To me instantly teleporting people out of an area and blocking the entereance sounds rather bland and is fairly similar to instancing. It's those articial restrictions that really turned me off of games like EQ2. Ones like SoW dropping in combat and not being able to assist another player unless they consent to it. I'm sure you could come up for some reason this is logical in a fantasy world, but in reality it is just more artificial restrictions to control what people can and can't do.
Honestly the only reason I hated open zones was later on when you had to get keyed for a zone. I remember my guild calling me at like 2 in the morning during the work week and telling me to log on if I wanted to get keyed for the next zone. The mob was up and if you missed being on for it there was no telling when the guild would do that mob again. I played a few hours a night but was never a hardcore gamer. I told them if they EVER called me again I would quit the guild as I didnt live for the game. I knew too many ppl who did. They quit med school etc to play eq full time. Thats when you knew ppl were in too deep but it wasnt my job to tell them that.
Other times was when ppl needed a mob for the epic like the cleric click stick that was EASILY the best epic item in the game. Guilds would line up and just wait for that mob to spawn and you would have to fight to get to him 1st.
I WILL say tho that that again is why eq was such a great game. Once you got to the end game and were maxed WITH your epic weapon, level loss, etc you felt you had really achieved something. EQ was def a love/hate game for most ppl.
Kilsin said:Quintra said:Admittedly I didn't read all 14 billion posts in this thread so I apologize if it's been suggested already, but is there a way for a Kilsin or someone to compile a list of the valid pros and cons people have for instancing, and put that on the front page of this thread? I feel like there is so much to sift through, everyone has differing opinions, but its difficult to step back and take a big picture look when you have this many posts in a thread.
Secondly, just to throw in my 2 cp - I really did like the open world bosses of original EQ, but I also certainly understand the downsides of instancing. What about something in the middle, where the encounter itself is "instanced" so to speak, limited to only the people in the raid to prevent zerging. But once that encounter is started, the entire instance becomes unavailable, and if the raid is successful, it becomes unavailable just as if the world boss had been killed. You could develop some mechanics to prevent someone from just triggering the instance as soon as it opens, such as you need a minimum number of people in your raid to start it, and also it ports you in the middle of a bunch of aggressive mobs, so you need to coordinate to make sure you're ready to go in. If you fail your break in, then another raid has the chance to jump in. That's just one idea I've had
There really is no point, we have already stated that we will avoid instancing as much as possible and go with our open world design as per our vision for Pantheon, we have other systems, mechanics and features that rely on this, so people can discuss their opinion of instancing until the cows come home but it doesn't affect our decision :)
Oh good grief. You said yourself there would be sharding. Throw the garbage semantics out and keep it real.
Krixus said:Kilsin said:Quintra said:Admittedly I didn't read all 14 billion posts in this thread so I apologize if it's been suggested already, but is there a way for a Kilsin or someone to compile a list of the valid pros and cons people have for instancing, and put that on the front page of this thread? I feel like there is so much to sift through, everyone has differing opinions, but its difficult to step back and take a big picture look when you have this many posts in a thread.
Secondly, just to throw in my 2 cp - I really did like the open world bosses of original EQ, but I also certainly understand the downsides of instancing. What about something in the middle, where the encounter itself is "instanced" so to speak, limited to only the people in the raid to prevent zerging. But once that encounter is started, the entire instance becomes unavailable, and if the raid is successful, it becomes unavailable just as if the world boss had been killed. You could develop some mechanics to prevent someone from just triggering the instance as soon as it opens, such as you need a minimum number of people in your raid to start it, and also it ports you in the middle of a bunch of aggressive mobs, so you need to coordinate to make sure you're ready to go in. If you fail your break in, then another raid has the chance to jump in. That's just one idea I've had
There really is no point, we have already stated that we will avoid instancing as much as possible and go with our open world design as per our vision for Pantheon, we have other systems, mechanics and features that rely on this, so people can discuss their opinion of instancing until the cows come home but it doesn't affect our decision :)
Oh good grief. You said yourself there would be sharding. Throw the garbage semantics out and keep it real.
Krixus, the only garbage being thrown around is what you are failing to throw at me in your above comment.
I said sharding - like in VG APW - is a possibility for us down the track if overcrowding or respawn issues arise, I did not ever confirm that there would be sharding in Pantheon. Please don't spread misinformation as it only confuses people and causes unnecessary angst.
To me shards are about the same as instances.
A shard is an instance that is created if alot of players crowd an area.
An instance is created by the player. To play his own version of a dungeon.
To me both are almost as equally bad. A game world shouldn cater to the player. The player should just find other spots to hunt if an area is crowded.
The game shouldn artificially create new hunting grounds if an area is in demand.
That said ..if its just the newbie areas that bear no bigger potential of watering down rare loot drops i do not mind as much.
Still shards or instances will always be suboptimal for my perfect game. Since if a game world caters to players it just takes away alot for me.
i think it's an interessting topic with adventages and disadventages on both sides. personally i like 100% without sharding/instancing.
if we go complelty without instancing/sharding:
- we would need some mechanics to prefent zerging down a mob with 100 people who was designed for 20 people. perhaps scalling? the open world raid bosses in wow get harder the more people are around them (they are still very easy to down....but perhaps pantheon can improove this mechanic)
- we would need more raid targets around the world and a mechanic to prevent that they are camped 100% of the time. I think this could already be archived with quite long traveltimes and a difficult way to the boss (deep in a dungenon for example). so not a handfew guilds can controll all the raid targets. Also unreliable respawntimer so you cant just set the egg-watch for respawn.
Nandor
Ok, so this has just going around in circles folks, we have given examples and definitions of what these things mean to us, specific examples were used that should be crystal clear of what may be in-line with how we could manage overcrowding and population issues in some raid areas and dungeons but after 14 pages, there is nothing more to add other than opinions and confusion to an already confusing topic, so I will go ahead and close it for now.
For clarification, the specific example of sharding was the VG Ancient Port Warehouse example, where there were 6 shards, all were open world copies of the exact same multi-level dungeon, anyone could enter and exit any shard, at any time without restrictions, it was not a locked instance to just one raid or group, it was just 6 mirrored version of the exact same thing, it worked very well to handle overcrowding so multiple guilds could raid at the same time in different shards, sometimes eevn multiple in the same shards depending on which wing/area they were raiding and what bosses they went after as there were a lot.
Thank you for all of the feedback, we will start the discussion up again during testing when we can actually see the results of many people int he same zones and dungeons. :)