just an idea, what if instead of wandering around the waste (like in wow) you had a map like in fallout 1/2 and when you wanted to do a quest you would click the area where its at and begin a private instance.

If you ever played Fallen Earth, that game had an amazing instance system.

They had your typical instance that you walk into, similar to WoW.

The other side of it was that if your current quest required you to go to a certain building, what would happen is that it would automatically generate an instance inside the building where you could complete it uninterrupted. Ah, it was also instantaneous- no load screen at all like the instance just jumps up on you.

It would be nice if they used some kind of model like that or a small instanced area just with quest mobs for your quest. ( I.E you use a certain world object and you get an option to continue quest and it loads a small instance where you can fight the mobs uninterrupted. )

That mechanic for Fallen Earth sounds much like the one used in City of Heroes. Two folk could walk into a building for a quest (the same one or different ones) and get very different maps and encounters. Quite clever really, but not everyone likes overly heavy uses of instances.

Personally I would like to see persistent instances, such that the interior of a specific building would always be the same (layout, etc.) but the contents of the map could change depending on quests (super mutants, ghouls, robots, etc.) as needed. It would also be nice to see interior building design follow some kind of logical sense, as opposed to being truly random... which tends to lead to very peculiar interior spaces.

A travel map much like in the original two Fallout games is certainly a very interesting idea. I have been wondering for quite a while whether the game will be entirely open or whether it will be a collection of big zones connected by a world map. Not really sure which of these two options may be best. A worldmap could always be used as a fast travel mechanic, even if the world itself is more open.

exactly, it would be wonderful if we could just enter a building for a quest to say, kill this raider leader and it would bring us to a private instance, we could have our party's with us of course (if the game allows party's that is) and there would be no waiting for the boss to respawn because another group killed him already.

That would be kinda cool i guess, but i would still wander the wastes just for loot and for fun

Getting lost FTW!(note, only applies to video games)

I like the idea of instanced quests, but mostly because I played EQ in vanilla where there was basically nothing instanced. Everything you did had to be part of a camping session. More recent games have definitely improved this situation.

If FOOL is heavily instanced, it would add greatly to the wasteland feel because you wouldn't be constantly running into other players out in the middle of the wastes where there logically shouldn't be anyone around.

However, the problem with making an MMO heavily instanced is that it ends up feeling like your standard single player game with a multiplayer option, and people don't like the idea of paying to play something that's not a "true MMO".

Now use of the overland map like in FO1+2 could be pretty interesting, especially if they incorperated player encounters into the random encounters, such as if two players were in the same grid square they could spawn in an encounter together. It'd have to be limited though, maybe with a cooldown timer so you didn't run into a new player every time you moved two steps on the map. NPC encounters could be more or less similar to the ones in FO1+2 and happen regardless though.
It would also be a great way to keep high level players away from the new ones, so you'd never have to worry about running into someone running around in power armor and holding a bozar while you're still in a leather jacket and using a pipegun.
They could even throw in a PvP button so that if you didn't want to do PvP you weren't forced into an ambush. If they do that though, the rewards for PvP should be much higher than the rewards for PvE.
Toss in encounters where you could help a member of a friendly faction who is under attack by players or NPCs....

I'm starting to like the idea of using the overland map, but it would need to be implimented carefully.

I found that the enemys in Fallen Earth respawnd far too quickly for my likeing. However this was needed to stop players from finishing quests off the backs of other players. I think a middle ground needs to be found in regards to this. Join my Fallout Online Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=129704254139&ref=ts

best post i have read yet, i think the overland map would work perfectly, if you want to travel from location to location all you would have to do is open up the overland map and pick a city,cave,vault,etc. i did not think about the random encounters but that sounds like a pretty awesome idea! and instances could work very well if it was done like, Lotro.

They would need to be really careful though, if FOOL is ment to be a p2p game then if it's too heavily instanced, a lot of people wouldn't think it was justifiable to pay $10 to $15 a month to play. But, we don't yet know if it's going to be p2p or a f2p format.