Let's seriously just put everyone in time out.

[Torven]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Uthgaard claim to have access to both TR and TMO's forums?

[stormlord]

Why do solutions always seem like they were gotten from the Gaming 101 for Dummies book?

Instancing is a nice solution for overpopulation in content, especially nice for developers, but it robs the world of social interaction and instead of playing in different content to keep yourself occupied, you're playing in the same exact content that everyone else is playing in. Instancing extends the life of already existing content - at the cost of other things.

The industry needs to look at other possibilities that don't reduce social interaction, and should encourage new content as opposed to the mirroring of already existing content (to save resources).

But I think instancing is probably the cheapest method right now and that's why it's used, among a few other reasons. However, this does not mean the same will remain true indefinitely.

I picture several things:
1) Dynamic spawns and spawn times
2) Whole dynamic zones that despawn and spawn based on changing conditions
3) Spawning that's based on population

Those're the first few things that come to mind. This takes me way back to Diablo II. In that game, when population goes up the creatures would drop higher rewards and better loot (with some increase in hitpoints and dps of the creatures you fight). This extended the usability of the content and ensured that if you couldn't find others to help you kill something because there was no one else then you could have a reasonable chance of doing it yourself (the creatures become easier). It also meant that when more players entered the server that things would get a bit harder and last longer.

Just imagine zoning into lower guk and seeing that there're too many people in the zone and there's no room for more groups or people. Now imagine that instead of leaving the zone to find something else, that the game increased the power of the creatures just enough that there'd be room for you somewhere. So instead of everyone else keeping all of the spawns clear, there might be several leftover so that you have something to do. This kind of change would probably entail numerous other changes in EQ, but it shows how something like this roughly works.

A server that's designed to dynamically respond to population, low or high, is not going to collapse when the population changes. EQ was (less so today, but I'd still argue that it's) highly dependent on population. But in any case, when a server can do this it will tolerate population changes much more effectively.

But I'd like to see more dynamic dungeons or zones that're created to be open world (not instanced). These dungeons might only exist for a time, dependent on other factors. They could have random elements inside and be sprinkled across the world in different places. It would be a bit like ldons except that everyone could enter.

I'd lke to see more land area and a travel system that's similar to UO's. One where players are in control of the travel system and can travel instantly to different locations they have stored in their travel book. One way to produce lots of content is to pregenerate it. While the content will not have the kind of quality we're used to in handmade content, it will be abundant and it won't come at the cost of social interaction or other negatives associated with instancing.

I've just given a few ideas here. But there're countless things. Instancing is just one way to reduce the chance that players will hit a road block in their progression. If you don't understand the underlying cause of these things, you might think instancing was made in the bible or given to man from god. Once you do understand the causes that lead developers to make instanced content, then you can see how other answers are possible if they're investigated and employed in new projects. But it has to be with conviction and not a halfass attempt - nothing is easy.

It just feels real contrived to me; the whole instancing thing. I always get this horrible feeling that it's just another excuse for people to be private and stick to their circle of friends. I don't think worlds should go too much in that direction. Spontaneous meetings are not bad and nor were PUGs. PUGs were one of the greatest things about the older game. A game where everyone is so private is not socially rich. It's a reflection of our society too, not just MMOs in general.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by Spoodowg2000bc [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The main nostalgia of Everquest is griefing others, guild fighting, etc.

It's not the best-made game, but it was one of the most entertaining in terms of being a competitive player-vs-player-via-enemy game (ie softcore PvP where you grief others through PvE).

What are your best EQ memories? Mine were shit like kiting raid mobs around for hours, training people, shit talk.

What's the point of an MMORPG? Oneupmanship. If you instance everything, it just becomes a matter of who can look up/best remember how to kill raid mobs, which is going to get boring as fast as WoW did for people. We've all killed this shit before; that's not what we care about. We want to kill the shit so that some one else can't.

You're pretty much what's wrong with multiplayer gaming.

[Acillatem]

Funny all of my favorite EQ memories involved the people I played the game with - my in-game compadres.

I played on a PvP server, and I don't sit here and think back "man I fukin kicked his ass good!" I had my arch-nemesis etc, but 99% of my memories include things like getting my friends their epic, certain people in guild I've met in RL and havin a beer or 2 with them, running around the Karanas in my teens with Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy Album played constantly for days on end lol.

/shrug Maybe I'm the odd one out - but rarely do I look back with satisfaction upon the negative shit that happened.

[porigromus]

Originally Posted by Bubbles [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Since you've screamed this in about 10 threads now, i'll just ask you this once: why is it when TMO is accused of something, they welcome any inquiry, yet whenever TR is accused of crossing a street wrong, the wagons are circled and the whole server comes crashing down?

I'm hardly a fan of TMO, or an enemy of TR. But i mean, come on now. You can't really accuse him of anything besides protecting the integrity of the server and keeping appearances 100% legit. Did he invade your private forums? Yep. Can argue tactics, but there's 0 he gains personally from it. It's far easier to understand his desire to prevent stupidity than go piecemeal through everything Xzerion has done for the past year.

Was Xzer up to something? Who really knows, who cares. It's stupid to keep up appearances and have a dev in a top tier raiding guild. It's just tailor-made for RnF fodder. The biggest tragedy is people like Nil and Co. don't get to enjoy their creation. And now add Xzer to that list.

And yes, now that Xzer has stepped down everyone will find something else to complain about. People will continue to complain as long as their is both a platform in RnF to complain about everything, until either a Red server is made so virgins can wage their holy war, or everything on p99 raid-wise is instanced so everyone can go out and get jobs and the guides and staff can actually get work done and focus on helping the people with real problems that aren't self-inflicted.

The high-end of this server is a cesspool of people who only get erections when they deprive others from pixels, who rage everytime something doesnt go their way, and are, in every sense of the word, a complete *detriment* to this project. Yeah, it's actually a project, in case some of you actually forgot. It's not your personal pixelated playground.

Oh sure, instancing isn't classic. Well neither is the silliness that happens anytime a raid target spawns on this server. On live if some bard or monk was frolicking merrily around the firewall in fear wiener-blocking a dracho or CT from another guild, the second guild would take their pullers, grab the rest of the zone and wipe Guild A's campground off the face of the planet. And no GM would show up or care. The planes were dangerous places, and people either played nice or policed themselves.. On blue servers, no less.. All the rule lawyering and GM involvement just boils down to a never ending supply of 'bluebie griefing' (tm) magically called 'classic tactics'. BS. Instance it, free up the staff to work on the project and the real playerbase, and let the uberguilds hang out in EC Tunnel and compare what "their" raid mob dropped that day. Everyone wins, except those so desperately clinging to the idea of raiding to griefand measure their E-peens.

Let's lead normal lives people. Enough of this nonsense.

Option B would be to just keep raid targets despawned for a month. The only way to make children behave is to completely take their toys away. We're down 2 people that gave their heart and soul to this project. It's been a bad week, to put it mildly.

I vote yes, us more casual players are the ones being hurt by this. The GMs have to hear wine after wine from the top 2% of the population all the time. Most people don't raid. I would enjoy a raid here and there like the old days after the high end guilds had their fun with them. I like being behind in raid targets with a nice little friendly guild.

So instance them, and make the loot drop very rare, make it so it only drops .005% or something crazy like that of the time so the people crying can be in their instance farming for years.

[Duie]

Funny because My fondest memories of Live was when Crush pulled us out middle of a ToV raid to help this cleric in a casual guild called the Mithil Heart Brigade, Complete her epic.
See We were the top guild and we wanted to have first shot, But instead of using our mussle, We came to an agreement with the smaller guilds on the server.

We would get first shot at any epic peice off any Raid mob. in Return We will stay out of smaller guilds way and help anytime on anything that we were called to help with. Crush kept his word.

See the difrence on here to compaired to Tribunal is, While we flamed the shit out of each other, We also had the integraty to make sure the server thrived.

[soup]

I mean, we have grown fucking adults doing this shit now. It's not a bunch of teens in high/middle school doing this. It's grown fucking adults. The behavior of a lot of people here is terribly pathetic.

[citizen1080]

Originally Posted by soup [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I mean, we have grown fucking adults doing this shit now. It's not a bunch of teens in high/middle school doing this. It's grown fucking adults. The behavior of a lot of people here is terribly pathetic.

This



Grow the Fuck up

[bakkily]

Originally Posted by soup [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I mean, we have grown fucking adults doing this shit now. It's not a bunch of teens in high/middle school doing this. It's grown fucking adults. The behavior of a lot of people here is terribly pathetic.

yea, i agree, and to the post above me saying grow up, heh ok

he's making a point saying that we all play like punk teenagers in a way

but the mentality of the majority is sadly dissapointing, not all, but most

[mgellan]

Dunno, simplest solution to me is if a guild misbehaves, delete it and give the leadership a temp or perm ban. If peeps ragequit over that, then most of the dicks disappear which is perfectly fine. The side benefit is the smaller guilds 1. Keep their high level players rather than losing them to raid guilds and 2. raid mobs open up to small guilds.

Why put up with the drama? I'd love to put up a server that is raid-guild hostile, seems to me it'd be quieter and more fun for 80% of the players [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Regards,
Mg