World instancing takes away from the MMO feel in my opinion. While I can see some good in the design, it really serves to destroy that 'community'/multi-player feel.
I can buy a single-player RPG and enjoy that any time. But when I play an MMO, I really expect to be engaged with other players for a good portion of my gameplay session. And really, it's playing with others and the development of relationships that keeps me playing the game.
If I get bored with a game that I play solo... I quit for a while, or I may quit entirely and simply move on. It's pretty easy to do that when it's just 'me' that's involved. But... if I play a game where I'm an active member of a guild, team, etc.,... then I'm likely to stick around even if the game is currently offering a less-than-optimal experience. Why? The relationships and social aspect. Even if I've reached a plateau in my gaming experience, I will look to help guildies and friends achieve their objectives and invest my in-game time in other ways for a while.
Obviously if a game fails to come up with something to peak my interest after a while, I will end up quitting. But for the most part, I would say the relationships I make do tend to extend my playtime much longer than any single player RPG game could.
GW has the multiplayer feel. You just don't have a persistent world. When I played GW1 I was grouped 80% of the time and I could do everything with my friends.
It's true that you finish a single player game much faster. However, I find that I have much more fun when playing a decent single player game than when I am playing an MMO. I have spent about 60 hours playing ME2 but every single minute was a great experience. I would pay much more for 60 amazing hours than for 500 so so hours in an MMO.
Besides there are also a lot of single player games which have multiplayer support. It's funny that Diablo was a much more social experience than most MMOs I have played. I levelled up with others whereas in MMOs you solo grind quests and you chat with your guildies. There are a lot of online games which also offer a social experience. However, only MMOs offer a huge online world, which feels static and dead. But not only MMOs offer a social experience. Not by a long shot.
@OP, I completely agree with you. When I started playing MMOs for the first time I really liked the idea of a huge online persistent world. But as time went by, I saw these online worlds for what they truly were. Empty shells which feel dead and they never change while imposing some really severe limitations on the game. I no longer see the point of having an online persistent world.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Ahh... gotta love that binary thinking. You know, where if you like A, it is impossible to like B. Or more like the fanboy definition, if you like A, B is just an affront to life as we know it and crossing over is akin to dividing the universe by zero. I like Rift. I hope to like GW2. God damn, can you believe it? UNPOSSIBLE!
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Ahh... gotta love that binary thinking. You know, where if you like A, it is impossible to like B. Or more like the fanboy definition, if you like A, B is just an affront to life as we know it and crossing over is akin to dividing the universe by zero. I like Rift. I hope to like GW2. God damn, can you believe it? UNPOSSIBLE!
Eh? was this posted in the wrong thread by mistake? Seems random.
No one has said you can't like both... fair play to you if you do.
Reread the thread and keep an eye out for the swipes at Rift. Not that I'm being a Rift fanboy or anything. It's just for some reason, GW2 and Rift are being pitted against eachother in threads lately since the Rift betas have been going on. GW2 prefanboys already declaring Rift dead in the shadow of GW2, and of course, stalwart Rift fans fighting back. General fanboyism is rife with binary thinking. Halo versus Gears of War. Playstation Vs. Xbox, etc.
I just saw shades of it in this thread WRT Rift and GW2 and couldn't resist a comment.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Reread the thread and keep an eye out for the swipes at Rift. Not that I'm being a Rift fanboy or anything. It's just for some reason, GW2 and Rift are being pitted against eachother in threads lately since the Rift betas have been going on.
I think maybe your being a little oversensitive
It's only natural to use Rift as a yard stick to measure other games against and compare them to, especially other themeparks, seeing as it's the latest iteration of it's type. It's natural folks fresh from it's betas will talk about it, both in the negative and positive, but no one is saying you can't like both, especially in this thread. It's also very natural for GW2 to be compared to it imo... if either come out lacking then we owe it to ourselves to be objective about it
It never bothered me. Gives the developers a lot more story control. Honestly in some games, Players seem like a plague on the world, running around everywhere in droves, slaughtering everything that moves. LOL
At least in GW you had the feeling that whatever you were up against was up to you and your group.
You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks ~ WC
Yes you are the only one who likes instancing. Of course there could be a few more 'freaks' out there who do too, but i've never heard anyone else admit to this deviancy.
I did not mind the instanced world. I have the trilogy and I still play it every now and then. It did take some getting used to, but honestly I did not ever see GW1 as an MMO and I think that helped me get past the instancing.
Last night i ran around on top of the mountain ridges collecting shineys and finding easter egg treasure boxes through four zones in Rift with no instancing or load screens...
I like seemless worlds you feel more of a sense off realism and expanse you don't get with instanced zones and loading screens...
"It would be awesome if you could duel your companion. Then you could solo pvp".--Thanes
Last night i ran around on top of the mountain ridges collecting shineys and finding easter egg treasure boxes through four zones in Rift with no instancing or load screens...
I like seemless worlds you feel more of a sense off realism and expanse you don't get with instanced zones and loading screens...
So it's impossible for you to immerse yourself into a setting if the game world isn't persistent and seamless ?
Last night i ran around on top of the mountain ridges collecting shineys and finding easter egg treasure boxes through four zones in Rift with no instancing or load screens...
I like seemless worlds you feel more of a sense off realism and expanse you don't get with instanced zones and loading screens...
So it's impossible for you to immerse yourself into a setting if the game world isn't persistent and seamless ?
It is for me. It's one of the major reasons games like EQ2 and AoC annoy me. All that potential for immersion completely ruined by essentially making every zone a giant room to walk around in.
So you only play Per/Seam games ? Well that's a bit extreme. Too bad you can't enjoy BioShock, Kotor1&2, Half life1&2, Portal, Diablo 2, Silent Hill series etc...
So you only play Per/Seam games ? Well that's a bit extreme. Too bad you can't enjoy BioShock, Kotor1&2, Half life1&2, Portal, Diablo 2, Silent Hill series etc...
Well, when it comes to talking about persistent worlds, obviously its mainly about MMORPGs. Out of what you listed I only liked Diablo 2 and some of the Silent Hills. Didn't like the other ones much, wasn't immersed.
I never understood the hatred of instanced/hub games like GW1 myself. We play them all the time without complaint - practially every multiplayer FPS takes place not in an open, persistence world, but in "instances" where you play for a while with a few other people and then leave to join another after winning or losing.
RTS's as well. Starcrat doesn't take place in an open, persistent world, and I've never known anyone to care. Other RPG's with multiplayer such as Diablo/Diablo 2, Neverwinter Nights, etc. are the same.
Best I can guess is that it's a sort of "uncanny valley" effect. Virtual faces with odd proportions and the like are fine until they get too close to being "real" in which case they become creepy and unnatural; likewise, games can uses "instancing" or systems that are effectively the same and that's ok until they get too close to being a "traditional" MMORPG in which case instancing suddenly becomes a problem.
yes you are. Seriously I always wished for more open world to explore with others. And you can still have heavely instanced areas to tell the story like the missions.... but the rest of the world should have been open to explore.
I'm not sure why people keep saying instancing ruins the MMO feel. More often than not, anyone you run by ignores you and is off doing their own thing. So even in an open world, you're alone. The only difference is an instanced world gives you the ability to alter things ~permanently~ while that can't be done in an Open World without drastic changes to the actual game.
I could count with my fingers the amount of people I've met just by passing them by that I even said hello to, let alone developed a friendship with. All of that happens in guilds, during teaming for raids or in GW's case, the harder quests/dungeons, etc. It doesn't happen while I'm out killing "X of Z mobs" just to turn in again, which is another thing that instancing games discourage, because once again you have the ability to affect the world on a more permanent scale.
There's nothing wrong with instancing, despite what people may say. I neither like nor dislike instancing, I feel the same way about it as I do an open world; either way, I'll spend 90% of my game playing solo, the other 10% with my guild or group of friends taking on group content. All the random passerbies are irrelevant. That's pretty much the way it works, regardless of the kind of world you're playing in.
The only real benefit Open Worlds have over Instanced Worlds is your loading times skyrocket, because now you have to load a seamless continent. Oh and you can run for long amounts of time and explore long stretches of land. If you're into that kind of thing. I don't happen to be.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
When I play Guildwars when someone runs past me while I am doing a mission I keep thinking it is a real person and want to talk to them. But it is an NPC. That makes me sad it is not that I want to talk to every person but I like the possibility of being able to and that is what I missed in Guildwars. Good game but lonely and it is too much of a single player in the end.
I'm not sure why people keep saying instancing ruins the MMO feel. More often than not, anyone you run by ignores you and is off doing their own thing. So even in an open world, you're alone. The only difference is an instanced world gives you the ability to alter things ~permanently~ while that can't be done in an Open World without drastic changes to the actual game.
I could count with my fingers the amount of people I've met just by passing them by that I even said hello to, let alone developed a friendship with. All of that happens in guilds, during teaming for raids or in GW's case, the harder quests/dungeons, etc. It doesn't happen while I'm out killing "X of Z mobs" just to turn in again, which is another thing that instancing games discourage, because once again you have the ability to affect the world on a more permanent scale.
There's nothing wrong with instancing, despite what people may say. I neither like nor dislike instancing, I feel the same way about it as I do an open world; either way, I'll spend 90% of my game playing solo, the other 10% with my guild or group of friends taking on group content. All the random passerbies are irrelevant. That's pretty much the way it works, regardless of the kind of world you're playing in.
The only real benefit Open Worlds have over Instanced Worlds is your loading times skyrocket, because now you have to load a seamless continent. Oh and you can run for long amounts of time and explore long stretches of land. If you're into that kind of thing. I don't happen to be.
It depends on the game mechanics.
In games like wow or lotro there really isn't a huge amount of interaction with people who are passing you. But in the earlier games it seems that it was more prevalent. I suspect that when people are talking about interacting with people they are thinking of these earlier games.
My only substantial experience with an earlier game (thought not "that" early) is lineage 2.
In that game you could literally count on helping people right next to you for any number of reasons. At launch, because ports were expensive, you would actually run to places thus giving the feeling of an actual world.
I can say from my experience that I had more interaction with players in Lineag 2 than any modern game that I've played.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
WAIT WHAT? Open world in GW2 will be instanced? lol.
Another GW2 fan that obviously has NOT played gw1. The thread is about GW1 not GW2, we don't know if gw2 will have instancing such as the co-op instancing style of its prequel. All we know is that the devs have said it is open world. Please refrain from making useless comments and read the original post.
Comments
GW has the multiplayer feel. You just don't have a persistent world. When I played GW1 I was grouped 80% of the time and I could do everything with my friends.
It's true that you finish a single player game much faster. However, I find that I have much more fun when playing a decent single player game than when I am playing an MMO. I have spent about 60 hours playing ME2 but every single minute was a great experience. I would pay much more for 60 amazing hours than for 500 so so hours in an MMO.
Besides there are also a lot of single player games which have multiplayer support. It's funny that Diablo was a much more social experience than most MMOs I have played. I levelled up with others whereas in MMOs you solo grind quests and you chat with your guildies. There are a lot of online games which also offer a social experience. However, only MMOs offer a huge online world, which feels static and dead. But not only MMOs offer a social experience. Not by a long shot.
@OP, I completely agree with you. When I started playing MMOs for the first time I really liked the idea of a huge online persistent world. But as time went by, I saw these online worlds for what they truly were. Empty shells which feel dead and they never change while imposing some really severe limitations on the game. I no longer see the point of having an online persistent world.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Ahh... gotta love that binary thinking. You know, where if you like A, it is impossible to like B. Or more like the fanboy definition, if you like A, B is just an affront to life as we know it and crossing over is akin to dividing the universe by zero. I like Rift. I hope to like GW2. God damn, can you believe it? UNPOSSIBLE!
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Eh? was this posted in the wrong thread by mistake? Seems random.
No one has said you can't like both... fair play to you if you do.
/shrug
Reread the thread and keep an eye out for the swipes at Rift. Not that I'm being a Rift fanboy or anything. It's just for some reason, GW2 and Rift are being pitted against eachother in threads lately since the Rift betas have been going on. GW2 prefanboys already declaring Rift dead in the shadow of GW2, and of course, stalwart Rift fans fighting back. General fanboyism is rife with binary thinking. Halo versus Gears of War. Playstation Vs. Xbox, etc.
I just saw shades of it in this thread WRT Rift and GW2 and couldn't resist a comment.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
It never bothered me. Gives the developers a lot more story control. Honestly in some games, Players seem like a plague on the world, running around everywhere in droves, slaughtering everything that moves. LOL
At least in GW you had the feeling that whatever you were up against was up to you and your group.
You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks
~ WC
Yes you are the only one who likes instancing. Of course there could be a few more 'freaks' out there who do too, but i've never heard anyone else admit to this deviancy.
In case of gw1 I like instanced world. Instanced world defined Gw's gameplay and world design.
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
My Guild Wars titles
I did not mind the instanced world. I have the trilogy and I still play it every now and then. It did take some getting used to, but honestly I did not ever see GW1 as an MMO and I think that helped me get past the instancing.
Last night i ran around on top of the mountain ridges collecting shineys and finding easter egg treasure boxes through four zones in Rift with no instancing or load screens...
I like seemless worlds you feel more of a sense off realism and expanse you don't get with instanced zones and loading screens...
"It would be awesome if you could duel your companion. Then you could solo pvp".--Thanes
So it's impossible for you to immerse yourself into a setting if the game world isn't persistent and seamless ?
It is for me. It's one of the major reasons games like EQ2 and AoC annoy me. All that potential for immersion completely ruined by essentially making every zone a giant room to walk around in.
So you only play Per/Seam games ? Well that's a bit extreme. Too bad you can't enjoy BioShock, Kotor1&2, Half life1&2, Portal, Diablo 2, Silent Hill series etc...
Well, when it comes to talking about persistent worlds, obviously its mainly about MMORPGs. Out of what you listed I only liked Diablo 2 and some of the Silent Hills. Didn't like the other ones much, wasn't immersed.
I never understood the hatred of instanced/hub games like GW1 myself. We play them all the time without complaint - practially every multiplayer FPS takes place not in an open, persistence world, but in "instances" where you play for a while with a few other people and then leave to join another after winning or losing.
RTS's as well. Starcrat doesn't take place in an open, persistent world, and I've never known anyone to care. Other RPG's with multiplayer such as Diablo/Diablo 2, Neverwinter Nights, etc. are the same.
Best I can guess is that it's a sort of "uncanny valley" effect. Virtual faces with odd proportions and the like are fine until they get too close to being "real" in which case they become creepy and unnatural; likewise, games can uses "instancing" or systems that are effectively the same and that's ok until they get too close to being a "traditional" MMORPG in which case instancing suddenly becomes a problem.
yes you are.
Seriously I always wished for more open world to explore with others. And you can still have heavely instanced areas to tell the story like the missions.... but the rest of the world should have been open to explore.
I'm not sure why people keep saying instancing ruins the MMO feel. More often than not, anyone you run by ignores you and is off doing their own thing. So even in an open world, you're alone. The only difference is an instanced world gives you the ability to alter things ~permanently~ while that can't be done in an Open World without drastic changes to the actual game.
I could count with my fingers the amount of people I've met just by passing them by that I even said hello to, let alone developed a friendship with. All of that happens in guilds, during teaming for raids or in GW's case, the harder quests/dungeons, etc. It doesn't happen while I'm out killing "X of Z mobs" just to turn in again, which is another thing that instancing games discourage, because once again you have the ability to affect the world on a more permanent scale.
There's nothing wrong with instancing, despite what people may say. I neither like nor dislike instancing, I feel the same way about it as I do an open world; either way, I'll spend 90% of my game playing solo, the other 10% with my guild or group of friends taking on group content. All the random passerbies are irrelevant. That's pretty much the way it works, regardless of the kind of world you're playing in.
The only real benefit Open Worlds have over Instanced Worlds is your loading times skyrocket, because now you have to load a seamless continent. Oh and you can run for long amounts of time and explore long stretches of land. If you're into that kind of thing. I don't happen to be.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
WAIT WHAT? Open world in GW2 will be instanced? lol.
When I play Guildwars when someone runs past me while I am doing a mission I keep thinking it is a real person and want to talk to them. But it is an NPC. That makes me sad it is not that I want to talk to every person but I like the possibility of being able to and that is what I missed in Guildwars. Good game but lonely and it is too much of a single player in the end.
I certainly do not like it. It makes me feel like I am in a single player game rather than an MMORPG.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
It depends on the game mechanics.
In games like wow or lotro there really isn't a huge amount of interaction with people who are passing you. But in the earlier games it seems that it was more prevalent. I suspect that when people are talking about interacting with people they are thinking of these earlier games.
My only substantial experience with an earlier game (thought not "that" early) is lineage 2.
In that game you could literally count on helping people right next to you for any number of reasons. At launch, because ports were expensive, you would actually run to places thus giving the feeling of an actual world.
I can say from my experience that I had more interaction with players in Lineag 2 than any modern game that I've played.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Another GW2 fan that obviously has NOT played gw1. The thread is about GW1 not GW2, we don't know if gw2 will have instancing such as the co-op instancing style of its prequel. All we know is that the devs have said it is open world. Please refrain from making useless comments and read the original post.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"
Yes we do.
Will Guild Wars 2 be an MMO?
Yes. Guild Wars 2 provides a massive, online persistent world.
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/game-faq/#five
nope, no co-op instancing.
How can an open (persistent) world be instanced ? That's a fucking oxymoron. Do you use your brain ?