On scalable instances and including everyone
by Mike Schramm 
Jan 1st 2008 at 2:00PM
Think it's "ridiculous" that you need exactly 10 or 25 (or 40-- or 3) people to raid? Beefpile does. He wants a World of Warcraft that conforms to his wishes-- if he's got seven players, they should have an instance to go without grabbing three more or leaving two behind.And there is such a game-- it's called Dungeon Runners, or Diablo II, or any other game that scales itself to match the players in it. But there are, of course, tradeoffs to such a system. If you have scalable instances (or a scalable overworld, or anything else that scales according to the people playing it), then you start to miss out on some of the development choices you can make. Many of the best bosses in the game don't work unless you have a certain number and a certain mix of characters involved, and any scalable instances would miss out on that design choice.
It's the same reason we haven't seen single-player instances yet-- because making things scalable would mean that developers would have to make everything accessible for all classes, and therefore they would lose the design that made the game so popular in the first place. If you want to play a game that scales to as many players as you have, you're welcome to play something else. But if you want to experience the content designed by the WoW programmers the way they intended, you've got to log in with what each instance requires.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Zumacrume Jan 1st 2008 2:09PM
-=kisses bizzards butt=-
rick gregory Jan 1st 2008 2:24PM
Old debate. The problem that you mention is real and a huge one (an instance balanced for just a rogue, or just a holy priest... hmm).
But there's another reason this is ultimately a bad idea - fictional consistency. Illidan is so powerful he commands armies, is feared throughout Outland... and a group of oh, 4 is supposed to be able to kill him? Heck, even a group of 25 incredibly powerful characters seems a bit light. And how would you handle things like group quests with that? Hey, this quest to kill Ruul needs 5 people... but the Black Temple raid scales so we can do with with 3? umm... no.
Now, WoW already has issues here (why don't all mobs drop something that they clearly have, e.g. murlocs and fins), but why exacerbate this?
Finally.. WOW is a MMO... not an FPS... if you can get seven people to do Kara you can find another 3. You want solo instances at your level? Similarly, five people isn't that hard to find. Hint... join a guild.
Genoce Jan 1st 2008 3:25PM
@3: QFT.
Green Armadillo Jan 1st 2008 3:34PM
Immersion breaks when you enter your enemy's fortress and, instead of running for help and coming back with an army ordered to kill your healers first, your foes stand in small groups waiting to be pulled so they can follow the aggro table.
Immersion breaks when the head of Onyxia (which somehow fit in a single slot of a player's backpack earlier even though it is larger than the player carrying it) is chained to the archway at one end of Stormwind while Katryna Prestor stands next to the Boy King on the other, years after being unmasked as Onyxia and clearly visible to any hunter in the area as a dragonkin.
Immersion breaks when a raid boss KILLS ALL OF YOU, you run back, and the fight starts over as if nothing had ever happened.
Immersion breaks whenever the devs want it to break. The devs have simply made a choice to reserve lore, along with gear and epeen, as exclusively for one subset of their playerbase.
rick gregory Jan 1st 2008 4:05PM
@green... all true. And none of it a reason to break it in yet another way. Some of what you outline is necessary in an MMO.. I can't see a way to kill a boss once and have it forever dead, yet have people continue to play. All of the instance bosses would be dead and we'd have nothing to do.
People who complain that they can't fight illidan with 2 of their buddies seem to just want to complain.
It's more of the "I want what I want and I want it now" phenomenon which I just can't get behind. It's simply not hard to find 9 other people to raid Kara if you WANT to. I mean, you've levelled to 70 but you can't find 9 people of the right classes to make a viable Kara raid?? or 4 people to hit a five man instance? Perhaps this issue in those cases isn't with the game, but the player.
Green Armadillo Jan 1st 2008 2:28PM
Personally, I don't care about epeen and I don't care about loot (and, by extension, losing at PVP). What I do care about is having all of the lore of Warcraft restricted to 25-man raiding. From the moment you put your TBC disk into your computer to install the expansion to the moment you run out of TBC content, it's all Illidan and his minions all the time. Where is the climactic encounter between Illidan and Maiev (or even the prerequisite to Akama and Maiev's charge on the Black Temple gates)? That's right, hidden behind raid content.
Remember, these are characters who were introduced and developed in SINGLE PLAYER campaigns in WCIII. Imagine purchasing a book, paying as much money as anyone else did, spending as much time reading as anyone else does, and then turning the page to the final chapter and instead finding a note that says you must join a book club, with 25 people who show up at the same time, some of whom are specced for bringing snacks, some of whom are specced for furniture/lighting, etc etc, and maybe, if you're lucky, you'll be allowed a few pages at a time every few weeks. If you don't like it, you can go watch someone else reading it on YouTube. That's the state of WoW lore right now.
(Yes, I'm aware that the leftover scraps of the Kael'Thas lore may be allowed to fall off the table where raiding guilds feast down to mere guilds that are competent enough to key for and run heroic five-mans. That's a small fraction of the significant lore encounters in TBC, and the heroic requirement most likely means that it won't be puggable, which means either you're in a raiding guild or in a guild that could be raiding if it had the numbers.)
turkeyspit Jan 1st 2008 2:44PM
@3
I couldn't have said it better myself.
I too am really into the Lore, having played Warcraft since the first game was released, but because I'm not part of a heavy raiding guild, I can't get into places like Naxxarams, or have a try at places like Onyxia, Molten Core or AQ.
Blizzard is finally realizing that 40 man raids are too difficult to run for most folk, so they started with 10 man raids and moved up to 25. Having said that, I doubt I will ever get to set foot in a 25 man raid, as its not something you can actually LFG for.
sleeptastic Jan 1st 2008 2:54PM
Your analogy falls apart in that WCIII was a self contained story so you got to the last page and it had an ending, and then you bought a new book called "World of Warcraft" that put a sticker on it's cover that says "Some content for groups only."
vlad Jan 1st 2008 3:31PM
"all the lore of Warcraft restricted to 25-man raiding"
isn't the whole game lore? so now we have to find 24 people to do anything in game?
or are you saying we should have machine guns and drive cars into people around NYC until we enter an instance, then were in wow.
seriously though i would love to see more solo content besides pvp, grinding and quests. i play on a pvp server and its can take 40 minutes to do something because your involved in 1v1 with someone that just wants to annoy people trying to get something done. the normal server carebears out there seem to not realize what world pvp is and what an annoyance it can be when you have limited play time and want to accomplish a goal real quick before bed or whatever. And no im not rerolling pve. It just would be nice get in an instance and do your thing by yourself once in a while.
im so tired of being forced to group up to do things. im not in a guild and don't want to be in a guild. when i was in a guild no one wants to help because they are all so self centered or busy or your not in a clique.
then there are pugs. omfg. first you spend 2 hrs trying to get people. then you spend another 30 minutes trying to convince one of these people that signed up in the lfg tool to actually come to the instance that they supposedly wanted to run. once everyone is there (and if someone didnt drop already) you get into the instance and pray as soon as someone dies or as soon as someone doesn't get their drop the group wont falls apart. It happens 95% of the time.
I like goals that rely on my skills where I control my outcome, not ones that force me to deal with other peoples incompetence and attitudes. Solo instances would be great.
rick gregory Jan 1st 2008 4:12PM
@vlad said "
im so tired of being forced to group up to do things. im not in a guild and don't want to be in a guild. "
Um.. it's a Massively Multiplayer game... you know.. MMO? The very TYPE of game it is implies groups. When someone designs a multiplayer game they're going to make design choices that assume people will interact, not choices that assume one will solo everything up through the toughest fights in the game. If you hate playing with other people, I think you're never going to really be satisfied. The foundation of the game assumes something that you don't want - an environment where people play together.
At the end of the day, somethings need groups. Some things need large groups. If you really want to see everything you'll participate in groups. Refusing to play with others in a multiplayer game and then complaining that some of the content needs groups seems incredibly self-centered - you want the game to revolve around your needs vs accepting the world you've stepped into.
Alch Jan 1st 2008 3:26PM
I would like to see raid requirements for loot drops but open limits. If I want to bring 40 fresh under geared 70s then I can. I just will not get the epic loot. The place will still be tuned to a 25 man but you can bring up to 40 if you like.
I wouldnt mind the place being tuned for less than 25 people as well with the bosses keeping their same level. That way if you can beat a boss with only 10 guys then good for you.
Green Armadillo Jan 1st 2008 3:28PM
@Sleeptastic: Actually, that was exactly my point. How many movies have you paid to see that had a "some content for dedicated groups only" sticker? How many books? How many non MMORPG games? Name one other storytelling format where customers pay the same price but only some get the entire story. It doesn't exist.
WoW could trivially make it exist if they wanted to. Maybe we could have a spectator's terrace in the Black Temple where players could fight off non-elite mobs, nominally to keep them off the back of the heroes doing the raid, and watch the big finale. No loot, no rep, no need to "weaken" lore characters to the point where they could be beaten by solo players, just a way to make all the lore available to everyone. Blizzard is arguably the most talented gaming studio in the world, and they could find a way to implement this or any number of other suggestions. Instead, they'd rather stand at a golden podium paid for with the subscription fees of non-raiders and mock anyone who isn't raiding by saying they're after "welfare epics".
rick gregory Jan 1st 2008 4:17PM
"How many movies have you paid to see that had a "some content for dedicated groups only" sticker? How many books? How many non MMORPG games? Name one other storytelling format where customers pay the same price but only some get the entire story. It doesn't exist."
You make my point for me. All of the fictional forms you mention BY THEIR DESIGN are open to individuals. You even say " How many non MMORPG games?" But WoW IS NOT a non-MMORPG... it IS a MMO. So you're asking a MMO to be something that it isn't. There's no logic to that, sorry.
Walking into a fictional form that, by its design, is a single participant form and then requiring groups would be silly. So is walking into a fictional world that, by ITS design is a multplayer form and insisting that everything be open to single players.
Green Armadillo Jan 1st 2008 4:46PM
@Rick Gregory: I'd agree with you if WoW was not a generally solo-friendly game. It's pointless to complain that there's forced grouping in a game that is entirely forced grouping - you just need to go get a different game. The difference is, WoW isn't a forced grouping game. That's the difference between the 400K customers that forced grouping games like EQ1 had and the nine million customers that WoW has.
Blizzard didn't spend all the time and money they did developing WoW to cater to the whatever percent that will someday kill a boss in a 25-man raid. They built WoW on the backs of solo and small group players' subscription fees, and then they pull a bait and switch - Illidan taunts you from a cinematic the moment you install the expansion, but most players, including even most raiders, will never see him. There's no reason inherent to the concept of a solo-friendly MMO why all significant lore events that happen in game need to be restricted to the most elite players, Blizzard just chose to design it that way.
Ahoni Jan 1st 2008 5:33PM
I love listening to morons like Green Armadillo who say "WoW could trivially make it exist if they wanted to."
Two issues here ... one, how do you know its trivial? Have you developed a MMO with who knows how many millions of lines of code? Have you plotted out the lore and patches, class and game balance issues, 3 continents, thousands of quests and dozens of dungeons? Didn't think so. It is not trivial.
Second .. maybe they don't want to. You don't like it, STFU and quit. Please. Stop taking up everyone's time with your fantasy about how easy it would be to make World of Warcraft into World of Green Armadillocraft.
theRaptor Jan 1st 2008 7:48PM
Yet more excuses for why someone is an utter scrub. Getting people is fairly trivial. To quote wow radio "there is nothing hardcore about having lots of people". Blizzard basically halved raid sizes in BC and look at all the new people raiding past Kara *roll eyes*
If they made Illidan five man-able, these scrubs would still get destroyed.
rafe.brox Jan 2nd 2008 8:53AM
The notion of solo instances is not new, but that doesn't mean it's not valid - as the point has been made previously, having a solo instance (with a quest and NPC party members tuned for each class) every ten or fifteen levels as a "lrn2play test" would be of immense value.
By the same token, having SOME instances scale based on the number of party members seems like an eminently sensible concept. The loot table could likewise be scaled.
Like Heroic mode, scaling could be toggled by the group/raid leader; if seven folks want to take on Kara at full strength, they're able to, but if the same seven folks want to poke their noses into Magtheridon's lair, they can wave the nerf bat and not get insta-pwnt.
I fail to see why there's so much contempt and hostility towards the solo and small-group players' contention that the "ultimate content" is all behind a 25-person wall (and a skilled 25-person group, at that)... but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that any excuse to be an elitist, exclusionary jackass will be heartily embraced.
Dotixi Jan 2nd 2008 3:59PM
Agreed.
alrdye Jan 2nd 2008 9:59AM
I hope they never make solo instances. This game is an MMO. It's grouping and playing with friends or other competent people that gives me the greatest pleasure in the game. That said, a LOT of people do not have time to raid 25 mans just as a lot didn't have time to raid 40 mans. It would be really nice if there was a way to see these bosses, these major characters in wow lore without having to be a dedicated raider. Not sure if it'll happen but I'd support Blizz in any attempt to find a way.
roger3 Jan 2nd 2008 10:33AM
Mike:
You wrote: "Many of the best bosses in the game don't work unless you have a certain number and a certain mix of characters involved, and any scalable instances would miss out on that design choice."
This is incorrect. The proper design choice in this instance (ha!) is to change the boss mob's abilities based upon class make up and group size.
This is easier than it sounds, but harder than what is currently implemented.