Nino...One of the upsides of VG.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Greyform

I am going to disagree with you on instancing though. See this is where you can say that Brad’s vision has some real substance, as time goes by and the world is filled in, having one world where there is diverse content throughout will be what makes VG stand out.

Unfortunately, here is what I think will happen.

1> They will never get caught up on the amount of content needed to pull this off. Even had they waited on release and had tons of content, there will always be a couple places that will drop better loot, have quests that are more fun -- and the reason why this is is because each designer wants to make their impact on the world better than anyone elses. Not saying that is wrong. Or on the flipside, some designers just are not that creative and will get spanked by creative ones. Sooner or later, 2-3 places will be picked out regularly and be camped ala EQ with people waiting with nothing to do - or having to take 20 minutes to travel elsewhere to see if the other place is camped.

2> With the state it is in now, mudflation will kick in and the resources used to create all that extra content to avoid instancing becomes wasted. It is much easier to concentrate dedicated amounts of talent and funds directly into specific areas to make each one of those areas fun, and give access to anyone anytime they want to play it. For example, I would rather see 5 awesome, well thought out, enjoyable and rewarding instanced dungeons, than 10 mediocre dungeons that are non instanced, with one or two of them being above par, but camped because everyone else feels the same way - and having to settle for one of the others. More doesn't equal better. Now would it be fantastic if they could come out with 25 dungeons, all fantastic, all with great rewards, all fun, and on instanced? Sure. But in the real world it isn't going to happen: And here is why.

2a) Communication between developers, in any industry, is terrible. Each is doing their own thing so to speak. Each one wanting to create content that players will go to the most. Each one giving their content an edge to garner that response. Now, combine that with the cost, timeframes, milestones, and feasibility (length of design cycle for a certain dungeon) and each developers working style or how much they can get done in a day, you will not see those dungeons come to their fullest potential.

Now back to what I was saying about instanced dungeons. Now take those same developers, pair them up, and put each partnership on an instanced dungeon that everyone can enjoy at any time, and you can concentrate, allocate, and disperse resources in a timely manner while hitting milestones much more easily with solid and fun content - without having to worry about the "mass" of content and the timeframes that will pressure that same content to be released too early.

Expansion after expansion can be released - but it isn't going to do any good. The higher end people will flock to the end content of the current expansion, casuals will have mudflation to help them with the past expanion or original content, and sooner or later all that hard work to meet timelines goes unused.

Will that happen with instanced content? Sure. But instanced content was easier to make, easier to conentrate on, easier to implement, accessed by everyone at one point most likely without holding them as a "content hostage" so to speak, with above all, less resources and time used to make.

In the end, I do not feel that old world non instanced content will bring back community - which is the main reason why Brad has it like this in his game. Times have changed, and it's time to change with them. Changing however doesn't mean going back to 1995 design docs and forcing it in with a 2007 game. It means creating new ways to use today's tech that is available for the sole purpose to give accessibility for all players whenever they are ready, while at the same time use new ideas, not old ones, to create the older community we all know and love.

[Kylax]

How about instead of world drops, you have world instanced drops?

For example an item that has the chance of dropping specifically out of any 20-30 dungeon.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Kylax

How about instead of world drops, you have world instanced drops?

For example an item that has the chance of dropping specifically out of any 20-30 dungeon.

For me, I like the idea of going to a certain place to go after a certain item. I think it is important to tailor items and rewards to the story behind where it is. For example, I wouldn't want to see Aragul's Robe dropping off a boss in Wailing Caverns. I think it is important to keep style in dungeons. And it's pretty fun going to a place hoping you get what you are looking for. It gives each dungeon a character of sorts. Plus you can tie those items into a quest line too and make the world seem a lot deeper.

Edit: I see where you are going with that though. If you could have world drops off dungeon content so no one would camp certain places - but then I think you would lose a good part of the magic that makes certain areas special to a player - which needs to be retained and helps maintain a sense of belonging to the world you are playing in.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Greyform

The thing with instancing I don’t care for is when a dungeon reaches farm status and it is the same old same old every night until everyone has whatever it is that dungeon drops.

How is that any different than a non-instanced dungeon?

[Greyform]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

How is that any different than a non-instanced dungeon?

your targets will have to shift based on who is raiding where

Sending scouts out to see what’s up, and where the best place to raid is, the whole meeting in one place but planing to raid someplace else.
That kind of stuff was fun for me in EQ. Yeah I know it is not as easy as dungeon X is always there and waiting for you, but I like it better.

[Jaytee Bushwacker]

The thing with instancing I don’t care for is when a dungeon reaches farm status and it is the same old same old every night until everyone has whatever it is that dungeon drops.

That can be fixed by lockouts/timers for rerunning a dungeon. They just have to be applied in non-retarted ways.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Greyform

your targets will have to shift based on who is raiding where

Oh, I wasn't aware that we were talking about raiding only here. Of course you could go the WoW route and have a mix of instanced and contested raid content. As long as people have *something* to do and aren't at the whim of every other raiding guild on the server.

I can remember a few times in EQ when pretty much everything was dead.. for several days in a row there would just be nothing worthwhile to do.

[Kylax]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

For me, I like the idea of going to a certain place to go after a certain item. I think it is important to tailor items and rewards to the story behind where it is. For example, I wouldn't want to see Aragul's Robe dropping off a boss in Wailing Caverns. I think it is important to keep style in dungeons. And it's pretty fun going to a place hoping you get what you are looking for. It gives each dungeon a character os sorts.

Let me rephrase that, as I agree about the obtaining specific loot.

Yard trash randomly dropping world instanced loot across the board that could be on par with other world drops obtainable.

Which brings me to another idea.

We have seen dungeons and dungeons before kill x mob get x loot. What about creating static NPC's in instances. Let's say the NPC Sosando has a farm and has known to venture out. You happen to be rolling with your team and spot him fending off things in a totally random dungeon. In that specific instance he tells you about X mob that might be worth looking into. You don't know if he will be in the instance until you find him. And when you go to try to take down that mob, it would be a separate event in itself.

In a totally separate dungeon, you see him again mining or something. You talk to him and he remember the "flag" you did before in the other dungeon. Each "flag" rewards you with an upgraded version you had gotten before for the more times you saved his ass per say.

Anyway I have rambled for long enough, I am all for instancing.

[Nairbog]

I'm not sure that people are flocking to certain dungeons because they have better exp/loot than others. I think it's because of the relatively low population for a huge world, people like to flock to where there's actually other people to interact with. There is certainly a reason to explore every dungeon because there are unique named drops to be found. To get the best items for your class at any given level you would most likely have to explore a few dungeons (this is assuming you want to fill up all slots with rare items). There is plenty of reward in going to an underused dungeon because you'll be getting lesser-known drops that are going to be valuable on the broker because of less supply.

I could be wrong, but I just think it's a stretch to say people are flocking to certain dungeons because they have better loot. From what I have seen, each dungeon has unique rare drops, and so spreading out and exploring new dungeons should have its rewards. I just don't think there's the population to support this right now, in addition to the tedium in travel many people experience. Perhaps teleports will help alleviate this problem to some extent and people will start spreading out to some of the lesser used dungeons/areas.

[xregg]

Sorry UT i dont post based on what your doing in a thread.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Nairbog

I'm not sure that people are flocking to certain dungeons because they have better exp/loot than others. I think it's because of the relatively low population for a huge world, people like to flock to where there's actually other people to interact with. . . . .

That is it in a nutshell. Was the same thing for EQ when Kunark came out for example. People went the OT-Karnak Castle route mainly because that was where the people were, and they were there because that was where you could get groups.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

That is it in a nutshell. Was the same thing for EQ when Kunark came out for example. People went the OT-Karnak Castle route mainly because that was where the people were, and they were there because that was where you could get groups.

Yeah, it's nuts how people would wait in a line for several hours to group there while places like Chardok and HS went largely unused.

[holymight]

I completely disagree with your assumption that instancing is necessary in MMOs. I personally hate instancing. I don't think it is necessary. Take the 47+ dungeon Rahz Inkur for example. It is a giant city dungeon that has tons of named everywhere (i would guess 30+ named). In addition, it also has bosses which are summoned by doing a variety of things.

1) You can collect dust from little rifts throughout the city and vials from mobs. When combined they form beacons and 15 beacons can be used to spawn a specific boss. There are sets.
2) When you kill a boss mob they drop a shard. You can use four shards to summon a boss at any of the four seals in the city. Each seal summons a different boss.
3) When you kill any of the summoned bosses they have a chance to drop another type of shard. There are two sets here, and they can be used to summon an even bigger boss at a specific seal.
4) In the palace you can collect blood to summon wolves. I believe there is a small chance to spawn a named when you use the blood to summon. The wolves that you summon drops two different types of sigils. Taking 10 of the same sigils and 24 coins collected from chests inside the palace, you can summon a boss.

This dungeon has so much stuff to it's insane. We have been in there two weeks solid and still haven't seen everything. There are sometimes 4 groups inside the dungeon and we never even run into each other. It is that big.

The dungeons in Vanguard does not lack quality. They are very fun and personally, I think they are a lot better than WoW or EQ2's. In WoW I didn't even go to every instance during the time I played. I only ever went to 1 of the wings in Dire Maul because I got so bored with it when I was there. Mauradon, only seen 2/3s of it before I got bored. Vanguard's dungeons have a lot more variety because they are based on PHs and triggered spawns as opposed to linear crawl that WoW has. Personally I find it boring to enter a dungeon and having everything up and ready to be killed. I find it a lot more interesting when I have to figure out how to spawn the bosses.

Now sure you can do that in an instanced dungeon as well, but I find that when you can run into bosses spawned by other groups it becomes a lot more random. In Rahz Inkur you can always fall back on summoned bosses if nothing is up, but the shared bosses give you something to compete over. It adds something that instacing just doesn't have.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by holymight

1) You can collect dust from little rifts throughout the city and vials from mobs. When combined they form beacons and 15 beacons can be used to spawn a specific boss. There are sets.
2) When you kill a boss mob they drop a shard. You can use four shards to summon a boss at any of the four seals in the city. Each seal summons a different boss.
3) When you kill any of the summoned bosses they have a chance to drop another type of shard. There are two sets here, and they can be used to summon an even bigger boss at a specific seal.
4) In the palace you can collect blood to summon wolves. I believe there is a small chance to spawn a named when you use the blood to summon. The wolves that you summon drops two different types of sigils. Taking 10 of the same sigils and 24 coins collected from chests inside the palace, you can summon a boss.

What happens when that becomes the only popular dungeon and you get about 9 groups in there with 30 boss mobs total, and you are out of shards? Wait the respawn times or camp certain areas waiting for the bosses to spawn to farm spawning materials, travel to another dungeon (which takes forever) maybe to see that is camped as well.

Of course you aren't going to have a problem now. The majority of the player base isn't even close to enter that dungeon yet and succeed. What happens in 2 months when the rest of the server catches up and players enter en masse? Sooner or later one or two dungeons will crown them all, and people will flock to them.

Course in this case you may not even see it. Subscription numbers are so low that you may get a worse senario. New players, and veterans alike, all conglomerating on 3-4 servers that the population problem exponentially outgrows the content available.

There are sometimes 4 groups inside the dungeon and we never even run into each other. It is that big.

Four groups is under 25 people. I didn't see anyone in Sebilis when there were only 25 people in that zone either.

The dungeons in Vanguard does not lack quality.

I am not saying that they all do. I am saying a lot will be mediocre because there will be a content rush and as that happens, more and more dungeons will come out bugged, unfinished, and unitemized or unbalanced.

In Rahz Inkur you can always fall back on summoned bosses if nothing is up,

Unless you are out of shards. Or need to farm. Sorry, but going to a dungeon to farm for 1-2 hours to spawn a boss to kill because everything is dead doesn't sound like fun.

[Twobit Whore]

Do any of these bosses have 'tricks'? Are they scripted or are they just standard mobs with an extra dot and a little more health? Can you trivialize them by having more than one group attacking them?