Originally posted by Icewhite

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.

Because RPG wasn't the unique part of the genre, the MM was. Taking out the MM but still calling it an MMORPG is just wrong.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

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.

Because they were finally letting people buy their game?

Originally posted by Flex1

If used perfectly instances can aid a mmo more than hurt it.

 

I think Guild Wars 2 does it the way I would say perfectly fits the nature of instances. If you want story elements in your mmo add them.

Darkfall does NOT want to do PV P the way GW2 or any other themepark does it.  

Originally posted by kartool

Originally posted by DavisFlight

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.

Because they were finally letting people buy their game?

The only time people couldn't buy the game whenever they wanted was the first week of launch. Know why? Because if all 300k people bought the game and tried to pile into a server that had a max capacity of 30k players, NOBODY would get to play, and they'd all have payed for it.

Sounds like AV did the smart thing.

Originally posted by kartool

Because they were finally letting people buy their game?

So what your saying is even though they didn't have the capacity or the personnel to handle the giant influx of players they should have taken people's money anyways?

You people are absurd if you don't like the idea of a huge open world with ffa pvp then gtfo.  The games not gonna change to cater to "your" taste.  Darkfall is a hardcore pvp niche game, it always has been and hopefully always will be.  The be all end all for aventurine is not MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY, like it is for other devs the goal of AV and the original df developers (the guys in charge of Aventurine) is simply to make the game they would want to play, they have said this over and over yet you people keep arguing for "greed" and a destroyed game concept.

P.S.  Don't expect a "flawless" launch this time around either.  AV is still very small compared to any of these other so call AAA trash companies.  After the first week or two when the servers stabilize a bit DF UW will be the best and only game around for the ffa pvp niche crowd.  If you can't handle the servers crashing and de-syncing amidst who know's what other problems arise then DON"T PLAY AT LAUNCH.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

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.

 I'm not sure that I am the one that needs to see the reality of AV.

AV released Darkfall , had to shut the store down because of the interest.  That interest still pales in contrast to the cusomers that bite into each AAA Mmo launched. Awhile later they launched the NA server, which again had an influx. So instead of opening up 10 new servers a week after launch due to interest, AV only opened up the one. Since then the game has progressively gone down hill in subs, to the point that EU is a ghost town and NA wasn't much better. They launched, they expanded, and then they lost the majority of their customers. Does this sound like the normal fair? Yes it does, the only difference is most AAA mmo's open multiple servers, have 100's of thounsands of players spike the game, then leave. How exactly are you not understanding what should be obvious? By this train of thought AV's actually on course for every other Mmo launch in the last eight years. You are going to argue they haven't shut a server down yet, but they pretty much put both of them on life support for far over a year. There has been NO growth for AV's Darkfall base it's been in a free fall for the last few years. You're pretty much holding the lack of a server closure as your only point of contention here, never mind that those servers numbers have dropped substantially which is the opposite of growth.

  I'm not sure there really is an arguement here, success can be measured by many different metrics : Income, Subscription numbers, and content generation are the normal keystones. You are the first person I've met that measures success based on server closures when the object of the measurement is a niche company with two regional servers. What you should have said was " I think AV is one of the most successful developers in the last eight years because they haven't closed either of their servers" then it just would have been your opinion.

erm...didn't they open NA server just because of lag?

Originally posted by Gdemami

erm...didn't they open NA server just because of lag?

 It's a possibility, but they did open it and subs did spike for it. Heck I talked five or six of my buddies into joining, we all left because of core issues .. but the userbase did spike for awhile. Like every mmo before and every mmo after.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

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 said 15k. Not 10k.  Also, at those populations DF experienced massive slowdowns near large battles and busy towns. Just because the game functioned does not mean it handled it in the best manner. Please try to be reasonable on this topic while also being a fan. The two elements can coexist.

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.

I will try to disregard your attempt at baiting. I work in the industry and have a firm grasp on game design requirements as well as network architecture. In order for a game to have acceptable performance on a wide array of hardware in high population battles there needs to be a way to control the population. If left unfettered it leads to performance slowdowns and potential server crashes. During DF's hayday it suffered this exact situation with large seige battles and there is much evidence in youtube videos as well as many of us veterans who experienced it.

A current game that tries to handle this situation in a mature manner is Planetside 2 which has 3 continents which are instances/servers that handle the problem quite well.

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by kartool

Originally posted by DavisFlight

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.

Because they were finally letting people buy their game?

The only time people couldn't buy the game whenever they wanted was the first week of launch. Know why? Because if all 300k people bought the game and tried to pile into a server that had a max capacity of 30k players, NOBODY would get to play, and they'd all have payed for it.

Sounds like AV did the smart thing.

The smart thing would have been to build a scalable system where they could add capacity quickly if necessary - not turn away customers.

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

Are you serious? If you are in the dungeon with just your party and no one else can enter it then it is most likely intsnaced. There are, or were, numerous seamless worlds, such as Everquest, FFXI, DAOC.

Originally posted by Gdemami

 

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Originally posted by zimike

I really shouldn't have to explain this one since it was already explained. Having to fight over a single mob for a quest is the poor game design talked about. To combat the POOR game design, devs had to create instances.

---

 

If players are fighting over single mob, that is indeed an issue and poor game design.

Yet, fixing the issue is still poor design? I think your logic fails very hard here...

Game design you do not like does not make it a poor design.

MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER GAME. If you want to play with 5 or 6 other people then play Starcraft II or Warcraft III or the dozens of other so called MMOs. Fighting over a single mob does not have to be a bad thing. It could be an end game thing, a mob on a timer, a mob with a random chance to appear from a place holder, a mob that appears when some other conditon has been satified, etc. All of these examples could be implemented in a peristant world. The players do not have to fight over a single mob. They could be cooporating to fight one mob.

Originally posted by Magiknight

Are you serious? If you are in the dungeon with just your party and no one else can enter it then it is most likely intsnaced. There are, or were, numerous seamless worlds, such as Everquest, FFXI, Anarchy Online.

You need to understand that to old schoolers any portal that takes you away from the map was considered an instance.  The term has changed over time to a more restrictive definition of a " personal dungeon ", and many other terms have filled in the gaps.   

i.e. DF:UW dungeons are under the map.

Originally posted by LizardEgypt
Anyone disagreeing with Tasos is lying to themselves. Whether you liked Darkfall or are interested in Darkfall UW, he is right. The games everyone is drooling over are no MMO diablo games. I see arguments that instancing is good on an MMO website. Go play GW2, SWTOR, or any of the other fake teleporting around the map RPGs for the shallow 2 weeks it'll last you and tell me again how much you support instancing. No player interaction, no risk/reward, just boring contrived repeatable gameplay.

This

I love when people say a game is on life support when they have no clue what they are talking about,  if that was the case how would they afford a new game?? Why would someone give them money to make a new game???

Most gamers think they know everything about games because they play them, funny, most people go to school for Game Design and when I listen to them, most do not have a clue and by reading this comments, I can tell they don't....

Instances is good and Bad, its not a cheap fix and not a fix for  a game, some games its needed, look at games like God of WAR, if that was Open world, it would be trash.. You know why??? I bet most don't..

MMo's I perfer Open World, Yes, I dislike instancing Yes, but depends on the game, Asheron call Had portals which is instance. So having them helps with lag issues as well.

Having 11k in one area is not always a good thing, people also complain about lag, well guess if you want High res textures good luck having them in some Open world MMo's , why else is Darkfall have low end textures, and low poly, because the game would be lag heaven.

So people need to understand about Poly count, texture maps etc, knowing what a DEV can use and Not use which if thye do not , can cause issue with performance of  a game.

So instances is not always a Band Aid for a game..... I hate them, and I work with Game Engines, Like Hero, Unreal, UDK, Unity , Cry etc.... So to sit here and say BS like this makes me wanna cry IRL...

PS: Portals, dungeons, etc anything loading , is a instance, no matter old or New school... I have worked on games long enough. I love when people try and argue this...

Lot of armchair developers confusing "facts" with their opinions. Whether one prefers to implement instancing or not, is a design choice, and whether they implemented the "right" feature or not is ultimately nothing but an opinion.

It's not that AV "gets it", and quite frankly I'd argue the opposite considering their history, but that's besides the point. They've made a design choice, and that is to not have any instances. Like it or not, it's an opinion, not an indication that one is inherently superior to the other. If opinions had that much value we'd all be killing each others in the street at the slightest insult.

On a different topic, I wonder if Fun Hulks will be in UW.

Originally posted by MadnessRealm

Lot of armchair developers confusing "facts" with their opinions. Whether one prefers to implement instancing or not, is a design choice, and whether they implemented the "right" feature or not is ultimately nothing but an opinion.

It's not that AV "gets it", and quite frankly I'd argue the opposite considering their history, but that's besides the point. They've made a design choice, and that is to not have any instances. Like it or not, it's an opinion, not an indication that one is inherently superior to the other. If opinions had that much value we'd all be killing each others in the street at the slightest insult.

 

 

On a different topic, I wonder if Fun Hulks will be in UW.

You have such an open mind concering other peoples opinions. What keeps your mind, which is so open, from falling out?

Originally posted by thinktank001

Originally posted by Magiknight

Are you serious? If you are in the dungeon with just your party and no one else can enter it then it is most likely intsnaced. There are, or were, numerous seamless worlds, such as Everquest, FFXI, Anarchy Online.

 

You need to understand that to old schoolers any portal that takes you away from the map was considered an instance.  The term has changed over time to a more restrictive definition of a " personal dungeon ", and many other terms have filled in the gaps.   

 

i.e. DF:UW dungeons are under the map.

 

 So you would say that DF:UW does have instances?

 

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.  

right.  instancing doesn't solve the problem of shoe-horning single player game design into an MMO.

unless you consider eliminating the MMO part, and making them basically not much more than a sp a "solution".