Instances in Gods and Heroes
Developer Diaries

We introduce to you the first of many Developer Diaries by members of the Perpetual Entertainment team. We will bring you small snippets of what is going on behind closed doors directly from the fingertips of the developers.

This first installment is written by John "Yogi" Hughes, one of the three Level Designers at Perpetual Entertainment. He's been successful in the modding community and has also been working on several single player titles before getting sucked into the fast developing world of MMOGs. Welcome him with a large cheer, and read what he has to tell us about instancing in Gods & Heroes: Home Rising.

In Gods and Heroes, players become classic heroes of the ancient world, born of immortal blood. As a scion of the gods, each player will have the opportunity to pursue his destiny through a series of Epic Quests that will span all levels of gameplay, over time commanding amazing God Powers and acquiring famous weapons and treasure of myth.

The game will be set in Rome around 300 BC, a time when the Republic is powerful, but Roman enemies including the Carthaginians, Gauls, and Samnites threaten the fledgling imperial holdings. Worse, the land is beset by terrible creatures, such as Gorgons, Cyclopes, and Furies. As heroes of Rome, players will take on missions to expand and protect the Republic, her interests, and her citizens, and will serve one of the twelve great Roman gods. Future expansions are planned to open up new lands and new pantheons of gods.

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/Waves at Reader. I'm one of 3 Level Designers on Gods and Heroes called John. That's right. It's just plain freaky. But we do have nicknames and I go by the name Yogi sometimes.

I started out making levels for First Person Shooters in the mod community with all the free time I had as a teenager in the UK. I did this for a few years and eventually got my first industry job. It was a great feeling to be accepted by a developer, and to be paid for what I love to do.

So here I am now, in the big US of A working with this great team on an exciting project not to mention the possibilities of an MMO world. What more could a Level Designer ask for? (Well, I wouldn't mind having a place to live closer to the office but that's another story!)

I must admit that I am fairly new to the MMO scene as I had previously worked on single player and on limited multiplayer focused games and only just last year played my first MMO. So you can call me an "n00b" if you like.. but I have worked hard to learn these games and learn the expectations of players who play them. I work beside a lot of other hardcore MMO players as well so this has helped me find my way to having a better understanding of the genre.

Gods and Heroes has been a blast to work on, and the theme is a very solid base to work from as the possibilities are endless, especially when you start to talk about the Gods aspect of the game. This is something we plan to have fun with to provide you with some truly epic moments. You need to be rewarded visually sometimes for getting far-in on a game, and not just with good drops either. How about some heart pounding events happening in an instance that you'd only expect to see from a single player game? That's a reward as such.

So you caught me out, I am excited about instances and what we plan to do with them in our game. I love playing them in other games but they still don't seem to really do it for me. Static is the word I am looking for, and also predictable. We are looking at changing this to essentially make instance gameplay more enjoyable.

Static and predictable instances *do* work well with games that want an instance to be a place where you do a few quests but is mainly a farming ground for people who want certain drops. So eventually, the players will have predicted every NPC movement and placement in the instance and will easily be able to kill the mobs and bosses to get their loot items. It's ok in my opinion to play the game like this if you like, and it's ok to have some static environments, but it gets old when that's all there is to an instance.


What if the NPC where a little smarter and more dynamic? It would be a lot more challenging, wouldn't it? The patrols may walk faster at times so you can't time it as well. Maybe there's a rare spawn of a guy who runs around the instance which may take you by surprise. All of this plus more makes the players work together closer than ever before in instances. Even the guy who has played the instance 10 times before doesn't know it like the back of his hand. These are all things worth experimenting with.

Thanks for reading,

Yogi