Instances vs Open World
I don’t prefer instances personally, but I never thought anyone should make a game that only I would play. I always prefer open world to instances, except as a vehicle for telling stories. That’s obviously better instanced.
For the rest of it, I’m satisfied with the ratio now, but I wouldn’t be crestfallen if there were no new instances. This is why my opinion shouldn’t count. lol
To be honest i have a very little sense of open world feel in this game as there are portals leading to each small zone, but thats just me. The open world can be frustrating too as in HoT zones u are not safe to be in an active map, many times to get the full benefit and progression one has to use the lfg to port to another instance, or zone if u like.
Power Ranger PvP
I used to be a power ranger, now not sure anymore
I used to be a power ranger, now not sure anymore
They have announced there will be new fractals which is really needed since there are too few of them and we’ve been doing the same ones since fall 2013. Next raid wing will also come out soon. Wish there was a brand new dungeon, but we know that isn’t going to happen now. I much prefer the instanced content in this game over the open world content so I definitely want more instanced. A shame since I bought the game because of how they were marketing dynamic events and it ended up being disappointing.
As for open world, I think the next expansion should add 6 zones. 2 easy 2 medium 2 hard. The easy maps would be like the old ones, the medium ones would have the difficulty of the HoT maps, and the hard ones would be much harder. This way there will be content for open world players of all skill levels.
I don’t think the difficulty of open world and instanced content should be related to each other. Have easy and hard content for both.
Lord Arcadio
League Of Ascending Immortals [OATH]
League Of Ascending Immortals [OATH]
Yes, this game needs more instanced content.
The thing about the Open World is that it has to be open to everyone, or you end up cutting off parts of the game for some people. That is, in general, a Bad Thing.
Instanced content can be adjusted to the players. Instances can have limits on how many players enter, so they can focus on a narrow range of numbers more easily instead of trying to scale from 1 to 50+ players. There can be difficulty adjusters, for those that want more or less of a challenge. And they’re not interrupted by outside events passing through the area.
The open world is important, but it needs to be fairly casual friendly. It needs to be engaging in other ways, such as exploration and interesting events, but engagement by difficulty runs the risk of becoming a road block that keeps people away from everything else. An optional instance, however, can be anything from a cakewalk to “I don’t think the players can beat this, but we’ll give them a shot anyway”.
At least, this is my take on it.
Sarcasm, delivered with a
delicate, brick-like subtlety.
delicate, brick-like subtlety.
Guild Wars 2 is a game that was designed mostly with the Open World in mind and not instances, and at release the game had very few harder parts. The most challenging zones (Orr) were challenging because of mob density, and mostly hard to navigate due to CC, but if you engaged the mobs they offered very little challenge. More annoying than dangerous.
But ever since the release they’ve been adding more challenging open world content, anyone remember when the Young Karka first appeared? Much more challenging than any release mob, and even comparable to HoT mobs but people seem to have forgotten about them. The Living World also added more challenging content, the Marionette, the Assault Knights, nearly every LS mob, Molten Alliance / Toxic Alliance / Aetherblades is harder to fight than any mob we had at release. And yet people forgot about all those when discussing HoT zone difficulty.
It’s obvious to me that they wanted to up the challenge in the open world ever since release. The only difference with HoT is that it’s permanent and not temporary anymore.
Instanced content can be adjusted to the players. Instances can have limits on how many players enter, so they can focus on a narrow range of numbers more easily instead of trying to scale from 1 to 50+ players. There can be difficulty adjusters, for those that want more or less of a challenge. And they’re not interrupted by outside events passing through the area.
This is the next thing I wanted to discuss. In other MMORPG that have a large number of instances and not focus on the Open World, they run in a new type of problem. Their open world is empty, even popular games allow players from multiple servers to play together in the open world, not because there aren’t enough players in the game, but because they are all “hidden” inside instances.
Although having lots of instances and then lots of difficulty settings for those instances has many potential benefits, it also has its own unique number of drawbacks, namely the open world will suffer. I don’t think that’s something Anet would ever want for this game.
Do we want players to be hiding inside their instances or instead put them in the open world to play with others?
I think there is a place for both in the game, but I would prefer to see the developers focus most (80+%) of their energy on an engaging and fun open world experience. It really is what sets GW2 apart from almost every other MMO out there.
As someone who enjoys playing with large groups of friends, I can say it is what caused me to buy the game when it launched. Yes, it is easier to tweak difficulty levels when you control the precise number of participants, but you do sacrifice something when you have to do that. Because of that concession, I would rather raiding and instanced content take a back seat (way back) to those things we can do as a community.
That is a very difficult question. Instances are nice because you can play with a group of friends. I love really big fights like WvW, DS or TD. But these fights are hard to organize with maps full of AFKers or people doing other things and it is very hard to get your group on a single map. So I would like to see features like Guild HoT Maps. A feature like “Guild World Event” or “Guild Missions” in which a guild can a have a separate instance of one the big Meta-Maps like DS or TD. That would be a really nice merge between Instances and Open World. I fear that would introduce new problems and would be harmfull for the community if big guilds only play with themselves.
The correct answer is that open world should have a mix of hard and easy as should instances. Ain’t rocket science when you think fairly.
The other think that people get wound up about is zone stalling, its too hard, it’s too easy etc but in reality it’s impossible to perfectly balance a zone to natch everyone’s skill levels moment to moment I may be skilled and tired, skilled and on the money, using a mix of skills to meet some personal objective, a new player with top gear, a an expert player in an alt in new gear. It goes on and scales in a non linear fashion. No program is ever going to cope with that, it’s impossible as the virtual world can nit be all things to all men, even if it did have the processing power.
“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize
(edited by vesica tempestas.1563)
The correct answer is that open world should have a mix of hard and easy as should instances. Ain’t rocket science when you think fairly.
Many people disagree with you and prefer the Open World to be easy mode and keep the challenging parts inside instances.
I fear that would introduce new problems and would be harmfull for the community if big guilds only play with themselves.
Yeah, the exact same problem games focused on instances have, even those with a huge population: An empty open world. It’s dangerous for the game to have loads of instances, since it is so focused on the open world, if guilds can do the open world events on their own instances then nobody will be doing them in the open.
I think there is a place for both in the game, but I would prefer to see the developers focus most (80+%) of their energy on an engaging and fun open world experience. It really is what sets GW2 apart from almost every other MMO out there.
I agree. “Engaging” and “fun” means different things for different players. Someone might call “fun” something that doesn’t require any thinking while another player might find “fun” when fighting more challenging foes. So, the open world, in order to account for all player types, must have content for all of them.
Those that disagree are basically saying I like x more than y with forum warrior mentalities (especially in a toxic forum like mmorpg) that’s not how you build a game designed for multiple players with a mixture of long and short term objectives, you design it based on design philosophy and the community well being as a whole (in a mmorpg)
“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize
I have no problem with HoT open world mobs. Some are terrible, but not because they are hard, but of their mechanics. But that is also an issue in core tyria.
The new set of maps have a lot of other, grave problems that have put my patience to the test. And patience is one of the few things that I don´t want to have tested when playing games.
Pay raiders in heaps of gold, exclusiv skins and titles only, then they can have as much instanced content as they like in my view. Hiding something substantial behind them creates a divided playerbase, elitism and a market for sellers. I know that this is not against the rules, and there are even mercenary companies the sell out for money in RL. Only because it is not forbidden, it is neither moral or fair by default too.