The one thing that has bugged me most with design in TBC has been the hallway instances. I know they represent a better use of developer's time than a BRD 2.0, but it becomes so dull after a few runs and makes all the instances seem to blend together. There's a middle ground between BRD and the hallway they need to find. A few mob groups you don't have to pull, a couple rooms you don't need to go in, it doesn't take that much to break up the hallway feeling. An extra hallway or set of rooms doesn't need to have a boss in it to be worthwhile. When I look at Stratholme, there are entire sections of the city that I never visited, places that don't have bosses or quests to finish. But just existing made the entire instance seem that much better.
I concur - this is what threw me off from Shattered Halls immensely. Even though the Bosses were reasonably entertaining (yay for Ogre Bosses), I had honestly hoped we'd be done with Long Hallway Filled With Evil Monsters (tm) by the time we left Scarlet Monastery.
To date, I still think BRD is one of the most awesome instances. You can go in and literally spend 5 hours there and still not have done everything (if at at the appropriate level, of course). And, if you don't feel like a long haul you can just go in and kill the boss you're after. Living/Undead Stratholme and its 'division' was well done too.
The one thing that has bugged me most with design in TBC has been the hallway instances. I know they represent a better use of developer's time than a BRD 2.0, but it becomes so dull after a few runs and makes all the instances seem to blend together. There's a middle ground between BRD and the hallway they need to find. A few mob groups you don't have to pull, a couple rooms you don't need to go in, it doesn't take that much to break up the hallway feeling. An extra hallway or set of rooms doesn't need to have a boss in it to be worthwhile. When I look at Stratholme, there are entire sections of the city that I never visited, places that don't have bosses or quests to finish. But just existing made the entire instance seem that much better.
I hate the hallways, and I loved BRD. I honestly think most of the BRD hate was based on it being a level 55~ instance in a level 60 capped game. I have this theory in my mind that if BRD was based around level 60, and had the best pre-raid gear available in it, everyone would have loved it. But nobody wants to run a massive BRD style dungeon multiple times just to get gear that is going to be obsolete in 3 more levels when you run Strat, Scholo, and UBRS.
But I digress. What would be nice compromise would be a dynamic instance. Something massive like BRD, but multiple entrances that actually lead to different instances of the same layout. There could be something of a storyline to go along with it- first you have a quest to check out the dungeon and kill a bunch of trogs, you go in and the mobs are fairly weak, you kill the boss and go home. Then the quest giver tells you that when you killed the trog leader, dark iron dwarves took over the place and refortified it with war golems and whatever, but if you go back and kill the dark iron leader maybe we can eliminate this threat and everything will be okay. When you go in again, this time the exact same zone is populated by completely different mobs, maybe some new objects as well, but the layout is familiar. Then there might be yet another version of the instance as the questline continues after killing the dark iron leader. Each version of the instance might only use ~40% of the zone area for the regular questline, in a fairly linear fashion much like a BC instance, but by going through all the various versions as you follow along the quest you will eventually see the entire place. Of course you also have the option of straying from the regular quest mobs and killing optional bosses in each version as well, for those players who enjoy the 4+ hour dungeon.
If nothing else, more instances should follow the "Gordon Freeman" school of dungeon design. Paths that appear to be detours, even though they aren't, break up the monotony considerably. A collapsed wall that blocks one path but opens another route, a gate that needs to be bypassed, they've used these before, but not nearly enough. Imagine a citadel under siege that collapses as you progress through it, opening these paths. Or mobs deactivating a bridge when they see you approach. There's still only one path but it gives the illusion of a real place.
I think this is the key. People will always try and find the quickest way through an instance while fighting as little trash as possible. There isn't much that can be done about that, except make it so its not so obvious. As a bonus, something like that bridge example, if you had to work your way around to it and could reactivate it, it gives a shortcut through the instance, which is always appreciated in the longer ones. Places like Shattered Halls and Shadow Labyrinth always as a bit much if you wiped on the final boss. Especially SH as the design of the fight made it almost impossible for wipe recovery to be used.
The door leading to the first boss in SH builds on this a bit more. With a rogue or engineer you can take a small shortcut, and if not then you work your away around. With that bridge example, maybe it would be possible to use a rogue/druid to sprint and jump across or a warrior to heroic leap to unlock it.
I especially like things such as the door as it changes the actual instance depending on your group makeup, which keeps it more interesting when running it again. Although a bit of caution has to be taken, else you get people making a group around that ability instead of saying "Sweet, we have a rogue/druid/engineer/warrior and can skip a bit."
I ran The Nexus in WOTLK beta, and it certainly seemed somewhat more non-linear from the first run through than TBC instances. Just looking at the map, you can go fight any of the first 3 bosses in any order, I think.
SPOILER ALERT on the map, if you don't want to know anything about the bosses.
Also, as with Illidan etc. and upcoming Arthas, it always seems a bit disappointing when even a 25-man raid manages to bring him down. Why can't some of these bosses be unkillable at first, but have some other objective that you achieve in fighting him.
Maybe you could fight Illidan, but as you hit a certain point in the battle, an npc would come in and distract him, telling you to escape. The end of Hyjal was a good example of this, and I think that there should be more like it, but for different purposes: rescue this guy then get the heck out etc. the "boss loot" could be a reward from the npc that you helped
I ran The Nexus in WOTLK beta, and it certainly seemed somewhat more non-linear from the first run through than TBC instances. Just looking at the map, you can go fight any of the first 3 bosses in any order, I think.
SPOILER ALERT on the map, if you don't want to know anything about the bosses.
I'll agree with you that The Nexus is a lot less linear than pretty much any TBC 5-man, (although there ends up being a lot of excessive running back and forth) but on the other hand, Utgarde Keep was nothing more than a glorified Ramparts. It's always a little disappointing when the path to get to the instance (through the giant dam) is more complicated than the path of the instance itself.
There were -plenty- of opportunities for extra or alternative routes to be included, and while there was definitely a change of scenery as you progressed through the instance (furnace, to caverns, to keep, to roof), the fact remains that the instance funnels you along from pack to pack, with no real opportunity for exploration or variety. All in all it was pretty disappointing, especially given how massive and epic the Keep seemed from the outside.
Something massive like BRD, but multiple entrances that actually lead to different instances of the same layout.
I'm not exactly sure what the separate instances would achieve, unless you mean something to the effect of "small" instances that can sort of see bits of each other (to the tune of blood furnace/maggie's lair). I find that bigger instances with well defined sub-sections (much like Dire Maul or Naxxramas) would be a more interesting design, really -- except they don't interact well with heroic instances. Which takes me to a tangent: I'd love to see a 5-man "raid" instance. A BRD-like design, 1 week persistence, but designed around 5-man parties. But then again, those would require a lot of design work, and would be quite complex, whereas Blizzard seems to like to keep designs simple.
I'm not exactly sure what the separate instances would achieve, unless you mean something to the effect of "small" instances that can sort of see bits of each other (to the tune of blood furnace/maggie's lair). I find that bigger instances with well defined sub-sections (much like Dire Maul or Naxxramas) would be a more interesting design, really -- except they don't interact well with heroic instances. Which takes me to a tangent: I'd love to see a 5-man "raid" instance. A BRD-like design, 1 week persistence, but designed around 5-man parties. But then again, those would require a lot of design work, and would be quite complex, whereas Blizzard seems to like to keep designs simple.
Sorry if my post was unclear.
The intent is to allow for multiple instances with an identical layout. Sort of like the way normal mode and heroic mode are completely different instances, but they have the same layout- except in this case the mobs would be changed to different mobs entirely instead of just being buffed up.
The purpose? Well, the common complaint about BRD style design is that players will just take the path of least resistance, run in, and kill the boss they want and complete their quest and ignore the rest of the instance. I don't see what is so bad about that, but the usual complaint is that the developer time spent designing the skipped portions of the instance is wasted.
So, I propose multiple instances per layout. Each would have a series of quests, and each would be focused with a different portion of the dungeon layout, but they would all contain the entire dungeon all the same, for the explorer type players who like to go beyond the easy farm and quest based bosses. This is already done, to a lesser degree, with things like the druid quest in sethek adding a new encounter, and the summonable boss heroic in mana tombs. The difference I am suggesting is that the concept be worked on the instance level instead of in individual rooms, and allow the player to pick the instance by using an alternate entryway rather than linking it to a quest, the advantage being that players can run it whenever they want instead of being limited by the quests they are on- case in point there were numerous times when I was in a group that wanted to do the druid boss in sethek but we couldn't find a druid who was willing to come along to summon it.
Players who are strictly playing to get the quests done as fast as possible can rush through each instance of the zone once, doing the minimum amount of clearing taking the path of least resistance, but by visiting the multiple instances they will see the entire dungeon anyway despite their power gaming style of play.
Last edited by kysta : 08/27/08 at 3:13 AM.
Reason: typo/grammar fix
I prefer the Strat/Scholo/Dire Maul style of instance to the more sprawling type like BRD.
While BRD offers a lot of atmosphere, it suffers from a lot of trash and conflicting goals, and its virtually impossible to satisfy the needs of the whole group without spending an exorbitant amount of time in the instance (i've spent 4+ hours in there with semi-decent (not overgeared) groups and still managed to complete only half the place). So objectives have to get left out, and people feel disappointed by that.
I like the "split-instance" scarlet monastery style of instance change that was made in TBC. The KISS principle works pretty well, and TBC instances are a lot easier to clear, and more goal-oriented. However, I think that in some cases they went a little overboard and made instances too much of a hallway (AKA Shattered Halls).
Which goes back to why I still like DM/Strat/Scholo a lot. Even though those instances are goal-oriented and have a tight focus so that a group can easily accomplish the objective in a short time frame, the instances are laid out differently and don't give you the "hallway" feeling.
One thing I love is timed events like the baron 45min run or the ZA event. Speedclearing adds a lot of life and flavor to an instance.
Warsong Gulch is something that has always puzzled me. How is me running into the orc base stealing a flag going to stop them from cutting down all the forrest?
It doesn't take much away from it for me though, what's so great about WSG is that you can enter a PUGvsPUG with just 2-3 people, and still make a huge impact on the match. After nearly 3 years I still love WSG, so I guess illogical works as well.
I think my personal favorite 5 man encounter must be the stairs event in Zul'Farrak.
Opening the cages, then looking down the stairs seeing the masses of trolls down there that wants to lynch you was frightening the first time around. Very epic fight to follow, it was very original at the time, and the interaction with Bly when you're safe down at the bottom of the stairs is a big twist in the plot. It all felt very alive.
By the way, Captain Bligh from the Bounty Mutiny anyone?
Also the towns in WoW feel most life less. Everyone is standing except for perhabs two guards that are patrolling around. Many single player games made this different. I remember watch someone play Gothic and that no shop was open during night (may be another game I don't remember it well) and that the NPCs were actually sleeping, eating walking around and having more than 2 different sentences to say. It would be awesome if during the night many NPCs were sleeping, doors were actually closed, guards sitting at a fire place and perhabs a beggar sleeping in a corner that would yell at you if you came too close and woke him up.
I can see all shops closing at night and a one-shop-fit-all opening for the graveyard shift but with a 10% price increase.
Originally Posted by Lasie
While BRD offers a lot of atmosphere, it suffers from a lot of trash and conflicting goals, and its virtually impossible to satisfy the needs of the whole group without spending an exorbitant amount of time in the instance (i've spent 4+ hours in there with semi-decent (not overgeared) groups and still managed to complete only half the place). So objectives have to get left out, and people feel disappointed by that.
I find it quite interesting because BRD is maybe the most realistic design.
It's an underneath city, you are not meant to storm it, kill everyone and dance on their corpse.
You go for a limited objective, you sneak to it and you go out. Minimum kill, minimum fuss.
Another quest, another run.
You even have a part where you interact with its denizen.
It's great ... and a lot of people can't stand it.
There are many problem with this design.
Groups are goal oriented (I come to do this quest). BRD has many goals, a group will work if everybody has the same. People are used to search for a party for a dungeon, not an objective. Most of the time you end up tacking someone with a quest at the other side of the dungeon to complete your party and the 4 hours run begin.
Repetition. People are OK running a dungeon 3 times a day, but if you ask them to do 3 times the entrance zone because you need 3 runs to complete all the quests they bitch. In the first case they accept the trash as part of the experience. In the second they feel these trash are part of the other wing of the dungeon and that wasting time killing them is unfair.
Completion. People don't like to leave things behind. If you have 3 dungeons, people do 1, leave the others alone and are happy with it. Put 3 dungeons into 1 and they feel they are wasting their time if they don't do the whole thing.
Position. It was said before, huge instance (maraudon is another example) don't sit well during leveling. But heroics maybe changed this quite a bit.
Now BRS and Strat were big dungeon where the split worked quite well (except the postman), so things are obviously more complicated than that.
Upper BRS is closed when you start the dungeon, so you only do the lower part.
When you have the key, loot is just better on the upper part, so you only do the upper part.
You have close to no common part between the two runs, so people don't really see them as the same dungeon.
For strat, there are two different entrances, so not one bit of common part between the two runs.
And a lot, a lot of trash between the two wings.
Theses two dungeons look a lot like the terrokar ones?
Well make it 5%, or 1% and only on cheap things.
It's not like a few coppers is going to kill the game economy.
Rep alone tweak price by 20%.
Why do it at all? There are plenty of cosmetic ways you could show a day / night cycle without having to inconvenience people. Give guards torches, or have different NPCs, or different dialog. I'd love to see a bit more flavour in WoW, but that kind of approach is the wrong way to go about it.
Why do it at all? There are plenty of cosmetic ways you could show a day / night cycle without having to inconvenience people. Give guards torches, or have different NPCs, or different dialog. I'd love to see a bit more flavour in WoW, but that kind of approach is the wrong way to go about it.
Yup. Add a nightshift. During daytime, have Woo Ping be the weapon master. During nighttime, his twin brother Loo Ping can take over. Or simply remove some of the excess people as they went off to sleep. Apprentices can easily go home. Or add a bed and sleep animation - you can wake them up and they're grouchy.
Loads of options that don't necessarily need to harass the player. Or - if there's multiple stores that do the same thing (white armor / white weapon / etc ) just close those for the night while you can keep the repair guy active.
Why do it at all? There are plenty of cosmetic ways you could show a day / night cycle without having to inconvenience people. Give guards torches, or have different NPCs, or different dialog. I'd love to see a bit more flavour in WoW, but that kind of approach is the wrong way to go about it.
Don't Stormwind guards carry lanterns during nighttime?
Why do it at all? There are plenty of cosmetic ways you could show a day / night cycle without having to inconvenience people. Give guards torches, or have different NPCs, or different dialog. I'd love to see a bit more flavour in WoW, but that kind of approach is the wrong way to go about it.
Impact.
People barely notice change if you don't throw it in their face.
A NPC explains that working night is tedious, who cares.
Put a 1 copper tax on every sale and make him explain that he charges more because he hates working nights, there is a better chance people will notice.
You can also put a quest where you help him accommodates his long nights, after what the tax disappear for you.
I would love to see a fidelity cars system : buy 10 arcane powder at my shop, the 11th is free !
Having happy hours in inns would be nice too.
Or a discount on food if you have you hearthstone there.
People spend their time in the capitals near a bank or an auction house, the game needs something to bring people to the inns, that's where you are supposed to hang out. A card game you can play there ?
Today goods NPC are pure utility, it would be nice to have the player choose to go to one rather than another.
Economy is a effective way to draw attention, but you can do it on a scale small enough that it doesn't disturb the economy or use tricks (like free beer none tradable and with an 1 hour lifetime).
I was going to suggest the NPCs sleeping and you're able to wake them up as well. They could say something along the lines of just get what you need and leave the money on the table then fall back asleep before opening up the purchase window.
Or, at least, they could if gossip windows were still in game. This is something I really enjoyed and added a bit of personallity to everyone. I'd love to see them again.
As an example, if you've never done it just cycle through all the things a guard of Silvermoon says. He has nothing but the highest respect for the mages, warlocks, but ask where the hunters are and he says something along the lines of "Oh, you're looking for them." Ask for the mining trainer and he points him out adding "I'm sure he will be glad to meet someone else as crazy as him."
Steering back towards instance design, I would be inclined to throw my support to the balanced, but still....clear/fast style. The instance that first comes to mind as something that I like layout-wise, of the normal instances, is Slave Pens. It has a particular path that most people take, that achieves things reasonably quickly. It has groups that you can choose to pull or skip, and depending on your group, you can choose (particularly the middle group after Rok'mar: if you have a tremor totem, you can skip the group, if you don't, it becomes more risky). There are areas of space where you dont normally end up, but it adds some atmosphere. There are wide-range patrols, that path through these whole areas, that you can skip when you keep an eye on, but it means that you can't completely ignore everything in those offside areas. There is also the one-way links between areas via water, which is kinda cool. Also, quest giver for SSC attunement being there is a nice touch, and something that adds a little interest to a run.
The other design style that really sticks out is Black Morass. The first time I did it, it blew me away. As much as Durnhold was fun, BM redefined what a 5-man could do in my eyes: the instance comes to you, no cc is required, its incredibly flexable in terms of composition, its fast, but at the intended gear level, it is challenging (this I particularly like, as it means that if your group is even gear and plays well, you are still finished in 40 min, but if you aren't likely to get anywhere, you work it out pretty quickly, and get out of there: there isnt really any room for those 5-hour nightmares).
The other design style that really sticks out is Black Morass. The first time I did it, it blew me away. As much as Durnhold was fun, BM redefined what a 5-man could do in my eyes: the instance comes to you, no cc is required, its incredibly flexable in terms of composition, its fast, but at the intended gear level, it is challenging (this I particularly like, as it means that if your group is even gear and plays well, you are still finished in 40 min, but if you aren't likely to get anywhere, you work it out pretty quickly, and get out of there: there isnt really any room for those 5-hour nightmares).
I hated black morass. Basically the whole instance boiled down to: stand in this room and kill the mobs as they spawn.
For the purpose of karazhan keying, it was a good design because you had to follow the pace set out for you, but for the purpose of fun and plausibility it was pretty terrible IMO.
And just to reiterate the fact that everyone likes different things - I am really not a fan of Durnholde.
I loathe escort quests in general (ignoring a few exceptions*) and seeing one inside an instance ticked me off. I'll admit Thrall had reasonably well AI and didn't drop like a ton o' bricks the second someone as much as glanced at him, but it still didn't do much to make me a fan of that place. I did enjoy its design - particular the (fairly) wide range you can explore the place as well as the famous NPCs sitting there in their younger years, but the run itself wasn't all too great.
* My major problem with escorts in general is the fact that those NPCs are totally clueless. They'll happily wander through a pack of mobs and pull the spawns as well, ignore the mobs you're fighting and have very little 'life' to them. Take the Druid in Firewing Point... If you can go Travel Form, why didn't you do that the first second outside and got the hell away instead of trudging through a dozen enemies ?!
The complete opposite is the Druid (Kinelory) near Go'shekk farm. That one is done exceptionally well. Her speech ("We must be on our paws"), the fact that she uses bearform and heals you is great. Why couldn't escort NPCs be more like that instead of mindless lambs ? You're helping them get out, the least they could do is try and be of some help instead of getting in the way and themselves killed.
I've always been bothered by how the ingame 24 hour day matches up to the real life 24 hour day. To me, this actually reduces immersion, as for the first three months I played, I never saw daytime in the game. This also makes it impossible for them to do things like have shops closed at night, because it would ruin the game for a large segment of the playerbase. If WoW had a 4 hour "day" instead of a 24 hour one, there would be a lot of interesting things they could do with the entire day/night mechanic. As it stands, all that happens is the sky changes color. It strikes me as something that could be fairly simple to alter and implement as well.
The problem with the post man or some quests in some parts of the BRD were that only a few people needed them mostly. But the instance itself was really great. I was stealthing there a lot and got my Molten Core attunement, as well as the ability to melt dark iron on my own and this was one of the best solo player actions ever in the game. Getting the barmans Shanker was also something I will remember forever.
A lot of the immersion is also taken away by spoilers-websites like mmo-champion and the PTR.
Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde
I find it quite interesting because BRD is maybe the most realistic design.
It's an underneath city, you are not meant to storm it, kill everyone and dance on their corpse.
You go for a limited objective, you sneak to it and you go out. Minimum kill, minimum fuss.
Another quest, another run.
You even have a part where you interact with its denizen.
It's great ... and a lot of people can't stand it.
There are many problem with this design.
I didn't hate BRD because of it's design. It looks great and has nice atmosphere after all. What I hated was that basically every friggin quest either started or ended in BRD for a raider. Want your melee end game trinket? Go to BRD. Want FR enchants? Go to BRD. Want FR bracers? Go to BRD. Want your endgame feral druid tanking trinket? Go to BRD. Want to do Onyxia? Go to BRD. Wanted to do MC? Go to BRD. Want to smelt or mine Dark Iron... well you get the point; I'm sure there is more but it really felt forced at the time.
I visited it recently to finish some quests and I nearly fell from my chair laughing when I saw that they added a friggin S4 arena vendor in the bar. I mean, if that isn't a Blizzard insider joke then I don't know what is. :P
Last edited by Tyvi : 08/27/08 at 11:27 AM.
Reason: added some more stuff
What I hated was that basically every friggin quest either started or ended in BRD for a raider...
I visited it recently to finish some quests and I nearly fell from my chair laughing when I saw that they added a friggin S4 arena vendor in the bar. I mean, if that isn't a Blizzard insider joke then I don't know what is. :P
It started to feel a bit tired, but it always made sense to me. BRD was a great central point tying all of those raid instances together and the fact that so much depended on it and navigating through various parts of it made it an enriching experience for me, at least. I think rogues got a lot more mileage out of BRD because of the Shanker solo'ing right of passage, the solo MC attunement, soloing the Lycaeum braziers, Soloing the coffer for Burning Essence... I look fondly on BRD as the place that made me feel most like a rogue.
And it was massive... and I loved every inch of it. I had my fair share of 4 hour stints in there with nothing much to show for it, but it made it so much realer to me because of that. Allowing it to be carved into sections like Strat or even Naxx would be great, but I don't think designers should feel like they should make it blatantly obvious where the line of demarcation lies. Reward people for poking around and exploring, but let experienced folks with a mission (farm this item off that boss) have a clear path to go in and get at what they need. I think it would be great if after a solid month, things are *still* being discovered in such a place.
08/26/08, 12:51 PM
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