Suggestion for the devs related to the difficulty in encounters (raids and dungeons).
This game will have loads of encounter, some will be hard, and some won’t. VR can’t design content only for the Hardcore 1%, making it so hard only a few handful of players get to beat it. They will design most content for the majority of the player base and some content for the top end.
I’m not saying they should make the difficulty faceroll level, so easy any noob can beat it, make it rather a nice challenge that will give the top end hardcore guilds a hard time and the good guilds a really hard time.
And now on to the suggestion part. VR could make some bosses have an hardmode toggle, (killing an add or not killing it, destroying something in the environment, etcetera) that triggers a near impossible to beat fight, that only a small percent of the player base can kill, and rewards some gear exclusive to that hardmode. This way VR doesn’t need to create specific content for the 1%, instead they create content that’s hard for everyone and in some encounters give the option to make it even harder for that extra challenge.
Just a few notes:
- To me, most of the non-hardmode fights should still be really hard.
- Few of the encounters should have the hardmode option.
- The hardmode gear shouldn’t be OP.
This is manly a suggestion for allowing VR to implement really difficult encounters without needing to create a specific zone for the hardcore of the hardcore. I’m still expecting different zones with inherent different difficulty levels.
We will have a nice mix of difficulties and challenges in all of our encounters, we have stated quite often that we will not cater to one side or the other, we want everyone to have something to do, whether you have 1 hour or 10+ hours to spare, you will be able to enjoy some part of Pantheon, dungeons, raids, quests, trash mobs, zones and named mobs will range in level, difficulty and challenge, so you have nothing to worry about.
Just to repeat for clarification in this thread - We will not be instancing content, raids or dungeons and we will not have different levels of difficulty per dungeons, raids, mobs etc. it will be open world with a nice mix to give everyone something to do. :)
Kilsin said:We will have a nice mix of difficulties and challenges in all of our encounters, we have stated quite often that we will not cater to one side or the other, we want everyone to have something to do, whether you have 1 hour or 10+ hours to spare, you will be able to enjoy some part of Pantheon, dungeons, raids, quests, trash mobs, zones and named mobs will range in level, difficulty and challenge, so you have nothing to worry about.
Just to repeat for clarification in this thread - We will not be instancing content, raids or dungeons and we will not have different levels of difficulty per dungeons, raids, mobs etc. it will be open world with a nice mix to give everyone something to do. :)
Oh nice, thanks for the reply kilsin :)
It's cool that content has an inherent difficulty, I preffer it that way.
i just gave this suggestion because making so much different content can be a hard task, and I though this was a good way to compromise.
This is why we are all waiting so long for our game. Because it DOES take time to make plenty of content, and it DOES take time to make a large, immersive world.
So rather than have some "big backer" that's going to start issuing "get it out there now, we want our money" like Sony.... they have chosen the route they've chosen. They are able to give us what WE want only because they don't have their thumbs in corkscrews from some big corporation saying, "screw content, get us our money back and roll that game out NAOW!"
Whenever you feel impatient, remember that getting content and balance is why we are all waiting so very (im)patiently... ;)
Kilsin said:We will have a nice mix of difficulties and challenges in all of our encounters, we have stated quite often that we will not cater to one side or the other, we want everyone to have something to do, whether you have 1 hour or 10+ hours to spare, you will be able to enjoy some part of Pantheon, dungeons, raids, quests, trash mobs, zones and named mobs will range in level, difficulty and challenge, so you have nothing to worry about.
Just to repeat for clarification in this thread - We will not be instancing content, raids or dungeons and we will not have different levels of difficulty per dungeons, raids, mobs etc. it will be open world with a nice mix to give everyone something to do. :)
I have mixed reactions to this.
Not that i hated instancing at all in EQ, just it took away from many of the problems we had in EQ with KSing boss mobs, and stealing loot as a lvl 1. So it also allowed people to get on when they could.
a 14 day spawn of a dragon that only a set few could get too, and the constant guild looting and more or less disbanding, after they got all they could.
It was less an issue when numbers declined, and if you could not beat the next area you where forced to keep doing the same encounter over and over to twink the warriors, clerics etc first.
Then we have the orginal EQ, which is being redone in a way.. I can say honestly i loved knowing a dragon was up, everyone went to see it but we had 100+ in the zone and never could fight it due to the lag - network coding. etc...
Brad remembers how cool it was back then when he programmed it, i just was in awe the whole time.... things didnt get changed right away either with instancing... Kunark was cool, velious was cool. If done right can be just as rewarding as it was back then.
So stoked now, but i still liked instancing with some boss mobs we where forced to rehash so many times due to guild lvling requirements. Wasnt the games fault or guilds fault it was the sheer demand to get into the next content the downtime was very agressive, and memberships required it.
So really what is best suited if we have 1000 players on the server?
Would POP be a possible idea down the road? i was ok with pop, but we lost half the population around that time due to burn out requirements. Flagging was a huge problem for some players and the massive arguements and KSing or the 7 day camps people took to get just 1 chance at a piece was over the top.
But it still was cool...
so ill stay netural of this for the time being, but i still love instancing if done right.
Crazzie said:Kilsin said:We will have a nice mix of difficulties and challenges in all of our encounters, we have stated quite often that we will not cater to one side or the other, we want everyone to have something to do, whether you have 1 hour or 10+ hours to spare, you will be able to enjoy some part of Pantheon, dungeons, raids, quests, trash mobs, zones and named mobs will range in level, difficulty and challenge, so you have nothing to worry about.
Just to repeat for clarification in this thread - We will not be instancing content, raids or dungeons and we will not have different levels of difficulty per dungeons, raids, mobs etc. it will be open world with a nice mix to give everyone something to do. :)
I have mixed reactions to this.
Not that i hated instancing at all in EQ, just it took away from many of the problems we had in EQ with KSing boss mobs, and stealing loot as a lvl 1. So it also allowed people to get on when they could.
a 14 day spawn of a dragon that only a set few could get too, and the constant guild looting and more or less disbanding, after they got all they could.
It was less an issue when numbers declined, and if you could not beat the next area you where forced to keep doing the same encounter over and over to twink the warriors, clerics etc first.
Then we have the orginal EQ, which is being redone in a way.. I can say honestly i loved knowing a dragon was up, everyone went to see it but we had 100+ in the zone and never could fight it due to the lag - network coding. etc...
Brad remembers how cool it was back then when he programmed it, i just was in awe the whole time.... things didnt get changed right away either with instancing... Kunark was cool, velious was cool. If done right can be just as rewarding as it was back then.
So stoked now, but i still liked instancing with some boss mobs we where forced to rehash so many times due to guild lvling requirements. Wasnt the games fault or guilds fault it was the sheer demand to get into the next content the downtime was very agressive, and memberships required it.
So really what is best suited if we have 1000 players on the server?
Would POP be a possible idea down the road? i was ok with pop, but we lost half the population around that time due to burn out requirements. Flagging was a huge problem for some players and the massive arguements and KSing or the 7 day camps people took to get just 1 chance at a piece was over the top.
But it still was cool...
so ill stay netural of this for the time being, but i still love instancing if done right.
No, and again, we have been very clear on this, we will not use instances unless we absolutely have to for quests of something, all of our dungeons and raids will be open world and free from instancing, we may use shards like VG had in APW if we run into spawn or overcrowding issues, other than that we will not use instancing, we have explained why a few times but basically it goes against our game philosophy with player interaction and promoting socialisation.
I am all for socialization Kils. What I am not for, is EQ style guild domination. If it is in fact the case that raids will be EQ style I'd like to know as early as possible so we can build our guild for that. As it will become a job again. Not only for us but for the team having to answer the petitions and such. WTB lock outs with quick respawns!
Enitzu said:I am all for socialization Kils. What I am not for, is EQ style guild domination. If it is in fact the case that raids will be EQ style I'd like to know as early as possible so we can build our guild for that. As it will become a job again. Not only for us but for the team having to answer the petitions and such. WTB lock outs with quick respawns!
This has been answered many times. From the FAQ:
Without instancing, are you concerned about overcrowding and/or too much competition for resources and content?
"Overcrowding and too much competition are indeed problems that have plagued both MMOs with and without instancing. If there are not enough players around, it can be hard to group and socialize. But if there are too many people around, the world feels crowded and people have to wait for encounters or spawns, or even compete for them. Our answer to this issue is twofold: first, primarily during the later phases of beta, we will determine how many people online at one time in our game world feels right -- neither under-crowded nor overcrowded. Second, if and when a server’s/shard’s population grows too large, we will launch a new shard with incentives for players to spread out. And with our harnessing of cloud hosted servers/shards, this is actually something we can do dynamically, easily, and quickly."
Also, rewatch the last live stream. Around the 37:45 mark, Brad directly addresses several ideas to minimize EQ-style guild domination of "endgame" content. This is not EQ.
Bazgrim said:Enitzu said:I am all for socialization Kils. What I am not for, is EQ style guild domination. If it is in fact the case that raids will be EQ style I'd like to know as early as possible so we can build our guild for that. As it will become a job again. Not only for us but for the team having to answer the petitions and such. WTB lock outs with quick respawns!
This has been answered many times. From the FAQ:
Without instancing, are you concerned about overcrowding and/or too much competition for resources and content?
"Overcrowding and too much competition are indeed problems that have plagued both MMOs with and without instancing. If there are not enough players around, it can be hard to group and socialize. But if there are too many people around, the world feels crowded and people have to wait for encounters or spawns, or even compete for them. Our answer to this issue is twofold: first, primarily during the later phases of beta, we will determine how many people online at one time in our game world feels right -- neither under-crowded nor overcrowded. Second, if and when a server’s/shard’s population grows too large, we will launch a new shard with incentives for players to spread out. And with our harnessing of cloud hosted servers/shards, this is actually something we can do dynamically, easily, and quickly."
Also, rewatch the last live stream. Around the 37:45 mark, Brad directly addresses several ideas to minimize EQ-style guild domination of "endgame" content. This is not EQ.
Sorry but the FAQ doesn't alleviate any concerns. If there is in fact the EQ-esque style of raiding, IE competitive world spawns with no lock outs, then neither under crowding nor over crowding would even matter. We could have only 100 people on the server and it can still be completely controlled by 1 guild. I'll rewatch the live stream after work later to see if the answer is hinted to there but I don't recall it. Either way would like to get official responses sooner rather than later as a lot of us have already begun building guilds and this plays a crucial part in how we continue to do so
I generally like the team's approach but I have seen the debates over instancing rage for literally decades. Barring technical obstacles, of course, I feel that the approach "instancing is always wrong" is just as incorrect as the approach "instancing solves most problems".
Gods spare me - and with Pantheon I am confident that they will - from another game where pretty much everything is instanced even open world areas. But please, if, and I repeat if, you see an issue of accessibility or variable difficulty levels that can be solved by having a certain dungeon or encounter instanced, don't rule out that option because the "i word" is anathma.
Enitzu said:Bazgrim said:Enitzu said:I am all for socialization Kils. What I am not for, is EQ style guild domination. If it is in fact the case that raids will be EQ style I'd like to know as early as possible so we can build our guild for that. As it will become a job again. Not only for us but for the team having to answer the petitions and such. WTB lock outs with quick respawns!
This has been answered many times. From the FAQ:
Without instancing, are you concerned about overcrowding and/or too much competition for resources and content?
"Overcrowding and too much competition are indeed problems that have plagued both MMOs with and without instancing. If there are not enough players around, it can be hard to group and socialize. But if there are too many people around, the world feels crowded and people have to wait for encounters or spawns, or even compete for them. Our answer to this issue is twofold: first, primarily during the later phases of beta, we will determine how many people online at one time in our game world feels right -- neither under-crowded nor overcrowded. Second, if and when a server’s/shard’s population grows too large, we will launch a new shard with incentives for players to spread out. And with our harnessing of cloud hosted servers/shards, this is actually something we can do dynamically, easily, and quickly."
Also, rewatch the last live stream. Around the 37:45 mark, Brad directly addresses several ideas to minimize EQ-style guild domination of "endgame" content. This is not EQ.
Sorry but the FAQ doesn't alleviate any concerns. If there is in fact the EQ-esque style of raiding, IE competitive world spawns with no lock outs, then neither under crowding nor over crowding would even matter. We could have only 100 people on the server and it can still be completely controlled by 1 guild. I'll rewatch the live stream after work later to see if the answer is hinted to there but I don't recall it. Either way would like to get official responses sooner rather than later as a lot of us have already begun building guilds and this plays a crucial part in how we continue to do so
I, too have read the FAQ and watched the stream. I understand instancing will not be in the game, and I accept that. The team has stated that they have a plan for stopping that 1 guild from dominating content. Cool, i understand that too. the thing I don't understand is, "HOW". Now, we won't know how until maybe alpha or beta (beta most likely) and I understand that as well. That doesn;t change the fact that people like Enitzu and myself are truely worried about how this will be handled. Until we know how it works and IF it works, I am still a fan of instancing used for raids. I understand that this isn't VR's solution, and I am not calling for them to change anything, but it is still what I would do as its the only real solution I can see. Maybe I am just not as smart as the VR folks, and I hope thats true, but I just can't see any other way out.
So FAQ or not, no matter how many times they tell us they have a solution for the issue. Until I see it myself, I reserve the right to be worried about it still being a problem.
Kilsin said:We will have a nice mix of difficulties and challenges in all of our encounters, we have stated quite often that we will not cater to one side or the other, we want everyone to have something to do, whether you have 1 hour or 10+ hours to spare, you will be able to enjoy some part of Pantheon, dungeons, raids, quests, trash mobs, zones and named mobs will range in level, difficulty and challenge, so you have nothing to worry about.
Just to repeat for clarification in this thread - We will not be instancing content, raids or dungeons and we will not have different levels of difficulty per dungeons, raids, mobs etc. it will be open world with a nice mix to give everyone something to do. :)
Love this quote. I'm definitely over having six different versions of every dungeon and boss. I think a mob is weak, or it's strong, or it's somewhere in between. I don't need a version of it at all different difficulties. Can you kill that dragon or not? Good news! Turns out he's feeling under the weather today. LET'S DO THIS!
Kilsin said:Just to repeat for clarification in this thread - We will not be instancing content, raids or dungeons and we will not have different levels of difficulty per dungeons, raids, mobs etc. it will be open world with a nice mix to give everyone something to do. :)
Will there be blockers for say 1 guild 25 players fighting boss mob all lvl 40ish, special drops
then comes along 1 player lvl 75 and solo's the boss mob
Just curious is all. and dont misunderstand me i loved both sides of the coin with EQ, but i especially remembered the vanilla EQ style of spawns. It was so much fun.
This is why i have to stay netural with instancing and open world it has its benifits and can be a social gain/loss too.
Remember Seb grouping? Remember the raids we did in Seb?
Who can say we didnt have fun then... OH **** the boss just spawned!!!! better login my alt and check... Zerg!!!
And for anyone reading this Kilsin is a pro gamer too. So he remembers the days... Just as well as anyone else here.
I think the team is on the perfect track by keeping their stance on instancing where and when, because if i remember right i think it was brad who mentioned in a interview that Instancing was an over used tool and was not the intent. Was this not his interview? i just cant remember who said it best.
Keep us on our toes will ya Kilsin :)
ty
Enitzu said:Sorry but the FAQ doesn't alleviate any concerns. If there is in fact the EQ-esque style of raiding, IE competitive world spawns with no lock outs, then neither under crowding nor over crowding would even matter. We could have only 100 people on the server and it can still be completely controlled by 1 guild. I'll rewatch the live stream after work later to see if the answer is hinted to there but I don't recall it. Either way would like to get official responses sooner rather than later as a lot of us have already begun building guilds and this plays a crucial part in how we continue to do so
In pretty much everything about this game I trust VRs vision/decisions and am not too worried since they have thus far been on point with all I've seen.
This issue is likely my singular honest concern. I'm not a hardcore raider but I enjoy raiding and I just can't see that happening in a classic EQ style system of first come first serve, phone trees, scouting and hugging spawn timers at all hours of day and night. I'm sure they are aware of the issue as they have mentioned it, so we'll all have to wait and see, but I hope they don't bow down to the hardcore and make it only available to them. I mean, for all we know there might be 40 or 50 raid mobs with overlapping drops at max level and each player is account-wide locked out for a week after beating one of them.
I'll be keeping a close eye on this issue.
Enitzu said:I am all for socialization Kils. What I am not for, is EQ style guild domination. If it is in fact the case that raids will be EQ style I'd like to know as early as possible so we can build our guild for that. As it will become a job again. Not only for us but for the team having to answer the petitions and such. WTB lock outs with quick respawns!
That is where we could look at lockout timers (there is a huge thread on this) and Shards like in VG where we have open world copies of the same dungeon, like VG had with APW, we have other things in mind to which I cannot speak about but I certainly wouldn't worry, we are all over this and know the pros and cons and what we are dealing with. ;)
dorotea said:I generally like the team's approach but I have seen the debates over instancing rage for literally decades. Barring technical obstacles, of course, I feel that the approach "instancing is always wrong" is just as incorrect as the approach "instancing solves most problems".
Gods spare me - and with Pantheon I am confident that they will - from another game where pretty much everything is instanced even open world areas. But please, if, and I repeat if, you see an issue of accessibility or variable difficulty levels that can be solved by having a certain dungeon or encounter instanced, don't rule out that option because the "i word" is anathma.
We have stated we will use Shards, similar to what VG had with APW, an open world clone of the same dungeon that anyone can enter but there may be 6 copies so 6 guilds can be in a different one each and not bother each other and any random person can enter any of the 6 shards at any time like you would in an open world.
For the record, we don't claim instancing is bad, it just doesn't suit our design philosophy or vision for our game.
kellindil said:Enitzu said:Bazgrim said:Enitzu said:I am all for socialization Kils. What I am not for, is EQ style guild domination. If it is in fact the case that raids will be EQ style I'd like to know as early as possible so we can build our guild for that. As it will become a job again. Not only for us but for the team having to answer the petitions and such. WTB lock outs with quick respawns!
This has been answered many times. From the FAQ:
Without instancing, are you concerned about overcrowding and/or too much competition for resources and content?
"Overcrowding and too much competition are indeed problems that have plagued both MMOs with and without instancing. If there are not enough players around, it can be hard to group and socialize. But if there are too many people around, the world feels crowded and people have to wait for encounters or spawns, or even compete for them. Our answer to this issue is twofold: first, primarily during the later phases of beta, we will determine how many people online at one time in our game world feels right -- neither under-crowded nor overcrowded. Second, if and when a server’s/shard’s population grows too large, we will launch a new shard with incentives for players to spread out. And with our harnessing of cloud hosted servers/shards, this is actually something we can do dynamically, easily, and quickly."
Also, rewatch the last live stream. Around the 37:45 mark, Brad directly addresses several ideas to minimize EQ-style guild domination of "endgame" content. This is not EQ.
Sorry but the FAQ doesn't alleviate any concerns. If there is in fact the EQ-esque style of raiding, IE competitive world spawns with no lock outs, then neither under crowding nor over crowding would even matter. We could have only 100 people on the server and it can still be completely controlled by 1 guild. I'll rewatch the live stream after work later to see if the answer is hinted to there but I don't recall it. Either way would like to get official responses sooner rather than later as a lot of us have already begun building guilds and this plays a crucial part in how we continue to do so
I, too have read the FAQ and watched the stream. I understand instancing will not be in the game, and I accept that. The team has stated that they have a plan for stopping that 1 guild from dominating content. Cool, i understand that too. the thing I don't understand is, "HOW". Now, we won't know how until maybe alpha or beta (beta most likely) and I understand that as well. That doesn;t change the fact that people like Enitzu and myself are truely worried about how this will be handled. Until we know how it works and IF it works, I am still a fan of instancing used for raids. I understand that this isn't VR's solution, and I am not calling for them to change anything, but it is still what I would do as its the only real solution I can see. Maybe I am just not as smart as the VR folks, and I hope thats true, but I just can't see any other way out.
So FAQ or not, no matter how many times they tell us they have a solution for the issue. Until I see it myself, I reserve the right to be worried about it still being a problem.
You shouldn;t worry about things that are out of your control my friend, life is too short!
We have considered all possibilities when creating our game and have used our many years of experiences combined in creating game and playing them at various levels to get around this problem, we will discuss it more during testing when you folks can see it first hand but until then, there is no point worrying yourselves over something that you can't control, we have it covered. :)
Respectfully, Kilsin, that tells us nothing. :) Every solution presented in any game to date has not stopped the problem outlined. (Except Instancing) If you have a silver bullet to this issue, why are you keeping it a secret?
There is no downside to alleviating potential customer concerns over such an enormous problem.
Also, your "sharding" solution is not a solution. Every competitive guild would invade those other shards specifically to prevent their competition from succeeding or progressing. "Shards" as you've outlined them are EQ1 picks. That's exactly what they are. And they are subject to all the same toxic behavior the open world produces. Next idea?
And before you play this particular card... presuming Customer Service /GM's can deal with these is just naivety personified. Having personally seen developers make claims such as this over the past 20 years, every single time a developer says things like "we have considered all possibilities when creating our game" that means you have considered all the possibilities your team can come up with, which, again, respectfully, is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of evil people who will be your paying customers. In other words, your statement, in my experience, is the epitome of hubris.
Which is fine, if you actually have the solution. But you better have it. :)
vjek said:Respectfully, Kilsin, that tells us nothing. :) Every solution presented in any game to date has not stopped the problem outlined. (Except Instancing) If you have a silver bullet to this issue, why are you keeping it a secret?
There is no downside to alleviating potential customer concerns over such an enormous problem.
Also, your "sharding" solution is not a solution. Every competitive guild would invade those other shards specifically to prevent their competition from succeeding or progressing. "Shards" as you've outlined them are EQ1 picks. That's exactly what they are. And they are subject to all the same toxic behavior the open world produces. Next idea?
And before you play this particular card... presuming Customer Service /GM's can deal with these is just naivety personified. Having personally seen developers make claims such as this over the past 20 years, every single time a developer says things like "we have considered all possibilities when creating our game" that means you have considered all the possibilities your team can come up with, which, again, respectfully, is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of evil people who will be your paying customers. In other words, your statement, in my experience, is the epitome of hubris.
Which is fine, if you actually have the solution. But you better have it. :)
Perhaps it's so other developers don't steal the idea before VR lays claim as founder, perhaps it is because every other solution to issues offered by VR turns into 20 additional questions and bickering over how it's wrong or wont work etc without any real feedback/trial and error from testing.
Iksar said:
Perhaps it's so other developers don't steal the idea before VR lays claim as founder, perhaps it is because every other solution to issues offered by VR turns into 20 additional questions and bickering over how it's wrong or wont work etc without any real feedback/trial and error from testing.
Sure, but here's the thing. I've never seen a developer "steal" an idea in the manner you're describing. I could post the greatest MMO idea the world has ever seen, and post it on Twitter, and now, so what? The project-driven restrictions on concepts, ideas and implementations prohibit 99% of new ideas, not the ideas themselves. It's not that the ideas are bad or good, it's the requirements of the project and the milestones and the financial targets must be met. Honestly, to think that a dev team would "steal" an idea is.. impractical, to put it mildly.
But presuming that is the reason, sure, I'll wait. But god help them if they're wrong and hubris IS driving the bus, because they will not get a second chance. =) This isn't 1999. There are 20 other games out there for people to play.
Exploring your second point, about the "without any real feedback/trial and error from testing" ?
You can logically prove or disprove an idea or concept without seeing it first hand. All you need is the power of reason and imagination. :)
An example of what I mean with respect to this supposed idea that apparently as good as instancing, or accomplishes all the goals of instancing, but isn't instancing.
Triggered mobs. Ok. Triggered, then you train the raid. They all die. You kill the mob and laugh. Or you out DPS the other raid, kill the mob, link all the loot and laugh.
Triggered mobs + locked encounters. Not a public design goal. No locked encounters.
Triggered mobs + timers. Triggered, then you train the raid. They all die. You don't kill the mob, and laugh.
Triggered mobs + timers + no nearby mobs. Bring 400 of your closest friends to stand ON TOP OF THE RAID. Lag them, crash them, increase latency to the point where they fail. Hell, CRASH THE ZONE. Also, immersion breaking, artificial and terrible for designers to have to create encounters like this. So far, public statements indicate no leashing, so... unlikely they would prevent training the raid. All part of the FUN, yo! :|
Shards + anything. Meaningless. Apply all of the above, but now inside a public copy of an open world zone. Stops nothing.
Open world, but your main can't attack the mob for x days/hours (or some other equally artificial restriction). Ok, I make alts. Dozens or hundreds, whatever it takes. And I make enough unique alts (in other guilds if necessary) to ensure the target is dead at every respawn interval until my main can kill it again. If the respawn interval is random, I will camp it 24x7 to ensure this goal is met. Poopsocking + Batphone = 1 guild pwns the server. Don't think 1 guild would do it? Ask P1999 how well that went. The faster you make the respawn the worse the problem. The slower you make the respawn, the easier it is for one guild to strangle the entire server.
Phasing. Not a public design goal. Effectively instancing, without the zone borders/loading screen. Still likely subject to the bring 400 of your closest friends problems, given the reality of threading, processes, forking, child/parent/orphans/zombies, context switches, etc when handling zone loading and balancing on the server. Still definitely subject to crashing the zone problems.
There's only so many variables in this equation. Non-Raid Players. Raid Players. Zone/Location. Raid Target(s). Raid Players have to see the zone and see the target. The only other decisions are: Can Non-Raid players see the raid? Can Non-Raid players affect the raid? Can the raid see Non-Raid Players?
Every answer to those variables provides a potential path to exploitation. Which is why designers switched to private instances, and all these problems went away.
VG handled it well.. Look at APW first day, that was a major headache, but was fixed with a lil shard loving... Then after a while it died down. This is why I think VR wants to make sure that we dont have only 1 area to kill. The more stuff to do the less sharding/instancing needed. Content is king!!! The more busy players are the more time the devs cant whip up something new for us. I wont dig into lock out timers yet. Too early to dive into that discussion.
Can someone tell me how shards, and instances, are different? I thought instances were simply different "instances" of an area that have different people or details in them. Is there a more detailed definition?
>For the record, we don't claim instancing is bad, it just doesn't suit our design philosophy or vision for our game.<
Understood and agreed. More than minimal use of instances or shards, and only for a compelling reason, is not something I want to see either. If you never have a reason sufficiently compelling, that is fine too.
BeaverBiscuit I would have said an instance is a dungeon or other area where only a limited number of people can go. Perhaps one person, perhaps one group, perhaps one raid. But other people can go to identical versions of the same thing. Thus 20 groups might be running the same instanced dungeon at the same time without interfering or competing with eachother. A slightly different use of the concept for housing - no limit to the nunber of people that can go there but a limit to the number of houses. Common in many games perhaps unlikely here. Some games like Vanguard and DAOC had limited housing areas and when they were gone they were gone at least for months or years. What a shard means - frankly no idea other than what I can get out of context seeing it used above.
