Your thoughts on instancing and zones?

[Lyenae]

Originally Posted by Torrid

Making non-instanced games will require a different model.

Not a lot of energy/resources is put into the actual game (gameplay design, rules systems, etc.) Researching a new model doesn't appear to be cost effective. It's easier to just make a ton of art and steal gameplay mechanics from other working games. If your game system doesn't work, you can always re-invent shit on the fly with a skeleton post-release crew and a ton of patches.

[Mkopec1]

Wow dungeons were cool in vanilla, especially when they had about a year to tune them. that was the pinnacle of WoW dungeon design. The linear 45 min shit that they call dungeons in TBC they can keep. Not all of us playing are ADD.

There is nothing wrong with having social dungeons either. Especially in a PvP game. Where social dungeons just went form cool to cooler. When you actually have to fight over bosses and mobs.

And if you don't like it, thats fine. There is nothing wrong with having personal instances for your group either. But I really think that a game like WoW would actually profit from a huge social dungeon with instances like AOC and AO do them. SO if the shit gets too crowded, there is another one ready.

[Samflam]

You kill enough shit around you and then what? you can't even pull in WoW.

[Solariss]

Instancing has really ruined these kinds of games for me in one way or another. They are still fun in their own right, but I can't get past the fact that I constantly think about how EQ was laid out so perfectly with all of the dungeons.

I was on the evil team on Sullon Zek and was on the last step for my bard epic, which was killing the fake Trakanon that you had to spawn by talking to the undead bard which spawned after killing the real Trakanon. (Fuck all that) This was the point where nobody ever wanted to kill him because PoP was out and it was a complete waste of time. I checked every day for like 2 months and finally saw that he was dead and the bard had spawned. Got my entire guild down there and as we were approaching Trakanon the good team started zoning into Sebilis. We figured out that they were the ones who killed the original Trakanon so their bard could get his epic. We had just downed him, I looted my shit just as we saw hordes of them running toward us, and we evac'd out. That was so epic (no pun intended).

[kudos]

Originally Posted by Mkopec1

Wow dungeons were cool in vanilla, especially when they had about a year to tune them. that was the pinnacle of WoW dungeon design. The linear 45 min shit that they call dungeons in TBC they can keep. Not all of us playing are ADD.

I hate BC and think it's the worst shit Blizzard ever released.

[Sanadebe]

See, my view points are somewhat murky.
On the one hand, I love the idea of social dungeons. I miss the good memories of Sebi and Guk etc.
On the other hand, I also remember sitting for 10 minutes with 2-3 mobs during the entire time because the zones were so locked down. As someone mentioned, its not like you can even really pull in WoW (no, the bullshit spamming insta's and praying the mob doesn't leash shit doesn't count) - in which case a social dungeon seems kinda pointless.
The other issue is, whilst a lot of people don't mind random world pvp (even if ganktards exist) the idea of dungeons being like this is a major turn off for a lot of people I know - hurray for 5 rogues stealthing in and ganking your group while you camp spawn. You'd have to disable pvp or make them faction only to have even a slight chance of them being used to a decent degree. And I just don't see that happening in WoW.

Edit: I personally believe eq2 is the only game thats got the balance right so far. Social dungeons that spawn a new instance if the first one gets crowded, with bosses on a day long lockout in an instance deep inside and fast enough spawning that you never really ever run out of mobs to kill (Runnyeye in vanilla eq2 is perhaps the best example of this to date).

[Mkopec1]

WTF does pulling have to do with a dungeon being social? Who cares if you can pull or not. Mobs are up you kill them, if they are not you either wait or move on. PvP server you fight it out. Add some rare spawns, ring events, placeholders, wide range of loot which can drop (random good shit) etc.. And now were talking.

Fuck you guys are pussies. Afraid of a rogue unstealthing and killing you? WTF?? This is where team play comes in. And it gives PvP a little flavor other than BG #1786.

[Zehn - Vhex]

You guys aren't doing much to stem the overriding point that the only real reason to have social dungeons is so you can grief other people.

Every single example given so far bar -one- has been "BUT YOU CAN GRIEF PEOPLE!" and that was the, "Well...you can form pugs out of people at the zone line?" notion which really doesn't hold much weight.

You can say "BUT IT BUILDS COMMUNITY!" till you're blue in the face but it won't make it true.

Though I suppose you could argue "Fuck dungeon crawling...I just want to camp my loot dropping mob and be done with it" as another reason. I contest that that's more of a loot issue which also needs to be addressed at some point as well.

[Digits]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

You guys aren't doing much to stem the overriding point that the only real reason to have social dungeons is so you can grief other people.

Every single example given so far bar -one- has been "BUT YOU CAN GRIEF PEOPLE!" and that was the, "Well...you can form pugs out of people at the zone line?" notion which really doesn't hold much weight.

You can say "BUT IT BUILDS COMMUNITY!" till you're blue in the face but it won't make it true.

Though I suppose you could argue "Fuck dungeon crawling...I just want to camp my loot dropping mob and be done with it" as another reason. I contest that that's more of a loot issue which also needs to be addressed at some point as well.

I think you are missing the point that private instances strip the game of the mmo charm, and for players such as myself that charm is one of the only reasons we play these games.

Community isn't supposed to be always positive. We need villains so we can have heroes. WoW only offers shitty players and not shitty players. Where's the excitement in that? Whether or not you think it's pleasant we need trainers, kill stealers, ninja looters and retards so we can appreciate the good players and honest, decent folk. It detracts from the game, absolutely, but it adds to the feeling of a living world. Drama is always going to be more entertaining than a paltry stat increase. You think this line of thought is garbage? That we can only get our rocks off with a nice cup of grief? That's fine, and every mmo dev appears to agree with you. All I know is that if I'm alone in an instance I feel separate and isolated, but being the only person in a social instance makes me feel like I'm a lone droplet of water in an ocean. On a personal note which may help explain this..I hate sleeping by myself. I have to live with someone, and it doesn't matter that they're in my bed as long as they're under my roof. I guess I'm just a social creature, even if half the time I just want to be by myself.

[Danth]

Well Zehn, I'll try to throw in my decidedly non-griefer perspective.

I like social dungeons for the chaotic, unpredictable atmosphere--pockets of adventurers holding their own in various spots, loose creatures running helter skelter (train!), perhaps having someone else's group save your own from a bad pull, or vice versa, and other such aspects. I've never seen that sort of gameplay experience replicated within an instance. Such areas have their share of problems (overpopulation, attention-starved griefers, etc), but I'm at a loss for solutions that don't also destroy the purpose of such areas. I'm happy to entertain ideas. Keys, I think, include fast spawn rates, and dungeons played more for experience gain than loot to reduce competition for *specific* creatures.

However, I also enjoy venturing into an unknown, abandoned territory (a true "dungeon crawl") in search of lost treasures and that atmosphere tends to be ruined if I run into a couple other groups who got there first. "Hi, welcome to the Abandoned Necropolis, nobody has seen the inside in ten thousand years--except the three groups currently camping the important named". To heck with that! As such, removal of other players via instancing serves an important purpose which, as with the above, can't easily be replicated via other means. Hence I'd prefer a game which uses both sorts of dungeons. If the social dungeons should be about fast respawns, experience gain, and low focus on loot, instanced dungeons are the opposite. I despise respawns in instances and expect them to have more of a focus on quests and loot than experience.

I play these online role-playing games for the dungeons and little else. I detest raiding, if I want to PvP I'll do it in another genre, and I don't see the point of extensively soloing in a multiplayer game. As such, the more dungeons--and the more variety in dungeon design--the better.

Danth

[Borzak]

I won't play another game that's heavily instanced. Hate it. The only time I can even stomach any instancing is certain types of raid content and then only lightly - not all of it.

[needraRZ]

True the possibility of griefing is a large part of what a 'social dungeon' is about but that's kinda the point.

If players are in an environment where they can act like asses and impact other people but _also_ require to group with other people (to progress in the social dungeon) it builds community.

People are known by their actions, and are more likely to be held accountable for that. Conversely people who get a good rep for being nice or competent in these environments also get a rep.

In WOW, being in a group with a tool who keeps training mobs everywhere has very little impact on the world and the community. In a social dungeon suddenly hes a liability to several groups and the word spreads. In a similar fashion, being stuck down a dungeon, have someone go linkdead and think you're going to die as the respawn catches up to you ,and then another group comes along and offers to help you out gives them positive rep in the community.

[Ninen]

If you're going to have big social dungeons, you need to add 2 other things to the mix.

-You need to train your player base to group (or at least that it isn't a method of last resort), and you need to do it early enough that it sticks as "part of the game" and not an afterthought. EQ did it through negative reinforcement, but you could *maybe* do it through positive methods. Dev's really need to get over the idea that exp splits and MINOR group bonuses cut it due to "groups kill faster". Yeh, when Bobby's not on the toilet, Jim's off getting more arrows/food/runes, Billy's off in Bumfuck cause you just added him through the LFG tool. Typical grouping needs to *visibly* exceed soloing for positive reinforcement to work.

-You need to have policy's in place to save your GMs. Be it First in Force, be it definition of a camp, be it whatever. Until the Remote "Slap the STUPID out of you" machines become standard on all PCs (thereby letting violence and the threat of violence allow normal face to face society rules to break the Anon Fucktard stranglehold on the Internet). Be vocal, be clear; the players need to understand that while in this shared space they are NOT God's gift to mankind.

-Having several reasons to be there is certainly a plus too. Exp *and* loot. Quest completion *and AA/whatever. etc. You can't have community if everyone makes one pass through and is gone, there's nothing bridging from one group to the next.

-The Silithis method, with some refinement, could work rather well to handle Bosses. You're not camping a PH, you're camping a room. Any/all mobs in the room/room cluster have a chance to drop Dohicky fragments. Combine X fragments and burn them in the handy fireplace to spawn an already tapped for you boss. Don't make *this* shit drop everywhere (other bosses/rooms have their own brand of fragment) or folks'll be tromping in from god knows where (though having all the random hallway roamers/trash/whatever have their *own* boss is viable too) Tweak the drop rate so that a boss can get spawned acceptably often and maybe even make him spawn as untapped if no one's spawned him in a suitable extra long while (who doesn't love heading out to some Bumfuck dungeon and finding *all* the named up because no one can be bothered to go there?). Fragments aren't nodrop, but ARE zonebound and have some timeout (3hrs online or 15min offline for example).

[Zorlac]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

If only Ultima Online was released a few years later, we'd have games cloning/aspiring to it. That would have been MMO bliss. Instead we have the WoW shitshow =/

Why do you think that EQ was such a big success? No forced PvP. And eventually UO copied that feature with Trammel (or whatever the non PvP side was called).

While I totally loved UO, and still today I think it was one of the best games I ever played, it had some insane and glaring flaws.

Back then I had time to "play" (well ... macro) pretty much 24h a day. I had 7xGM characters before Little Timmy woke up. Result: the whole murderer system was a joke to me. I could grief at my heart's content. Plenty of other flaws like parry being 110% worthless, In Vas Flam + Corp Por spell combo pretty much meant death at one point or that I could raise archery to GM in under a few hours and become one of the most insane killing machines. Oh, yes, stealth and the whole rogue steal your weapon or important reagent while we fight. The whole reputation system had big holes in it that you could drive a truck through it.

The most important flaw it had was the fact that the more people on the server have a skill then the entire server gains skillpoints slower for the same skill. Guess what? Power gamers/macroers always get GM fast while Little Timmy goes insane, remember raising resist? There was a time on Catskills when it took me 6 hours of intense macroing (having trapped a few high level casters in my house) to get 0.1 resist. Oh and you couldn't lock down skills either back then so if I made one use of a shitty skill I didn't train, adios 100 resist. Of course with about 10 hours a week of playtime that I got now, there is no way in hell I would touch a game like UO, just not made for casual gamers, was way worse that EQ and WoW vanilla combined for the casual player.

UO was a great game for the hardcore player. However, wolves without sheep get bored. And that what has happened. No one likes to play the "sheep". Prove me wrong and I will point you to Siege Perilous the failed experiment who attracted only a handful of hardcore guilds. Because in reality, most of those "hardcore" PvPers were nothing more than griefers who couldn't live in a world without "sheep", because some guilds like the Undead Lords were the alpha males of Siege Perilous and these so called "hardcore PvP" guilds suddenly became the "sheep".

Had other games copied UO, the MMOG genre would have died a while ago.

[Fayvren]

You guys aren't doing much to stem the overriding point that the only real reason to have social dungeons is so you can grief other people.

Every single example given so far bar -one- has been "BUT YOU CAN GRIEF PEOPLE!" and that was the, "Well...you can form pugs out of people at the zone line?" notion which really doesn't hold much weight.

You can say "BUT IT BUILDS COMMUNITY!" till you're blue in the face but it won't make it true.

Though I suppose you could argue "Fuck dungeon crawling...I just want to camp my loot dropping mob and be done with it" as another reason. I contest that that's more of a loot issue which also needs to be addressed at some point as well.

It's not just the griefing, though there are plenty of aspects that do involve griefing. Its the sense of relevance.

The danger of trains. Asking other groups for help when things go wrong. Watching as high level players pass you by to do things that you're hoping to do when you're higher level. Working out ways to divide the zone between groups.

On the matter of griefing, theres no way players can develop a good reputation, if no one can develop a bad reputation. If you want 'good guys' you have to have the assholes that kill steal etc. And no, not everyone does it, not even a majority of people do it. Id say that kill stealers are in the minority in most games, but them being there opens things up. In Wow you pretty much have NO reputation. You're either a good or bad player and that only matters to your group.

Let's also stop pretending that there is anything left of a real dungeon crawl in WoW. The instances play more like a bind rush where if you're the proper level you can just slam ur head against it till you get to each boss. Everyone moron can clear pretty much every instance,and thats why you have so many retarded 60s and 70s that are complete fail at everything else they do. I would pay a ton of money to see "instances" have insanely quick respawn timers so retarded players would never see any reward and put real "danger" into the dungeons. Wipe enough and start over.