A RARE INSTANCE OF THOUGHT!
10:37 pm
Provoked by Brad McQuaid’s instancing manifesto, and Raph Koster’s comments on it.
Brad’s take is, in general, a well thought out argument against instancing - I just disagree with it. Here’s why. Read both links first, so that you’ll have some context when this story launches its own instance here. ->
First off, my opinion - instancing is a content delivery mechanism. Nothing more, nothing less. You can do really bad instancing, and really cool instancing. It’s all up to how the designers leverage it, much like every other cool bit of technology.
Brad’s complaints against the tech are purely from a design standpoint. To wit:
Instancing is anti-immersive. “When I beat down mongbats in the middle ages, I didn’t get my own copy of the Cave of Chaos! I just walked right on in and shared it with all the other mongbat slayers.”
Agreed. The problem isn’t with instancing here, though. DikuMUD-style MMOs, with the everyone-gets-their-own-Hero’s-Journey play progression from loser to uber, are anti-immersive by their very defintion. You don’t feel like the Hero of Elanthus when everyone surrounding you is wearing equally impressive “Hero of Elanthus” gear. You feel like you’re playing a game. This is fine! Games can be fun. But at that point, you have to draw the line between fun and immersion on the side of fun, because the game mechanic itself is going to demolish any sense of heroic uniqueness.
Instancing is an excuse for not having enough content. I’m not really sure where he’s going here. Players know when they’re going through the same instance for a thousandth time, so I’m not really aware of any game that can claim this as a wedge against the Content Demon. DAOC’s task dungeons in Catacombs are an example here - very much an anti-immersive, repetitive “go into this cave and kill yonder foozle”. But they werent’ designed as content, but as tools - if you don’t have time for anything else, you can go into GenericRandomCave and kill RandomMonster32. It’s literally the equivalent of killing time by rolling random encounters for yourself while waiting for a DM to show up. Meanwhile there’s plenty of story-based instances, designed to be played through only once, in the same expansion. Again, it’s just tech. How you use the tech drives the results.
Instancing is an excuse for not designing fun paths through your content. In other words, you’re using instancing as a crutch to get past “cock-blocking” (one of those fun MMO terms that I can just see the collective teeth of Terra Nova gnashing over), or players clambering over each other trying to get to the limited amount of available cheese. One of the problems here is that if you structure your content as cheese delivery systems, your players will treat them as cheese delivery systems, and act like they do at another cheese delivery system, the deli. “Oh, there’s a line here, I’ll get at the back of it and wait my turn.” “Paladin 54, your order of Dark Elf is ready!” Even if you have developed battle-hardened systems of encounter tagging and loot generation that completely eliminate any and all customer service issues (hold on: *maniacal laughter* OK I’m done) your players will still, in a very effective fashion, apportion the cheese amongst themselves. It’s what communities do.
Note: instancing doesn’t stop this. Nothing stops this, because you’re not going to override basic group psychology. All instancing does is - again, as tech - make it easier for you to design systems that prevent abuse. Players in World of Warcraft, one of the most loot-centric MMOs out, still strive for the perfect loot even though most of it originates in instances. There’s just less problem with having to wait in line for it.
In a way, Brad argues
for enforced content scarcity. To wit:
"And then there are those who want more of a challenge and don’t mind indirect competition and finite resources and realize, that unless they really try hard, they’re not going to achieve everything, or see everything – but they also think that’s fine – in fact, arguably, it makes the world more real – you can’t see every square foot of the real world, after all – and you always need something to dream about, or another goal to head towards."
Again, we have a model that proves instancing co-exists quite well with this - World of Warcraft. Just because you are level 60 does not mean you are going to be able to enter Molten Core. In a progression familiar to MMO players, you’ll need to be “attuned”, or earn keys to reach that content. Yet Molten Core is still an instance. If your guild has gone through the trial of attuning their 40 or so players, they aren’t limited yet again by the immersion-destroying event of three other heroic slayers of Ragnaros ahead of you in line. All instancing does in this case is preserve the sense of wonder - your group of heroes has braved the right of passage, now you alone stand at the summit, ready to beast-slay.
Brad would, I suspect, argue at this point that that sense of wonder is zapped away by the knowledge “I am in an instance and 30 other guilds are in similar instances right now.” Well, yes. It’s a game. Again, at some point you have to draw the line between game and world. In the DikuMUD model, more often than not, I say draw the line squarely at game. And honestly, for me, the sense of immersion isn’t helped by the knowledge “I am part of the only group of my server doing this.” I’m moved more by the in-game tools of storytelling. Then again, like most people, I never will be part of Uberguild Alpha that climbs the highest mountain. And unlike Brad, I don’t really believe that people derive much benefit from hearing about the exploits of Uberguild Alpha by proxy. (I’m sure the hit counters on fohguild.org beg to disagree.)
Instancing harms player retention by making the game too easy. “I finished the game, I’m done, I can cancel my account now.” If your MMO is designed in such a matter that you can say “I’m done” at some point, then yes, that is a concern. And I tend to agree with those designers who believe that you DO need to have an end. At some point you want to bring closure to your players. If they continue on for the community that forms within your game, that’s great - but is an embittered player who’s sick of your game after 3 or 4 years worth the customer service cost they’ll start to inflict on you out of sheer boredom? But more to the point, trying to drive player retention by making the game painful is a bad plan. Players that hate you tend not to give you as much money. And if the game is shallow enough that you can race through it in the space of a few weeks, making people wait in line to finish isn’t going to help matters that much.
Instancing harms the formation of community by segmenting players into virtual cocoons. This is the usual argument of those who champion true virtual worlds - if there aren’t enough shared spaces in the world, players won’t come together to form the communities around which virtual worlds grow.
This might be a valid argument if everything in a game was
instanced. But I’ve seen very few games structured this way. Some games, such as City of Heroes/Villains, Guild Wars and Everquest 2, do instance large swatches of the world. But they still encourage shared spaces. They’re not shared amongst the entire community, yes. But past a certain point, this isn’t something you want to
encourage. There’s no attraction to a huge area where thousands of people gather, because you physically cannot talk to thousands of people. As long as you are encouraged to engage in shared efforts with strangers working for the same goal, you can still encourage growth of your communities without the lag involved of sharing your achievements with ten thousand of your closest friends.
Again - instancing is just tech. Like 3D engines. iD may make the best 3D engines in the business, but many people found Half Life 2 to be a better game than Doom 3. It’s all about how you leverage the tools you have to make an immersive game.
I look forward to playing Vanguard. AND D&D Online. And pretty much everything else coming out, because I think virtual worlds are cool, which is why I occasionally devolve into these sort of theological debates. If that does little for you, spawn your own instance
here!
