Thoughts on Instancing

I favor some degree of instancing, but not total. The ability to serve a greater amount of the server population while still having competition allows for everyone to have raiding fun, while still having competitive races and drama that gives the community its flare. Instanced zones should have lockout timers appropriate to the normal respawn timer on the main boss of the zone.

It's been a long time so I'll probably forget some content, but this is the setup that would put a smile on this old dorf's face.

This setup is based on a time lock for expansion openings with no voting to unlock. I don't favor any voting. Uncertainty about when future expansions will open seems to only cause discontent, regardless of which side of the vote people are on.


EQ Classic: 3 months (not enough content for longer, mostly just leveling to 50)
Instances:
Plane of Hate
Plane of Fear
Plane of Sky

NON-Instanced (Old School Contested/Racing):
Nagafen
Vox
Phinegal Atropos


Ruins of Kunark: 3 months (not enough content again, mostly just leveling to 60)
Instances:
Veeshan's Peak

NON-Instanced (Old School Contested/Racing):
Epic Quest related stuff
Gorenaire
Talendor
Severilous
Venril Sathir
Trakanon (maybe change the keydrop to a flag, one kill effectively gets a guild VP access -> so more guilds would have a shot at VP before moving on to Velious)



Scars of Velious: 6 months (everybody loves this expansion, timelock doubles to 6 months)
Instances:
Plane of Growth
Temple of Veeshan
Sleeper's Tomb (many of the keying mobs are contested, which will make ST access contested, but the raid itself uncontested)

NON-Instanced (Old School Contested/Racing):
Dain Frostreaver IV
Yelinak
Zlandicar
Lord "Bob" Dodigjldfkgnsdiofggfjgakdfglawhor
Avatar of War cycle (and everything else in Kael, always a fun "kill the mob on the enemies corpses" locale)


Shadows of Luclin: 6 months (AA'ing begins, making content exhaustion less brutal)
Instances:
Vex Thal
Ssraeshza Temple (maybe just the Emperor if technically possible)

NON-Instanced (Old School Contested/Racing):
Thought Horror Overfiend "THO"
Burrower
Lord Inquisitor Seru
Shei Vinitras
Ring of whatever that nobody ever does


Planes of Power: 6 months
Instances:
Plane of Time (proper instancing, not like the original messy system)

NON-Instanced:
Everything else -> At this point in the game I think newly instancing old content becomes less important.

Lost Dungeons of Norrath: Release during PoP: 2 months in?
Legacy of Ykeshe: Release during PoP: 4 months in?

Gates of Discord: 6 months? (very unpopular expansion, but the 6 months time will give secondary guilds time to finish enjoying PoP before other expansions make it completely obsolete)

Omens of War: 6 months?
Beyond this point I have no idea, I am not very familiar with content beyond Gates of Discord.




Greetings to anyone who might remember me!

Chaan
Formerly of Lanys T`vyl, Kane Bayle, & Stromm

I don't want instancing as it's just one more thing that removes the social element in mmo's.

I would actually prefer the opposite approach aka 'Ragefire' method. Leave the zones open but make raid mobs spawnable with sufficient player effort.

Guilds who are interested in the content still have to compete with other guilds who are working prerequisites, but you're not SOL for a week because the other guild had one more wiz/dru online.

I would still leave the static mobs available for people who wanted to race. Their reward for winning is that they can skip the spawn-mechanic prerequisite.

As a hardcore player myself, I don't see how instancing of raid targets, lightly, will effect the competition in any way. What I proposed in the other thread was a very light form of instancing. Allow guild leaders who got flagged by a gm, or some other method to avoid exploiting, to spawn instanced versions of the raid zones only so often. I'll give some examples.

If you're a casual guild that had no chance of seeing Nagafen, you now have the ability to spawn a solb zone instance once a week (Double the regular timer of Nagafen). The hardcore guilds will continue to contest the open world Nagafen because he will spawn twice in that time period where casual guild gets to summon him. Hardcore guild gets three Nagafen's to casual guild's one.

Per the contesting part- This one is much more obvious to me. Raid contesting will still be there because the bosses are spawning still in the open world. I don't understand why people think this will change because a guild can spawn an instance once a week. Every single time Nagafen spawns he will be contested heavily by the hardcore guilds because it's extra loot, contested content and bragging rights. Do you somehow think because hardcore guild can summon Nagafen once a week that they no longer care to contest his true spawn? You're dead wrong if you think that.

In closing- I think light instancing is good for the community over all. I think the casual guilds will enjoy their experience much more while the hardcore will continue to play their style. Some hardcore players will be angry that "lesser players" are allowed access to content and believe they should be locked out, I wholeheartedly disagree. I believe everyone should have a good time and my fun is not derived from the pain of someone else.

I actually like this, even though I hate instancing in EverQuest. Go figure, someone thought of something that rewards everyone involved.

Nod even as a pro-instancing person myself (in fact the person Roshen responded to when it was first mentioned as a possibility), I'd still want uninstanced to be preferable to instanced if they do it.

There's a host of methods they could take, easiest of course being a longer timer in comparison. (I'd dare say a 2 week lockout could even be fine - classic has 6 raids if you count Phinny, so even on a 2 week lockout that would give them a raid every 2-3 days)

I've always favored 80% instanced raid content, 20% contested raid content. Unfortunately the genre can't seem to deliver that, most games are either/or. Even EQ have moved towards majority instanced raid content anymore. I'm not really sure why developers can't do a bit of both, but it is what it is.

So I'll just say I favor some instanced raid content, while leaving some contested world bosses up. Will we see that in EQ? Not likely, not with the size of dev team they have now post-merger.

Aren't there a few instanced versions of these zones/bosses already? Like Old Man MacKenzie has instances for Vox & Nagafen, I think there was an instanced version of Trakanon for a monster mission. Another monster mission for Kael Drakkel and then a newer raid zone for ToV? Something like that, I've never done any of these. But someone could compile a proper list. Would it then be simple enough to scale them properly?

I also feel like if these things are instanced, they drop less loot, have a longer lockout than their real-world counterparts And then the real world counterparts should be FFA, no GM intervention at all. This would help the server gear up faster as a whole, toss the non-race crowd a bone, and give the racers what they want as well. So it appeals to everyone, and sort of offsets the fact that these servers move faster than originally, by increasing the flow of loot in a shorter time.

i would hardly call what happened on fippy, "social." closer to cesspool

This.

Oh, and also welcome to the losing side. People want stuff handed on a silver platter, which is mirrored by the rather short expansion cycles. No "playing the game", just collecting so-called "achievements" and move on like a swarm of locusts.

That being said, the op's list is probably the most common ground we'll ever find. I just wish they'd stop releasing expansions shortly after PoP or at least make the cycles a year long.

Having RL that doesn't allow the ridiculous multihour campouts for a spawn is "wanting stuff handed to them" and "not playing the game"? [PS - for "not playing the game" - I raided hardcore with guilds ranging from 1st to 3rd on their server until OoW and I can count the number of contested raids on both my hands over the years - I dealt with nearly that many within the first week of raiding on Combine, and again nearly as many during the first week of Vulak (the lower population of the two, I'm sure with more population Fippy was worse!)]

And that's assuming of course the drama cases of "Oh we're too late for that spawn, let's train the other guild" or "Oh we're too late for that spawn, let's petition and try to get them suspended", or "We're too late, lets engage and try to DPS race them on a spawn we have no rights to", or "We're too late, lets send someone out there to steal their loot if they haven't decided how to award things before the FFA looting opens", or a dozen other examples that happened with reasonable frequency would somehow stop occurring.

I think your glasses have a bit of tint to them - something around a pink or so.

Common ground is really all I'm looking for. I want a server that is arranged to promote the best possible community for the longest duration possible.

This setup is intended to try and satisfy the competitive element for the hardcore raider while simultaneously allowing an unlimited number of raiding guilds to survive/flourish. In this scenario, only the elite will be able to hunt down some of the open world prizes like the Avatar of War, but every guild will have the opportunity to raid and develop in staple gearing zones (like ToV).

The added number of secondary guilds that thrive on the availability of a few instanced gear-up zones will even serve as a more vibrant source of new recruits for the few super competitive elite guilds.

It's not a perfect setup for anyone, but I think something like this offers the best possibility of a healthier server for the longest possible term.


Chaan

Well, to make me go on the ignore list for just about everyone here, I'll throw in the fact that I've been playing on Vallon Zek, a team-pvp server (Darkies, Dwarves, Elves, Humans -- with all the light races teaming up against the Darkies), from Kunark to Omens of War in some of the top raiding guilds. We didn't have the problem of dps racing each other, we just smacked each others heads and the guild who won got the prize. So in a nutshell, we had two raids at the same time and it was fun! Mostly because the large guilds enforced strict rules, like no bindrushing back to the raidzone and generally some respect for the other guild to let them raid in peace if you lost. I heard that it was quite different on the other PvP servers and when they merged VZ into Rallos Zek it was like the gates of Oblivion had suddenly opened and all those honorable rules went out the window. Yes, back then honor ment something different than pvp experience points.

I know this will never be the "common ground" we're all looking for, but I will dare to keep my dream.

Another thing to consider is that maybe not everyone wants to raid the latest content. My first guild was very content with the lower regions of ToV while the highend Defiant-guild basically had dibs on NToV. Later when Luclin got released, Defiant moved on to Vex Thal and we finally got a shot at NToV. When PoP got released and Defiant went there, my guild was happily doing Vex Thal. And remember, we still faced each other on a daily basis in (im)mortal combat, so gear was far more essential than on any PvE server -- and they still got their behinds handed to them more than once. During the PoP era my darkie guild had to give up the purist approach and started x-teaming with the light races, simply because Bards became essential to raiding (resist songs). But I digress ...

What I'm trying to say is, slow progression does not have to be a bad thing. The social aspect is far more important than new content, but you have to give the players time to actually socialize. Polishing your Magelo profiles is not socializing.

No instancing unless it is for epic/quest pieces only. Instead, completely randomize the spawn time of raid targets (no 3day, 7day, etc windows) and give them a chance to spawn placeholders.

Good luck poo socking that.

Did you play on the previous Progression, Vaedian? There were people farming things like the Fear Golems when they were two and even three expansions back to sell the loots/multiquests to people. Kunark Dragons even further into Progression were still getting farmed by top end players.

I agree that being somewhat behind isn't necessarily a bad thing (part of why one proposal I theorized was to enable instancing once the expansion has been beaten (either after X normal kills, the next expansion opens, or whatever)) - it's more complicated for SOE/Daybreak to do of course though.

But don't think for a minute just because Kunark is open the top end is going to say "Oh well, we're leaving X alone" - heck, on Vulak the top end guild actually kept a L52 set of SK alts just for Naggy and Vox for quite a while.

Please. The hardcore guild knows that you can kill Nagafen with nothing but 3-4 level 50 mages. The hardcore guild will have two hundred mage alts and will kill Nagafen 20-30 times for every time it pops in the static zone.

On instancing, if they decide to go that route, I hope they rework both loot quantities and encounter difficulty. As things stand, there is very little if anything in classic or Kunark that can't be defeated by 4-6 mages.

How would you handle the instancing of something like PoHate? You have the bosses and minibosses with different respawn timers, which would be easy enough to implement similar to Anguish bosses vs. mini timers. But you also have the trash, which drops the best in slot visible armor pieces for classic era. This stuff was designed with server wide drop rates in mind. It can be farmed with a group or two of 50's, but currently, only when it's up. How would you switch it up so that everyone doesn't end up with a full set of the armor on all their alts after the first couple weeks, from simply going into an uncontested instance with unlimited trash and farming away? Or do you not see a problem with everyone being handed all the best in slot visible gear for fairly little effort?

What are you even talking about? What does the fact that 3-4 mages can kill Nagafen have to do with guilds sitting on his spawn waiting to blast him? Were you even there for classic? All three guilds would bring their entire roster and try to outgun the other. No one was sending 3-4 mages to claim anything but phinny. Not sure what you mean by "kill Nagafen 20-30 times for every time it pops in the static zone" though... Is that a comment for instancing? That was already discussed in the only allowing the guild leader to spawn one instance a week part. No separating your raid force for multiple instances.

Simple, nothing respawns in instances. You get one copy of every monster in that raid per your one weekly instance.

Right, because no one could ever think to make multiple guilds for their alts.

And yes, I played classic on Fippy. In one of those top 3 guilds, sitting on spawns constantly. People brought their whole team because they had to outgun the other guilds, not because the encounters required it.