Zenimax: I really wish you'd...

Ranvena

...make some of the zones private. Every time I play this game, the thing that bothers me the most is how packed all of the solo dungeons are (especially when they are related to a quest). It becomes less of a "Cool! I found an enemy-filled dungeon for me to explore and fight my way through!" to "Hey Bob. Hey Lola. How's the dungeon? Cleared out? Nice. Guess I'll go loot some ginseng barrels in this empty hallway." Or my favorite "I'm totally going to sneak around and loot this noble's house! Wait... there's three or four other thieves here. Are all the guards on a coffee break?"

This problem comes from having linear content in a public setting. In older games like EQ, dungeons were vast and spread out so parties could go different directions from each other. In MMOs like Neverwinter or Guild Wars, dungeons or entire zones are made private to the player's party. I like that because it gives you that sense of exploration and immersion much better than five people running through killing everything in the same hallway. Call me crazy, but having somebody attacking the same piddly minion that I am because it's the only thing to interact with is not the kind of cooperation I'm going for. By all means, keep towns public. Keep main zones public even. But why in the world are all of these tiny solo dungeons turned into a mosh pit??

Some players would complain that this negatively impacts cooperative play and grouping and I say - not at all! Make some of the content difficult or impossible to solo and people will find groups for it. Or they'll just zerg around the map going after rifts.

Please think about it. It's a little work for a lot more value to the game.

Hokiewa

Ranvena wrote: »

...make some of the zones private. Every time I play this game, the thing that bothers me the most is how packed all of the solo dungeons are (especially when they are related to a quest). It becomes less of a "Cool! I found an enemy-filled dungeon for me to explore and fight my way through!" to "Hey Bob. Hey Lola. How's the dungeon? Cleared out? Nice. Guess I'll go loot some ginseng barrels in this empty hallway." Or my favorite "I'm totally going to sneak around and loot this noble's house! Wait... there's three or four other thieves here. Are all the guards on a coffee break?"

This problem comes from having linear content in a public setting. In older games like EQ, dungeons were vast and spread out so parties could go different directions from each other. In MMOs like Neverwinter or Guild Wars, dungeons or entire zones are made private to the player's party. I like that because it gives you that sense of exploration and immersion much better than five people running through killing everything in the same hallway. Call me crazy, but having somebody attacking the same piddly minion that I am because it's the only thing to interact with is not the kind of cooperation I'm going for. By all means, keep towns public. Keep main zones public even. But why in the world are all of these tiny solo dungeons turned into a mosh pit??

Some players would complain that this negatively impacts cooperative play and grouping and I say - not at all! Make some of the content difficult or impossible to solo and people will find groups for it. Or they'll just zerg around the map going after rifts.

Please think about it. It's a little work for a lot more value to the game.

It's one thing I really liked about DDO, quest instances including alot of wildnerness were instanced. Though I suspect the servers for this game couldn't handle that but that's entirely speculation on my part.

Eyro

I personally think it would be awesome. And I would like to see it taken one step further and have the dungeon scale to the amount of people in your group. And even a normal and vet mode you could even leave the default setting the way it is now and people have to go into their settings to change delves and group dungeons into personal instances. And you could pick a difficulty. I’d love to see delves and group dungeons be meaningful content again and not just a gear farm.

Dragonnord

I remember when Vvardenfell was released, I went to talk to Vivec and his assistance was doing something in that kind of a fountain in the middle of the room, and I swear I couldn't see what he did at all, I couldn't appreciate the scene (immersion was completely broken) because the room was packed with people doing all kind of stuff in that same room.
 

DMuehlhausen

How about NO.

You want single player experience play Skyrim. Yes I get people taking some kills, or so many people you can't always see everything going on is annoying, but that is the nature of this style of game at times. There are plenty of single player RPGs that will give you exactly what you want.

Eyro

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

How about NO.

You want single player experience play Skyrim. Yes I get people taking some kills, or so many people you can't always see everything going on is annoying, but that is the nature of this style of game at times. There are plenty of single player RPGs that will give you exactly what you want.

With phasing I wouldn’t think it would be that hard that much of an issue to give people the option of both. Although I have no idea how much of the phasing code still exsist in the game, and if the servers would burn to the ground trying it.

klowdy1

Hokiewa wrote: »

Ranvena wrote: »

...make some of the zones private. Every time I play this game, the thing that bothers me the most is how packed all of the solo dungeons are (especially when they are related to a quest). It becomes less of a "Cool! I found an enemy-filled dungeon for me to explore and fight my way through!" to "Hey Bob. Hey Lola. How's the dungeon? Cleared out? Nice. Guess I'll go loot some ginseng barrels in this empty hallway." Or my favorite "I'm totally going to sneak around and loot this noble's house! Wait... there's three or four other thieves here. Are all the guards on a coffee break?"

This problem comes from having linear content in a public setting. In older games like EQ, dungeons were vast and spread out so parties could go different directions from each other. In MMOs like Neverwinter or Guild Wars, dungeons or entire zones are made private to the player's party. I like that because it gives you that sense of exploration and immersion much better than five people running through killing everything in the same hallway. Call me crazy, but having somebody attacking the same piddly minion that I am because it's the only thing to interact with is not the kind of cooperation I'm going for. By all means, keep towns public. Keep main zones public even. But why in the world are all of these tiny solo dungeons turned into a mosh pit??

Some players would complain that this negatively impacts cooperative play and grouping and I say - not at all! Make some of the content difficult or impossible to solo and people will find groups for it. Or they'll just zerg around the map going after rifts.

Please think about it. It's a little work for a lot more value to the game.

It's one thing I really liked about DDO, quest instances including alot of wildnerness were instanced. Though I suspect the servers for this game couldn't handle that but that's entirely speculation on my part.

SWtOR is highly instanced like that, too. It really makes the class stories much more fun, and realistic.

heaven13

This could be a nice addition. Making the private instances in overland a harder difficulty would be beneficial in a couple ways:

1. Would make exploration more fun (especially quest areas that aren't solo instanced already
2. Those who are not happy with the "faceroll" easy content of overland would have something that's a little harder but still manageable solo. Sure, it's not out in the world, but there are a lot of delves and caves around and a little more challenge isn't a bad thing. Of course, those who can solo vet dungeons would still find this easy

It's been brought up before but an option when entering a dungeon/delve/whatever to go in alone or go in the public instance and then set difficulty to normal or vet would be awesome.

tinythinker

heaven13 wrote: »

This could be a nice addition. Making the private instances in overland a harder difficulty would be beneficial in a couple ways:

1. Would make exploration more fun (especially quest areas that aren't solo instanced already
2. Those who are not happy with the "faceroll" easy content of overland would have something that's a little harder but still manageable solo. Sure, it's not out in the world, but there are a lot of delves and caves around and a little more challenge isn't a bad thing. Of course, those who can solo vet dungeons would still find this easy

It's been brought up before but an option when entering a dungeon/delve/whatever to go in alone or go in the public instance and then set difficulty to normal or vet would be awesome.

It would be ESO+ and a Crown Store purchase of some kind required, though

jedtb16_ESO

oh, sorry.... i thought this was an mmo.... (/hint MassivelyMultiplayerOnline)

tinythinker

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

oh, sorry.... i thought this was an mmo.... (/hint MassivelyMultiplayerOnline)

Honest mistake. No worries



EDIT: (No, really, there is a big debate about whether this game is a true MMO or a kind of solo game with MMO options. The arguments get pretty heated.)

Rain_Greyraven

The whole this is a MMO idiom is nonsense.....puritanical views that a MMO has to be exactly like the original ones is insipid at best myopic at the least.


I think a happy medium is to allow pre-made groups to have their own instance of Dungeons and trials if they so choose, that way nothing is being taken away from what is...it is only allowing groups that want a dungeon to run with their friends the ability to do so.

Mic1007

Seeing as most of the endgame PvE content is already instanced, as is the Main Quest, Fighters Guild, and Mages Guild, there already is instanced PvP Battlegrounds, and open world PvP is locked to one huge zone, I don't think it's much of a stretch to add a private option for overland PvE Zones for those who want it. The only obstacle I can think of would be whether the server can handle it. I know nothing of server stuff.

jedtb16_ESO

Rain_Greyraven wrote: »

The whole this is a MMO idiom is nonsense.....puritanical views that a MMO has to be exactly like the original ones is insipid at best myopic at the least.


I think a happy medium is to allow pre-made groups to have their own instance of Dungeons and trials if they so choose, that way nothing is being taken away from what is...it is only allowing groups that want a dungeon to run with their friends the ability to do so.

hmmm tough talker this one.

unless it is a solo instance... main/guild quests etc there are likely to be other people around.... that's the nature of the beast.

nonsense/puritanical/myopic? nope... just an observation of fact.

driosketch

Sure it's a multiplayer game. That said, ZOS makes some pretty good quests, but writes them as single player. And overland content is super easy. I've abandoned quests to redo them where I showed up to battle a named NPC boss and got instant credit for the corpse already lying on the floor.

Honestly, I'm not sure if some of these aren't already instanced or not. I've never had to share the Wyrd Tree fight. I did almost get a character stuck in First Hold abandoning the quest inside the oblivion portal.

tinythinker

driosketch wrote: »

Sure it's a multiplayer game. That said, ZOS makes some pretty good quests, but writes them as single player. And overland content is super easy. I've abandoned quests to redo them where I showed up to battle a named NPC boss and got instant credit for the corpse already lying on the floor.

Honestly, I'm not sure if some of these aren't already instanced or not. I've never had to share the Wyrd Tree fight. I did almost get a character stuck in First Hold abandoning the quest inside the oblivion portal.

I'm not that invested in the debate in this thread, but I have run away before when someone was about to kill an quest NPC so it didn't just count my own quest as complete.

Rain_Greyraven

Mic1007 wrote: »

Seeing as most of the endgame PvE content is already instanced, as is the Main Quest, Fighters Guild, and Mages Guild, there already is instanced PvP Battlegrounds, and open world PvP is locked to one huge zone, I don't think it's much of a stretch to add a private option for overland PvE Zones for those who want it. The only obstacle I can think of would be whether the server can handle it. I know nothing of server stuff.

Actually the severs could handle it quite easily, in fact it would probably relive some of the bottlenecks as most lag happens when you have a large group of players all in one area, that was actually one of the big reasons WoW used instancing then later doubled down on personal instances.

Eyro

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

oh, sorry.... i thought this was an mmo.... (/hint MassivelyMultiplayerOnline)

Don’t we have dungeons that are designed for 4 people? That doesn’t sound very massive. Or raids for that matter. Not massive. Battlegrounds? Still not massive. This must be the worst MassivelyMultiplayerOnilne game ever.

Xoelarasizerer

I would be all for an extra option players can toggle for the zone delves to be "solo" or "public" instances.

As annoying, immersion breaking, and not anyones fault that other players are doing the same quest as you at the same time, I don't see said instance toggle working for an entire zone, though.

But for the sake of basic zone delves, it'd make the "linear theme park ride" experience at least have the choice of not feeling barren and abandoned if you cared about that. The flip side is skyshard hunting and a number of delve quests (that don't involve fighting it's boss) will be quicker and easier with other players busy with the locals inside.

But also, this hypothetical solo option could introduce more bots farming in their own private dungeons. Problematic.

jedtb16_ESO

Eyro wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

oh, sorry.... i thought this was an mmo.... (/hint MassivelyMultiplayerOnline)

Don’t we have dungeons that are designed for 4 people? That doesn’t sound very massive. Or raids for that matter. Not massive. Battlegrounds? Still not massive. This must be the worst MassivelyMultiplayerOnilne game ever.

or it could just be that some things are instanced and others aren't like every other mmo.

Eyro

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

Eyro wrote: »

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

oh, sorry.... i thought this was an mmo.... (/hint MassivelyMultiplayerOnline)

Don’t we have dungeons that are designed for 4 people? That doesn’t sound very massive. Or raids for that matter. Not massive. Battlegrounds? Still not massive. This must be the worst MassivelyMultiplayerOnilne game ever.

or it could just be that some things are instanced and others aren't like every other mmo.

Yup, and this thread is a suggestion about how some of those things could be changed to make More people happy. Or would people having the option to do content solo if they wanted some how make this game less of an mmo?

MongooseOne

There are plenty of instance content in the game already. Asking to make Public Dungeons and Delves private makes no sense.

Guarlet

I'm not too invested in this personally, but one possible solution is to make it so that there more instances of each zone and thus less players in each instance. That's how the original Secret World did it, and it made questing very immersive because you only rarely saw other players while playing through the storyline. Man, that MMO really knew how to do its quests.

heaven13

Xoelarasizerer wrote: »

I would be all for an extra option players can toggle for the zone delves to be "solo" or "public" instances.

As annoying, immersion breaking, and not anyones fault that other players are doing the same quest as you at the same time, I don't see said instance toggle working for an entire zone, though.

But for the sake of basic zone delves, it'd make the "linear theme park ride" experience at least have the choice of not feeling barren and abandoned if you cared about that. The flip side is skyshard hunting and a number of delve quests (that don't involve fighting it's boss) will be quicker and easier with other players busy with the locals inside.

But also, this hypothetical solo option could introduce more bots farming in their own private dungeons. Problematic.

I wish I could find the quote (or even remember the name of the forum user) who brought this up awhile back. They had some insightful ideas on how to combat issues with bot farmers because, I do agree, giving them a private instance to farm ad nauseum wouldn't be beneficial to anyone but the bots.

Eyro

MongooseOne wrote: »

There are plenty of instance content in the game already. Asking to make Public Dungeons and Delves private makes no sense.

I would agree. If the choice is a binary to do it or not do it. I would rather they not do it

But I would love to see it as an player option. As in the player gets to choose go in solo/group or go in with everyone. Along with scaling to group size and/or difficulty options. Do I think I will see that? No. But I can dream.

AlienatedGoat

Too many people in this thread assume that a game being an MMO precludes it from having instanced areas.

Many AAA MMOs have had instanced areas, particularly in story areas.

jedtb16_ESO

Phage wrote: »

Too many people in this thread assume that a game being an MMO precludes it from having instanced areas.

Many AAA MMOs have had instanced areas, particularly in story areas.

so does this one.

AlienatedGoat

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

Phage wrote: »

Too many people in this thread assume that a game being an MMO precludes it from having instanced areas.

Many AAA MMOs have had instanced areas, particularly in story areas.

so does this one.

Not enough, to be honest. Main zone quests should all be instanced, especially for the DLC areas.

It's really hard to enjoy the main story when you've got 100 people shoved into the area, especially on launch week.

Kodrac

Getting some mileage out of this gif today.