How important are instanced raids in mmorpgs?

[YouAreAllWrong]

Instanced Raiding goes against the very definition of MMOs.

Although we see a trend of new games focusing on the addiction part of MMOs, rather than the actual Massive-playability of MMOs, I do believe that gear treadmills, small scale content and grinding will become an obsolete game design in a few years.

I see MMO companies making Massive sandboxy style of games in order to try and distinct themselves from trending online co-op games we will see on next generation consoles and PCs.

[nih]

Instanced Raiding goes against the very definition of MMOs.

If UO doesn't have it, it is wrong. Right? Now tell me why did UO lose to EQ. Note that by the time of the trammel patch UO has already lost.

I just can't understand people who can't just have fun - but unfortunately that is the gaming climate we have right now.

Because for a lot of people, fun means "effort expended towards the achievement of a goal". A goal can be can require either lots of time (which is the case for most older MMOs), or skill (something pvp usually fits here), or both (only real example is wow raiding). In your example, GW2, getting max level and exotic gear is neither hard nor long. After that, where is the next challenge?

The previous paragraph merely describes the single-player dimension. The multiplayer dimension skews even more in the direction of progression. While a lone individual may feel compelled to "get every armor and weapon skin in obtainable", how the hell is that supposed to be translated into a group setting, especially when the content is piss easy. Most gamers are guys, and most guys are not gay. Compare "let's grind this retardedly bugged but stupidly easy instance 80 times so we can all get that armor dye in that obscure shade of pink" versus "let's push hard on Ragnaros this week to see if we can get into phase 3 ane maybe down him in a few weeks so we can all wear the firelord title".

Woah. I was just asking for some sandbox stuff like player housing and other stuff to make the game feel more like a virtual world rather than raiding+arena=everything.

Again, just because UO had player housing doesn't mean it is either a good idea or a good fit for an MMO. Player housing is a LEGO kind of activity and does noo fit as well in a virtual world where real estate is expensive. No matter how well built, an MMO player housing system will never even approach 1% of an actual virtual LEGO game. Compared to Minecraft, UO player housing sucked, Rift player housing sucked, and most assuredly Wildstar player housing is going to suck. What's the point?

[SodiumChloride]

If UO doesn't have it, it is wrong. Right? Now tell me why did UO lose to EQ. Note that by the time of the trammel patch UO has already lost.



Because for a lot of people, fun means "effort expended towards the achievement of a goal". A goal can be can require either lots of time (which is the case for most older MMOs), or skill (something pvp usually fits here), or both (only real example is wow raiding). In your example, GW2, getting max level and exotic gear is neither hard nor long. After that, where is the next challenge?

The previous paragraph merely describes the single-player dimension. The multiplayer dimension skews even more in the direction of progression. While a lone individual may feel compelled to "get every armor and weapon skin in obtainable", how the hell is that supposed to be translated into a group setting, especially when the content is piss easy. Most gamers are guys, and most guys are not gay. Compare "let's grind this retardedly bugged but stupidly easy instance 80 times so we can all get that armor dye in that obscure shade of pink" versus "let's push hard on Ragnaros this week to see if we can get into phase 3 ane maybe down him in a few weeks so we can all wear the firelord title".



Again, just because UO had player housing doesn't mean it is either a good idea or a good fit for an MMO. Player housing is a LEGO kind of activity and does noo fit as well in a virtual world where real estate is expensive. No matter how well built, an MMO player housing system will never even approach 1% of an actual virtual LEGO game. Compared to Minecraft, UO player housing sucked, Rift player housing sucked, and most assuredly Wildstar player housing is going to suck. What's the point?

Wut?!

Firstly, who are you to define what an MMO should be? The game is a lot of things to a lot people, people play for different reasons.

Secondly, why can't it be "as good"? There is nothing those other developers can do that Blizzard can't.

[Valeron]

Conversely, I'm of the opinion that it isn't really an mmo if it has instanced content. Everything should be open world.

[zephid]

They are very important in any MMO that focuses on PvE.

[nih]

Firstly, who are you to define what an MMO should be? The game is a lot of things to a lot people, people play for different reasons.

I was responding to someone talking about GW2 there, not UO. He was asking a demographic question of why people don't stick around to frolick and I gave him an answer. You can make a multiplayer game based on frolicking, but it won't be much better than frolicking in a single player game and it has no incentive to keep groups of people continually engaged.

Secondly, why can't it be "as good"? There is nothing those other developers can do that Blizzard can't.

I'm not saying that Blizzard (or any other developer) isn't capable of making something as good as Minecraft, I'm saying that player housing in the confines of an MMO will never be even 1% as good as lego landscaping in Minecraft.

[SodiumChloride]

I was responding to someone talking about GW2 there, not UO. He was asking a demographic question of why people don't stick around to frolick and I gave him an answer. You can make a multiplayer game based on frolicking, but it won't be much better than frolicking in a single player game and it has no incentive to keep groups of people continually engaged.



I'm not saying that Blizzard (or any other developer) isn't capable of making something as good as Minecraft, I'm saying that player housing in the confines of an MMO will never be even 1% as good as lego landscaping in Minecraft.

Hmm, you might have replied to the wrong person then ...

Still, I still don't see why it will "never be even 1% as good as lego landscaping in Minecraft".

In my vision of player housing, we will have guilds own their own piece of land which they can landscape to their satisfaction. Their members could place their homes, built from components they can earn/buy, in the said guild's territory with gardens and whatever. This is all possible.

Minecraft's home building is in fact very primitive. For a decent home build system, refer to the Sims.

[YouAreAllWrong]

If UO doesn't have it, it is wrong. Right? Now tell me why did UO lose to EQ. Note that by the time of the trammel patch UO has already lost.

I never said that the definition of MMOs is UO (although it can be). Also, popularity does not define a genre.
There is a reason why MMO has two "M"s. Heavy instancing goes against the very purpose of the genre.

Now, If the soul purpose of the game is to Raid and get loot, that is fine. However, you CAN have a great small scale multiplayer game without it be an MMO. For example, GW1 great game, not an MMO, TSW awesome game, not an MMO etc.
Just because people like one style of game that doesn't mean that, that's how every game should be.

[Enitzu]

I'm going to say instanced raiding ruined MMOs.

This in a nut shell. Instanced raids are nice since you can plan out your raids but that's it. At the start of EQ all bosses were open world and while the griefing and such did happen it was all a part of the game. The top end guilds had to have enough people to raid, find what bosses were up that day, and mobilize a force in order to take it down all before the other guilds could. This made raids not only enjoyable but it gave it another level of challenge.

Now a days you have WoW with it's what 6 raids of the same raid? That's not only a waste of development time that could be going into putting more or better content into the game rather then the 100+ daily quests every patch but an incredibly boring waste of time for alot of people having to run the same raids over and over to gear for the heroic modes.

Nintendo has been doing a study for years to show how "easy" games have become and just how dumbed down (for lack of a better term) most games have to be made just to appease the majority of the playerbase. Did you know that most of today's gamers can't even beat the first level of the original super mario bros game? I mean really? Was it really that difficult? We just need 1 good game to put the difficulty back in that's all I ask for. Stop giving people watered down games because they can't handle them. That is how people get better not by nerfing the content so they can all do it.

Source: http://www.p4rgaming.com/majority-of...er-mario-bros/

Just my 2 cents

[paralleluniverse]

Something I see once in awhile pop in topics about end game that if mmo doesn't have instanced raiding with item progression tied to it then "what's the point" or "thats so antisocial and might as well play single player game". Why is it that?

I used to play Ultima Online before WoW and there wasn't any instances there and yet players formed guilds and played together even if developers didn't try tell players that they should play together and if they do they get reward from it. I used to raid a lot during TBC and when I look back I don't remember it being more social than than my experiences with other players in UO was. In fact I remember UO being lot better as players didn't need each others to play the game but rather enjoyed to play together.

I also feel lot of players give WoWs raids way too much credit for its success. I remember when me and my friends started wow that we didn't know what raids were or what tiers and end game meant. In fact if I knew that I would need to level max and then start weekly rng lottery with raid bosses to gain "virtual levels" to progress my character in the end game, I am not sure if I had picked wow at all back then. Still whenever wow loses subscribers there are lot people who make big deal about what was best tier and how wow is losing players because raids were so much better in their preferred expansion (even if only small percentage played these back then).

What does "play together" at endgame without raids mean? Be specific.

Yes, raids are essential. No raids means no PvE endgame, which means no point. Theoretically, it's possible to make another alternative PvE endgame that is as fulfilling and difficult as raids. But no one has ever succeeded in doing so.

So until then, it's raid or pointless game.

- - - Updated - - -

This in a nut shell. Instanced raids are nice since you can plan out your raids but that's it. At the start of EQ all bosses were open world and while the griefing and such did happen it was all a part of the game. The top end guilds had to have enough people to raid, find what bosses were up that day, and mobilize a force in order to take it down all before the other guilds could. This made raids not only enjoyable but it gave it another level of challenge.

Now a days you have WoW with it's what 6 raids of the same raid? That's not only a waste of development time that could be going into putting more or better content into the game rather then the 100+ daily quests every patch but an incredibly boring waste of time for alot of people having to run the same raids over and over to gear for the heroic modes.

Nintendo has been doing a study for years to show how "easy" games have become and just how dumbed down (for lack of a better term) most games have to be made just to appease the majority of the playerbase. Did you know that most of today's gamers can't even beat the first level of the original super mario bros game? I mean really? Was it really that difficult? We just need 1 good game to put the difficulty back in that's all I ask for. Stop giving people watered down games because they can't handle them. That is how people get better not by nerfing the content so they can all do it.

Source: http://www.p4rgaming.com/majority-of...er-mario-bros/

Just my 2 cents

Games too easy? Yet you bash raids, despite heroic raids being arguably the hardest PvE content ever created.

[Viertel]

Nintendo has been doing a study for years to show how "easy" games have become and just how dumbed down (for lack of a better term) most games have to be made just to appease the majority of the playerbase. Did you know that most of today's gamers can't even beat the first level of the original super mario bros game? I mean really? Was it really that difficult? We just need 1 good game to put the difficulty back in that's all I ask for. Stop giving people watered down games because they can't handle them. That is how people get better not by nerfing the content so they can all do it.

Source: http://www.p4rgaming.com/majority-of...er-mario-bros/

Just my 2 cents

/sigh

No, they haven't. The site is satrical and the entire post was a satire of the gaming state.

Check. Your. Sources.

[Enitzu]

Games too easy? Yet you bash raids, despite heroic raids being arguably the hardest PvE content ever created.

I didn't bash raids. I said instanced raids make things too easy imo.

And you really can't be serious about heroic raids being the hardest things ever. Yes some of the fights are incredibly difficult and I love those fights. Heroic Rag was one of my favorites. But overall heroic raids really aren't difficult. Heroic raids are what the normals should be. The fights should be challenging and they should push people to be better to accomplish more. Vanilla WoW was done well as was TBC. After that started the fast paced decline of challenging content.

If you don't agree that is your opinion as this is mine. I'm not telling you that you are wrong I am just stating that if companies put back the challenge into games now after all this time you would see so many flame threads because the genre as a whole now was never forced to be better. They would just wait until it was made easier or vastly over geared it. Vanilla WoW had very few guilds that ever completed Naxx 40 or even AQ 40 for that matter. Back then it was not uncommon for people to not have seen all the content and that was fine. It gave people something to shoot for and to push towards. Now there is no reason to do so. If you don't get into heroic raiding it doesn't matter because you will still see every fight in the game (the only exceptions maybe the heroic only bosses which people will still see just not in the current tier).

[ComputerNerd]

Instanced encounters are controlled encounters.
With fixed stats and properties of an encounter then fixed rosters of players are required.
Instancing is the easiest way of achieving that.

I didn't bash raids. I said instanced raids make things too easy imo.

And you really can't be serious about heroic raids being the hardest things ever. Yes some of the fights are incredibly difficult and I love those fights. Heroic Rag was one of my favorites. But overall heroic raids really aren't difficult. Heroic raids are what the normals should be. The fights should be challenging and they should push people to be better to accomplish more. Vanilla WoW was done well as was TBC. After that started the fast paced decline of challenging content.

If you don't agree that is your opinion as this is mine. I'm not telling you that you are wrong I am just stating that if companies put back the challenge into games now after all this time you would see so many flame threads because the genre as a whole now was never forced to be better. They would just wait until it was made easier or vastly over geared it. Vanilla WoW had very few guilds that ever completed Naxx 40 or even AQ 40 for that matter. Back then it was not uncommon for people to not have seen all the content and that was fine. It gave people something to shoot for and to push towards. Now there is no reason to do so. If you don't get into heroic raiding it doesn't matter because you will still see every fight in the game (the only exceptions maybe the heroic only bosses which people will still see just not in the current tier).

Very few clear heroic content while it is current.
The difficulty curve is arguably too easy at the low end with LFR, but at heroic level it certainly cannot be called too easy.
I would say that normal is fine where it is in difficulty, not least because the fixed roster requirements and the associated scheduling is a barrier in itself.

[Enitzu]

/sigh

No, they haven't. The site is satrical and the entire post was a satire of the gaming state.

Check. Your. Sources.

Seems so. My apologies I didn't touch anything on the site just followed the link from another site posted about it. Still wouldn't surprise me seeing some of the people in games today.

[Deleted]

Because for a lot of people, fun means "effort expended towards the achievement of a goal". A goal can be can require either lots of time (which is the case for most older MMOs), or skill (something pvp usually fits here), or both (only real example is wow raiding). In your example, GW2, getting max level and exotic gear is neither hard nor long. After that, where is the next challenge?

The problem here is that you are mixing up goal and challange. When did we loose the ability as a group to set our own goals?
Take GW2 again. Getting to max level and getting exotic gear is a pretty easy challenge. There are many other challenges to be had after that, different events and other things you can challenge yourself to. But because there are no artificial goals set, many people ignore it.

Lets take WoW. I know and have heard tons of people who enjoy doing *insert whatever activity*. Then they get the last achivement, or kill the last thing of *whatever activity* and stop doing it. Take raiders who really enjoy raiding with their 10/25 friends each week, but stop as soon as they have topped out there gear. I have heard people say they can't raid (usually "unless you really really need me") because they have to get their fishing skill up to max level. Only to during raid complain about how boring fishing is in WoW!

One is a fun challange, but the other one have a artificially set goal - which makes MANY many people pick that.

One more example, from our dear WoW. Back in BC, atleast on my realm, speed runs of instances became a common thing. People competed over who could run instances the fastest. Was a fun activity when you grew bored of raiding.
This stopped pretty much completely in Wrath, and when it as re-introduced as an official feature in MoP it as hailed as an all new thing. Yes, granted, the timed runs in MoP also have a higher difficulty level, but mainly it is a speed challange. And again, I keep seeing people going for gold, and then being "done". Your actual time doesn't matter, cause you got to the artificially set goal.

[lettuce]

Non-instanced raiding was the norm on Everquest til it fell apart, too. I feel like having servers with such small, segmented population is a relic of this era and has no place in instance-centric MMO.

[Enitzu]

Very few clear heroic content while it is current.
The difficulty curve is arguably too easy at the low end with LFR, but at heroic level it certainly cannot be called too easy.
I would say that normal is fine where it is in difficulty, not least because the fixed roster requirements and the associated scheduling is a barrier in itself.

True out of all the guilds there is only maybe 3-5% that actually do clear current content. But is that because it's too difficult or because the player base has gotten worse over the past 10 years skill wise? It could be argued either way with no clear winner.

LFR is far far too easy. When all mechanics can be ignored and still beat a fight that's a problem. Heroic raids are not easy. They shouldn't be. But back in TBC and Vanilla this was all raids. They were all hard and they took alot more prep in order to actually beat. You didn't go into AQ 40 the first week and get a clear. Hell most didn't get a clear for months since you had to farm so much of the resist sets.

If scheduling is a barrier in terms of raiding then that would be a personal choice. That would be because you yourself would rather play with certain people. With 7.7 million people playing the game saying that you can't find 25 people (or even less if you go 10) that can raid on the same schedule then that is completely personal. I have never in any game had this be a problem and that is to include 72 person raids long ago which took a whole lot more to put together.

[Golden]

True out of all the guilds there is only maybe 3-5% that actually do clear current content. But is that because it's too difficult or because the player base has gotten worse over the past 10 years skill wise? It could be argued either way with no clear winner.

LFR is far far too easy. When all mechanics can be ignored and still beat a fight that's a problem. Heroic raids are not easy. They shouldn't be. But back in TBC and Vanilla this was all raids. They were all hard and they took alot more prep in order to actually beat. You didn't go into AQ 40 the first week and get a clear. Hell most didn't get a clear for months since you had to farm so much of the resist sets.

If scheduling is a barrier in terms of raiding then that would be a personal choice. That would be because you yourself would rather play with certain people. With 7.7 million people playing the game saying that you can't find 25 people (or even less if you go 10) that can raid on the same schedule then that is completely personal. I have never in any game had this be a problem and that is to include 72 person raids long ago which took a whole lot more to put together.

I find it interesting that there is already a game out there that has a difficult raid progression model named Rift. Yet instead of playing Rift, you guys stay subscribed to WoW. All that says to developers is that there are more important considerations than difficult raid progression or exclusive content in an MMO that determine whether someone subscribes or not.

The interesting question to me is why do hardcore raiders stay with WoW? Is it because they need a big audience to do their thing in front of? Is it because they like the character design? Is it the artwork or storyline? The time invested?

[Enitzu]

I find it interesting that there is already a game out there that has a difficult raid progression model named Rift. Yet instead of playing Rift, you guys stay subscribed to WoW. All that says to developers is that there are more important considerations than difficult raid progression or exclusive content in an MMO that determine whether someone subscribes or not.

The interesting question to me is why do hardcore raiders stay with WoW? Is it because they need a big audience to do their thing in front of? Is it because they like the character design? Is it the artwork or storyline? The time invested?

Actually I played Rift for a couple years as well. Hammerknell when it came out was hard for the most part and required the time sink resist stuff which was good but once people started dropping off the game it became harder and harder to replace people with high caliber players.

Hardcore raiders stay with WoW for the money of course. Alot of them are making a killing during new content via streams and sponsers so why wouldn't they? I mean who wouldn't love to get paid to play video games!

[Fencers]

The interesting question to me is why do hardcore raiders stay with WoW?

Population.

The thing about World of Warcraft is that the game is essentially a cultural monolith. The quality of is somewhat irrelevant.