Yes. I keep crossing my fingers that Brad and the devs really aren't listening to some of these people in multiple of these threads lol. Granted I do think their opinions are valued. I just think some go a bit over board with their Nostalgia.
I understand their reason for not wanting instancing and I personally dislike instances but I cannot deny the fact that they are able to bring challenge to a mmo that will not be available otherwise. There is no way to make a boss difficult for a small group of players otherwise since you could just multi group or Zerg it. The only way I see this working is a fake instance where a group of players gets locked in a room and others can be around but not partake in the fight.
Simply put without an instance guilds will bring tons of people to stomp on dungeons. There will be no challenge for intended smaller group content.
Take for example the boss in the previous stream. Looks difficult looks fun right? Now put 30 others players in that room.
I think instancing is a nice feature, but it is also nice to have a game without it. Every MMO today has instancing. This would offer something different. Some might not like that people will fight over certain things or will have to wait in line at times. I have had those same feelings many times in early MMOs. This is really the only chance I know of to see a game with no instances in MMOs. Therefore I am hopeful they won't start instancing everything. There is a lot more freedom when things are not instanced and it makes traveling around a lot more enjoyable. You get to see other people everywhere you go and interact with them possible in a meaningful way. That is a challenge in and of itself.
Wellspring said:...
Instancing cannot be the only solution to prevent zerging... I refuse to believe that.
It isn't.
A simple solution to what was shown in the live stream is: When a boss is enaged, you temporarily block entry to the room, then you teleport everyone not in the engaging group outside the door to that room, then close and lock the door, then release them. (ideally all within 500ms) Voila. Closed set encounter. Block heals and LoS to/from the room, make it no-camp, and if someone manages to enter or logs in during the encounter who is not in the engaging group, they are instantly teleported outside the room. Next group can come in when the door opens, and they're allowed to enter.
Mechanically, it provides the same value as an instance with respect to a closed set encounter, but is still in the shared open world. In fact, such a system would also work for raids. First raid stays, all other PC's get teleported out of the engagement area, etc.
Such a thing is already possible in NWN1 via scripting, as well as more advanced engines. Volumetric triggers with an OnEnter event is all you need.
People keep mentioning instances, but Brad mentioned shards, which are different. In Vanguard, when APW (1st raid dungeon) was launched, it was unsharded. The lag was so bad nobody could kill anything, so they made 6 shards, which like instances are copies of the dungeon, but are always up and available. It prevents 1 guild from locking everything down, but does limit what is available. Bosses had a shorter respawn (8-12 hours, I think).
So if they do 2 shards of a raid dungeon with 8-10 bosses with a 12 hour respawn, 1 guild could keep everything locked down for a while. But lack of sleep would eventually start catching up to people and other guilds would slip through and get kills.
Gragorie said:People keep mentioning instances, but Brad mentioned shards, which are different. In Vanguard, when APW (1st raid dungeon) was launched, it was unsharded. The lag was so bad nobody could kill anything, so they made 6 shards, which like instances are copies of the dungeon, but are always up and available. It prevents 1 guild from locking everything down, but does limit what is available. Bosses had a shorter respawn (8-12 hours, I think).
So if they do 2 shards of a raid dungeon with 8-10 bosses with a 12 hour respawn, 1 guild could keep everything locked down for a while. But lack of sleep would eventually start catching up to people and other guilds would slip through and get kills.
I wouldn't be opposed to shards as long as it didn't prevent my raid from joining a shard that was already in progress (in order to kill the other raid of course, #PVPServer4Life!).
Shards plus lockout timers I can see being a potential issue for PvP. If one guild kills their raid bosses and gets locked out of the other shards, then they wouldn't be able to harrass the other raids once they've entered their shard zone. Where's the fun in that?!
At the same time, I do not think the same players should be able to kill the same bosses in multiple shards back to back. Oh the conundrum!
Wellspring said:Gragorie said:People keep mentioning instances, but Brad mentioned shards, which are different. In Vanguard, when APW (1st raid dungeon) was launched, it was unsharded. The lag was so bad nobody could kill anything, so they made 6 shards, which like instances are copies of the dungeon, but are always up and available. It prevents 1 guild from locking everything down, but does limit what is available. Bosses had a shorter respawn (8-12 hours, I think).
So if they do 2 shards of a raid dungeon with 8-10 bosses with a 12 hour respawn, 1 guild could keep everything locked down for a while. But lack of sleep would eventually start catching up to people and other guilds would slip through and get kills.
I wouldn't be opposed to shards as long as it didn't prevent my raid from joining a shard that was already in progress (in order to kill the other raid of course, #PVPServer4Life!).
Shards plus lockout timers I can see being a potential issue for PvP. If one guild kills their raid bosses and gets locked out of the other shards, then they wouldn't be able to harrass the other raids once they've entered their shard zone. Where's the fun in that?!
At the same time, I do not think the same players should be able to kill the same bosses in multiple shards back to back. Oh the conundrum!
You could switch to and from at the entrance, and could freely switch between them. Lockouts were only for the bosses, trash never had any lockouts. You could have multiple guilds in the same shard killing (or training) different targets.
Gragorie said:Wellspring said:Gragorie said:People keep mentioning instances, but Brad mentioned shards, which are different. In Vanguard, when APW (1st raid dungeon) was launched, it was unsharded. The lag was so bad nobody could kill anything, so they made 6 shards, which like instances are copies of the dungeon, but are always up and available. It prevents 1 guild from locking everything down, but does limit what is available. Bosses had a shorter respawn (8-12 hours, I think).
So if they do 2 shards of a raid dungeon with 8-10 bosses with a 12 hour respawn, 1 guild could keep everything locked down for a while. But lack of sleep would eventually start catching up to people and other guilds would slip through and get kills.
I wouldn't be opposed to shards as long as it didn't prevent my raid from joining a shard that was already in progress (in order to kill the other raid of course, #PVPServer4Life!).
Shards plus lockout timers I can see being a potential issue for PvP. If one guild kills their raid bosses and gets locked out of the other shards, then they wouldn't be able to harrass the other raids once they've entered their shard zone. Where's the fun in that?!
At the same time, I do not think the same players should be able to kill the same bosses in multiple shards back to back. Oh the conundrum!
You could switch to and from at the entrance, and could freely switch between them. Lockouts were only for the bosses, trash never had any lockouts. You could have multiple guilds in the same shard killing (or training) different targets.
Oh nice, and if a raid somehow made it through all of the trash alive and reached the boss area, then they would be safe from PvP? I could be down with that!
Gnog said: @Gragorie, Your description of training other guilds to prevent them from killing raid targets is a form of PvP. Why would that kind of conduct be permitted (let alone encouraged) on a PvE server? Shouldn't anyone who wants to engage in that particular brand of PvP be limited to PvP servers? Help me out here. If your only justification is that you derive glee from training and blocking others' progression, I say you need to roll PvP and not engage in PvP while hiding behind PvE rules.
Gragorie was just describing the mechanics of shards and that training trash mobs would be an option/risk. No where did he say he condoned training or that he would be the one doing it. Also, no where did he say it was a PvE server. In fact, he was responding to my question which I mentioned playing on a PvP Server...
vjek said:Mechanically, it provides the same value as an instance with respect to a closed set encounter, but is still in the shared open world. In fact, such a system would also work for raids. First raid stays, all other PC's get teleported out of the engagement area, etc.
Such a thing is already possible in NWN1 via scripting, as well as more advanced engines. Volumetric triggers with an OnEnter event is all you need.
This solutions merges almost all disandvantages of instanced and non-instanced content together. It produces a lack of content (because killed content ist not available to other players) and the content is still exclusive for the duration of the fight.
Greetings
Glad to see the discussion on this coming back but for the life of me I see no solution.
Atleast we can agree on the fact that every single raid / group type encounter (except world type bossess that requires 100's of people) will be trivial without something in place. Everything will be zerged.
The fact is people play differently then they did in the EQ era and there are a LOT MORE PLAYERS. Without locking content to a certain number of people there can be no balance.
If you are going to have a "Fake" instance such as a room locking down and teleporting in all you are doing is creating an artificial instance but with problems such as lines of people waiting or cutting in which case a queue would have to be implemented. A pvp server could fix this but a lot of people don't want to PVP.
A combination of sharding + "Fake" instancing could work but again a shard is essentially an instance too just with more than your group in it.
So for all those that are complaining you are going to quit if there are instances I don't think you can understand what it will be like without them or a system in place that is emulating them. The days of EQ are gone FOREVER but we can bring back the difficulty and nostalgia with old school elements. However, just know there MUST be a way to balance content and lock it to a number of players or the game will fail. Not all modern elements that are in todays games are bad.
Edit: Another idea came to mind. You can lock the group that tagged a rare/hard enemy and other groups wont be allow to damage or cast upon your group.
Well they've already discussed instances in the context of story encounters which is perfectly reasonable. I think conservative usage of instancing for individual battlefields is perfectly reasonable. Not whole zones if it can be avoided, but a subset of the encounters of the game? Totally fine.
Gnog said: @Wellspring, It was less than clear that your exchange was limited to PvP servers. If it was meant to be so limited, I see no problem. Train
Trash in VG in APW shards had a 1 hour respawn, and you had to clear the path to get to the bosses. Mobs also had fairly short leashes, so training was not that common and not very easy. Trash could hit pretty hard, so only a couple classes could really pull it off if they wanted to. PVP on the PVE servers in VG was more done by crashing chunks and lagging raids.
Larirawiel said: ...This solutions merges almost all disandvantages of instanced and non-instanced content together. It produces a lack of content (because killed content ist not available to other players) and the content is still exclusive for the duration of the fight.
If you're not going to go with instances (or solutions that accomplish the design goals of instances), then temporarily making content unavailable to other players while it's being consumed by you is an unavoidable part of the design. At least with what I've outlined, it's only unavailable for the shortest amount of time possible, and you can't zerg it. (while the encounter script is running)
The next group can consume it as soon as possible, especially if it's triggered/spawned as part of a quest. And it's all in the shared world.
There is no logical design that permits multiple groups to consume the exact same content concurrently, in a single shared virtual space and time. You have to resort to illusion, exclusion, or some other variant of sharding, phasing or similar trickery to hide or separate players from one another.
Gragorie said:Gnog said: @Wellspring, It was less than clear that your exchange was limited to PvP servers. If it was meant to be so limited, I see no problem. TrainTrash in VG in APW shards had a 1 hour respawn, and you had to clear the path to get to the bosses. Mobs also had fairly short leashes, so training was not that common and not very easy. Trash could hit pretty hard, so only a couple classes could really pull it off if they wanted to. PVP on the PVE servers in VG was more done by crashing chunks and lagging raids.
Haha. Yeah, PvP was also done that same way on the PvP servers.
One place I think instancing is appropriate is any type of storytelling or progression event where you want to limit the number of people who can participate. For example, the PoJ trials in EQ. These were limited to six people for progression and difficulty purposes. In EQ at the time there was no instancing so they simply limited the room to six people at a time. Early in PoP there was a ton of people attempting (and usually failing) these which meant there was always a huge line to even attempt them. I think stuff like this it's absolutely appropriate to use instancing. For the most part I'm a fan of using open-world for just about everything else, though some stuff like chase raid bosses or quest mobs it would probably be nice to make them spawnable.
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
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 :)
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 that means there's really no reason for me to waste time following this thread. Thanks Kilsin!
I'm glad this game is all for non-instancing. As for people taking an entire guild to zerg a mob designed for six people, mechanics have already been introduced to prevent that in MMO's for over ten years. For example, in EQ2, once a group engaged a mob, no other group can assist in killing it unless they yell for help, at which point the mob will no longer give xp OR loot. I'm not saying this is what Pantheon is or should do, it's only an example of one of the ways to avoid that situation. People who only play games with instancing should really have an open mind towards contested content. It really does create a fun environment. Give it a chance.
P.S. Thanks Kilsin for ensuring us that we will have an ever so rare non-instanced MMORPG!