Instanced small team combat.

[MrVicchio]

Pros:
Scripted/Measured goals that must be achieved to "win".
Controlled number of combatants allowing for balancing
Good for shorter period of play for those that don't have the time to "find the fight" as it were.

Cons:
Takes people away from "The war".
Repetition, SoE would have to take valuable time away from creating the real content to making "instanced" events
Doesn't fit in with the PS "universe"

[Bags]

Originally Posted by DashRev

What if it made PS2 deposit $15 into your high-yield savings account every month? It doesn't, and it won't.

Feature 1 doesn't magically make people come play feature 2. Instances and open-world mechanics are dichotomous. They are competing aspects of the same game that draw on the same pool of players. Adding instances will negatively impact the availability in non-instanced content.

It happened with PvP in WoW, it happened with PvE in DAoC, it happens every time it is made an option. Some people want the fastest, most accessible gameplay regardless of its quality.

This^infinity

Anyone who thinks this won't segregate the community and lower the size of large scale fights is wrong.

Not to mention sony will never implement this as a normal feature since planetside's big thing is FIGHTS WITH THOUSANDS OF PLAYERS, not 30 vs 30.

[xcel]

Look we can sit here and argue pointlessly about it all day, but the fact is that instancing goes against the main vision of the game, which is: no instancing. For the love of god, one of the first things that Higby said during the community address was that there is NO INSTANCING...I mean...what more do you people need? Hoping for even a little instancing gameplay is wishful thinking AT BEST because the whole game is designed to be without instancing...the simple solution for people that like match based gameplay is to just pick up another game....

seriously...the people on this forum sometimes.......................................

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Vancha

And yet still you do...

So far there's no good objection to it, apart from people thinking it could be a better game than the actual game - who I'm fairly sure are picturing something straight out of CoD, which it needn't be anything like - so this would seem to be the ideal thread to be verbose.

I have nothing more to say about it. I wouldn't wake the sleeping dragon.

[InternetZombie]

Why dont we use the VR training for this kind of stuff?

Allow people to go into VR and set up whatever game types and things they want but since it's VR there are no rewards. All your doing by joining these VR events is wasting your time (and probably having fun).

Why not even let an Outfit go into VR and set up something like a base assult so they can co-ordinate unique stratagies and the like without any real consequences (or benifits) of learning these stratagies out on the unforgiving battlefield?

Basicly I guess waht I'm saying is why not give us a sandbox to do whatever we want in with VR training.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by MrVicchio

Pros:
Scripted/Measured goals that must be achieved to "win".
Controlled number of combatants allowing for balancing
Good for shorter period of play for those that don't have the time to "find the fight" as it were.

There are already measured goals to "win" in PlanetSide. Gain territory, take it away, etc. Not really a "pro" for instanced combat.

"controlled number" for balancing is rather pointless. Wars shift constantly back and forth. How outfits adapt to being outnumbered and how outfits adapt to having more personnel than needed to accomplish a task are important organizational and tactical skills in Planetside.

If they fix the pacing issue and make it easy to "get to the fight" then this isn't a pro anymore. In fact if they dont have it easy to get to the fight I would say they have failed and should not ship until they do. This shouldn't be a pro for instanced combat.

"even teams" is about the only thing that you gain from instanced combat, and if that's really important to you and a persistent world isn't, then there's plenty of 16v16 games out there for you to play. You don't have to play one of the only games that offers a persistent world and massive combat.

Cons:
Takes people away from "The war".
Repetition, SoE would have to take valuable time away from creating the real content to making "instanced" events
Doesn't fit in with the PS "universe"

These are huge cons, and I'll add another.

If you are doing outfit vs outfit, that's 2 sides. There are 3 sides in Planetside, which means if you take 16-30+ people out of an empire and you do that for two empires (or the same empire) then you are handicapping those empires in "The War" and the empire that isn't participating in the instance got indirectly buffed because you just took 30-60 opponents away from them. It causes imbalance.


There is absolutely no need for instanced combat in PS2 and it would be disastrous for the game if it did. You need look no further than Warhammer Online, where Mythic mixed RvR with instanced battlegrounds. The RvR became spotty at best. World PvP in WoW died once battlegrounds came into existence. You can't have instanced combat and persistent world combat in the same game and have both be successful. They're competing for the same playerbase, and the nature of open persistent world requires as many people as possible to be successful. You take people away from that you may as well kill the game now and call PS2 a watered down Battlefield competitor. The persistent open world and massive battles is what makes Planetside Planetside.

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by DashRev

What if it made PS2 deposit $15 into your high-yield savings account every month? It doesn't, and it won't.

Feature 1 doesn't magically make people come play feature 2. Instances and open-world mechanics are dichotomous. They are competing aspects of the same game that draw on the same pool of players. Adding instances will negatively impact the availability in non-instanced content.

It happened with PvP in WoW, it happened with PvE in DAoC, it happens every time it is made an option. Some people want the fastest, most accessible gameplay regardless of its quality.

And again, people seem to be jumping to the conclusion of CoD gameplay (plus, I already explained what happened with PvP in WoW. What the hell?).

I give up. I'm stuck in an endless cycle of...

"It'd pull people away from the game!"
"Why?"
"*enter CoD gameplay equivalent of instanced combat*"
"What if it was nothing like that?"
"Look at X game!"
"That happened because of Y"
"...It'd pull people away from the game!"

All I'll say is, both SOE-run events (think EVE ATs) and accommodation for player-run events (killaXgirlz tournaments) would be nothing but a boon for PS2.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Vancha

And again, people seem to be jumping to the conclusion of CoD gameplay (plus, I already explained what happened with PvP in WoW. What the hell?).

I give up. I'm stuck in an endless cycle of...

"It'd pull people away from the game!"
"Why?"
"*enter CoD gameplay equivalent of instanced combat*"
"What if it was nothing like that?"
"Look at X game!"
"That happened because of Y"
"...It'd pull people away from the game!"

All I'll say is, both SOE-run events (think EVE ATs) and accommodation for player-run events (killaXgirlz tournaments) would be nothing but a boon for PS2.

You know it's funny, the guy you quoted didn't mention call of duty. Instanced combat will draw players away from non-instanced combat.

[Azren]

Honestly I dislike instances in any MMO game. They are nothing, but a fast and simple way to make fast progression, and are abused as such.

Someone came up with the idea to use instances for outfit battles. Care to explain how an outfit devoted to tank driving will ever defeat an outfit devoted for air cav? Because that is what the devs are aiming for; outfits for specific roles.

There is one way something like this could work: Have it in VR area, with no rewards whatsoever. If you could set up a tower assault for example, that would be a nice way to test some tactics before trying them out for real.

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by Bags

You know it's funny, the guy you quoted didn't mention call of duty. Instanced combat will draw players away from non-instanced combat.

No, but he did use the examples of WoW and DAoC, as well as saying the instanced and non-instanced were dichotomous, so he was obviously thinking of something similar enough that it could draw players away from the big fight.

Though I suppose you're right, he was more of the "Look at X game!" and thus you followed with the "...It'd pull people away from the game!" as in my example. Now we need someone to mention Call of Duty, and the sequence is complete.

[Bags]

Call of Duty.

[Vancha]

Thank you.

[exLupo]

Originally Posted by Hamma

They did these events before and it didn't kill the game. This simply makes it so griefing asshat's can't get involved.

EVE holds regular Alliance Tournaments. Off in a segregated segment of space with set rules and bla bla bla. The point being, EVE has a place and a time for inter-alliance one-upmanship that, intentionally, has no impact on the rest of the game. It exists and has merit and does not harm world PvP.

Done in the right way and for the right reasons, team v team combat can enrich the play experience with no ill effect. Bad in one place does not equal bad in all places.

A PS analogue would be either formal SOE events -or- an Outfit v Outfit closed engagement arena. If it's based on a sign-up list or some kind of time limiting rotation, SOE could even broadcast it. I know I'd get down on some PlanetSide.tv.

[DashRev]

Originally Posted by Vancha

No, but he did use the examples of WoW and DAoC, as well as saying the instanced and non-instanced were dichotomous, so he was obviously thinking of something similar enough that it could draw players away from the big fight.

Though I suppose you're right, he was more of the "Look at X game!" and thus you followed with the "...It'd pull people away from the game!" as in my example. Now we need someone to mention Call of Duty, and the sequence is complete.

I cited examples of games where the original existed without an instance-based alternative, that alternative was then added, and the original gameplay style suffered for it.

Instances draw players away from the primary open-world gameplay. That really is the only argument I should need. The stated goal of PS2 is total war on a massive scale consisting of thousands of players. Anything that explicitly interferes with that goal has no place in PS2.

It makes no difference what you're doing in those instances, whether it be "duels, tournaments, PvE, races, or Olympics" it still creates their own segregated little bubble where players are separated from the overall game.

Its unfortunate that you expose yourself to griefers that way, but to be honest I sympathize more with them than with you. They're the ones coming along and saying, "Hey, Jackass, there's a war going on and we're underpopped on Hossin because you pulled two squads to go race ANTs around on Oshur.

PlanetSide is not laden with mini-games and instanced honor-duels for a reason; that is not what the game is about.

[Vancha]

Hey now, you did "Look at X game!" and "...It'd pull people away from the game!" in the same post. That's cheating.

Originally Posted by DashRev

I cited examples of games where the original existed without an instance-based alternative, that alternative was then added, and the original gameplay style suffered for it.

No, you cited examples of games where the instance-based alternative was either better (WoW) or required (I assume you were referring to ToA?)

Originally Posted by DashRev

Instances draw players away from the primary open-world gameplay. That really is the only argument I should need. The stated goal of PS2 is total war on a massive scale consisting of thousands of players. Anything that explicitly interferes with that goal has no place in PS2.

It makes no difference what you're doing in those instances, whether it be "duels, tournaments, PvE, races, or Olympics" it still creates their own segregated little bubble where players are separated from the overall game.

Its unfortunate that you expose yourself to griefers that way, but to be honest I sympathize more with them than with you. They're the ones coming along and saying, "Hey, Jackass, there's a war going on and we're underpopped on Hossin because you pulled two squads to go race ANTs around on Oshur.

PlanetSide is not laden with mini-games and instanced honor-duels for a reason; that is not what the game is about.

It's a good thing SOE haven't stated any intention to turn PS2 into a sandbox game, otherwise everything you just said would directly contradict SOE's plans for PS2 (or perhaps I should say "design philosophy".)

Oh...