Even so, given the amount of effort that goes into level layout and art assets, I’d still have to argue that it requires less effort to scale a single instance to multiple group sizes and compositions than it is to create an entirely new instance from scratch. I’m sure it’s mind-numbingly dull for the developer involved, though….

That’s what I’d like to see more of, content that scales down to 2 or 3.

Here’s the perfect example of what I think ruins a game. I beta-tested Vanguard (no instancing at all). The coolest newbie area was, IMO, the orc area. You start as a galley slave, escape, make your way through the front lines to a friendly camp, and get enlisted as a sort of “special forces” soldier. One of the earlier missions involves sneaking into an enemy camp and assassinating the enemy leader. All very fun and heroic until you get to his tent and find that there’s a line of people waiting to kill him. I can’t put into words what a lame feeling that generates.

I understand there are people who want to play in a group. I don’t understand why they would want to submit themselves to that sort of frustration anymore than I understand why some people enjoy skateboarding or skydiving. But hey, as long as I can do what I want to do in the game, more power to them for playing it their way….

Sure it’s not going to be easy to implement but the rewards of social cohesion and player inclusion outweigh the cost in my opinion.

And personally, I like steep death penalties. I don’t need perma-death or item loss (PvP with full loot is more annoying than fun). But, in my opinion, when you take the sting out of losing, you diminish the joy of success.

Its funny though… I love exploring, and to me EQ was the best game for it. So yes, tastes vary.

Generally great fun, sounds like what I enjoy the most. I think EQ is a really bad example though. I think EQ has to be the most ‘unforgiving’ game ever made. In my experience a ‘sub-optimal’ group meant someone was going to die. And lord knows we mustn’t have a weak death penalty, death has to hurt and hurt badly.

I like exploring, EQ was not the game for it even with feign death to smooth the way. I think EQ was far and away the worst designed game of any that I’ve ever played. But you’re right, tastes vary

The problem I’m talking about is that when a game is too solo friendly and doesn’t do much at all to encourage grouping, people in general tend to not group. So the newbie zones are largely full of people running around not talking to each other and soloing the content. If a game is introduced that way, people will tend to continue that trend: not talking and playing solo. Yes, I can invite my real life friends and online friends I’ve met in other games to join me on the same server in the same game I am playing, but that isn’t random socialization, that isn’t meeting new people.

Yes, yes, yes… I understand that there are plenty of people who like to play “alone together”, to solo content while existing in a world with other players so they can make Chuck Norris jokes in global chat channels and laugh together without ever actually grouping up and doing things together. But I have no interest in that… I’m in an MMO to play with people, not to be a lone wolf running around the other people.

We disagree. That’s awesome! But I think the original EQ was one of the best designed games ever because I have a few dozen friends now that I wouldn’t have without that game. My attempts to play in a similar fashion and make new friends in WoW largely failed because the game was too solo friendly at the bottom and too guild-centric at the top. Its too easy with too much instancing with too few reasons for people to just random NEED each other.

The thing is, even in EQ I never stood around spamming LFG or LFM, held hostage to the willingness of strangers to allow me to play the game. I traveled around, talked to people, played in sub-optimal groups in shared zones, making connections that more often than not payed off later in invitations to group and people to invite to my groups. Sure, there were times I couldn’t put together the “right” group to do something I wanted to do, but I could always find something to do. Whereas in WoW I pretty much could always do exactly what I wanted to do because most of it didn’t require a group at all, and 99% of the time I couldn’t find anyone to group with anyway (most people actually respond with “Haha! You don’t need a group for that!!” or some variation), and it was f-ing boring.

Are you only teaming up if you are forced to do that? I see nothing wrong with being able to play solo, teaming up should be an encouraged activity, not enforced. Offer a somewhat different and possibly better experience with a team than solo but allow both.

City of Heroes/Villains has done an excellent job doing that encouragement IMHO. Of course the ability to scale has in that case go hand in hand with allowing people to set their own difficulty setting; without that it would certainly end up with the excessive work in tuning the encounteras as mentioned. And that also fits in with how flexible character development and team set-up work out in the game, XP gain and many other pieces. No single feature works in isolation.

CoX is the MMO I have teamed up the most in by far, even if other MMOs has done more to provide the “need” to team up.

WoW did this but it could have been far better by doing two things. One was not setting a level limit on lower level instances and the second was not introducing mentoring. So instead of grouping and experiencing the dungeon the way it was ment to you get a high level toon to run you through and by pass the challenge while still reaping the rewards.

With level restriction and mentoring in place it allows a far greater possibility to put a group together to experience the instance as it was intended. The mentored player levels far quicker as a % of exp from the mentor goes to the apprentice. The one thing that needs to happen that I have not seen is to put some kind of rewards on boss mobs that the higher level players who are mentoring can use towards gear at their level. (Ie insentive for them to particiapate.) An example would be putting the same badges ( currently conquest badges ) that high level player would get from a doing heroic dungeons at level 80. Of course this would also mean putting a lock out on the dungeons so that gear and badges could not be farmed.

As far as instancing goes I think the way SOE did it with EQ2 was the best way to address high populations in any one zone. Does this break immersion or makes it a pain to group? To some extent but I think people figured it out pretty quickly and while it might break immersion no better system has been created to address over population. How is your immession any better when 20 people are standing around waiting for a mob to spawn so they can kill it to complete their quest?