Morbidheresy Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 You are sent on a special mission to explore an ancient temple that has not been entered in 1000 years. The coveted item you seek is closely guarded. You deftly sneak inside, kill your way through the hallways, and retrieve the artifact. Only the dead bodies of your enemies remain. Suddenly, Jingle-Fett bounces into the room with a clone of your companion and shoots his little flaming rockets at your feet for fun. I would like to know why multiplying the number of occurrences described in the 2nd paragraph by double or more is considered "immersion." The way I see it, running into more players = less immersion, UNLESS the situation calls for grouping- then guess what- Chat connects all planet instances so that when people do need to interact, it can be done. I think the people who want swarms of jumping, explosion spamming, mob-tagging players want it more in order to fit their schema of MMOs than for any actual legitimate reason. Personally, I do wish that cities and the star fleet were a singular instance, but they make up for it in part with quality npc placement and ambient sound. Would like to see the main city changed, but the questing zones are perfect how they are. It seems me that Bioware figured out how to beautifully blend an authentic and clutter-free environment with multiplayer functionality and convenience, and for whatever reason an ultra-vocal minority has taken issue with it. Ironically, I guarantee that many of them are the same people who criticized the game for not being innovative or reinventing MMOs (i think it has, but thats a different topic) and yet the lack of ridiculous area-overpopulation makes them mad because "that's not how mmo's are." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColonelColt Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 Your post is exactly why 'story' and 'MMO' doesn't really blend together. There's simply no way to make it work. That is why most MMOs forgo any real story elements. The only way to make a story-driven game work is to make it essentially a singleplayer experience, which is the route ToR went. That is why people dislike instancing. Because it turns the game from an MMO into a massively online singleplayer game. People don't buy MMOs and pay 15 bucks a month to play by themselves after all. Hope this answers your question as to why people complain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cameirus Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 You are sent on a special mission to explore an ancient temple that has not been entered in 1000 years. The coveted item you seek is closely guarded. You deftly sneak inside, kill your way through the hallways, and retrieve the artifact. Only the dead bodies of your enemies remain. Suddenly, Jingle-Fett bounces into the room with a clone of your companion and shoots his little flaming rockets at your feet for fun. I would like to know why multiplying the number of occurrences described in the 2nd paragraph by double or more is considered "immersion." The way I see it, running into more players = less immersion, UNLESS the situation calls for grouping- then guess what- Chat connects all planet instances so that when people do need to interact, it can be done. I think the people who want swarms of jumping, explosion spamming, mob-tagging players want it more in order to fit their schema of MMOs than for any actual legitimate reason. Personally, I do wish that cities and the star fleet were a singular instance, but they make up for it in part with quality npc placement and ambient sound. Would like to see the main city changed, but the questing zones are perfect how they are. It seems me that Bioware figured out how to beautifully blend an authentic and clutter-free environment with multiplayer functionality and convenience, and for whatever reason an ultra-vocal minority has taken issue with it. Ironically, I guarantee that many of them are the same people who criticized the game for not being innovative or reinventing MMOs (i think it has, but thats a different topic) and yet the lack of ridiculous area-overpopulation makes them mad because "that's not how mmo's are." /sigh its not immersion it kills, its fun and the multiplayer part of an MMO. Worlds feel dead, you cant do things as a group. Instances of 60 players for a world....seriously 60!, play RIFT and you get a couple of hundred in one place for a zone invasion, and BW decided to split whole planets into 60player chunks... its pathetic for an MMO. Its great for a single player experience, but who wants to pay a monthly sub for a single player game? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerandar Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 the towns are dead, there are about 5-20 NPC's and not a single player, woo shards and instances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morbidheresy Posted December 25, 2011 Author Share Posted December 25, 2011 /sigh its not immersion it kills, its fun and the multiplayer part of an MMO. Worlds feel dead, you cant do things as a group. Instances of 60 players for a world....seriously 60!, play RIFT and you get a couple of hundred in one place for a zone invasion, and BW decided to split whole planets into 60player chunks... its pathetic for an MMO. Its great for a single player experience, but who wants to pay a monthly sub for a single player game? I was under the impression that most people play MMO's in order to raid, pvp, or RP. Instancing doesn't affect any of those since there is no world pvp, groups are still just as easy to form, and if anything conventional (non-mmo) roleplaying is enhanced because it is often just you and the NPC's and story. Like I said, those who enjoy being surrounded by bouncing characters with silly names are an ultra-vocal minority, and I think most people are happy with a tranquil outdoor environment. It is old, stupid, mmo convention as far as I am concerned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WereMops Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 (edited) Your post is exactly why 'story' and 'MMO' doesn't really blend together. There's simply no way to make it work. That is why most MMOs forgo any real story elements. The only way to make a story-driven game work is to make it essentially a singleplayer experience, which is the route ToR went. That is why people dislike instancing. Because it turns the game from an MMO into a massively online singleplayer game. People don't buy MMOs and pay 15 bucks a month to play by themselves after all. Hope this answers your question as to why people complain. I don't totally agree with you but then again I don't disagree fully either. I'd pay 15 bucks a month for more or less unlimited entertainment, even if it's "singleplayer" which I disagree that it is. My Opinion below, if you don't agree then you don't agree, simple. People have to look at SWTOR as a new (or reinvented) type of MMO, the MMORPG, where the mix of singleplayer, co-op and MMO meet eachother, personally I think they've done this very well, sure there's tweeks that could be done at certain places to increase the "massive" feel but overall it's very well done. EDIT: about the 60 people instancing, I've seen plenty of 150-200 instanced planets, usually only the last instance (when the prior one reach it's limit) is less populated, but that's more or less unavoidable. Edited December 25, 2011 by WereMops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deserttfoxx Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 Alderaan and up arent sharded for 1, and as for the phasing with your personal story, all you people still clamoring for this need to move the hell on. Open world with no instancing is NEVER COMING BACK, sorry, it died in eq 1 and it needs to stay dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cameirus Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 I was under the impression that most people play MMO's in order to raid, pvp, or RP. Instancing doesn't affect any of those since there is no world pvp, groups are still just as easy to form, and if anything conventional (non-mmo) roleplaying is enhanced because it is often just you and the NPC's and story. Like I said, those who enjoy being surrounded by bouncing characters with silly names are an ultra-vocal minority, and I think most people are happy with a tranquil outdoor environment. It is old, stupid, mmo convention as far as I am concerned. I play MMOs for the people. I think you'll find the people who just run instances non stop back to back are the rare ones. Most like to socialise, and to play in a world that feels vibrant and full of life, something swtor spectacularly fails at. IF this was a single player game then it woudl be fine, like ME for instance, but its not, its a sub based MMO, which is failing on being both massive and multiplayer. Zones can be large, but content is small, wiith lots of travelling. Very few player (serously, 60 in an instance of a planet! should be several hundred at least) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jargonaut Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 (edited) I was under the impression that most people play MMO's in order to raid, pvp, or RP. Instancing doesn't affect any of those since there is no world pvp, groups are still just as easy to form, and if anything conventional (non-mmo) roleplaying is enhanced because it is often just you and the NPC's and story. Like I said, those who enjoy being surrounded by bouncing characters with silly names are an ultra-vocal minority, and I think most people are happy with a tranquil outdoor environment. It is old, stupid, mmo convention as far as I am concerned. There is supposed to be open pvp, it will need a lot more than 60 people. Besides that; playing in an area where there are other people is an old, stupid mmo convention? It's part of the reason a lot of people play, people want the hussle and bussle of lots of people running around and the feeling of an actual community. It sounds like you would prefer a lobby based game rather than a Massively Multiplayer online RPG. It's actually a stretch to call this game a MMORPG, I'm not sure the BW devs have quite understood the concept. I believe this problem has come about because the levelling "fields" in this game are actually quite small and can't support large numbers of players without them having to compete for too little space in which to play. One respect in which BW have failed in an otherwise good game is the areas are lacking in expansiveness and explorability meaning people aren't going to be spread over large areas so they have to be instanced. It's the main lacking feature of this game from what I've seen so far but my char is only lvl 28. I hope that the areas later are larger with less instancing. Edited December 25, 2011 by Jargonaut Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knightblaster Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 Your post is exactly why 'story' and 'MMO' doesn't really blend together. There's simply no way to make it work. That is why most MMOs forgo any real story elements. The only way to make a story-driven game work is to make it essentially a singleplayer experience, which is the route ToR went. That is why people dislike instancing. Because it turns the game from an MMO into a massively online singleplayer game. People don't buy MMOs and pay 15 bucks a month to play by themselves after all. Hope this answers your question as to why people complain. It's a conundrum, really, for game designers. The most "MMO immersive" game design is a sandbox where most of the gameplay is made by the players and their interaction with each other. EVE is one of these, as was Ultima and as was (the original) SWG. Here the players and what they do and create and how they interact *is* the content, for the most part. Trouble is, this type, while immersive, isn't that popular with most gamers because it generally involves more time and effort to be "entertained" than is the case with a game that provides a pathway to follow. So going from there, you can either go the story route (which BioWare has done here, and which was really not that feasible technically until fairly recently, at least not in the way it has been done here) or you can go the "hybrid design" route of WoW, which is probably best described as "playing alone together" -- that is, everyone is on their own pathway of quest lines and progression, but they are playing in a world where they can see everyone else hoping around doing their own pathway and progression. It greatly degrades the story (not much story credibility really when people are sitting around waiting for a quest mob to respawn) but it greatly increases the "immersion" in terms of being in a world that is populated by a massive amount of *players*. So it comes down to what one means by "immersion". In MMO-speak, most people mean "feeling like I am playing in a world that has a massive amount of players visibly running around in it", rather than "feeling like I am experiencing credible stories that are not trivialized by players camping a respawn spot". It's a fork in the road, in terms of game design. BioWare went the story route more than any other MMO to date has done (again, not feasible to do it quite this way until relatively recently anyway), which is causing controversy among MMO players who are more used to (and often prefer) the playing alone together type of approach to game design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dasffion Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 I see plenty of people while I'm out and about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sw_dragon Posted December 25, 2011 Share Posted December 25, 2011 It doesn't kill 'immersion'. I can get 'immersed' in a single player game like skyrim quite easily... This game doesn't immerse me like said single player games, they at least have background music Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts