124685-open-world-or-instanced

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As Drop 5 nears, I think it would be a good time to try and guide future development by beginning a discussion on how to move forward.  Specifically, I think it's an undercurrent of current discussion as to which way it should really go.  In between PVP v PVE, the class battles, payment model arguments, etc., more pressing issues are sort of simmering below the surface, and probably ought to be addressed to provide better feedback to the development team about things that we probably have more input in.
 
Specifically, I'm talking about whether future development should focus on open world or instanced content.
 
Wildstar has a reputation for excellent instanced content, but this is even more an MMORPG issue.  The subgenre has moved towards instanced content to bring it in line with other non-MMO online RPGs like Diablo 3.  This means a lot less people are wandering around in the open world; they're standing around in town waiting for the queues to pop.  World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV both moved in this direction.  So we get more content that is instanced, on-demand, and limited in group size and participation.  Instead of the old open world games where running into another player meant chances of interaction, today's MMORPG open world is a place where the "solo" game largely happens.  Randomized queue generators have also made it harder to interact regularly, which has made MMORPGs as a whole more fragmented, compartmentalized experiences.
 
I don't indict this move as some kind of pandemic, though, because while the open world has probably more of the hallmarks of the MMORPG genre and plays to its strengths better, it has huge drawbacks.  For one thing, it's far more difficult to control difficulty in the open world.  You may be running around in it solo, or you may be in a group, or even a full raid, all of which require different mechanics to properly challenge.  You can use numbers to simply overwhelm your challenges.  This leads to more social interaction, perhaps, at a random level, but the content is very quickly devoured and doesn't tend to be scaled to as high a level of difficulty.
 
Players have been arguing fairly consistently for more interaction in the open world areas, between PVP and PVE, and for the world to hopefully be more visibly populated.  However, people also decry the drawbacks of open world content, calling most of the elder game open world pointless reputation grinds.  This seems to suggest we should probably more properly delineate what we want for our open world and instanced content, what the balance between the two in future development should be, and how we'd like to see both changed to serve our needs in ways they may not be now.	
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I will pick OW every single damn day of the week!
 
I honestly hate how MMO's have become stand in a city at end game and port to everyplace in the game.  I know this is a problem with Theme Park MMO's, so I don't know how well it would work if most of your content was OW and not instanced.
 
For all the shit Archage gets, there is one thing it does right and that's the massive open world feeling of the game when logging in with very few instances.
 
On a side note, a lot of new mmo's have been turning away from the theme park model WoW made so popular.  Just take a look at upcoming MMO's like Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, EQN and Landmark.	
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As far as open world stuff goes, I think Carbine (and other developers) should really take a look at what Trion does with Rift. They're constantly making use of their various open world systems (rifts, zone invasions, instant adventures, etc) to introduce new objectives for people to go after. Means the open world actually feels active. Even little things contribute to this, like having the game auto-announce in global chats when a major zone invasion is about to start in X zone.
 
WildStar tried to do open world stuff with the occasional event, but the rewards for those things are just awful and there's really just not enough of them nor any other incentive to participate with only a few exceptions (e.g. the tree, or Lightspire).	
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Instanced is where WS is always going to shine when it comes to fight mechanics, because they tune their fights to a specific group size. Open world becomes "tank and spank" when you have enough players.
 
I'm all for adding open world content, especially if they can find interesting ways to do it, but I definitely think the game needs more instanced dungeons and raids in its future.	
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Instanced is where WS is always going to shine when it comes to fight mechanics, because they tune their fights to a specific group size. Open world becomes "tank and spank" when you have enough players.
 
I'm all for adding open world content, especially if they can find interesting ways to do it, but I definitely think the game needs more instanced dungeons and raids in its future.
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EQ seemed to do extremely well w/o instances, but that's was many moons ago, and times have changed.
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Admittedly I never played it, but I have a hard time imagining that the fight designs and combat were similar between the two games.
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Open World, all the way.
 
I mean, Shiphands/Dungeons, etc. are cool and all, but I've always been an Open World kind of player.
 
Gimme some dynamic events. Gimme some zone-changing invasions. Gimme some reason to go back to Algoroc outside of mat-farming.
 
I wanna be able to pull up a map, click on any random zone, and see something fun to go and do.
 
When I went back to WoW, I noticed there were super-high-level mobs all over the Barrens. Low-levelers couldn't interact with them, but high-levels could. Gave Endgamers a reason to get out of Orgrimmar and back out into the world.	
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One thing I wished they did, but I see why they could not was open world housing.
 
One thing they could do is take away the instant port to dungeon and make people 'GASP' manually go there :D  But this won't happen.	
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It's not even a question for me— instanced content is the way to go. There are a few sides to my opinion on this, based on personal experience:
 
1. OW content frequently sucks. OW boss content is too easy, whereas world events in games like RIFT, FFAAR, and GW2 were grindy, low challenge, with generally poor rewards. I'd also say OW events can be exploited easier than instanced content. Overall, I haven't been impressed with any of the OW content I've seen over the last 5 years.
 
2. Wildstar's strengths generally are from its instanced content. I don't think this is a good time to attempt to develop a new approach. 
 
3. I don't really care for most of the late-game environments. I don't want to spend any more time than I have to in areas like Grimvault.
 
All said I wouldn't mind seeing more OW stuff with an expansion, but I have no desire to see Carbine spend drop development time trying to reinvent the wheel on OW. As much as the social aspect of being out in the world is neat, WS's world just doesn't interest me that much at this point, and solid gameplay is easier achieved through structured instanced content IMO.	
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It's not even a question for me— instanced content is the way to go. There are a few sides to my opinion on this, based on personal experience:
 
1. OW content frequently sucks. OW boss content is too easy, whereas world events in games like RIFT, FFAAR, and GW2 were grindy, low challenge, with generally poor rewards. I'd also say OW events can be exploited easier than instanced content. Overall, I haven't been impressed with any of the OW content I've seen over the last 5 years.
 
2. Wildstar's strengths generally are from its instanced content. I don't think this is a good time to attempt to develop a new approach. 
 
3. I don't really care for most of the late-game environments. I don't want to spend any more time than I have to in areas like Grimvault.
 
All said I wouldn't mind seeing more OW stuff with an expansion, but I have no desire to see Carbine spend drop development time trying to reinvent the wheel on OW. As much as the social aspect of being out in the world is neat, WS's world just doesn't interest me that much at this point, and solid gameplay is easier achieved through structured instanced content IMO.
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			Does "Give Me Some More Leveling Zone Please" figure into the Open World request? Because I gotta tell you, the unchanging Whitevale>Farside>Wilderun>Malgrave>Grimvault trek is gettin' a little bit old.  :P	
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It's because the game isn't designed with OW content in mind, it's a theme park, so instanced content will always be better.  
 
That being said, I still hate the fact that when you log in at end level you're just sitting in the city/house waiting to raid.  To me that's not an MMO, it's just a lobby based game with multiplayer.  
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One thing they could do is take away the instant port to dungeon and make people 'GASP' manually go there :D  But this won't happen.
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FWIW: I like the Siege of the Ligthspire 20+ event.  The defense of Dru's tree not so much.  R-12 is pretty neat too but the start is a bit too grindy for my taste.
 
Like Naunet pointed out there's pretty much no incentive to run them.  The drops aren't worth the effort and once you've ground out the reputation there's no point.  Maybe Contracts will make them worth running again, dunno.
 
I had every intention of doing the Guardian of the Grove and Defile rep on my esper alt (for the tier unlocks) but I just haven't been able to get myself motivated.  I never finished the R-12 rep on my main because the only thing I was interested in was the tier unlock and she's now capped them.	
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The one big argument against OW content: griefing, either on purpose and by using a permitted game mechanic.
 
On purpose: ganking, or AA's stealing of harvests from other player plots or trade goods, or GW2's Tequatl OW boss with people AFKing on the cannons
Game mechanic: GW2's event chain where two groups either wanted the chain to succeed or fail, depending on their end goals.
 
You want OW bosses that are not boring tank and spank, but what do you do about people sabotaging your play experience?
 
I just want to run my daily rep grind and you are looking for some newb to OW PvP, so how do we coexist? Voluntary flagging? How many do you see on the PvE servers who run around flagged?	
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It's not a MORPG. It's a MMORPG. Open world gives you that. Instances don't.
 
This is not to say that instances don't have their place, they certainly do. If you want to guarantee that a certain group size takes down a boss, the only way to do it is in an instance. But they should not and cannot be the main emphasis of a MMORPG. The world itself needs to be an interesting and rewarding place to be a part of.
 
If everyone is just sitting around in the capitols and instantly teleporting their team into a place where they can never have to see anybody else, then world events/bosses, harvesting, exploring, discovering things, and interacting with the environment have been devalued to the point where even people who would prefer to do that are better off in some instance.
 
And that's exactly what's happened in the current game. You're much better rewarded with plat and loot in Veteran instances. You're much better rewarded for PvP in a BG. Heck, you're even better rewarded harvesting for materials--which is a typical reason to go out into the world in most MMORPGs--in housing plots. The only crafting mats you can't get in an instance are for cooking zone-specific meals, and cooking as a tradeskill is pretty much useless.
 
Maybe contracts will change that. I doubt it, but we'll see. But if not, then here's some ideas:
 
1. The game has slowly but surely been shifting the balance of valuable crafting mats out of the world and into instances. Stop that and start shifting them back. Veteran instances and raids have plenty of progression rewards, they don't need to be where you go to get the best of crafting mats and housing decor too.
 
2. Housing plot harvesting circles should never be a more effective way to obtain crafting mats than open world harvesting--at best, it should be as effective. If you're better off just romping around housing collecting up mats than you are actually being out in the game's world, then the yields from the plots need to be nerfed or the yields from the world need to be buffed. Given that most of those materials are in such enormous surplus that their prices on the AH are mostly floored out at or near the vendor cost, I don't think it's any mystery which of those two options ought to happen.
 
3. Challenges should not reward gear at all, since once you've outleveled the gear the challenge becomes increasingly meaningless. More decor and dye and level-independent prizes should be in those challenges. "Kill X critters within Y minutes" challenges are just silly unless starting the challenge auto mentors you down to a level appropriate to keep it challenging.
 
4. There's all kinds of achievements that are supposed to incentivize things like filling out the map, or increasingly greater tiers of killing 1000's of monster type X, or doing a /cheer at the peak of Mount Climbsalot and so on. What is the incentive? Points. What are the points worth? Nothing. Therefore, how much incentive is there? None.
 
5. Have people mentioned how lame world events and bosses are here in comparison to other games like Rift? They have? Repeatedly? Maybe you could give those some much-needed love.	
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I enjoy repeating Open World events as well as bosses. Bosses like this guy are AWESOME. I had the pleasure of tanking him with my guild several years ago, and it's still a fond MMO memory for me.
 
That being said, it shouldn't be an either/or kind of thing. I love instanced content because it can tell a story and you can go through it at your own pace, when you've got the time and not when it spawns on the world clock. To continue the SWTOR reference, this place was one of my favorite instances of all time. The atmosphere was just perfect. I don't know if you could get something like that in the open world, although Farside's derelict silo certainly gives it a run for its money.	
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I will pick OW every single damn day of the week!
 
I honestly hate how MMO's have become stand in a city at end game and port to everyplace in the game.  I know this is a problem with Theme Park MMO's, so I don't know how well it would work if most of your content was OW and not instanced.
 
For all the shit Archage gets, there is one thing it does right and that's the massive open world feeling of the game when logging in with very few instances.
 
On a side note, a lot of new mmo's have been turning away from the theme park model WoW made so popular.  Just take a look at upcoming MMO's like Crowfall, Camelot Unchained, EQN and Landmark.
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Yep...and every single one of those mmos will/have failed for that. Themepark is familiar and fun... Things like dailies, farming, and contracts are enough to get people in the world.
     Sandbox mmos are bad because they almost always lack direction on what to do or how to do it. 
 
 
I think we should have a well balanced mix of both, which is what Wildstar provides, we get 20 man events, WB's, contracts, dailies, ect for our open world needs, and new dungeons, adventures, shiphands, and raids for our instanced needs.
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Can't say but exploration of more open world content would be worthwhile.  We already have experiences to borrow from and learn from, like Rift and GW2 as to what works and doesn't with open world content.  I think WildStar ought to see what it could come up with along those lines while making sure not to compromise the core of their game.
 
On another note, like Tex said some more leveling zones are due at some point.  There's supposed to be a zone south of Illium and Auroria on Olyssia and a zone south of Whitevale on the exile continent whose name escapes me.	
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I would prefer instanced. Just purely because I hate, HATE sandbox MMOs, and the open world, no matter what you have in it, will get boring quickly, difficult to balance (correctly), difficult to build for (correctly), turns either into a zergfest or wipefest. Sure some could say it makes the game look more populated, but I tend to disagree.
 
If it comes down to it, whats more important, instanced raids where they can be properly balanced, or open world where there are tooo many variables to take into account but more people in the world. I know which I would rather have.	
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