26 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 41st comment:
Votes: 0
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If you're going the realistic route, its not hard (though not trivial either) to just randomly drop some named NPC dude into otherwise generic dongeons and have a questgiver from a guild or something go, 'Yeah we need you to kill the menance that is Bob the Lich in Generic Dungeon #3012."

Even this, while better, is not really "realistic" in terms of world continuity; the same players will be eliminating different 'big menaces' in the same place at potentially the same time.

BTW, you mentioned elsewhere that your native language is not English. Is it French by any chance?
26 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 42nd comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Quote
If you're going the realistic route, its not hard (though not trivial either) to just randomly drop some named NPC dude into otherwise generic dongeons and have a questgiver from a guild or something go, 'Yeah we need you to kill the menance that is Bob the Lich in Generic Dungeon #3012."

Even this, while better, is not really "realistic" in terms of world continuity; the same players will be eliminating different 'big menaces' in the same place at potentially the same time.

BTW, you mentioned elsewhere that your native language is not English. Is it French by any chance?


I speak Gaelic, English, French, and some spotty Suomi (finnish). In about that order of fluency. (I noted somewheres recently, can't remember if it was here, 'Rudha' is 'Red-haired' in gaelic, dating from the first MUD character I made waaay back when.)

Maya/Rudha
26 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 43rd comment:
Votes: 0
Ah, ok. I was just wondering because you spelled 'dungeon' in a sort of hybrid French/English way ('dongeon' as a mix of 'dungeon' and 'donjon'). I do that sometimes, mixing up 'appartement' and 'apartment', 'address' and 'adresse', etc.
26 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 44th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Ah, ok. I was just wondering because you spelled 'dungeon' in a sort of hybrid French/English way ('dongeon' as a mix of 'dungeon' and 'donjon'). I do that sometimes, mixing up 'appartement' and 'apartment', 'address' and 'adresse', etc.


Different dialects of English (and for that matter, French and Gaelic) spell things differently, on top of the coarse differences between languages, as if I didn't have enough to mind.

David Haley said:
Quote
If you're going the realistic route, its not hard (though not trivial either) to just randomly drop some named NPC dude into otherwise generic dongeons and have a questgiver from a guild or something go, 'Yeah we need you to kill the menance that is Bob the Lich in Generic Dungeon #3012."

Even this, while better, is not really "realistic" in terms of world continuity; the same players will be eliminating different 'big menaces' in the same place at potentially the same time.

BTW, you mentioned elsewhere that your native language is not English. Is it French by any chance?


I would imagine that generally speaking, adventurers are going to do just that - adventure. Whether or not these kinds of random quests start 'breaking' immersion depends on a few factors - how well they're implemented into the world (blatantly mad lib quests as my rather simple example tend to stick out), and whether they end up serving as a balanced method of advancement - in terms of character advancement, not flooding the world with macguffin artifacts, not giving the player undue amounts of resurces, etc etc.

The problem I've had in the past with random quest systems is making sure that the risk versus reward payoff ends up being balanced, and making the quests seem important while not at the same time making important quests seem everyday and mundane, as you've said. Its a real problem of the model, but its something that can be mitigated, if not outright fixed, by applying and balancing the mechanic properly.

Its worth noting that if you're adding to and changing the different templates regularly then it also helps mitigate them starting to seem samey.

Maya/Rudha
26 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 45th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
Different dialects of English (and for that matter, French and Gaelic) spell things differently, on top of the coarse differences between languages, as if I didn't have enough to mind.

Well, yes, that's true, but no dialect that I know of spells it "dongeon". But yes, all these different spellings are all kinds of fun. :smile: I don't think that French has nearly as many as English does, though; Canadian French differs in the words they use moreso than the spelling. I don't know anything about Gaelic though.

Rudha said:
Its worth noting that if you're adding to and changing the different templates regularly then it also helps mitigate them starting to seem samey.

Yes, this would help. If you had enough templates, and enough ways to fill them in (enough areas, monster types, reward types) and few enough players, it might even make it just fine.
01 Nov, 2010, lockewarrior wrote in the 46th comment:
Votes: 0
I instanced a player to create a 'clone'. Attach a script to it that handles basic AI and defines interaction between (control by) the actual player.

People pay money to play WoW. That pretty much dictates WoW implementing instances. If you're paying $15 a month for online play and you can't complete a quest for that really cool item you want because somebody already did it today, you're going to get upset. Say Mark Applemonkey gets off work every day at 6:30pm, and gets home at 7:15. He needs to have dinner, maybe shower or do laundry, and find time to play Ultra-Fantasy Awesome Universe (popular MMO/MUD). If his only option to play is nights and weekends, and the quests reset at 6:00am his time, he's never going to get that item.

When people pay money to play a game, they expect equal chances to succeed, to grind, to quest, etc.

Compare to Achaea. You're not paying a flat rate to play, so the Admin aren't required to ensure you have equal chances to slay monsters. This allows for 'real' competition, and IMO, better gameplay overall. You are forced to either explore new areas, solve new quests, or to interact with new players so as to be able to participate in group hunts.

I think instancing could be useful, but not in any of the ways it's been discussed so far. Here's an idea:

You're character is a Paladin. Upon reaching level 8 you get promoted to Captain. The Black Hand (a mysterious band of assassins) doesn't really like that you are advancing so well. They send an assassin (NPC) to kill you. This is a great opportunity for an instance, IMO. The NPC is instanced and heads out to kill you. It has your number, so only you will fight it and it will only fight with you. Another player won't see it heading for you, or you they could but you could prevent other players from attacking it.

This way, say two players reach level 8 at the same time and are both promoted, they can head their separate ways and both be attacked by assassins.
03 Nov, 2010, Runter wrote in the 47th comment:
Votes: 0
I don't even know where to begin here. You claim people who pay to play games want soft play because they only log in short sessions at certain times. Which is completely absurd. As a long time competitive mmo player I can say with certainty that "competitive" players like instancing for many things. Can you imagine if new content only had one shared instance on a very popular game? You'd have to wait for months before you had a shot to experience any of it the way it was designed. How is having to stay logged in all day long to experience fractured content "competitive" anyways? There are popular mmos without instancing and depending on the time of day practically any decent area is cleared out perpetually.

I guess its no surprise someone from an IRE game would worship at the altar of what they do. They should start giving out divine favours for positive propaganda posts. Oh wait, I think they've done that already.
03 Nov, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 48th comment:
Votes: 0
Runter said:
Can you imagine if new content only had one shared instance on a very popular game?


I don't have to imagine. I played Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies. I remember running into dungeons to find everything already dead. I remember PvP wars erupting because one guild was camping a specific spawn site (krayt dragons anyone?), and another guild rolled up to do the same thing.

It wasn't ALL doom and gloom, although if you were a solo player…. yeah, it was. :)

lockewarrior said:
People pay money to play WoW. That pretty much dictates WoW implementing instances.


I just can't believe how many things WoW invented before it even existed, at least according to today's youth….

I think the first successful MMO to use instancing was City of Heroes. There were PLENTY of MMO's before that which people paid money to play that didn't have it. There are still several today that don't use it. It is *NOT* a requirement, it is simply one way to handle the boss camping phenomenon, and in truth, it's the lazy way to do it.

Vanguard attempted a different solution. Their game featured dungeons where only the NPC's were instanced, so people could still see and interact with each other, but if three groups were there, each would have their own spawn of the encounters. This was to attempt to solve the isolation issue that instancing causes. Namely, your group has wandered down to the bottom of a dungeon and discovered they can't kill the last boss… you're in an instance, so nobody can just wander in to help, and you can only recruit in town, inviting people one at a time. Vanguard's solution meant you could see others as they were also trying to do the same thing, and groups could join up for the bigger bosses if they wanted to do so.

FFXIV also does this for quests. When you take a quest to go kill N mosquitoes, the bugs spawn on the map, but only you can attack them.. to everyone else, they're either entirely invisible, or they refuse to fight. I'm not sure, but I think they're invisible until the questing player engages them, at which point others can see but not interact with them.

Now, I'm not saying instancing is bad. Far from it, but it is overused these days. It solves several problems, but it causes several others. Today's gamers seem to be all about the loot and xp, and so many of the continuity issues aren't a concern for them.
03 Nov, 2010, Runter wrote in the 49th comment:
Votes: 0
Well, I agree with what you're getting at, Quix. There are other ways to solve the design problems. I don't support area instancing at face value as a cureall. I just don't believe it is neccesarily an evil. I was mostly disputing the idea that those solvable problems are actually more fun for players who play free to play.
04 Nov, 2010, lockewarrior wrote in the 50th comment:
Votes: 0
@Runter: You are an idiot.

I neither claimed that people who pay for games want soft play because they only play for short periods of times, nor do I play/worship IRE MUDS.

My point was that those people who -do- only get to play for short periods of times generally are entitled to feel like they deserve an equal chance -because- they pay, as opposed to people who ride the service for free. If you're on an entirely free to play MUD, you can't go around demanding things be a certain way (at least not expecting the admin to meet your demands.)

If your game has a small number of quests and hunting spots, instancing is probably a good way to go. If your game has a significantly larger amount of quests and hunting spots, instancing might not be needed. (Encourage players to explore.)

I'm personally for staff/player run quests, that frequently change - but this requires a lot more work too.

No, I'm not disputing the value of instancing: WoW group raids would not work if there wasn't instancing.

On the flip-side: I don't believe Revelation employs instancing, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. Most likely because the player-base is significantly smaller than what you would find in say, WoW. Case in point: Do what works best for your game, regardless of what is 'theoretically' the right way to go about it. If your players respond well to instancing, and it doesn't break RP, and you're happy with it.. Do it! :]

cheers
04 Nov, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 51st comment:
Votes: 0
lockewarrior said:
@Runter: You are an idiot.
[…]
cheers

Well, at least we're trying to be nominally polite… :rolleyes:
04 Nov, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 52nd comment:
Votes: 0
lockewarrior said:
No, I'm not disputing the value of instancing: WoW group raids would not work if there wasn't instancing.

Actually, they would… just not quite the way they do now. WoW didn't invent raiding either, they merely took it down the instance route to allow groups to get carbon-copy replicas of the same experience. Anyone who's been in a 100+ player open-world raid in Everquest will verify that there's more than one way to have epic content that requires (some amount of) cooperation to complete. :)

Quote
On the flip-side: I don't believe Revelation employs instancing, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. Most likely because the player-base is significantly smaller than what you would find in say, WoW.

Just as an interesting data point, WoW may have the largest subscriber base of any MMO out there, but it's actually pretty stingy in terms of the number of players per server. Typically, only a few thousand players are logged into any given server at a time, and there are hundreds of servers with hundreds of instance servers in a pool to handle raid/battleground instances.

All said and done, EVE-Online has one of the largest single server games out there, using a cluster and a gigantic solid-state disk SQL server array. The cluster typically has 40K people on at a time, and I've personally seen over 1000 in Jita, and battles with several hundred on each side. Try packing 1000 people in Dalaran and see how fast the WoW server melts. :)

The only reason I bring that up is that EVE also does not use instancing of any kind. They, however, have a unique solution to the problem. Missions are spawned at random coordinates in the sector, and there is a LOT of space in a sector. Still, I know it isn't instanced, as it is very possible to scan people down while they're in a mission and attack them (or wait for them to die and grab their stuff). It's not common, but it can be done. Of course, PvP is central to EVE, so it's not considered a problem anyways.
04 Nov, 2010, Runter wrote in the 53rd comment:
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Nu uh. You are. Or is this a "your momma" moment?
04 Nov, 2010, lockewarrior wrote in the 54th comment:
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@Runter: I lol'd.

I know you're not -really- an idiot. My apologies if you took it seriously.

Anywho, I definitely didn't say WoW invented raiding either. I don't know what WoW's repopulation times are like, or what they would be on 'bosses' if they didn't use instancing, but even if the times allowed for say, 5 repops a day, on a server with over 1000 players, that makes for pretty slim pickin's.
05 Nov, 2010, lockewarrior wrote in the 55th comment:
Votes: 0
To expand on what I said..

Your comment really offended me. I started building on a MUSH when I was 9 years old. I've been a die-hard fan of MUDs and codebase developers almost my whole life. I definitely don't worship IRE. In fact, if you saw the compulsive liars thread, you would probably already know that.

I don't believe in charging money for players to play MUDs. I also don't believe in allowing players to buy top tier equipment and abilities with real life cash. I support open-source software, and free sharing and exchange of technology. IRE is pretty much the opposite of that.

If I had to pick someone/something in the MUD community to worship, I'd probably go with Nick Gammon or Cratylus. Both have contributed remarkable amounts of code to the MUD community.

By the way, I've checked out CoralMud. That's pretty cool stuff! If I could get Ruby to run properly on this machine, I would probably develop it full time.
06 Nov, 2010, Ssolvarain wrote in the 56th comment:
Votes: 0
lockewarrior said:
slim pickin's.


Not really. The idea that everyone could (and then should) have everything didn't really emerge until WoW. Add on the wonders of patch rips and databases, and you've got yourself a "sign up here for X item" thing going on. Very linear, very boring.
06 Nov, 2010, Runter wrote in the 57th comment:
Votes: 0
The easy way out, and frankly the design low road, is to dispute the fact that a problem even exists. Its a fairly common occurance to try to muddy the waters of minimum and maximum goals. Luckily we have metrics that clearly articulate what players (even willing to pay) think is boring.
07 Nov, 2010, lockewarrior wrote in the 58th comment:
Votes: 0
lockewarrior said:
Case in point: Do what works best for your game, regardless of what is 'theoretically' the right way to go about it. If your players respond well to instancing, and it doesn't break RP, and you're happy with it.. Do it! :]

cheers
07 Nov, 2010, Ssolvarain wrote in the 59th comment:
Votes: 0
So instancing was your idea now?
07 Nov, 2010, lockewarrior wrote in the 60th comment:
Votes: 0
Lol. Having trouble following the posts?

Depending on the specific project, instancing might seem like a good idea or a bad idea when I'm thinking about it.

Ultimately, as a programmer, you should (want to) implement something and measure the result. (How you think I was trying to take credit for instancing or change my view half-way through a discussion is beyond me. I quoted the earlier post, so as to say, "This was kind of my view from the start. Try it…)
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