24 Nov, 2010, Runter wrote in the 101st comment:
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Generally people already instance many things. Items, npcs, quests, etc etc. Its remarkable how many people who already instance hundreds of "The Unique Sword" take the stand against instancing they don't use specifically but require a similar amount of suspension of disbelief.

Let me be clear, I agree with the assertion that instancing is hardly justifiable from a realism perspective. I also believe that's no reason to throw away a good tool.
24 Nov, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 102nd comment:
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Here are some problems with that approach:

1- Land size
To address the land issue, you make a world so big that in practice you will never run out of space. (Note that this isn't a solution, but merely a deferral of the problem.) What does this do to your world? Well, it means that anywhere you want to have anything, the space allocated has to be huuuuuuggggeeee. That means that a simple orc country area must be 10 million times the size you might normally expect it to be, because you need all the extra room. But what about the vampire castle? We'll need 10M of those too. Don't forget the werewolf lair – need 10M of those. In the meantime, the non-instanced areas, like a main town or something, occupy only the expected space. So you have an inconsistency between the amount of space that towns occupy, and the amount of land that must be allocated to any instanced point of interest. I guess you could make all towns be on country plots that take up 10M the size of the town, but now you have a large amount of empty, wasted space.
Furthermore, all of this space needs to be navigated! Let's say for now that there is just the orc country. Being led to a random position in an area 10M square fortresses large means that you could end up having to walk very, very far just to get there. This introduces another inconsistency: things are unreasonably and unrealistically far apart.
Now let's say that there are several interesting places to visit. This just makes the problem even worse, and in particular once you fill up all the space around your starting village, you have to walk across these 10M-plot zones to get anywhere! Beyond not making sense from a world-building perspective, this is unplayable and unreasonable.

2- Gaining access
Your example assumes that players must be let in as friendlies. What if they're supposed to enter as conquerors or destroyers? Surely if you can force your way in, so should I be able to as well, given equal resources. So, we have a strange new requirement that all instanced areas must be friendly to the person trying to enter them.

3- New instances
You can see my instance once it's there. But what happens at the point of creation? If you're wandering around and happen to be where my instance goes, what happens? What if you walk past where it goes, and walk back a minute later – poof, there's a fortress now. That's not exactly consistent…


Unfortunately time limits force me to stop now, but hopefully it's clear that this isn't really a solution to the problem. You can continue pushing your examples, but surely it's also clear that you're forcing yourself into a more and more artificially constrained box just to meet some requirement. At some point, does not the medicine become worse than the disease? The idea of having a world 10M times the size it should be seems utterly undesirable to me…
24 Nov, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 103rd comment:
Votes: 0
Ludwig said:
The following is an example that uses instancing in a way that makes sense in-game without creating inconsistencies.

Yeah, there are a number of ways it can be justified, depending on the theme. I already gave some examples earlier, but even if you want to go for the more traditional approach (everyone enters from one location, cannot enter other people's instances) there are already a number of fictional themes that work that way.

For example you could also do something like Time Bandits, Sliders, or (to a certain degree) Primeval, with portals that vanish once enough players have entered the instance. Or for a sci-fi setting you might have an X-Men/StarTrek-style holodeck, or an AI-controlled elevator that assigns each candidate (or group of candidates) their own training floor, or use a Stargate-style system that allows people to close the gate on the other side so that other players are forced to dial a different address.

In my mud, the players are immortal beings who are capable of rewriting their own "threads" through time - thus they have their own version of reality (their home plane) where they can modify their past (redesign their character) on a whim. Although this doesn't get much mention within the game itself, the design notes for instances originally described them as paradoxes - by resolving these discrepancies in their own timelines, the characters weave their version of reality into to the "main" timeline, eventually becoming the near-omnipotent gods that you often see portrayed in fantasy fiction.

But it's even easier than that in most muds, where a "room" is a location of unspecified size and shape, and even exits can be fairly abstract. You could simply have a room called "the craggy hills" with a description that mentions "countless caves", and when a player or group enters an instance you just send them a message about entering "one of the caves".

The only limitation is the imagination of the developer.
24 Nov, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 104th comment:
Votes: 0
It's already been mentioned several times that if you allow portals of some sort, you make the inconsistencies go away by essentially violating the "standard" rules of space/time/etc. This is a perfectly valid way to deal with instancing, assuming that you are willing to introduce dimensional portals and that such things make sense in the theme. (Note that you are removing one inconsistency by adding another, from a "realism" point if view – if realism is so important in the first place.)

The bit about "craggy hills" doesn't actually solve the inconsistencies we've been discussing. But it does deal with them in a very sensible way. It solves the real problem at hand, without trying to force the instancing paradigm into some kind of realism that it simply doesn't match. (No matter how many caves you have, if they are there and are realistic, the same place should be explorable by different people.)

This isn't a question of developers' imagination being limited; this whole discussion is about whether or not instancing is a realistic concept. It's quite clear that there are very many ways to depict instancing – even if you have to bend standard physics to do so. I think it's a little rude and personally aggressive to imply that this discussion is about some people being unimaginative, when there have been serious points made regarding the problems of realism here.
24 Nov, 2010, plamzi wrote in the 105th comment:
Votes: 0
Or, you could make up a background story about a mighty race of "coders" from another dimension who, by the power of their words and something called "compiler", are able to create so-called "instances" to give everyone their very own orkish stronghold.

Now let's go slay some orcs!
25 Nov, 2010, Ludwig wrote in the 106th comment:
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Well I accept your disagreement but I'm not convinced.

Have a nice day.
25 Nov, 2010, Tonitrus wrote in the 107th comment:
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Ludwig said:
Well I accept your disagreement but I'm not convinced.

Have a nice day.

How breathtakingly useless.
25 Nov, 2010, Ludwig wrote in the 108th comment:
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Would you like me to continue the discussion, Tonitrus? I thought I would stop here and agree to disagree because it's Thanksgiving in my country.
25 Nov, 2010, lockewarrior wrote in the 109th comment:
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Yeah, but you aren't really agreeing to disagree about anything.

You were trying to argue a point by giving inconsistant, inaccurate, and poorly thought out examples to illustrate some 'belief', and personally attacking the character of the people who made the best effort to discern any validity to your posts.

Having repeatedly failed to propagate anything friendly or useful in the discussion, you're signing off with a passive-aggressive attempt to undermine the validity of your opponents position. "Well I accept your disagreement.." is like saying, "I accept gravity."

Accept it or not, mate, jump and it's going to hurt.
25 Nov, 2010, Ludwig wrote in the 110th comment:
Votes: 0
I thought he was done arguing due to time limits.
Quote
Unfortunately time limits force me to stop now


So I left the discussion and bid him a nice day. I thought it would be a nice thing to do…
I wasn't at all trying to be passive-aggressive. When I want to be aggressive I'll do it.
25 Nov, 2010, Ssolvarain wrote in the 111th comment:
Votes: 0

Instanced Turkey


Non-Instanced Turkey
25 Nov, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 112th comment:
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Mmmmm, instance!
25 Nov, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 113th comment:
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The time limit was due to being in Japan and having things to do, not a global lack of time. :smile: That said, I'm not convinced that there's much mileage to be had here; if you're happy to leave it here that's fine with me too…
26 Nov, 2010, Runter wrote in the 114th comment:
Votes: 0
Aw. I'm envious.
100.0/114