Mayceus said:I again, don't agree with people saying Instances don't provide social aspects, that is just wrong.
Instanced dungeons do not create or foster anti-social aspects on their own; however, the anti-social aspects are fostered/created by the mechanics of the game. (No downtime / instant travel / no need to talk / teleporting group finders / super solo friendly / etc).
The most guilty of these is the group finders that teleport you to the dungeon. For most people once an instanced dungeon is completed (that was formed by a teleporting group finder) they say "GG" and go their seperate ways. There where a few people that would get put on a friends list or may even communicate with later. And the devs answer to this was group finders across multiple servers! (Joking on the reason for this, for those that could not tell). Now try to meet up with that person you liked to play with when they are on a seperate server...
i'd like 5 or 6 groups running around in a constricted area killing a limited number of mobs and killing each other >=D then i can sit down in the local tavern telling tall tales of gaingruel the undertaker, keeper of the dead, ruler of the grave site seven. "he didn't know what was coming. fairthale and his party thought they could kill us? he never played fair with saveil. amazing how long grudges can go for. yes yes. i let slip a little word. when fairthale and his party were about to slay us... you should have so the look on his face when saveil's dagger went through his chest. we of course had a friendly duel for the undertaker. he gaingruel was just a trophy, the real prize was the fight look on fairthale's face HAHAHHAhha...."
-imagined adventures of yours truly
((When it comes to contested content, I think that many people (though of course, not all) would prefer that the challenge come from the content itself, not from other players.
When it comes to open world design, I think that same general group of people like the concept of open world design because it feels less limiting and scripted, with more opportunities for exploration and discovery.))
I couldn't have put it any better - maybe not as well.
Syrif no there are *not* a lot of games out there like Pantheon is going to be. And if you toss in three or four instances so that all players can enjoy that small piece of the content without griefing and pseudo-pvp there *still* will not be a lot of games out there like Pantheon. None, in fact.
A handful of instances at most where the developers can give us encounters precisely tailored to the size and level of the group going in and where it truly is player versus environment not player versus other players does not make Pantheon into WoW.
Why does every suggestion for some small variation from EQ in the name of avoiding some of the well known abuses that we have all seen in so-called modern MMOs produce the reply "go play WoW if that is what you want" or "many other games have that"? No we do *not* want to play WoW or we *would* be playing it now.
No we do not want the crap that is out there now - but neither do we think that EQ or Vanguard were so perfect that they cannot be improved. Awfully darn sad if the developers can NOT do a lot better than what was done many years ago.
Yes I know what the developers have said about instances. But that won't stop me from presenting reasons why they may be not quite 100% correct on this issue. Maybe they will listen. Maybe the horse will learn to sing though I think most likely the answer to that hope will be "neigh".
Mayceus said:
No, Instances are better for the community, the safety of parties since it limits respawns as they don't make sense anyway, you can make content more complex since fights don't have limitations in regards to being able to utilize more space since they have an instance to play in, you can tell a story far better with quests and just.. actual story elements and add far more interesting traps and such? I'm saying.. make these massive sprawling multi wing huge dungeons.. instanced, it will produce less lag and just a better service.
You make a bunch of sweeping statements, logical fallacies and pass them off as fact. Do a search as this topic has been posted on probaby dozens of times with many extremely intelligent well thought out rebuttals to your opinion.
Regardless, this is not going to be an instanced game. They have stated this many times. In the last stream Joppa talked about how they were running through content just to show it off, but in reality gameplay would be clearing to a room and then pulling mobs to the group camp style. I get that this is a message board and people just want to talk sometimes, but this is one dead horse.
@Dorotea Precisely why instances should be left in WoW. They aren't needed here at all. Not one, not three, not four. But seriously, if someone wants instances then WoW is the closest thing available. It's just how it is. I imagine there are other games out there that are instanced-out too. Don't really care about them. This is going to be an open world game. I have played games in the past that are open world, meaning ZERO instances. They were just fine being open world (not 1/2 open, not three quarters open, but open world as in the real thing). An open world mmorpg seems to be missing. We need more options in the mmo market. Pantheon will be an alternative that brings that.
Syrif - I agree instances are overused today and we need a lot more open world. While I respect your opinion we differ on whether Pantheon needs 100% open world to be a big improvement over what is out there or whether 99% would suffice (all landscape open world and the great majority of dungeons). You may be right - certainly VR seems to agree with you so far. And while you don't mention it the "nose under the camel's tent" argument supports your view. If it is a lot easier to make an instanced encounter work the way VR wants it to work who is to say that three instances won't become 10 within a few years. It is often said that instances breed like rabbits (actually it isn't said but I couldn't resist closing with something hare raising).
Syrif said:@Dorotea Precisely why instances should be left in WoW. They aren't needed here at all. Not one, not three, not four. But seriously, if someone wants instances then WoW is the closest thing available. It's just how it is. I imagine there are other games out there that are instanced-out too. Don't really care about them. This is going to be an open world game. I have played games in the past that are open world, meaning ZERO instances. They were just fine being open world (not 1/2 open, not three quarters open, but open world as in the real thing). An open world mmorpg seems to be missing. We need more options in the mmo market. Pantheon will be an alternative that brings that.
It's not "just how it is". There are plenty of mixed worlds.
Open like "the real thing"? Lol. There are so many places in the real world that are 'instanced', ie. only a certain number of people are allowed and so many places where contention is not allowed for very good and healthy reasons.
Whilst I want Pantheon to be largely 'open', instances are not the evil some people insist they are.
Being over-used and badly used in some games doesn't mean the opposite: open world and as much contention as possible, is a good thing.
@Dorotea Even though I can see where you are coming from, I strongly disagree. 100% open world mmorpg doesn't exist at the moment. Pantheon will be best suited as being the alternative to the current mmorpg market & filling that empty space. People who played Brad M's games (including VR devs) long for a game that is different from what dominates the watered-down mmo market. We don't want a partial alternative, we want a strong alternative.
disposalist said:It's not "just how it is". There are plenty of mixed worlds.
Open like "the real thing"? Lol. There are so many places in the real world that are 'instanced', ie. only a certain number of people are allowed and so many places where contention is not allowed for very good and healthy reasons.
I don't understand your 'Lol.' Yes at one time there were 100% open world mmorpg's, as in the REAL THING that I mentioned. I played such games like this including Old EQ (you know, the EQ that existed during Brad M/Verant's golden age of game development). Perhaps this was before a few new people's time? Hell if I know. Mixed worlds already exist in other games at the moment - no thx. Imo there is nothing good or healthy about instances in an mmorpg. Why else would myself and so many others return to Pantheon. Anyway, I'm not surprised that Visionary Realms is not big on instancing, as neither am I. Will be nice to have an open world mmorpg again. Too bad most people interested in returning to Pantheon aren't active on forums, but oh well. That's just how it is ;) Cheers. #communitymatters
My understanding is that it wont be an issue because there will be no "camps" per se. In otherwords the item of loot or named will not always spawn in the same area, but will randomly spawn in a larger area. So no instances needed, you go to the place to experience the place and not the fixed point spawn timer, ergo, no need for instances. I am not sure how instances will be used if they plan to go that route.
So you can PvP all you want, but it wont make anything better from a camping-the-spawn perspective. Unless you like that mechanic. I understand the predictability, but not the painfully long camps. I prefer almost a Carlos Castaneda view on finding peyote, if it comes to you in your path, then it is to be taken. This is where I see the Devs coming in, they could influence said path behind the scenes- and play Us!. So while we play the GAME, the devs instead play THEIR game. Maybe its a forever monster mission where they can take over random monsters (A la the shameful secret behind the EQ next gameplay demos) or maybe play normal as an incognito "regular" character, or maybe watching an area and changing NPC interaction, NPC behavior on the fly, throwing in a item on the loot table not normally there or even perception doohickeys.
stellarmind said:bdo is open world XD combat is top tier, but all the cash shop stuff is O.o and it's mostly pvp and the pve is making money >.> like irl...
Ew. That sounds pretty terrible lol. I don't think I'm referring to that mode of gameplay. I mean didn't like Pantheon just like win like most anticipated mmorpg of the year or like something :p
from a dev point of view of doing open world stuff, there is alot one can learn from another open world game. they have talked about 'shards' which i'd assume is like channel hopping. say you are at a grind spot and someone is trolling you, you can swap channels if you don't want to deal with it and still want to do your thing.
so if i was a pantheon dev i would do something like this:
terminus channel 1, 2, 3, pvp. everforest channel 1, 2, 3, pvp. pvp channels would have lets just say 5% increase drop rate(bdo has a 50% drop just because items and loot work differently)
in bdo you can still pvp on normal channels, and there is a karma system (if you go negative enough you basically can't go into towns)
we'll have to see how the server is setup though
it does look like they are going to go the traditional route where characters are server locked though >.>
if you are on terminus server then you can only hop channels 1, 2, 3 pvp and can't jump to any everforest servers.
Characters should be server locked. Reputation should matter.
Sharding I am not sure if I want are not however. I would say I don't want it, but that depends on how many bottlenecks they design in the game. If they don't have any horrible bottlenecks in term of progression and gear, than sharding is pointless.
Watemper said:Characters should be server locked. Reputation should matter.
Sharding I am not sure if I want are not however. I would say I don't want it, but that depends on how many bottlenecks they design in the game. If they don't have any horrible bottlenecks in term of progression and gear, than sharding is pointless.
i've been jumping between the post with FD griefing so i've been contaminated XD.
@Watemper Yes characters should be server-locked where reputation matters. #communitymatters
@Stellarmind Yea, I never heard of the Korean bpo. I think it's true that open world is very largely absent. An mmo is either mixed or open world. Open world (meaning not mixed with instances) will serve Pantheon quite well.
yea bdo is very much open world and i really enjoy it. i just don't like the cash shop stuff and how pve is handled >.> much like being out in the wilderness instead of a theme park. as long as i can take matters into my own hands, like in the wild, and not have to go through some lengthy bureaucratic processed paperwork then im fine. it's very interesting to see ppl talk about the open world mmos vs instanced mmos.
Mayceus said:So, this is going to be a bit open ended. I welcome all forms of response in regards to this, albeit I'd like to keep the general. "Hurhur git gud/go to a different game derkaderka" types. I've talked to a few people, there is obviously threads out there and whatnot. However, I really have never heard anyone actually say something of value that says Open World dungeons are superior to Instance. Now, before people flame the comment, don't just scream "Oh NOOO WoW FAN" people have forgotten that old school instances were very good. Don't say they didn't involve a social aspect, they did. You had to shout for a party, and go there and enter and work together using CC and proper tactics and killing targets in order while talking to people.
They were social and fair with some difficulty, and we've seen bad instances that require no skill and fights that last seconds. GW2 for instance has horrible instances, there is many cases.. however Instance is superior for both quality of game and order of game. In an Open World, people have to compete for content for no other reason than.. you want that? Camping, people assume others will go in order? What happens if people say just ignore the order of the parties arrival and do what they want.. then you.. train on them?
No, Instances are better for the community, the safety of parties since it limits respawns as they don't make sense anyway, you can make content more complex since fights don't have limitations in regards to being able to utilize more space since they have an instance to play in, you can tell a story far better with quests and just.. actual story elements and add far more interesting traps and such? I'm saying.. make these massive sprawling multi wing huge dungeons.. instanced, it will produce less lag and just a better service.
I'd just love to hear why Open World is better, I have never seen it.. and I've played.. a LOT of games and have a friend who has played EQ and lived through the camping/chaining wars. I've personally experienced the.. failures of FFXI camping/dungeoning systems as well.
Hoping for proper and excellent defenses and counters to this!
PS: DWARF POWER.
This isn't really up for debate with Pantheon. It's essentially a dead end topic since they are not going the instancing route. But I'm willing to talk about instancing in general in MMOs. Talking about how great instancing is really confuses me, since I've experienced the heavily instanced games of WoW, GuildWars, etc. Your group/raid is completely isolated in the dungeon...there is ZERO community interaction. There is zero competition over the content and the only scarcity of items that can be created is to ramp up the difficulty to insane levels, or have the drop rates be like lotto tickets one in a million. Nobody can help another group when inside an instance and nobody can hinder either. Your idea of game design belongs in free to play lobby games not MMORPGs. It's not massively multiplayer when everybody is trapped in their own little bubble.
Mayceus said:So, this is going to be a bit open ended. I welcome all forms of response in regards to this, albeit I'd like to keep the general. "Hurhur git gud/go to a different game derkaderka" types. I've talked to a few people, there is obviously threads out there and whatnot. However, I really have never heard anyone actually say something of value that says Open World dungeons are superior to Instance. Now, before people flame the comment, don't just scream "Oh NOOO WoW FAN" people have forgotten that old school instances were very good. Don't say they didn't involve a social aspect, they did. You had to shout for a party, and go there and enter and work together using CC and proper tactics and killing targets in order while talking to people.
They were social and fair with some difficulty, and we've seen bad instances that require no skill and fights that last seconds. GW2 for instance has horrible instances, there is many cases.. however Instance is superior for both quality of game and order of game. In an Open World, people have to compete for content for no other reason than.. you want that? Camping, people assume others will go in order? What happens if people say just ignore the order of the parties arrival and do what they want.. then you.. train on them?
No, Instances are better for the community, the safety of parties since it limits respawns as they don't make sense anyway, you can make content more complex since fights don't have limitations in regards to being able to utilize more space since they have an instance to play in, you can tell a story far better with quests and just.. actual story elements and add far more interesting traps and such? I'm saying.. make these massive sprawling multi wing huge dungeons.. instanced, it will produce less lag and just a better service.
I'd just love to hear why Open World is better, I have never seen it.. and I've played.. a LOT of games and have a friend who has played EQ and lived through the camping/chaining wars. I've personally experienced the.. failures of FFXI camping/dungeoning systems as well.
Hoping for proper and excellent defenses and counters to this!
PS: DWARF POWER.
I think raid zones should be instanced and on a 1 week timer but all reg zones should be persistant. I absolutely hate multiple copies of the same zone on the same server as it really takes away the community feeling
This isn't really up for debate with Pantheon. It's essentially a dead end topic since they are not going the instancing route. But I'm willing to talk about instancing in general in MMOs. Talking about how great instancing is really confuses me, since I've experienced the heavily instanced games of WoW, GuildWars, etc. Your group/raid is completely isolated in the dungeon...there is ZERO community interaction. There is zero competition over the content and the only scarcity of items that can be created is to ramp up the difficulty to insane levels, or have the drop rates be like lotto tickets one in a million. Nobody can help another group when inside an instance and nobody can hinder either. Your idea of game design belongs in free to play lobby games not MMORPGs. It's not massively multiplayer when everybody is trapped in their own little bubble.
Well said
Evade said:Mayceus said:So, this is going to be a bit open ended. I welcome all forms of response in regards to this, albeit I'd like to keep the general. "Hurhur git gud/go to a different game derkaderka" types. I've talked to a few people, there is obviously threads out there and whatnot. However, I really have never heard anyone actually say something of value that says Open World dungeons are superior to Instance. Now, before people flame the comment, don't just scream "Oh NOOO WoW FAN" people have forgotten that old school instances were very good. Don't say they didn't involve a social aspect, they did. You had to shout for a party, and go there and enter and work together using CC and proper tactics and killing targets in order while talking to people.
They were social and fair with some difficulty, and we've seen bad instances that require no skill and fights that last seconds. GW2 for instance has horrible instances, there is many cases.. however Instance is superior for both quality of game and order of game. In an Open World, people have to compete for content for no other reason than.. you want that? Camping, people assume others will go in order? What happens if people say just ignore the order of the parties arrival and do what they want.. then you.. train on them?
No, Instances are better for the community, the safety of parties since it limits respawns as they don't make sense anyway, you can make content more complex since fights don't have limitations in regards to being able to utilize more space since they have an instance to play in, you can tell a story far better with quests and just.. actual story elements and add far more interesting traps and such? I'm saying.. make these massive sprawling multi wing huge dungeons.. instanced, it will produce less lag and just a better service.
I'd just love to hear why Open World is better, I have never seen it.. and I've played.. a LOT of games and have a friend who has played EQ and lived through the camping/chaining wars. I've personally experienced the.. failures of FFXI camping/dungeoning systems as well.
Hoping for proper and excellent defenses and counters to this!
PS: DWARF POWER.
I think raid zones should be instanced and on a 1 week timer but all reg zones should be persistant. I absolutely hate multiple copies of the same zone on the same server as it really takes away the community feeling
Raid content comes with its own unique design challenges. Having non instanced raid content is certainly going to be a massive challenge for the dev team (and for the community if it's done poorly!). When two raid forces are competing for the same boss on a PvE server that is a screwed up situation in my opinion. On PvP servers its an amazingly fun time since it means a massive battle over the boss or needing to keep scouts to stop pests from ruining the raid. But on a PvE server how can the two raid forces compete? They both attack the boss each trying to out DPS each other or trying to train each others raid (PvE no way to stop the train runner). Maybe the two raid leaders could have a /roll off for who gets to do it? LOL! In reality on more civilized servers in EQ the raid guilds would come together, arrange a schedule, and work it out that way. The downside was only the top few guilds had a monopoly on the content. I've seen mention of the raid content in Pantheon being done similar to Vanguard:SOH which in my view is almost identical to instancing. Sure technically the raid is not inside of an instance...but as a locked encounter nobody can interfere so it may as well be inside an instance as far as I am concerned. When you lock encounter sizes (for example 24 players on a boss) that means no competing over raid bosses on PvE servers period other than first come, first serve. I've read arguments about preserving the difficulty of the content, preventing zerging, preventing griefing, but at the end of the day the locked encounter system is not an open world system. The players are enclosed in a bubble when raiding a boss.
Raid content being what it is (extreme time/effort to organize and execute) means people aren't gonna be happy at all when they scheduled a set time to raid and some other guild out damages them on the boss and takes the kill. Will raid bosses in Pantheon be summoned by special quest items? Will there be rapid respawns of said raid bosses after another raid group kills it and gets locked out for 1 week? What is the point of having non instanced raid zones when players cannot intervene for better or worse? Is it so that non raiders can farm the trash mobs in the zone or so that other raid guilds can farm the trash mobs, or is it more or less a siutation of wait your turn guild A is killing the boss now and it will respawn in 10 minutes? If VR tells me it's gonna be exactly like how Vanguard was then I don't need to ask these questions, otherwise my questions stand.
I would say the open world keeps the integrity of the game. The world is supposed to be tough, supposed to be real, the human element being the most unpredictable and exciting. Open world adds more of a challenge i think at the end of the day, also the fact that you can enter a zone solo and possibly find others that need you. Or someone else can enter the zone and join your group when somone leaves. Instances just make it feel not realistic, life is full of competition and thats what makes it worth it.
too many people seem too concerned with not being able to get some epic loot or kill an epic raid boss, but fact is, those willing to poopsock and put in that much effort to be the top of the food chain have put in the work to do so.
