has everyone sprinting for the exit like in EQ's BlackBurrow (TRAIN!!!!!!!).  whee.  This leads to having to use pulling techniques to separate groups of mobs.  Doesn't really cure the problem, just treats a symptom.

I agree (as you can see by my earlier post) that most dungeons should be instanced. But I would like to say that not only were the trains in BlackBurrow about the only thing I found fun and exciting in EQ (trying to hold off as many of them as you could so weaker players could get out, or to try and be the hero of killing them off) but it was one of the few times in MMOs that I actually felt danger. I can't think of a modern MMO where I ever was nervous in a dungeon that everything could go wrong and I could die. That is in part due to instancing, part due to modern day easy mode MMOs, and in part due to nothing happening when you die now.

I miss the days of danger.

For those that prefer a unified world where people are running into each other all the time, I have to wonder why, exactly. I mean, sure, if the population was comprised of mainly decent people who would go out of their way to help one another, sure, but more often than not you find people who jump in and just start blasting whatever is in front of them, with little regard to who is fighting what, and with no sense of what the proper way to behave is when interacting with others, either in or out of combat. In a game world, there are far too few repercussions for people who behave poorly, so there is no reason for these people to behave otherwise. The people who end up having the "best" time are those who basically play like other people aren't even there. They do whatever they want and most of the time aren't even called on it, because as long as they don't go out of their way to piss someone off, most people won't bother to report it because it just eats into time they could otherwise spend playing the game they paid the same amount for as the asshat who doesn't give a damn about anyone else. It won't matter if the person is banned or not, because the customer service reps never discuss the actions taken against griefers, so you never feel truly vindicated, even if you are. I am sure I wouldn't mind a seamless world without instancing if people behaved better, if it didn't feel like I was being led by the nose from one plot point to the next, and if I didn't have to sit around so long waiting for that special spawn or glowie to refresh. Instancing happens on MY time, and that's why I enjoy it. I'm not messing up someone else's agenda, and they aren't messing up mine. I do a few instanced missions, and sure, others do the same ones, but so what? If I take down a named mob in the game, some other group is going to do the same damned thing in however many minutes it takes for him to respawn. What's the difference? Nobody affects the WoW environment in a meaningful way any more than the CoX environment. I much prefer opting into random zone raids that are epic and huge once in awhile at MY option than being led to a huge battle by a string of missions that I pretty much MUST do to level up in a reasonable time period. Also, one thing I REALLY enjoy is that in instanced games, I can opt to solo any time and make good progress. With non-instanced games, I might be stuck waiting for a mob to respawn, or for a team to let me in so I can take down this huge plot point mob that I need to advance to the next story line or area.

Again, I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that I've given both a fair shake and find that I'd rather be able to remove the human element entirely at my discretion via instancing than be locked into a world where I'm at the mercy of the young, the socially-maladjusted, and the cruel.

Everquest's problem wasn't the open content it was rare mobs dropping rare loot - the combination of which created bottlenecks. If you have a dungeon where one mob drops three items, a common, uncommon and rare drop and that mob is itself a rare spawn with place holders then you do get a lot of the problems people mention. However if...

1) Those three items were split up between three named mobs who always dropped their particular item.

2) The named mobs were flagged and only dropped their special items once per player.

3) The special items were no-drop.

Then there'd be no incentive for players to kill them more than once and no incentive for farmers.

I'd also say situations where players are fighting over mobs just for levelling is bad world design. Either there's not enough dungeons for the level range or more likely there are more dungeons but for some reason people all congregate in just one. In EQ terms i think that latter case was mostly due to things like the ease of travel, access and binding.

When it comes to things like trains and bad behaviour it's definitely true those big open dungeons make griefing easier and i think that's a fair reason for liking instances but personally i used to love the sense of danger you got from having to dodge trains now and then so the occasional griefing was worth it to me. But that's obviously a personal thing.

I think instancing can really enhance or destroy a game depending on how it is implemented. There are ways it can be done that can make an MMO much much better. Instances must make the existing world MORE fun. They should NEVER make a player feel as though they are forcefully separated from their fellow players. Obviously when you go into a dungeon with your friends, you don't feel separated because they are with you. The worst thing ever is when you feel you are separated from your friends IN THE SAME ZONE as them... It doesn't make any sense and it completely destroys the immersion.

In my opinion it SHOULD be done this way:

1. Instanced dungeons as seen in WoW. However, I feel that SOME dungeons should not be instanced. There needs to be both in my opinion.

2. Instanced raids. Again, I think SOME of the raids should be open-world content.

3. Instanced solo-content. This hasn't really been done yet and I think it could really enhance some class-specific content. Imagine difficult epic instanced areas where your character is the sole hero and the objective must be completed just to advance your character.

4. Developers should do their very best to make instancing as invisible as possible. WoW's new phasing technology is a perfect example of this. You can enter instanced areas in that game and never even realize you left the main open world.

Instancing should NEVER be done this way:

1. Instanced cities.

2. Instance open world zones.

Any game that instances world zones or cities instantly kills my feeling of immersion. No matter what they do at that point, its gone... I've lost interest in the game. As in Age of Conan...

Originally posted by delateur

For those that prefer a unified world where people are running into each other all the time, I have to wonder why, exactly... The people who end up having the "best" time are those who basically play like other people aren't even there... Instancing happens on MY time, and that's why I enjoy it. I'm not messing up someone else's agenda, and they aren't messing up mine... Also, one thing I REALLY enjoy is that in instanced games, I can opt to solo any time and make good progress... I'd rather be able to remove the human element entirely at my discretion via instancing than be locked into a world where I'm at the mercy of the young, the socially-maladjusted, and the cruel.

 

Tell me something: WHY ARE YOU PLAYING MMO GAMES ??????????????????????

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Originally posted by alecbr
Tell me something: WHY ARE YOU PLAYING MMO GAMES ??????????????????????

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Tell me something: Why are you screaming at me for articulately explaining what I dislike about MMOs? I don't think it would take you or anyone else of average intelligence any great amount of time to figure out there are far more things offered by MMOs than the things I dislike. I think I'd focus more on why you feel it's appropriate to scream at people who don't share your ideas than for me to explain what I enjoy about the MMOs I play.

Originally posted by delateur

Tell me something: Why are you screaming at me for articulately explaining what I dislike about MMOs? I don't think it would take you or anyone else of average intelligence any great amount of time to figure out there are far more things offered by MMOs than the things I dislike. I think I'd focus more on why you feel it's appropriate to scream at people who don't share your ideas than for me to explain what I enjoy about the MMOs I play.

Let me explain it this way. I love Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. But what I dislike about the game is that it is a war game and a FPS. I don't think it would take anyone of average intelligence any great amount of time to figure out there are far more things offered by COD 4 than the things I dislike. So Infinity Ward please let COD 5 be not a war game and not a FPS but put some elves, magic and sword fighting into the game.

And sorry about screaming, I apologize :)

Originally posted by alecbr

Originally posted by delateur

For those that prefer a unified world where people are running into each other all the time, I have to wonder why, exactly... The people who end up having the "best" time are those who basically play like other people aren't even there... Instancing happens on MY time, and that's why I enjoy it. I'm not messing up someone else's agenda, and they aren't messing up mine... Also, one thing I REALLY enjoy is that in instanced games, I can opt to solo any time and make good progress... I'd rather be able to remove the human element entirely at my discretion via instancing than be locked into a world where I'm at the mercy of the young, the socially-maladjusted, and the cruel.

 

Tell me something: WHY ARE YOU PLAYING MMO GAMES ??????????????????????

 

You do know that its traditional to mix /'s in with that many ?'s?

Perhaps, as several have said, there are *aspects* of MMO's(of what ever definition) that don't exist in single player games?  People do add to games. But they also tend to bring negative elements to them as well.  In the old days one had to simply deal with that. Games as well as their audiences have moved on since then.  I personally would not wish to return to that past.

Originally posted by dhayes68

Funcom solved the problem in an interesting way: They made the game fail so that there weren't enough players around to trigger the instancing.  I understand due to the low populations, its not much of an issue anymore.

Haha.  That made my day. 

Good article Massey.  When used correctly, I think we'd all look forward to some of the epic story-lines and "power" instancing could place into the hands of the individual or small group of adventurers.  Developers just need to realize when they should use it.  IMO, it's used best if no one ever even notices it because it flows so well.  

One thing that Blizzard did with Classic WoW was put in pre-instance areas. Like deadmines. It added to the immersion of the area and gave an introduction to what the actual deadmines instance was.  You could pickup groups there to do the quests and actual instance or run just around the pre-instance.

Instances are here to stay now because the MMO game, now has a huge following (compartiavly speaking from back in the M59/UO/NWN days)

Those "old" games we remember fondly, EQ / UO / ETC, had small populations, hence REPUTATION actually mattered. Sure there was kill stealing and queue jumping etc. All of these things had repucussions, your name was known for doing such, as was your guilds. 

It was also pretty unheard of to get a name change or server transfer. So your rep stuck with you. Heck I had to jump through hoops (including an in-game chat with a GM) to get a transfer in EQ. These days you can just pay a few bucks and bam transfer to a new server. Reputation just does not seem to matter as much in the "modorn" age of MMO's.

Do I miss the old yells of "camp check"? Sure on some days .. but seeing the way that gaming is going (more mainstream and more-so with alot of games aiming at the consol market) I am glad for instances and not having to deal with certian personality types.

To me, as an "older" gamer, it seems manner's are lacking in alot of the newer players. I dont blame them really, I blame the way games have evolved to make reputations worthless. Most people will point to WoW and say that this is the root of poor game-play. WoW being "main-stream" and focusing heavy on instances and worst still the easy ability to name change / server transfer is a factor for sure, its a trend with society as a whole though and MMO's are just reflecting that. We could get into a debate about how society is falling .. but thats not a topic for MMO forums really :p

Bottom line, Instancing is here to stay. People are, a general rule, are not very nice. The anonimity of the internet brings out the worst in people as there are no repucussions for thier actions and modorn gaming just relects that. Rather than try to change people, the industry just trys to limit how much people can irritate each other. Smart move if you want to keep making money.

Originally posted by demarc01

People are, a general rule, not very nice.

That said, all of your arguments are silly and invalid, because most of you are probably not very nice, and your opinions are therefore hard to gauge on a level of how much you actually care, or how much you're trying to troll the forums.

Instancing is just a technique, a way of doing something, you could have an "instance" in a dungeon where the 'name variable' changes on some monster to reflect a choice you made in a quest chain four levels ago, some guy you betrayed to the council (the other option being to tell them you did something bad yourself), who has now joined the rebels that you are killing right now in a dungeon. See? Bam! Storyline, choices, actions being reflected in future gameplay!

The "instancing" would allow this player, or this group of players (multiple enemy NPC characters?) to reflect on their previous gaming experience and go "yeah right, so he joined up with these rebels, huh?" or something along those lines, without affecting other players or their particular "enemy NPC" names.

There are little things you can do with instancing, not just lock out a group into a zone, but customise it to suit their game or story, not that we've really seen any of it yet, but I imagine that's the sort of thing we may be seeing in SWTOR.

Blah! I just wanted to give a small joke about how people suck, but you guys made me rant! Gah!

Originally posted by tmr819

 

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Originally posted by pencilrick
Instancing sucks.  It takes more from the table than it gives back.  Basically, instances guarantees uninterrupted access to content at a tremendous sacrifice to immersion.
Making a case for instancing is like making a case for permadeath; it just begs "Why?"
And don't get me started on phasing....

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This so totally made me laugh. "Instancing sacrifices immersion." What? Are you kidding?

How immersive is it if another group of players rumbles up and kills that epic villain you have so painstakingly worked your way up to? So, you then have to wait for him to "respawn"? Puh-lease!

Instancing is vital to immersion, in my opinion. More than that, the option to solo content in an instance is crucial to immersion. Ever make your way through some epic dungeon only to have a complete jerk in your party turn the entire experience into a miserable experience for one and all?

I love grouping and persistence; don't get me wrong. But I wish more MMOs would offer SP-RPG instance options for players who like me, actually care about the story. The STORY.

As a general rule I prefer (i) playing solo + AI + instances for story and (ii) playing in a group + instances and/or persistent environments when I just want to goof around and have fun or tackle something I cannot accomplish on my own.

Nothing destroys -- DESTROYS -- immersion and story-telling for me faster than some idiot in my party (or even some idiot just running by in a persistent world) with a "Noobs-R-Us" moron avatar name and a stupid, jerkface attitude to match.

What I'd like to see MMOs offer is "Player Modes". Enter a special instanced area (like, for example, player housing) and select your preferred mode that particular day:

--Mode 1: Persistent world/Dungeons & Instances scaled for player groups of 5
--Mode 2: Persistent world/Dungeons & Instances scaled for a group of 5 players and/or AI/henchmen (as in Guild Wars)
--Mode 3: Persistent world/Dungeons & Instances scaled for 1 player

If LotRO or WoW were set up this way, I would go back to either of those games. This is roughly how DDO is structured. The problem with DDO is that there is no real persistence, which is a bad thing, imo, and also the game is just not that great. But the concept of offering players OPTIONS for completing instanced content -- solo, solo plus AI, or group -- in DDO is really excellent.

Totally agree and this is why I stayed with CoX for so long. I'd love to see them increase the number of instance maps and add some new, non-city,  zones but being able to progress through a mission at my own pace was very far from counter immersive. It also worked just as well with groups.

I suspect it's why  CoX  generally had such a pleasant community, so much less of the jerkish kill stealing anger!

Originally posted by delateur

 

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Originally posted by alecbr
Tell me something: WHY ARE YOU PLAYING MMO GAMES ??????????????????????

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Tell me something: Why are you screaming at me for articulately explaining what I dislike about MMOs? I don't think it would take you or anyone else of average intelligence any great amount of time to figure out there are far more things offered by MMOs than the things I dislike. I think I'd focus more on why you feel it's appropriate to scream at people who don't share your ideas than for me to explain what I enjoy about the MMOs I play.

Careful it's strapping a bomb to itself as you type and seeking out your place of work, in order to kill the largest amount of unbelievers,  who shall burn in hell !

'Hell is other people'  not entirely true just the loony, uncompromising ones.

What a great article!

After seeing the SWTOR private demo on Gamescom, I'd say it's gonna be heavily instanced in order to tell the story they want, ate least for the first levels.

 If Warhammer  had instanced RVR lakes, it would have been a powerhouse.  Now, it's just another 300k entry into a flooded market of near misses.

And by the by, the author sounds like he's describing the SWTOR that I seem to be imagining.

Originally posted by silicnsmiley

 If Warhammer  had instanced RVR lakes, it would have been a powerhouse.  Now, it's just another 300k entry into a flooded market of near misses.

 

And by the by, the author sounds like he's describing the SWTOR that I seem to be imagining.

Warhammer had instanced scenarios. There were instanced RvR lakes. Instead of laying siege to a big fortress you just captured the flag. That is one of the main arguments for an instance right? Fast and easy to get into. If they added a walled fort to an instance there would have been calls for murder. People would have complained that they couldn't get in 5 scenario runs in an hour any more.

So what is the difference in how Warhammer is and what you claim it should have been? What did they not add that you wanted to see? Personally I quit it because the instancing took people out of the open world RvR.

Originally posted by Coldsteel6d

Originally posted by silicnsmiley

 If Warhammer  had instanced RVR lakes, it would have been a powerhouse.  Now, it's just another 300k entry into a flooded market of near misses.

 

And by the by, the author sounds like he's describing the SWTOR that I seem to be imagining.

 

Warhammer had instanced scenarios. There were instanced RvR lakes. Instead of laying siege to a big fortress you just captured the flag. That is one of the main arguments for an instance right? Fast and easy to get into. If they added a walled fort to an instance there would have been calls for murder. People would have complained that they couldn't get in 5 scenario runs in an hour any more.

 

So what is the difference in how Warhammer is and what you claim it should have been? What did they not add that you wanted to see? Personally I quit it because the instancing took people out of the open world RvR.

No.  There's a flaw in the logic of you open world, instance haters.  Instanced PVP does not take people out of open world PVP.

Crappy open world PVP keeps people from participating in open world PVP.

Instanced lakes means that when you run into a lake from the "open world" you are loaded into a player population load balanced instance.  Instead, we got a RVR that was determined only by which faction had more players.

When I started WAR at launch I was on a low population (but balanced server).  My small to medium sized guild made a living taking keeps with 6-10 players until the Destro faction responded.  Then we could hold a keep for hours against a slightly larger force.  Other players from both faction would trickle in until either we lost the keep or the attackers got frustrated and left.  

It was epic.

After the server merge and our guild reaching T4, no such luck.  We couldn't even make it through a single keep lord before the zerg arrrived.  Then, suddenly outnumber 3 or 4 to 1 we would get wiped in less than a minute.  

EVERY TIME.

If the lakes were player population load balanced I'd still be playing.  In two faction, static server, open world RVR, I suggest that it is theoretically impossible for the developer to guarentee a fair gaming environment because of server to server population imbalances.

Would you play checkers against somebody that only allowed you half your pieces?  Chess if you only got the king side pieces?  Maybe you would enjoy the challenge, but there's a reason that those game have survived and we both left WAR.

Originally posted by silicnsmiley

Originally posted by Coldsteel6d

Originally posted by silicnsmiley

 If Warhammer  had instanced RVR lakes, it would have been a powerhouse.  Now, it's just another 300k entry into a flooded market of near misses.

 

And by the by, the author sounds like he's describing the SWTOR that I seem to be imagining.

 

Warhammer had instanced scenarios. There were instanced RvR lakes. Instead of laying siege to a big fortress you just captured the flag. That is one of the main arguments for an instance right? Fast and easy to get into. If they added a walled fort to an instance there would have been calls for murder. People would have complained that they couldn't get in 5 scenario runs in an hour any more.

 

So what is the difference in how Warhammer is and what you claim it should have been? What did they not add that you wanted to see? Personally I quit it because the instancing took people out of the open world RvR.

 

No.  There's a flaw in the logic of you open world, instance haters.  Instanced PVP does not take people out of open world PVP.

Crappy open world PVP keeps people from participating in open world PVP.

 

Instanced lakes means that when you run into a lake from the "open world" you are loaded into a player population load balanced instance.  Instead, we got a RVR that was determined only by which faction had more players.

When I started WAR at launch I was on a low population (but balanced server).  My small to medium sized guild made a living taking keeps with 6-10 players until the Destro faction responded.  Then we could hold a keep for hours against a slightly larger force.  Other players from both faction would trickle in until either we lost the keep or the attackers got frustrated and left.  

It was epic.

After the server merge and our guild reaching T4, no such luck.  We couldn't even make it through a single keep lord before the zerg arrrived.  Then, suddenly outnumber 3 or 4 to 1 we would get wiped in less than a minute.  

EVERY TIME.

If the lakes were player population load balanced I'd still be playing.  In two faction, static server, open world RVR, I suggest that it is theoretically impossible for the developer to guarentee a fair gaming environment because of server to server population imbalances.

Would you play checkers against somebody that only allowed you half your pieces?  Chess if you only got the king side pieces?  Maybe you would enjoy the challenge, but there's a reason that those game have survived and we both left WAR.

 

Sounds like the other side was just better organized and prepared. They got the most, the fastest, to the best place. Sometimes things are not balanced, Sometimes things are not fair. At 4 to 1 odds yea you are probably just screwed when you are not defending but you know what? If there were no instanced scenarios available to players then you might have made up alot of that disparity. At any given time in WAR 75-90% of RvR action is scenario based in my opinion. No one comes out unless there is a major event going on. Dump instances and you can have multiple keep raids going on end that will cut back the advantage of the side with more people. They cant be everywhere at once and they wont be divided evenly.

If numbers were all that mattered in anything then during the cold war the Soviets and China would have rolled us up inside of 5 years. There is something to be said for skill and thoughtfulness. Don't use we were outnumbered as an excuse. Plenty of time in DAOC I was on an under pop server fighting against overwhelming odds and had fun and was successful. Not always and not even most of the time. But we were never automatically out of the fight because of numerical inferiority.

And as far as the Chess analogy, I do play that way. Its a much better way to improve yourself then by playing fair, why? Cuss life ain't always fair. Best way to train for it is to handicap yourself. It's makes a win 100 times more satisfying then just winning a standard game. Try it sometime. If ya keep losing you can always quit....

Originally posted by Coldsteel6d

 

Sounds like the other side was just better organized and prepared. They got the most, the fastest, to the best place. Sometimes things are not balanced, Sometimes things are not fair. At 4 to 1 odds yea you are probably just screwed when you are not defending but you know what? If there were no instanced scenarios available to players then you might have made up alot of that disparity. At any given time in WAR 75-90% of RvR action is scenario based in my opinion. No one comes out unless there is a major event going on. Dump instances and you can have multiple keep raids going on end that will cut back the advantage of the side with more people. They cant be everywhere at once and they wont be divided evenly.

 

If numbers were all that mattered in anything then during the cold war the Soviets and China would have rolled us up inside of 5 years. There is something to be said for skill and thoughtfulness. Don't use we were outnumbered as an excuse. Plenty of time in DAOC I was on an under pop server fighting against overwhelming odds and had fun and was successful. Not always and not even most of the time. But we were never automatically out of the fight because of numerical inferiority.

 

And as far as the Chess analogy, I do play that way. Its a much better way to improve yourself then by playing fair, why? Cuss life ain't always fair. Best way to train for it is to handicap yourself. It's makes a win 100 times more satisfying then just winning a standard game. Try it sometime. If ya keep losing you can always quit....

/sarcasm

Your comparison of a game with rules to the real world is apt.

/endsarcasm

Games are not life.  Games are games.  People like games that are fair.

Wish in one hand and poop in the other.  Instancing is here to stay.  

People like instanced PVP because it is balanced within the game mechanics.  The past is gone.  There is no going back.  You will not get what you want except in a niche market game full of elitist gankers like yourself.

I said very plainly that I enjoyed hours and hours of epic battles against slightly larger foe using strategy and defensive positions in WAR.  When it comes to numbers of 24 vs 96 or 100 v 300, the higher number teams advantage increase exponentially in a zerg fest.

Let me give you a concrete example.  If my team has 20 players and the other team has 80 players, even if we kill them 2 to 1, once our 20 players die and run back from the GY, we have killed only 40 players on the other team.  They still have 40 players there who have yet to go down.  

DAOC was a three faction game.  Your argument does not apply to a two faction system like WAR. 

The "orginization" argument is weak attempt at a personal attack that illustrates your complete lack of comprehension of reality.  The imbalance was in WAR was evident and well documented. You had but to connect to the login server to see MEDIUM vs HIGH or FULL population to know who was going to hold the keeps.  And it did not simply break down to my personal experience or my groups lack of organization.  The underpopulated side NEVER held and significant number of real world RVR objectives.  The underpopulated side NEVER advanced through the endgame PVP raid encounters.  Not just on my server, but on every server.  It wasn't only Order getting crushed by Destro on every server.  There were servers where Order had the higher population as well.  They had daily raids on Destro's main fortress.  Destro never made it to the fortress on those servers, as Order never made it to Destro fortress on my server.

Save your lack of logic and personal attacks from somebody who cares about your opinion.  You sir are an MMO dinosaur.  Instanced everything is the way of the future.