Solo instances: Tseric vs. WoW General

[Etadanik]

So today on a whim I strolled over to WoW General to see how things are going, and I'm surprised to find a thread that is simply replete with interesting design issues - and one in which there is a consistent dev presence. Ignoring the maturity level of WoW General for a moment, it seems worth checking out:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1

The main issue is the feasibility of solo instances in MMOs. If you don't want to read the thread I recommend just sticking to what Tseric posts.

Any thoughts?

[Malakie Torsade]

I've never been crazy about the idea of solo instances unless your game is built in such a way that they are needed (see, CoH.) Duo instances maybe. Really, I'd much rather have the developers using their time on 5+ man instances instead of trying to balance solo ones for ever class/talent combo.

[Ionsniper]

Casuals want solo instances so they can get easy loot. Theyd complain the loot wasnt good enough for the risk involved and saying they want top raid lvl items. I just dont see it happening.

[Kylax]

Perhaps if it had stat tracking where it gives a top 25 of who cleared it the fastest or how many healing potions were used.

I couldn't see more than maybe 1 or 2 loot drops from any given 1 man instance if it actually became part of the game.

[Etadanik]

Indeed. I see all this clamoring, at the final analysis, as a matter of loot-envy because I think that most casuals would agree that it's not so much the presence of solo instances as it is the presence of worthwhile methods of attaining loot without having to depend on a group.

Now, I have no doubt that alot of the demand is also motivated on the basis of seeing good, hand-crafted content for soloers, but ultimately I can't see how anyone can state with a straight face that instances are in and of themselves worth running a dozen times if loot was not involved. Moreover, if it were really just about the fun, then one could argue that you could always run grey instances - the reason why people don't see that as a viable alternative comes down to the gains.

Still, I think what's important to realize about Tseric's comments is that there is a real productivity problem with solo instances - and that adding more developers isn't necessarily the solution, at all.

[gremlinz273]

Can anyone link to the blue posts. Im interested in reading those, but Im not about to go crawling through 60+ pages of idiocy to get there.

Pretty much a return to the 'Hey we wanted Diablo 3' idea.

[Vard]

The anti-social players seem to really think a solo instance will be the answer to their problems...

Always found it weird that some people just can't grasp the concept that organizing large groups of people IS a challenge, and that's part of the reason for better loot in raid dungeons.

[Dynalisia]

So what these solo-instance craving people want is basically a single player game, with a huge interactive lobby where they can show off all their items to people. Otherwise they would have just played a solo RPG and been content with it.

[Zuuljin]

I'll admit that i'm probably in the group of solo players who want better loot, but I also acknowledge that getting all those people together and the coordination is part of the challenge since I was a hardcore raider back in EQ1 days. I'll also preface this with currently I dont play WoW, only EQ2, and I dont raid.

The thing that gets me about that challenge though, is that its not really a challenge, at least not more then a stareing contest is. It requires you to sit there and wait for alot of poeple to get online, then hang around for countless hours killing trash to get to said raid mob, none of which is difficult because you have so many people. I used to just /follow and afk until we got to our destination. Then you get to the boss mob, and (at least in EQ1 days) youd just hit autoattack and a few spells while the MT and clerics did all the hard work. That is not difficult, that is time consuming. So for soloers, its just a matter of time. The only "skill" you have over them, is your ability to play in 1 large chunk, rather then 4 smaller chunks. That is something completely unrelated to the actual game world. Some people simply do not have the time to raid, therefor they will NEVER get raid loot. The game basically ends at whatever solo or group loot you can get.

Soloers just want something to show for equal time being put in, although not in 1 big chunk. I also dont think soloers should be able to outfit themselves in complete raid gear. But I dont think its unfair to ask for 1 or 2 items, that are equal to raid gear, but obtained through and EXTREMELY long solo quest, that can be worked on every day for months. Say a raid takes 40 people 2 hours to finish. There should then be a quest that takes 1 person around 80 hours to complete, but still gives out an item equal to raid gear for that slot.

I think that would also have a weird side effect of getting raiders to actually go out and do quests, rather then just logging in to raid, then logging off. Make full time raiders work for their loot too, but in the oposite way. Why should all the best loot come from 1 playstyle? Make it come from both.

Edit: I'll also add something a bit more on topic. I dont like the idea of solo instances unless they are merely a step in a bigger quest, something to just help tell the story. I think that theses people just want their own little world, with the ability to show off their epeen. I mainly play solo, but I often run across people on my path who are doing the same thing i'm doing, so we group up to finish faster and move on to harder stuff. Alot of it is on the fly, and I never really log on with a goal, other then to just explore and do quests.

[Ellsworth]

Originally Posted by Dynalisia

So what these solo-instance craving people want is basically a single player game, with a huge interactive lobby where they can show off all their items to people. Otherwise they would have just played a solo RPG and been content with it.

This is worthy of being made into a signature.

[Moontayle]

Originally Posted by gremlinz273

Can anyone link to the blue posts. Im interested in reading those, but Im not about to go crawling through 60+ pages of idiocy to get there.

Pretty much a return to the 'Hey we wanted Diablo 3' idea.

Click the little blue icon next to the Reply button to go to the next Blue post in that thread.

As far as Solo-instances... EQ2 does it and in fact make it a point to include these as part of each Adventure Pack AND they've added quite a few in Live Updates over the years. Granted, they don't have the player base of WoW but that's not even near to the issue. Tseric brings up hardware concerns but I call bullshit. It's doable but they don't want to dedicate any resources for it. In that respect, I agree. They're already slow as shit for releasing everything and adding anything else to the mix would just slow them down even further.

[Etadanik]

Originally Posted by Dynalisia

So what these solo-instance craving people want is basically a single player game, with a huge interactive lobby where they can show off all their items to people. Otherwise they would have just played a solo RPG and been content with it.

Basically what Diablo was.

Though, you should also take into account PvP - so many people these days argue that PvP should "BE ALL ABOUT TEH SKILLZ," which is in fact another way of saying that they want to dominate in PvP but don't want to spend any effort to do so, since the benchmark for skill in WoW is so much lower than the benchmark for effort.

[Xerrot]

Originally Posted by gremlinz273

Can anyone link to the blue posts. Im interested in reading those, but Im not about to go crawling through 60+ pages of idiocy to get there.

Pretty much a return to the 'Hey we wanted Diablo 3' idea.

Here.

To read the "Blue" post after that one, just click on and it'll send you to it.

EDIT: Beat to the responce by one minute, bleh.

[XI-]

Originally Posted by Moontayle

Tseric brings up hardware concerns but I call bullshit. It's doable but they don't want to dedicate any resources for it. In that respect, I agree. They're already slow as shit for releasing everything and adding anything else to the mix would just slow them down even further.

Spawning instances, each occurance of which exists for an hour for some reason, even though you've re-entered the instance, and cannot access the previous incarnation of it creates a tremendous server load. Before they limited you to 5 instances/hr, several classes could solo the first AoE pull in stratholme, of non elites. It took them about 3 minutes per pull or less, and they spawned so many instances so fast the server performance took a severe hit and eventually would crash. Now imagine if you took the number of instances created now and multiplied them by a minimum of 5.

[Kolle]

There's already two solo instances: Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms.