Originally posted by Rulzern
I won\'t even respond to such a shockingly ignorant statement.
Arrogant... i would say yes, Ignorant... i would say no.
I dont see anything ignorant about that comment of mine. Your comment however shows to me in my eyes a sense of ignorance.
With a open-source MMORPG, and some clever design/managing, not having instancing shouldn\'t be a problem.
I suppose Open-source makes them some how differant from and better than other highly funded, very talented Development teams working for multimillion dollar backers?. These guys live or die by there ideas.. if there game flops there out looking for another producer or there reputation is so badly damaged no producer will ever fund another project of theres again.
With balanced mobs, lots of land, and a large amount of mobs (not neccecairily variety), you can just move to another area to find decent hunting.
So giveing people lots more mobs (in number) will solve the problem?, giveing them more land and there by more mobs will solve the problem?... and I dont see where your comeing from with the Balanced mobs idea?...
Humans are an interesting species, you give em as much land to roam in as possable and what do they do.. they gather together into a group and settle down, while more come and join them... the same thing happens in MMORPG\'s. Most MMORPG\'s have more than enough space and more than enough mobs, takeing EQ as my prime example since its the one ive played the longest, has numerouse zones that are exedingly suitable for player numbers well into the 3 digit numbers to hunt in, how ever due to exp differances players congregate into \"best bang for your buck\" zones to go hunt while some of the best zones for fun go completely empty for years... places such as the old Droga and Nurga Dungeons and Skyfire (sept for epic hunting Cleric partys) the only way to fix this would be to make all areas give the exact same exp for all the mobs, and every mob in the game will drop the exact same items, every time. bit extreme yes but unless you do this players will look for the \"best bang for there buck\" zones, camps, mobs etc and do the old lemming thing. ive seen it a million times. even if you have one zone or one mob that gives 1 exp point more than normal give it a short time and every one will be hunting that zone or that mob and leaveing the others.
The issue of KS\'ing really depends on the combat system, have to wait until we have something that indicates how the combat system will handle different scenarios.
its funny how after 5 years of MMORPG (which in the computer game development world is a damn damn long time, go back 3 years and take a look at how games have progressed, heck graphical engines are almost 200% better than they where 2 years ago) its taken them this long to come up with instanceing of zones to remove most of the problems, one issue i guess would have been network technologie has improved along with server power.
KS\'ing has little if nothing to do with combat systems, in EQ what ever person/group ever did over half the damge got the exp and loot rights, in UO it didnt realy matter since it was purely skill based although looseing a mob (and there fore a chance of gaining a point in skill) to some uber d3wd who killed it in one hit for no particular reason oter than hes mass farming leather for tailoring was pretty infuriating, in DaoC I cant realy remeber how they worked out exp in said situation i beleive it was the same as EQ in that its based on who ever did the most damage. Unfortunately there isnt a suitable combat system out there that could solve KS\'ing, for instance make one that the first player/group to hit teh mob gains all exp and loot rights, result ks\'s will run up and engage mobs before there being pulled and therefor stuff it up for every one out there, technicaly the only combat system that actualy works is the over 50% damage gains exp and loot system, why reinvent the wheel when its mostly perfect to begin with, yes it has problems such as high level players \"damage raceing\" a lower level group just to get the mobs loot, but funnly enough... instanceing fixes that since, hmm well the low level group would be the only one in the area, and they wouldnt have to contend with the uber high up KSer since he\'d be in his own instanced area.
Ninja looting is another nasty that instanceing solves, since the player access to the loot is reduced to only those within the instanced area, and those people are there grouped by choice and no outsider can take advatage, you might get the odd pain in the rear that is Main looter and then goes LD at the end of a dungeon crawl with all the loot. but you can pass the word around and never invite him to your group again.
In over 5 years of MMORPG evolution theyve come along way since there beginings in meridian59, Lineage and the like, in all of those years (which as i mentioned is a long long time in any computer industry, its taken them almost 2 and a half years to get instanceing actualy into a MMORPG), instanceing is singley the best solution to many of the old bugbears of MMORPGing. What you have to ask your self is, if there was as you suggest other ways of fixing these problems, why has it taken them so long for them to find one?... easiest answer... there hasnt been one. untill now.
And im affraid to burst your bubble, but the PS team will not find some magic solution, open-source or not, that the other payed, veteran development teams had\'nt already thought of.
edit:-
Typical LDON instance quests in EQ are 4-6 hrs long, and if you have to leave, your group is screwed. So by trying to cater to the short-time gamer, they have actually made it worse in some ways.
The average adventure time is around an hour or so, prep time and party gathering takes about 10-20 minutes depending on group members, a LDoN raid might reach into the 4 hour range due to organizing the guild, and prep time. but your average adventure in LDoN takes as i mentioned an hour, some groups have gotten the killing spree and collection missions down to 30 minutes, and thats with a very minimal group setup, heck ive seen people three box LDoN adventures now
. If a mission goes awol, the players can easily just leave and then cancel the adventure, they still gain adventure points just not as many as if they had completed it. Once canceld the players can hop right back into another one once theyve gotten replacements.
Also the exp rateing on most LDoN dungeons is alot higher than normal exp (bar PoP zones) result is the casual player can get just as much benefit from a small stint single adventure in and hour and a half than they would normaly get adventuring in a normal old world zone for a few hours. Adding also the fact they can store points to buy very decent items of raid quality they normaly wouldnt be able to get unless they where part of a top tier guild that had very rigourse raid hours (why people join guilds that set a time table on raiding is beyond me, sounds more like a job than a fun get together). Do you actualy or have you played EQ vengeance?...
LDoN has been one of the best breaths of life EQ has had in years, and most EQ players would agree with me on that.
