Instancing stance?

Ok I know that the old answer has always been that instancing is evil and will never happen. But, are the Tmaps not instance events in themselves? With guaranteed 2 items to drop as well as cash and gems and occassional spells and some XP.

What would happen if 1 instance zone, with a max of 5 instances at a time, was put in place with a 1 group cap that set itself according to 1) the groups level and 2) an option for (easy, normal, hard, your going to die alot). Drop the guaranteed loots shot that a Tmap has and have a 20% chance of having a named mob at the end of the instance.

Is there any possibility for consideration of a single instance zone just to see how it would be received? I am just curious and have kicked the idea around in my head for awhile. Wondering what others may think.

It's an interesting idea but a departure from the current philosophy of SoD, which I'm a fan of.

Dalaya is set up to be as close to "real" as possible while still being a playable game, mobs spawn once in days, travel takes time/effort (even through mop) etc.

I'm not sure how you think tmaps are instanced, since they take place in the same world as everything else and can be interfered with by any player on the server, and aren't "always up" the way an instance would be, you have to have a treasure map and dig for it.

I think part of the problem with instancing is that it makes the rest of the game feel like a lobby, instead of immersive. My $.02 anyways.

I do definitely see that side of it too. Which is why I threw out the idea of a single zone with a max of 5 instances. Another skew to the concept could be a "Key" that could be found on Tmaps that opens a dungeon. Have maybe 1 in 10 maps drop a key, to avoid flooding, and the key could create the zone to go in. Almost like finding a map in a map =)

Fun ideas are not always workable or fitting. But new ideas never hurt.

i think what could be more interesting is giving maps a certain chance on first dig to open up a dungeon with a possible boss. tmaps as they are are kind of boring and they're always the same. opening up a chance to have a dungeon crawl would make them alot more fun and alot less tedious. as bad as instances were in Live (making the rest of the world feel like a lobby) the dungeon crawls themselves were quite interesting i thought. it was always cool to see a new location and fight nameds inside.

CaptHappy said:

i think what could be more interesting is giving maps a certain chance on first dig to open up a dungeon with a possible boss. tmaps as they are are kind of boring and they're always the same. opening up a chance to have a dungeon crawl would make them alot more fun and alot less tedious. as bad as instances were in Live (making the rest of the world feel like a lobby) the dungeon crawls themselves were quite interesting i thought. it was always cool to see a new location and fight nameds inside.

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Now that is a cool idea I just love a good dungeon crawl.

Danku said:

But, are the Tmaps not instance events in themselves?

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Im not quite sure you realize what an "instance" is. It has nothing to do with loot.

I personally define instance as an on demand thing. Whatever you get from it, it is basically on demand/use. That is why I think of Tmaps as an instanced item/event. You start it when you are ready.

Also no.

Houses are instanced. You have your own personal copy of the zone. There can be 400 people in the zone 'house', each having their own separate copy of the zone and never seeing eachother

Danku said:

I personally define instance as an on demand thing. Whatever you get from it, it is basically on demand/use. That is why I think of Tmaps as an instanced item/event. You start it when you are ready.

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That sounds more like a scripted event ;o

Danku said:

I personally define instance as an on demand thing. Whatever you get from it, it is basically on demand/use. That is why I think of Tmaps as an instanced item/event. You start it when you are ready.

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Tmaps are not infinitely available, private instanced zones are.

And if you are going to reply with well make a delay on when you can re-enter an instance. The counter is that is the same effect as having constant zones with a spawn time.

Back On live I was a huge fan of LDON or instanced zones. That was right up untill it got even more boring then tmaps are now. On live it was a great way to get pretty high end gear. With the small community that we have here I don't think it would be the greatest idea. I do however think if the Devs can come up with a way to put a twist on Tmaps it would be wounderful. Possbily something very small not a big ass instanced zone. Like for instance a chance for the earth to collaplse around your digging team where everyone falls into a small pit or very small dungeon where the chest would be. So basically instead of the chest spawning on the dig your whole group falls into a pit casued by the digger. You would then have to find the chest in that small area while fighting mobs that would spawn on par with the maps difficulty. Once you find the chest it would be surrounded by the last wave that would have poped when the chest spawned.

I know it might sound wierd but lets face it some kinda twiist would totally make doing maps a little more exciting. As they stand right now they are for the most part very boring as its the same thing over and over. The only time I ever wanna do any is when I'm helping guild members get gear. Even then I would rather be doing just about anything else including going to the dentist. :haw:

Danku said:

What would happen if 1 instance zone, with a max of 5 instances at a time,

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From my first post, I proposed ways to avoid mass, endless spawns of a zone. I do think endless instancing is a horrid idea and have never considered it, even from post 1.

Tempus said:

Tmaps are not infinitely available, private instanced zones are.

And if you are going to reply with well make a delay on when you can re-enter an instance. The counter is that is the same effect as having constant zones with a spawn time.

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Tmaps are loot. They continue to fall and be fished up, endlessly. Sounds a bit infinite in their availability.

You are missing the point that if it has a limit on it that prevents you from doing it over and over again, it is no diferent than a persistant zone in which the mobs respawn on a fixed duration.

And yes, there is a finite number of tmaps on the server right now. If you were to do them all then continually do them as people fish them and get them as drops you would have down time.

T-Maps are scripted events, not instances. Instances are always fun at the beginning, and eventually make the game boring and repetitive (see LDON and end-game WoW). I personally was excited to try Dalaya for the simple fact that it did not have instances. I love there being a world that actually feels like a world, even if you can travel around pretty easily through the MoP (and let's be honest, going without it would be too tedious).

The idea of having a small chance at entering a small instance would be ok, and perhaps one of the few ways that instancing wouldn't get dull and game-breaking. Basically it would be the same chest, just you have a room to look through/fight through to find it. The collapsed-into-a-dungeon idea is kinda cool, but it wouldn't really make sense lore-wise for most locations. Just a small room, basically a cave, would fit. It wouldn't really change much with the script, it'd just be kind of exciting when it happened (if it was rare). And the loot should prolly be a little better too.

Anyway, I would hate to see instancing, even in a limited format, find it's way into Dalaya. A rare spawn single cave, just for aesthetics really, would be about the max I'd ever want to see. There are opinions on both sides, but the lack of instancing is one thing that really makes the game unique and appealing to folks like me.

i definitely agree that on demand endlessly available instances are a bad idea, would a special tmap dungeon that drags you into an instance every once and a while really be that bad of an idea? i'm not saying it fits into SoD's general goals, rules or themes, that's up to wiz and the devs.

What I would say though is that the idea of tmaps is really great, and the fact that you have to fight mobs to do them is actually a good thing. I know as a player the first few times I did them it was very exciting and an interesting process. All I was saying is that it might add another layer, and a more outcome when your tmap leads you to an entrance to a hidden dungeon instead of a buried treasure chest.

I've been thinking of that idea for a little while. I don't think it would take all that much to implement if the DEV's are down. In the grand scheme of things I think it would be a neat twist. The one thing I relly enjoyed about Ultima Online and PVP servers to a certain extent is the "oh shit" factor. You have no clue what might happen next and that makes it exciting. I think if you give the digger a small chance to cause a collapse and suck his party down with him it would add that excitment. Besides the guardians arise from the earth anyway right? Falling into a cavern with mobs placed here and there would make completing the map really neat. Along with having to break that final spawn around the chest itself.

Possible good sides

1) A little more excitement on the map is great! People get that rush of "ohh shit" when they start to zone. Have a message that states "The digger causes a collapse! You group falls into a hidden cavern!"

2) The small cavern could be a small instanced mini war zone in layout. Have groups of a few mobs placed here and there towards the ultimate goal of reaching your chest.

3) Sence a collapse is rare you could have one named mob down there as well. One named that drops one random loot from the current t map. So your raid or group gets a shot at three of that chests loot instead of just the regular two. This adds to the "ohh cool" we did it factor of grinding the maps out.

Possible down sides

1) If you die in an instanced zone your going to need to at least respawn back inside if you fail. If not your going to loose the chest. If you wipe your still going to have your chance at retaking the cave and winning your treasure.

2) Instanced zones will need to have time limit. Currently you have 30 minutes from spawn of chest to win your map or it despawns. So the insta zone would need to have at least a 45 minute - 1 hour max timer placed on it. If you can't beat the cavern by then everyone gets booted back to the dig location.

3) Once you win you would need a way out. Either an exit that pops you back into the dig location zone or port out only like catacombs etc.

Something along this idea of an instanced zone is kinda neat as its just a twist on something allready established. If it even remotly resembled the LDON way of things I wouldn't like it.

i think theres plenty of ways to prevent unlimited access to instances, i dont see how this could be the main point in ur argumentation.
Just make it a tmap kind of thing, that can be found and used, takes u to the instance, once youre there it poofs, thats it.

imho theres no big difference between tmaps and instanced zones like ldon. the biggest difference is, tmaps are a boring, stand in a place and fight crowds of mobs with no real challenge besides finding the right setup, whereas instanced zones face more than the challenge of crowd control classes and a rogue to open the box. You had to pull, you were facing a time limit so you had to work efficiently, you had a variety of different play styles (rescue, kill xx mobs, collect xx items, kill boss mob). Some people say LDON was the beginning of the end in EQ, i totally disagree. Its prolly the best of the expansions that came out after PoP, and made the "world" seem much larger to me personally. It made sense lore wise and provided an alternative way of developing ur equipment, and the zones were just very nice. See: CoD, Sepulcher, etc. prolly the best "crawl" kind zones ever made in this game. It was the ONLY place in EQ where you could provide a raidlike challenge on the level of a 1 man group.

Dalaya is set up to be as close to "real" as possible

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If i was so kean on everything being "real", i sure as hell wouldnt be playing a game to do so...

i did like the idea WoW had on them.. 7 days before reset on raid dungeons. Tho here it would have to be like 5 ish. But prob won't happen.

The wife and I used to love LDON. The problem was we grinded them out with our set group of 4 other people for months. There for a while it was the only thing we ever did. We didn't raid anymore or even really hang out in any other dungeon. All we ever did was grind out those LDON insta zones for loot points. We ended up with some really uber stuffs but got completly burned out on insta type zones. A lot of other people vanished into those zones as well. There for a while many zones turned into ghost towns. It was great while it lasted. Thats about all I can really say about LDON now.

I just couldn't stand behind anything that would sucks the player base into a black hole. The tmap thing is kinda cool but anything beyond that wouldn't help the server out as a whole all that much.