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Are Gear Treadmills the Best We Can Do for End Game? | One Good Roll | MMORPG.com
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Are Gear Treadmills the Best We Can Do for End Game? | One Good Roll | MMORPG.com
In this week's One Good Roll, Steven muses about how the gear grind has been a rather consistent pillar of endgame as far back as MMORPGs have been around, but he wonders, is this really the best end game MMORPG's can offer?
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거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
its the best mmo
I was never able to get deep into ESO. So the endgame is exploration? What happens when you've explored every inch of every map?
When the start is the end(!), then there is no game.
This is symptomatic of 2 elements:
- the game/the journey is useless or reduced to a mere tutorial (same difference).
- the game wants to be a world hosting its players forever but is failing at it.
The treatment consist of:
- make a real A to Z game with a significant content that at some point ends for real
- OR make a digital world that works where people can live/play as long the server is on.
- make leveling less significant so the difference between veterans and newbies stays meaningful but not overwhelming. It prevents fragmenting the population which is one of the main drawback of leveling and makes also PvP less unfair(a talented noob should be able to outplay a stupid veteran).
- make the leveling process an infinite grind that will probably outlast the longevity of the game server itself.
You wait for next expansion or do events, which is why I stopped playing.
I like ESO, don't get me wrong. But I do feel that it gets stale pretty fast.
I'm more of a fallout guy anyways.
And yet.....
Depending on what you do, pretty much like any other MMO, the end game of ESO can very much be a gear grind. If you are into the raiding scene, you'll grind loot.
You could say any MMO is doesn't have a gear grind if you exclude certain pieces of content. Kinda silly for someone to suggest that ESO doesn't have one. Less of one? Or maybe a greater focus on other things? Sure, but devoid of it? C'mon now.
Can't and won't argue that at all.
When the "end game" was designed around competing against other people, instead of a static AI, it always felt like those games provided a constantly evolving end-game that was accessible, rather than one where you had to gear, and plan specifically for it.
if you are saying FF14, ESO, GW2 are wow clones, you must be on something that are destroying your mind or you haven't played these mmorpg's. they are uniques, nothing similar to wow in any sense.
Online games appeal is that you can become stronger than others. Grinding a gear that doesn't make you stonger isn't that appealing. Like in ESO, you have ability to grind gear in new expansions, but you don't because your gear is already better. That is why ESO doing fine, but not great.
Take a WoW. It's absolute trash, yet even in their trash state it is hard others to reach to level that WoW is running. Like how many MMORPG out there have community events running on level of World First? None.
When the latter half of a game is focused on PvP I just fall off on having any interest. It's part of what makes me only ever play BDO in short stints, as I like trying out new classes, meandering through some narrative, and doing a bit of homesteading and decorating.
But then it just turns into a repetitive faction and pvp grind where you're watching a couple nodes flip back and forth. That combined with seasonal content just turns into a big loop that is anything but dynamic for me.
But to state with more clarity. Perhaps my biggest gripe with most systems that have end game, is the vertical treadmill at the core of most games in question. They're designed around often excessive vertical progression, and not only does that mean many classically designed MMO worlds run into problems with outleveled content, it also means that numeric progression has become intrinsically tied to any sense of forward play.
This isn't to say vertical progression has to. Just that most designs do and then have to shoe-horn solutions into their content. Be it down-leveling players to zones or for quests, right-sizing players to mob level or mobs to player level, lazily ushering players up in level by expediting XP gain or outright offering level skipping, etc. There's a lot of "flattening" of scaled content going on in games now which could, and in my opinion should, be handled much more organically.
Having the functionally same mob copied twelve times and adjusted to different "level" ranges already speaks to something having gone wrong with the design of a game.
Can we not aim for difficulty ramps that focus less on numeric ramping and instead more on how challenges presented can vary or introduce new elements? I know some of that happens in leveling, but fact is that's not a mechanic bound to leveling itself, it's just used alongside it, and often neglected in favor of numerically scaling things.
There's also a separate discussion regarding longevity of a game(notably live service/MMOs) experience to be had about narrative design and delivery methods. I'm very much of the mind that while a very detailed linear predefined story can be fun to experience, it does not suit the live collaborative environment of an MMO particularly well.
In a lot of MMORPGs the gear that comes with an expansion obviates every piece of gear that came before. There is no option but to grind out new gear for all the players no matter how casual they are.
ESO may require that for raiding players but it certainly doesn't otherwise. So for many, the game is entirely gear grind free.
Player driven end-game centered around PvP and territory control.
Problem is these days people are afraid of PvP... for some odd reason.
We may not like the grind but we would like the lack of grind even less.
There is just no way that any studio can keep pumping out new zones with new content as fast as we consume it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
DAoC pre-ToA expac did it best. Once ToA dropped it turned into the same ol' PvE raid gear grind every other game had. Pre-ToA I LOVED that game because endgame gear was CRAFTED. GASP! Who would have thought that would work? Well, apparently not DAoC because the took a big steamy crap on all the crafters when ToA dropped. Yes I have an opinion on it.
So yes, vertical progression over an horizontal one, but I am not saying that it is necessary to have treadmills. I do believe it's acceptable to have them, but that if they're present, they should be as imperceptible as possible.
I absolutely despised time-gated content including dailies and as much as I love leveling, I still do think that it's flawed.
I would love to get into the story of an MMO, but their linear and preconceived natures never ever got me interested. I'm always more interested into rushing the story because I always instinctively feel like I need to get to the end-game ASAP and that nothing else I do in-between matters. IMO, quests are almost always uninteresting and not fun to do.
People have commented about a game having an actual end, and as far as I'm concerned, that's the last thing I want from an MMO. To me, in a dream MMO ; I'd always be excited to play again the next day, there would always be something enjoyable and meaningful to do, characters would be unique and not all built the same and the world would be ever-changing. It sure sounds too good to be true but I do believe that it's possible for a game to do a much better job than anything we've ever had so far.
Now that I've said how I feel about most past and current MMOs, here are things that I think would make a game great :
True character progression and development. No classes. And by that I do not mean that everyone can do everything. Everyone starts skill/ability-less and the players themselves get to choose what they're gonna start learning from there. From new systems, the players learn to be proficient in their new skill. And then from there, they get to develop themselves while getting mastery of their skill by having the freedom of customizing their skills through an in-game editor. You want to shoot 2 arrows at the same time? You can, but depending on how skilled you are with a bow, but at first shooting 2 arrows might take you twice as long to ready and fire than only 1 arrow. But through mastery, you get more proficient. With enough mastery, you might then be able to have those 2 arrows go to two different angles that you chose yourself. Same thing for magic, you want to throw 2 fireballs? You want them to curve around or above an obstacle or an enemy blocking? You can, master yourself enough and you can edit your skills yourself for them to do what you want. I admit it would be harder to develop for melee attacks but I still believe that it would be possible and also fun.
Getting a strong mastery of 1 combat technique (Fire magic, bow and arrow, using two swords, etc) would take a very long time and it would even be possible to learn multiple but that would be exponentially harder. However, you make it so having a higher mastery of something means having more utility rather than being simply stronger. You develop the combat mechanics/systems for harder PvE encounters and PvP around well timed dodges or blocks. (More similar to a DarkSoul than a WoW, but different) With probably a fatigue/energy system that accentuates player skill.
Basically, you don't balance the game around numbers and you make gear provide mostly different kind of utilities. You make the fights hard in a sense that no one can kill everything because their character in it's essence will never be adequately skilled to do so. Your whole group might not be able to defeat something or it might require a lot of preparation and information gathering. You make it so two seemingly identical enemies can have different special attacks and you try to make the game with as much diversity as possible. Unexpected = Good.
So for example, your guild might currently not be able to defeat a boss that they would want to kill because they don't have the means as a whole to block one of it's wiping attack. You could develop the game with additional means for them to be able to counter it and be able to kill it. I believe it would be possible to make the game to incentivize having outside help or maybe encouraging it would have a greater impact on the overall community experience.
I could go on a lot longer about skills and expend much more on it but I'll stop it there.
Lastly, you keep the general quests to a strict minimum and you pit at least 2 factions against each other and you make the whole game (PvE and PvP) revolve around it, where everything ultimately impacts that. You develop the entire story and game with the different factions at it's core and have it take a direction that's influenced by the player base's actions.
I believe that you would end up with a game where you can clearly see that someone has invested a lot of time into it but isn't necessarily much stronger than someone who has put a lot less albeit the fact that the first person might be able to accomplish things that the second can't. This creates a situation where someone can truly be impressed by seeing someone do something while at the same time not feel like there's no point, for themselves, to play since they can't compete with such a person. In a world that seems and feels meaningful.
You then have to support it with constant and good enough content to keep motivating the player to continue playing while still being able to do what they like the most.
There's ways to give a player more sense of mastery in a game experience without making it a linearly scaling one. Progression can be tied more directly to unlocks and the ability to more greatly customize away from standardized kits into more optimized and specialized ones.
This isn't to say vertical progression is something to be completely ignored, there is some merit to saying there is a "natural" factor to vertical progression in the context of becoming better in discreet ways. But that's the thing, mastery of a skill is not a global uptick in someone as a human. It's a discrete thing with some bleed over to adjacent skills.
I'd also point out most of your suggestions seem to lean on horizontal progression elements, like focusing on providing utility specialization/options through gear over numeric increases. Same with masteries providing more utility over heavy scaling.