Game Needs More "Instancing"?

madeeh91rwb17_ESO · December 2016

Ok. So I've just recently got back in this game and have reached level 48. And I am straight up ADDICTED to it, especially LOVE its crafting system. Sometimes I think its the desire to make and find new gear, discovering alchemy traits and a vast range of potion possibilities alone that are keeping me up

The game has improved miles since the launch days.

Now that the servers are down and we have some time, I would like to say a word or two about it.
I think this game can be better than FO4, if they "instance"(Not sure if I am using that MMO word accurately) most places outside of Cyrodil.

My most loved storylines were the Coldharbor/Mages Guild and Fighters Guild lines. Which is almost certainly because they are kind of polished as a single player experience. Some Coldharbor quests felt better than the Alduin story of Skyrim TBH. Also, the group dungeons with my friends(real life and in-game) were simply amazing. Many were far superior than Skyrim/Witcher dungeons by a long shot.
But I absolutely hate it when I am talking to a ghost in a dungeon, telling me how the dungeon has been desolate and closed for thousands of years. Whilst in the background I can see a guy in a stupid hat, unleashing his velociraptor and loud fireworks on his foes! Buh!

Make it all "instanced"(Or as much of it as you possibly can), so we can't see players apart from our group mates, at least in our dungeons and quests.
They can be made visible in cities and other "public zones".

I understand overwhelming number of people in this forum and many fans of this game in general are MMO players. And I am anything but, same goes for Most of the Elder Scrolls/Bethesda fanbase. And I have been told many times: "This is an MMO! This is how these work. Go find a single player game"
But you will see that at this very moment in time. After the last one Tamriel update. Most of the criticism the game is facing is its MMOness. (For example: facebook.com/pcgamermagazine/posts/10155671114678079)

I really do believe this game can become better than FO4, succeed massively and become the WOW killer that it was initially percieved to be. But only if ZOS "kills" the MMOishness in this game. You can't beat wow and others, by following in their footsteps.

They need to make everything aside from cyrodiil/pvp areas and cities, "instanced" to the player. Where you can only see other players if they are in your group.
This will probably save loads of server resources. Open many possibilities. Allowing them to polish the single player experience into something that feels immersive and real.
And set a new milestone in MMO genre. Because MMORPGs can be the future of RPGs.

Also, add line of sight like Skyrim, instead of zoned groups of mobs who can be seen blindly running past you back to their post, after following a contemptible person who simply gallops all the way into the dungeon pretending there is nobody guarding the passages. Annoys the crap out of me every time

And why are there still lurchers still roaming around when I killed all of them 5 minutes ago, and took care of the magic that spawns them. Same goes for that exact same group of bandits that I just killed minutes ago, look at them, simply standing there and gawking at each other's faces, barely interacting with environment. Oh and I thought I had saved Glenumbra from all these zombies and bandits. This graveyard was supposed to be CLEANSED GODDAMMIT! Angof is DEAD!

Also, give NPCs some fighting/battle taunts. Remember: "Can't wait to count all your coin", "Never should have come here", "That's just a scratch", "I yield, I yield!". Even draugr had things like: "Unslaad Krosis!", "Daanik Ah Dov!" etc.
It was entertaining listening to a bandit's aspirations about his future, and his views about his boss from the shadows.(I heard some of those in ESO, which means they have the idea of it. But it needs more of that)
That said, in many ways ESO is way way better than skyrim. For example, the dialogue-set of ESO is superior to skyrim and many games. Like how you can talk to an NPC after he/she has given you a quest and he will give you a "TL:DR". And how in the coldharbor quests the characters will tell you to go talk with the person with pointer on his head and give you their opinion on the situation at hand at virtually every step.

Can this be done?
Is it possible?
Or is it just too much to ask?

madeeh91rwb17_ESO · December 2016

Or they can just role an RNG dice ON SERVER every time a calculation of XP or Loot needs to be made.
Like World of Tanks does.

Kodrac · December 2016

No it doesn't. This isn't a single player game. What's with all the Skyrim 2 threads lately?

Voxicity · December 2016

No. This isn't a single player game.

Also the fact that you referenced a top comment on a facebook post by PC GAMER [insert swear word] makes your thread pretty much invalid. Those are the kind of people who expected this game to be ''Skyrim 2'' or ''Skyrim Online''

no]

just no

please

Wollust · December 2016

Game needs less "turn this into skyrim 2" people

Stopnaggin · December 2016

It could be done yes. It will not be done. And in all reality it shouldn't be done.

On a side note, you like crafting now, but when you get far enough along its almost pointless. Most drop sets out perform crafted set, a few craftable sets areally still viable, spend 18 months leveling crafting to realize there isn't much demand, millions of gold on motifs, time spent farming. Crafting is in a sad place right now.

idk · December 2016

Exacting. This isn't a single player game. Don't expect it to fully play like one.

madeeh91rwb17_ESO · December 2016

I am not calling for a Skyrim 2, I am merely point out the need for more immersion.

Maybe the reason why the are so many "Skyrim 2" people, is the high demand of immersion?
And it is this very demand that makes ESO a great candidate for setting a milestone in MMORPGs. And can enable it to dominate the market for years to come.

Voxicity · December 2016

madeeh91rwb17_ESO wrote: »

I am not calling for a Skyrim 2, I am just merely point out the need for more immersion.

Maybe the reason why the are so many "Skyrim 2" people, is the high demand of immersion?
And it is this very demand that will makes ESO a great candidate for setting a milestone in MMORPGs. And can enable it to dominate the market for years to come.

Speak for yourself. I'm pretty immersed as it is thank you very much.

Parafrost · December 2016

Stopnaggin wrote: »

It could be done yes. It will not be done. And in all reality it shouldn't be done.

On a side note, you like crafting now, but when you get far enough along its almost pointless. Most drop sets out perform crafted set, a few craftable sets areally still viable, spend 18 months leveling crafting to realize there isn't much demand, millions of gold on motifs, time spent farming. Crafting is in a sad place right now.

I still love my twice born star

As useless as it is now. Also, zos should make gear specifically for pvp that can be crafted. That would be a thought right?

seveneighttwoub17_ESO · December 2016

To be honest I hope not to see more instancing. Right now, as it stands, its already quite difficult to get on the same instance of the game with my group mates. Just yesterday I worked for nearly 20 minutes using the "go to group member" option (without success) before logging out completely in frustration because it did NOT work only to log back in and have it immediately move me to the group 'location' instance. No thanks. I'd personally rather have less instancing!

Betheny · December 2016

Would be nice to complete a quest boss fight without another ten players busting in on the action. Only time I want to see other players is for world bosses.

MercTheMage · December 2016

I agree about the mob line of sight thing... Make everything except towns and pvp instanced tho? Does that include the overworld? Leaving a town and wandering into a barren world with no one else there doesn't sound to fun to me. I like running into friends, running into a guy having trouble with a mob and helping him out with a heal or something.

Malakisidious · December 2016

housing will be instanced

lmao

Darethran · December 2016

Instancing is terrible and bad. It's a hackish way of splitting up the server's workload; players want to do a dungeon? Chuck them onto a dynamically created virtual server with 64 MB of RAM.

Quite frankly, MMOs are the last games that should have instances. Fighters and other arcade-y games? Sure. But an open world game? Hell no. Everybody should be able to change the environment for everybody else. Erect a house in the middle of Deshaan, and everybody else can try and break into it.

That stuff is what makes MMOs glorious. Sadly, there aren't any that have a proper world anymore. I guess UO still counts, but that got butchered by the whole Trammel safe-zone nonsense.

ESO should take a page out of Shadowbane's book, and allow us to make buildings, forts and cities directly within the game. Make a special hardcore PvP server for it if need be, just give us a sandbox that's worth the name, dangnammit.

seveneighttwoub17_ESO · December 2016

@ MercTheMage I agree with you. I like meeting new players (new to me not necessarily new to the game, though that's nice too) while out adventuring. Its the thing about an mmo that makes me log in. Knowing that there are other real people out there that I've yet to meet and play the game with is awesome. Instancing me and putting me virtually in a single player game again would be sad. To be honest, I'd just log out and go play some other mmo that I wouldn't enjoy as much.

Stopnaggin · December 2016

Parafrost wrote: »

Stopnaggin wrote: »

It could be done yes. It will not be done. And in all reality it shouldn't be done.

On a side note, you like crafting now, but when you get far enough along its almost pointless. Most drop sets out perform crafted set, a few craftable sets areally still viable, spend 18 months leveling crafting to realize there isn't much demand, millions of gold on motifs, time spent farming. Crafting is in a sad place right now.

I still love my twice born star As useless as it is now. Also, zos should make gear specifically for pvp that can be crafted. That would be a thought right?

At this point crafting anything that could compare would be great. I know TBS, Julianos, NM and a few others, but nothing in comparison to dropped sets numbers. They added 30 sets in 1T, added a crown store motif that needs crown store stones to make, and nothing to use it on.

18 months of research, millions of gold on motifs and farming mats, are all time and gold wasted at this point.

What I would like to see:
Style changes to dropped sets
Jewelry crafting and upgrades
Upgradable gear
Being able to learn some of the bonuses on dropped sets (maybe after a dungeon or trial get a stone of research or something)
Spell crafting

Probably a few other things as well, but yeah that's a start.

Docmandu · December 2016

Instancing doesn't belong in MMO's. If you want a single player skyrim, go play skyrim.

AlnilamE · December 2016

It would be really boring if you never ran into anyone while you are out in the world questing or gathering. I think the game is fine as it is and has the proper amount of instancing.

Betheny · December 2016

I would sometimes miss other people, one of my favourite things is to watch people die to slightly tricky boss fights while playing them a happy lute tune.

madeeh91rwb17_ESO · December 2016

Ok
Too many hardcore MMO-fanatics here. Lot more than I expected at least.

So, lets start from the things that can be agreed upon:
- Addition of enemy dialogues/battle taunts. And expanded rants and interaction with environment.
- Line of sight mechanics/End of "zoned" groups that just stand there and gawk while you slaughter their mates just a few meters away.

madeeh91rwb17_ESO · December 2016

As for instancing problems, they can just hand over the dungeons to the PCs of individual players who prefer a solo experince. With earnable XP-caps/time to counter any hacks and exploits.
Or follow the Borderlands model. With expanded online overwatch/certification for security.

This will only lighten server load and free up resources, opening doors to further development and polishing

Sogreth · December 2016

No thank you. My character works well while being close to other players. Sometimes I have a rough time fighting 3+ enemies. But if other players are around, I can help pick them off, and heal if needed. My character is complete crap, I know this. Hybrid characters are bad. But I enjoy it

And it's hard to group up with people because I like to take my time, I search through every barrel and crate getting food materials. I enjoy that playstyle, so trying to find a group...well, I'll end up just being left behind. So it's a lot easier to just run into other players and we help eachother out.

Voxicity · December 2016

madeeh91rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Ok
Too many hardcore MMO-fanatics here. Lot more than I expected at least.
.

Hi

You're posting on the forums of probably one of the top 5 MMO's of the current times. If I were you, I'd expect at least a couple of MMO fanatics mate

I do agree with and support your other suggestions though!

Karius_Imalthar · December 2016

It used to operate much more like what OP is asking for but it lead to a lot of problems with players having problems grouping who were at different parts of a quest and people being unable to see eachother who were grouped (accept the chevron over their head) etc. They made a lot of effort of time to reduce the amount of instancing because it caused so many problems.

SolarCat02 · December 2016

I do think there should be a lower population cap for city instances... It would hopefully result in faster load times and fewer crashes in major cities. If something else would improve the game performance in those areas even more than extra instances, of course, I will happily vote for that instead.

Regarding instances when outside of the cities, I think they are fine as is to be honest. The massive groups farming dolmens can be a little annoying sometimes, but all in all it works well.

If anything were added to split people into different instances, I would vote for the Normal/Veteran toggle to also work for delves and public dungeons in addition to the group ones. You already can't change the setting while a group member is inside them (at least, I couldn't when I tried), but the setting doesn't do anything to change difficulty. I think a change like that could be fun, while also providing a difficulty stepping stone to better prepare for veteran dungeons and such.

idk · December 2016

@madeeh91rwb17_ESO

It doesn't make sense to make an MMO more single player and instance much of it.

JSilva88 · December 2016

I love ES games, but honestly didn't play much of Skyrim because it was just too big and lonely. Meeting people out in the world and in public dungeons makes this game more fun and is why I will play an MMO over single-player games now. The main story lines already give you an immersive mostly single player experience if you're not skipping through the dialogue.

Edit: And if I was all by myself in an instanced version of every public dungeon, delve, whatever, I'd never be able to kill the bosses on my own, especially since every monster is now scaled and despite having gear stars, I'm just not that good at the game yet and my class is not usually built for solo'ing. I usually have to wait for another player to walk up and we tag-team on the spot. No looking for group, just on the fly cooperation.

craybest · December 2016

I actualy enjoy finding more people in dungeons and stuff it means it will be easier. XD I solo most things too so it's nice to see someone else around for variety

Balamoor · December 2016

Betheny wrote: »

Would be nice to complete a quest boss fight without another ten players busting in on the action. Only time I want to see other players is for world bosses.

Yes this I agree with, it's odd when I am told that there is an abandoned keep that no one has visited in close to a hundred years and I get there there are 150 people inside all bunny hoping and some guy is selling T-shirts at the door.

They need to really give questing a revamp in this regard and more instancing may not be the answer, but they can make the world more dynamic by using temp quest dependent versions of areas and Dungeons. They already do this it just needs to be refined.

madeeh91rwb17_ESO · December 2016

I see most people here are haunted by the word "instancing" because of technical reason and bugs.(Which is more of a fault in game-code and not game-design)
But the main thing that I was proposing was, "individualizing" the game experience. Instancing is just one way of doing that.

Like I've said, they can just handover the dungeons or regions in which the player is located in , to the player's PC. Along with essential details/data and constraints of course.

----

Then there are people here who are saying how its good to have many players around in every corner, as they can help each other in many scenarios.
Think of borderlands again. That game actively and seamlessly scales the difficulty/number of enemies depending on the number of players in group.
ESO can implement something along those lines.

And then there are players who simply want to see other players because that is what they want. Period.
"GTFO of my traditional MMO! Haven't you read the ten commandments of MMO! You HEATHEN! May the Gods of MMOs SMITE YOU!"
Well, we can always have the option for such players to play just like they currently do. Somewhere in the gameplay/social setting tabs. And dedicate some scalable(A cloud computing concept) server resources to them.
Because frankly, I don't think they would be in very great numbers, already in the game there are people who would prefer a hybrid model. Or would like the various MMO aspects gone for good.
And then there is the player base outside of the game, that simply dislikes the game because of the very reason that it is way too MMOish for them. More players are playing skyrim remastered on twitch than ESO at this very moment. And that is still not the entire target audience. ESO is far superior to witcher and skyrim in many ways and it can easily engulf their players if it does the right things.
Overall, I believe the non-MMO crowd is way larger than the MMO fanatics, Manyfold. At least Tenfold,
So I think that it would be worth the effort and money for ZOS to take that path and develop a massive overhaul. And we will have a true WOW killer at our hands. that will Dominate the MMO market, and the RPG market for years to come.

Because lets be honest, TESO has got no bigger selling point that those first three letters in its name.

drakhan2002_ESO · December 2016

I personally like the thought of instancing. Having played DAoC and City of Heroes/Villains in which both of those games had instanced dungeons/missions, I loved it. I particularly liked how it was implemented in CoH/V - players could create solo missions using an in-game tool. Populate it will predefined monsters, etc. Eventually there were thousands to choose from. However, like everything else nice in MMOs there were ways to exploit the XP/loot, which kept the devs busy nerfing certain features.

All that said. It would be neat to have a few instanced dungeons where the soloist could just grind, over and over, without the need of seeing another adventurer. I too may be in the minority, but I certainly did enjoy that feature in previous games. I guess having played every major title to the highest degree in the last 16 years has made me understand what I like in games and what I don't like. These are just my opinions and they may not be shared by everyone.

The Elder Scrolls Online

Game Needs More "Instancing"?

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