[daviyoung]

Could be pretty big.

“If anybody’s played MMOGs for a long time, they’ll know that the very first generation had public dungeons,” Firor explains, loading up a low-level Daedra public dungeon to demo - a grand series of catacombs with lofty ceilings and walls of rusty brown stone. “Public dungeons were my favourite thing about EverQuest, in fact, and I can’t think of an MMOG since then that’s had them. "Each one of these public dungeons is soloable, however, and there are a lot of them, but they’re also dangerous. Lots of creatures, very close together. Basically, if you solo it, you’ll need to find a place to heal, and then you might find another player there who’s exactly like you, and needs help, and then you can fall in together. You’ll have met someone that, hopefully, you’ll want to stick around with later on.”

Full article: http://www.edge-online.com/news/elde...ublic-dungeons

I don't have much experience with MMOGs but this seems like a live version of the Souls' hint system. Looks like it's shaping up to be a decent game.

Sorry if this is old, or if I should have put it in another thread but I couldn't find a suitable one.

[RoadHazard]

Pretty sure we've known this since the game was first revealed.

[mclem]

Could be pretty big. Full article: http://www.edge-online.com/news/elde...ublic-dungeons I don't have much experience with MMOGs but this seems like a live version of the Souls' hint system. Looks like it's shaping up to be a decent game. Sorry if this is old, or if I should have put it in another thread but I couldn't find a suitable one.

How does this differ from what amounts to a cave in WoW, certainly some of the more involved ones (There's one in particular in Winterspring from Vanilla that springs to mind)? Just scale?

I'm curious how they avoid the issue of turning up just as a stupidly powerful player gets there (perhaps catching up on old content, perhaps boosting a friend) and so having no mobs to realistically fight and having to wait for respawns on the boss you do want to kill.

[gogojira]

I was about to give them a little credit then they said the public dungeons can be taken on single player. Boo.

[Squidofman]

Pretty sure we've known this since the game was first revealed.

We have. It was one of the few bright spots from that trainwreck of a debut.

[Aeana]

Pretty weird that he says he can't think of an MMO since EQ that had it. It was the standard before WoW, and the history of MMOs certainly doesn't go EQ -> WoW. I kind of hope that MMO designers are really familiar with the history of the genre so they can build on it.

[ahoyhoy]

I really enjoyed the massive public dungeons in DaoC (such as Darkness Falls). Even though waiting in manually-created queues to get a chance to join a farming party at a particularly juicy mob camp was frustrating sometimes, I enjoyed the cooperative aspect required in maintaining a fair system, with the community itself largely serving as the regulatory force.

[Aeana]

I really enjoyed the massive public dungeons in DaoC (such as Darkness Falls). Even though waiting in manually-created queues to get a chance to join a farming party at a particularly juicy mob camp was frustrating sometimes, I enjoyed the cooperative aspect required in maintaining a fair system, with the community itself largely serving as the regulatory force.

I think all of my brightest memories of DAoC involve dungeons of some sort. Or at least most. Darkness Falls especially, but also like Coruscating Mines and others. They added instances with Catacombs, obviously, but before that, public dungeons were a major attraction.

[Sophia]

Pretty weird that he says he can't think of an MMO since EQ that had it. It was the standard before WoW, and the history of MMOs certainly doesn't go EQ -> WoW. I kind of hope that MMO designers are really familiar with the history of the genre so they can build on it.

Everquest 2 had both public dungeons and instances if I recall, and that was the around the same time as WoW. I distinctively remember tanking in one in the early levels of the game, before the expansion packs came out.

EDIT: It was called the Wailing Caves. Fun place. There was also Blackburrow on the other side.

In retrospect, I wish Everquest 2 hadn't had all those issues, it was an awesome game.

[Durante]

Pretty weird that he says he can't think of an MMO since EQ that had it. It was the standard before WoW, and the history of MMOs certainly doesn't go EQ -> WoW. I kind of hope that MMO designers are really familiar with the history of the genre so they can build on it.

I was about to post exactly this. Until WoW (which is when I bowed out of the genre -- the last entry I played a lot of was DAoC) "public" dungeons were the standard. So much so that I had to think for a moment to infer what's meant by the "public" part.

[Old Gimlet Eyes]

Wow, a non instanced dungeon, what innovation. Now let me have action based FFA PvP and make those non instanced dungeons really exciting.

[Alrus]

Err so it's like every single zone in Lineage 2 and tons of other mmos without instanced dungeons?

[ElectricBlue187]

This sounds like a pretty awful idea. SWG had public stuff and it was basically camped 24/7 by people waiting for the thing to respawn so they could kill it for the millionth time

[Derrick01]

Not a fan of this. I liked being able to use my Rogue skills in WoW to solo a few dungeons here and there. At the very least you only had to be with a few other people, it wasn't a fucking mess with dozens of people trying to kill the thing you need.

[Xanathus]

In other news Elder Scrolls Online will lets players have the ability to actually play with other players at the same time! Innovation!

[Kenak]

Everquest 2 had both public dungeons and instances if I recall, and that was the around the same time as WoW. I distinctively remember tanking in one in the early levels of the game, before the expansion packs came out. EDIT: It was called the Wailing Caves. Fun place. There was also Blackburrow on the other side. In retrospect, I wish Everquest 2 hadn't had all those issues, it was an awesome game.

EQ2 completely lost sight of what made Everquest so great. Hell, they instanced regular zones for christ sake.

[teiresias]

I could have sworn the majority of FFXI's dungeons (at least the ones I played anyway) were public as well.

Not surprised they'd just be making crap up and lying to make their game seem better at this point though, it's obvious it's a train wreck in this MMO market.

[bjb]

I'm still not convinced this title isn't using the Hero Engine.

Therefore it's really inconsequential what the features are. Hero Engine will without question make this (and any) game shit.

[Z3M0G]

Couldn't believe it when people told me it would be pure 3rd person with typical mmorpg combat... just couldn't believe it. Pretty much lost all interest with that.

[Doc Holliday]

City of heroes had them right? I remember that scary park that was full of high level mobs.

[Xiaoki]

In other news Elder Scrolls Online will lets players have the ability to actually play with other players at the same time! Innovation!

Diablo 3 lets players have the ability to actually play with other players at the same time too.

Not quite sure what you're getting at here.

[ElectricBlue187]

Diablo 3 lets players have the ability to actually play with other players at the same time too. Not quite sure what you're getting at here.

I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic

[Slayven]

There is a good reason few MMORPGs have done it since WoW.

[Dunlop]

Diablo 3 lets players have the ability to actually play with other players at the same time too. Not quite sure what you're getting at here.

Sarcasm meter broken?

Seems interesting but my avid hatred for the hero engine makes me refuse to believe this game will be anything other than heavily instanced with endless loading screens

[konstantine7]

This sounds like a pretty awful idea. SWG had public stuff and it was basically camped 24/7 by people waiting for the thing to respawn so they could kill it for the millionth time

I remember this in anarchy online too. There would be public dungeons with a boss that had like a 20% chance to respawn once every 10 hours. Terrible.

[Sophia]

EQ2 completely lost sight of what made Everquest so great. Hell, they instanced regular zones for christ sake.

At the time, it was kinda needed. Game was intense specs wise, yo!

[Slayven]

People always look at EQ with rose tinted glasses. They forget the grieffing that comes when public dungeons and single spawns.

[Effect]

EQ2 completely lost sight of what made Everquest so great. Hell, they instanced regular zones for christ sake.

That's actually not a bad thing. Better to instance the zones (force players into one when another fills up or allow them to move to a lower populated one) do to crowding when a game launches then to have to many servers. With instances they stop appearing once the population spreads out or people stop playing. That was actually one of the huge positives about Everquest 2 I believe at the time. Especailly if you came from Everquest 1 where you had to actually wait in line at times to kill a creature, an area and camp, etc. Having extra servers is bad. Just look at Star Wars: The Old Republic.

People always look at EQ with rose tinted glasses. They forget the grieffing that comes when public dungeons and single spawns.

People purposefully causing "trains" in Blackburrow in EQ1 is something I do not remember fondly. Though sometimes that was unavoidable if you needed to cross an area to get the other side.

[mclem]

I've not yet understood why this is a Big Thing, when compared with the WoW example I mentioned earlier. It basically sounds like "You'll be able to group up for some tasks, and some areas are dense with enemies!", which isn't exactly anything new and exciting. What's the bit that makes their implementation different?

[Slayven]

People purposefully causing "trains" in Blackburrow in EQ1 is something I do not remember fondly. Though sometimes that was unavoidable if you needed to cross an area to get the other side.

I plead the fifth on that. And training giants to the docks at Oasis of Mara.

[Anteater]

What's public dungeons? They're just locations that allows everyone to explore and not instance?

I thought a lot of MMOs outside of WoW does that

[mclem]

I thought a lot of MMOs outside of WoW does that

No need for an 'outside of WoW', WoW does it too; that's why I want clarification, because I think I'm missing something.

[Shai-Tan]

In Age of Conan it turned into pvp zones where people would fight over the mob spawns. I thought it was actually kind of fun. Except they had a bunch of different instances so people could just run away to an empty instance. Would work better with factions though. Age of Conan was free-for-all not factions.

[Alrus]

I remember this in anarchy online too. There would be public dungeons with a boss that had like a 20% chance to respawn once every 10 hours. Terrible.

Well in Lineage 2 you had world boss that only spawned at a certain time, considering the drops were amazing, it would sometimes lead to pretty massive PvP which was pretty fun. But then again some other time it would mean camping the spawn point for hours because the spawn window was huge, and that was terrible.

But depending on the PvP system, open zones can lead to really fun times.

Edit: Oh, this game is faction based right? Then public dungeons within a same faction will only lead to kill stealing and griefing with no simple way to defend yourself, so it will suck.

[Sophia]

What's public dungeons? They're just locations that allows everyone to explore and not instance? I thought a lot of MMOs outside of WoW does that

Pretty much, and yeah, lots of MMOs use public dungeons.

[Berordn]

No need for an 'outside of WoW', WoW does it too; that's why I want clarification, because I think I'm missing something.

I think it's more appropriate to say that WoW did this. In BC when everyone moved onto Outland, all the mobs in the non-instanced dungeons were changed from elite to normal and accordingly readjusted. In Cata, the world revamp turned most of them into straight lines or gave you a breadcrumb trail to follow in them so you weren't lost for hours. Accordingly, they were missing in Outland and Northrend.

WoW removed them for a reason, and I can't say I understand why you'd want to go back to that.

[animlboogy]

The caves and such in GW2 work pretty well when the scaling isn't broken. People complaining about crazy spawn timers and such being a part of this aren't really considering modern design at all.

Not sure I'm too into all of this being soloable in its entirety, though. Scaled rewards to encourage groups maybe?

Either way it's really strange to claim this as a feature unseen since EQ. We're living in the instance era for sure, but even WoW has areas like this, and both FF MMOs are mostly based on it. Those are just the obvious ones.