Do they just rattle around like bingo balls until a slot opens up?

When a designer invents something retarded the excuse is always the same: the players are confused and the designer is right.

The designer obviously cannot waste his precious time to clarify the doubts and the critics of the players, of course, are all superficial and coming from misinterpretations. After some time everyone will understand the genius. Or not.

The fun part is that this process is purely reputation-driven. Nothing else. You can put the most idiotic idea ever in the mouth of a respected and well-known developer, and the majority of the players will start to drool. In particular if it's filled with buzz-words and commonplaces. In particular if it's completely devoid of details and full of positive adjectives. Today we have two different examples (or three if we included WoW's Honor System) defining two different moments. The phase when the idea is still a blurred, vague concept but still accepted with lots of hype and unmotivated praises and the following phase, when the idea has to become real to collapse in a magnificent trainwreck for all to see. An alternation of unfounded promises and their consequence.

In the first case we have Brad McQuaid explaining a new form of instancing, in the second case we have the Combat Upgrade trainwreck that invested the "headless" SWG. Two parts (moments) of the exact same process.

In this second case, from devs to producers, there has been an insane work to release interviews, dev diaries, apologies and whatever you can fit in the pack. Probably because there was this need to teach again to the poor clueless players how the new system works. Because they are confused:

The first obvious issue that's impacting our players is that it's a fundamental change. Players, specifically our hardcore players who've been playing for 20 months, have to relearn how to play.

Because it is a new system, especially when you're a veteran player and you have a whole lot of high-level skills you use in combat, it's going to take you a while to use the new system.

(hint: "communication" means listening what others are saying, not preaching from a podium)

There's this diffused arrogance, the players are stupid, they cannot see the magnificent ideas (nor the designers have time to explain them) behind some changes. So they just need tools to keep the herd under control while the shepherds lead it in the proper way. Babysitting the kiddy community. After some time the protests will settle down and everyone will get used to the new game (hint: peoples adapt and get used to just everything. This doesn't make the result a good result).

This is when the game gets fucked up, under the eyes of the players. The promises full of adjectives do not hold anymore, the facts claim their concreteness and the only resort for the devs is to justify their work by denying the problems, denying alternatives, denying the critics. Well.. denying. And delaying (so that the players will adapt and shut up). They want the community asleep, sweet dreams while the money keep flowing, everyoneishappy and alseep. They chant lullabies and reassurances. Everything will be okay, there's nothing wrong, all is working as intended.

Some games, instead, live still in the misty land of the hype, where everything is possible. Where every player can paint something in his head the way he likes. All perfect, nothing will go wrong, the premises are all wonderful. This is the first stage where the reputation of the developer becomes the whole depth of his ideas. That's the value, nothing else. The source is the cause (which is a good principle, after all - till it lasts). And we have Brad McQuaid with the most blurred, indefinite (and derivative) game-concept of the history: "Vanguard - Saga of Heroes". He has a very good reputation among those catassers that still represent the heart of the genre and his first resource and marketing target. The best he did wasn't to create EverQuest, but to leave it with a perfect timing, unloading all those responsibilities before suffering their weight (Raph did the same with SWG, even if he didn't come out really as a winner in the eyes of the players). He left at the peak, he cashed the praises and the glory and dodged all the consequent responibilities to become an "icon" of the nostalgia, a myth on his own, purified and exhalted by the censorship of the passing time. He's not even anymore human. He's a god called "Aradune Mithara", the god that will bring back "the experience" to the players.

In the last days we got some more concrete informations about one of the systems that will appear in the game. As expected the majority of the fanboys loves it, while the minority that criticize those ideas is obviously confused. This system has been defined as "Advanced Encounter System" and is a rehash of some features of the instancing technology. My first comment isn't that different from the opinion I have formed after reading through the "compiled version":
"Incredible! They will be able to borrow all the problems of the private instances without any advantage! It's a design miracle!"

The system is rather odd. Odd because it doesn't make sense, it's unjustified. It has already been defined as "private instancing, just in public" or "instances with spectators". The basic idea is that the various groups entering a dungeon will follow different questlines and paths, as they choose. These paths will be based on different triggers, both common (kill "x" mobs, reach this place, pull the lever etc..) and uncommon (the actual AES, aka "spawn on demand"). In the design plan this means that these dungeons are always public. Vanguard will completely avoid the instancing technology so the world will always be shared and unique. In a dungeon you'll find other groups already involved with various path/storylines. The schema will work like a theme park with different attractions, every group will follow its own itinerary and the choke points will be avoided by introducing this new form of "public instancing".

At some point of the progress through a path, a mob will drop a special object that, if used, will spawn "privately" the special encounter. In order to prevent other groups to disrupt it:

A very limited subset of NPCs involved in an encounter route will be ââ?¬Å?Goldenââ?¬? NPCs. These are the only NPCs which others may not interact with. A majority of encounter routes are planned to play upon the standard population of the dungeon as stated above.

The purpose of the ââ?¬Å?Goldenââ?¬? NPC is to insure that a group which has been working on an Encounter Route for several hours and finally spawns a boss mob does not have said boss mob ââ?¬Å?stolenââ?¬? ââ?¬Å?ksââ?¬â?¢dââ?¬? or otherwise molested by other players.

Now the problems I can see are the direct consequence of the contrary of these words I extrapolate:

With some forethought (and there's no shortage of that around here, or hindsight)

What I see is that this "creative" system doesn't add *anything* new that is positive, while bringing along a long list of problems. For example, it doesn't matter if the special encounter is "private", what matters is the key, because somewhere the path has to begin. Somewhere public. If the "boss mob" encounter becomes a "rare drop" from a random type of monster, this is a mechanic we already know. We call it: farming. Another example is how they'll lock the encounter. The mob won't be targetable by other groups but what about interventions from outside in the form of healing, buffs and whatnot? This is another perfect way to break any PvE challenge and it will break the immersion even more than the use of private instances or the locked encounters seen in EQ2. Think to the poor skeleton at the end of the dungeon, with a bunch of groups waiting in a line outside the room for their turn to spawn it. Or maybe the room will be big enough to let it spawn in various points? Or maybe the key to trigger it will be rare and will require various hours of farming?

With some forethought (and there's no shortage of that around here, or hindsight), encounter routes can help keep a dungeon/adventure area fresh, elminate some of the "groundhog day" syndrome, advance storylines, introduce new storylines, allow the players to have impact on the gameworld, etc.

This keeps people moving around and DOING the dungeon, which we think is a better way to address the tedium of camping than completely instancing a dungeon or area.

Please explain me, which of this points ISN'T accomplished through a standard use of instancing? The difference is that you lose the actual advantages (focus on what interests you, no clutter on screen, better performance and the freedom to alter and interact with the environment if not at a superficial "illusory" level) in exchange for a long list of potential exploits that will be hard to track down and fix. The idea is good because it brings to have different paths and stories through a dungeon, different way to interact and progress instead of just camping a static spot. But how is this different or better from what World of Warcraft already achieved?

This looks like someone watching EQ2 and WoW only to say: I want both of them. The result is a "wonderful" compromise that will inherit the problems of both at a near-zero utility. Like someone who cannot decide if to jump left or right from the middle of the road while being ran over by a truck. This system adds nothing to what we already have and implies bad performance, exploits, waiting lines, long farming sessions and a complete disruption of the "suspension of disbelief". Vanguard isn't and won't be a "next generation" mmorpg. It will be an hybrid between what we have now and the nostalgia from the past. A conservative (and derivative) approach by definition.

Remember, the point here is that you have multiple parties in the dungeon, looking for loot and experience AND encounter routes that lead to the better loot. This keeps people moving around and DOING the dungeon, which we think is a better way to address the tedium of camping than completely instancing a dungeon or area.

Not only this is perfectly accomplished by WoW, but this passage hints extremely long farming sessions in order to have the "encounter route key-loot" to drop. If these routes/paths won't be repeatable (as already planned), this will bring to infinite "LFG" sessions where the players won't be able to find mates to finish a particular quest line. Or, if you prefer, long farming sessions within the guild in order to drag everyone along the treadmill and decent loot. Or, as Slyfeind commented on Grimwell:

That strikes me as incredibly naive of Brad. He ought to know better. Unless that was a really long series of typos, and he meant to say "A group will enter a dungeon and simply say 'Hey I want to do the Manticore Encounter Route,' which means everyone will be forming huge raiding parties, and spend all night looking for those magical bracers of public-instancing."

Of course we aren't there already. The E3 is near, this is the season of the hype, blurred screenshots, press release and dev diaries.

Do they just rattle around like bingo balls until a slot opens up?