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Game or Endgame?
MangoXII
Member Posts: 203
Hi.
This is in part me seeking a bit of discussion about the patrons of the site and their taste in MMORPGs, as well as looking for a new game (Or somehow a way to spark some more interest for myself to play a current game).
Like many MMORPGers, I've tried practically everything you can name. Even games I knew I'd dislike going in, I've tried. (Most recent example is Warhammer Online; just not my bag, but gave it a shot anyhow) But lately I've been getting sick of trying new games with the same concept of leveling implanted by the earlier MMORPGs. You know, essentially starting a game, leveling to learn a character but to ultimately reach the "endgame" content.
I'll admit, the sandbox genre appeals to me most, but I've enjoyed my fair share of the typical MMORPGs (WoW, EQ, SWG, CoH, AoC, etc.). I have tried EVE a number of times, and even bought a subscription, which I like to say I "indirectly" played for two months (Basically just logging in to train, and nothing else). I love everything about the game, except for the interface and the combat. I understand the combat takes skill and strategy, but I have to say I like to control it more than I can by just clicking (Twitch type of gameplay, if you will. Sort of think the ideal sci-fi MMORPG would be a combination of Mass Effect and EVE, spanning multiple planets, and a large amount of space.). I would love to get into it, as it's essentially the only sandbox with concepts I enjoyed.
I'm also not looking forward to trying Darkfall (Not trying to bash), because I'm a big fan of cool animations, and I just personally find the Darkfall character models and animations to be rather deplorable. Nevertheless, I'll be trying it out. Aside from EVE, it's the only game I've noticed strays far away from the stereotypical leveling system popular in the market.
To get to my main point, I was wondering how many of the MMORPG.com frequenters would love to move far away from the typical start-up, level up, and raid/gear up formula. I mean, I'm really just starting to despise the idea of endgame. Why can't MMORPGs just have game? No level specific regions, just jump in, take a tutorial, and be able to do most everything. I remember reading the features of Darkfall on their site, and they seemed pretty solid, but I'm a bit of a pessimist, and did not expect it to go well. I really felt the no levels, actual character customization, and essentially worthless gear sounded pretty fantastic. Any thoughts would be very appreciated.
Also, any big fans and helpful people who play EVE, I'd really love some pep talks about it. I'd certainly love to actually get into it, rather than log in and train and log out. (I'm also currently playing AoC, and as much as I dislike leveling, it hasn't been too repulsive.) I know about Earthrise and Fallen Earth, and fully intend to give those tries too.
...yikes. That's a lot of parentheses.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
I completely agree. I don't want an mmorpg anymore, I want a game.
Not a freaking waste of human life with an endgame. I want a game. The game will have and end as all things do but the end of the game will not be the "endgame" as everyone else is doing. The "endgame" should be when a player is in their last final hours of gameplay, not when the game ends.
The current endgame formula actually keeps some people from making other characters, achieving max level yet again and thus having more variety and more fun.
I h8 instanced dungeons also..h8 them. They just seperate me form the rest of the world, and with the current trend being to spend half of your gametime in dungeons it just doesn't work. There is not enough sociability with the current "endgame" model some games pursue, especially with them taking over an hour to complete, saving on boss kills, and having lock out timers. It basically mandates who your going to spend your time with that night instead of letting you play with friends you meet along your journey through the game.
Well, I have to admit I have no qualms with instanced dungeons. I mean, if everything were open, you'd have to make the game have some seriously dated graphics (Which, honestly, I have no problem with, but the current market probably would not take too kindly to a new game using tired, old graphics). Other than that, I think the basic stated features on the Darkfall website would be great to be used in another game. In fact, although I doubt I'll like Darkfall, for its animations (To clarify, by animations I mean the models as they run, fight, and anything related), I hope it does well just to bring a new archetype to the MMORPG genre. I prefer a balance of PvP and PvE, and generally speaking PvP exclusive games do attract some of the worst types of players, but I feel like full loot, worthless gear, open world, no levels, full character customization...I feel like those would all be beautiful as the new standard.
QFT.
Instances has effectivly ruined a great social aspect of MMORPGS today. Running into people and helping them on the way is none existant today. I formed a lot of online social bonds with people this way.
However i don't miss the old days of being put on "lists" for certain dungeon camp spots either. Even though i hate instances i really don't see any other alternative.
Why oh why did VG have to fail. The content was there *sigh*. May Brad McQuaid burn in hell
Well of course the endgame is stupid. The entire point of an endgame is something that will keep players busy pretty much forever while requiring minimal development time from the company.
The only game I've ever seen with an endgame that isn't completely stupid is Guild Wars. There, the endgame is, set it to hard mode (so everything, even newbie areas, is a decent challenge at the level cap) and go do whatever you want. It won't make you any stronger, but if you like content, it's there.
If you'd rather get away from the concept of an endgame entirely, A Tale in the Desert and Puzzle Pirates don't have activities that can be sorted as end-game versus not end-game.
In ATITD, the level system only gates off content. That is, in order to build a particular building, you have to be at least level 10, but if you're at least level 10, it doesn't matter if you're level 10 or level 40, as the latter would provide no additional advantages on that building. One could argue that Zomboe had a bigger impact on the third telling than most other players, in spite of never advancing past level 0 (which an average new player can do in an hour or so if so inclined).
In Puzzle Pirates, the level system does even less. What levels in Puzzle Pirates does is more technical than I'd like to explain here, but it doesn't make you stronger.
See here's the thing. What publisher would make something completely new and risk all of that money? I really believe, if dev's have a nice substantial amount of funding with no questions asked, I believe that we would find more interesting games.
I for one, don't mind levels. Like I said a million times before, if its themepark, sandbox or what ever, you're always going to "level" in something. What I think level really means for mmo's are the fact of you increase something for progression. It's away to have a little accomplishment. The thing is, like many others stated, is to get there and how to get there. If done properly I look at levels for what ever as training progression. When you have hit the max level you are finished with training. I think endgame is a bad term. I believe that you should accumulate in activies that you would find at end game as you level. I also think that the story should explain why a character would level or not level as well.
For wanting a game and not an mmorpg, why do you want it online? Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but what I get out of it is, you want a single player online game where you can talk to people like a chat room. Alot of people and fans don't realize what it takes to make an mmorpg untill you made one or at least trying to get into that field. So all of these people want something new off the norm and when they don't get it they whine. Which in my opinion isn't really that bad, but you must understand where the publishers and the dev's come from. We need more mmorpgs with the MMO factor in it in my opinion, sandbox or themepark, doesn't matter. I think what would be a good start, is to have an mmo, themepark or sandbox, improve on the existing games with their own twists, for half of the game. And use the other half of the game as innovated as possible. Because if the players don't like the new, you can further devolope the improvements with your twists. If the playerbase does indeed enjoy the new, then you can expand the new and possibly get trust from your fan base to try even more new innovations. I am going to say it one more time. In an mmo, you are going to "level" in something.
I think myself that making a game TOO open can be a bad thing. It's ok saying you get started then you can do everything, but that throws things a bit too wide open in my view. What I think would be better would be some kind of progression system, but not as harsh progress as some, like wow, where 10 levels advantage over an enemy, human or npc, makes you near unbeatable by them. Something where the changes as you level are subtle, just gaining a few new things, rather than changing the character completely.
Basically, have a more transparent levelling system, but as you level, have some of the content typical to the "end game" available all throughout. have a raid that would suit level 15-25 people, one that would suit levels 20-30 and so on, so that as you progress, there's the type of content available that's in the "end game". Aswell as, of course, the usual options of quests and whatever pvp implementation is available.
I think getting rid of the journey aspect altogether could hurt the game's long term appeal, but I think making that journey as much like the destination as possible, and as transparent as possible is the best way to progress.
I know there will be some players that prefer not to have the journey section, but there are also some that would not like to be without it. Finding the middle ground would have the best chance of appealing to most, though there's always room for a few niche titles to appeal to the less flexible fans of either system.
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Currently playing: Rift
former player of: DAoC, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, SWG (pre-NGE), WoW, Warhammer online, LotR:O
Let me spell it out.
ENDGAME is NOT a replacement for THE GAME.
This is the problem certain companies have..using endgame as a replacement for the game.
If you want people to play longer make a fun product with replay value, not a product with something long, tedious, time consuming at the end.
And do you know what replay value is? It's when a game is fun enough the first time that you will play through it again.
Do any of you have a favorite RPG from the Super Nintendo, Playstation, or Genisis? I'll bet it was largely the same gameplay wise throughout am I right? I bet through leveling you just got more varied or stronger powers, and were able to go into tougher dungeons which were differant but played the same am I right?
Now i'll bet many of the older gamers that did have a Super Nintendo, Playstation or Genisis when they were over 6 played through their favorite MMORPG multiple times right? Just LIke people played through Super Mario on the SNES multiple times, even if they only beat the very end a few times.
BTW GW Prophicies is what you mean by the journey, and being able to go almost anywhere, and levels not *completely* determining what you can and can't do, and by getting access to a wider variety of powers over time, and being able to experience more over time, although that is in most cases simply because yout ook the time to experience it. Missions are just another word for Dungeons typical to WoW, only GW has more cool cutscenes so you don't have to read Walls of Text mid battle, and in Prophicies they are used to drive a gamelong storyline.
And if you'll notice in oblivion every griped their faces off about how it was "unrealistic" that the mobs leveld with you, allowing you to go anywhere. The only other option is to have randomly leveld monsters going all over the place, but that defeats the purpose of placing them in certain zones, allowing players to go through certain zones without fear of death. Now if you went all soul calibur, with blocking and combos...hell yes..sould calibur mmorpg where are you!? rofls..then levels wouldn't "totally" dictate the champions, skill would matter, you could upgrade your character and get new "skills".
If you want your game to stop when you get to the end, and there is a clear differance between game and endgame, then your game fails and you could have played something better.
Seems to me what you are worried about is not levels per se, but gating content. Levels in a certain family of games are set so as to render content over your level as effectively impossible, and therefore gated. (Sloppily designed games in this family also backward gate by rendering low-level content completely trivial, and therefore for anyone who cares about at least the illusion of challenge, gated off. However, many of these games have exemplar/mentor/deleveling mechanics to get around this problem. Just because one massively large game fails to do it does not mean this is a necessary consequence of level based systems.)
So the question is, should games gate off content, and how much? I think a little bit of gating can be ok if there is an overwhelming amount of content. It helps the player pace themselves, and gives the game a chance to provide meaningful rewards by providing access to content. Good gameplay + promise of reward is, let's face it, more pleasurable than just good gameplay by itself.
However, good gameplay is still mandatory. Gating becomes a problem for me when there is a shortage of interesting things to do. Then you can get to a situation where the game is boring now, but promises to become fun later if only you "grind" through the boring part. This is now completely unacceptable to me. This is the bad gameplay + promise of reward paradigm. I've done it before, but I'm tired of it now. And what makes it so frustrating is that if only the game did not gate off the fun content, I would still be able to squeeze some more fun out of the game. But alas, I must quit a game that tries these shenanigans on me.
Another issue is changes in the nature of the content. If a game starts off with, say, an emphasis on solo/small group play but gates off access to, say, PvP and large raid play (*cough* WoW), then even with a tremendous QUANTITY of content, if a particular individual enjoys PvP and raids over soloing and small group play, then this poor person is effectively doomed to feel like he is grinding at low levels. (If the game then backward-gates content, the person who doesn't care about PvP and large raid play might suffer from the opposite problem of having less content after reaching max level than they had at lower levels)
I only play MMOs that are games.
Im not a big fan of a game that already sets a predetermined goal for me before I even create my character.
Even if a game has several options at endgame its still all predetermined and thats not what I want.
I want to play in a living breathing world, I want to effect this world and I want the freedom to create my character the way I want.
I refuse to play games with level caps and with endgame gear grinds ever again. I refuse to play any game with predetermined classes with limited flexability (talent specs) ever again.
I refuse to play any game that requires me to run quest after quest for character advancement.
All these things need to be optional.
Back in the day games like UO and SWG gave me this freedom and now games like Eve and Ryzom are continuing the trend.
I await games like Darkfall, Mortal online and Earthrise Because these developers remember what MMOs were originally supposed to be imo.
Let me design a avatar, drop me in a large non-instanced game world, as a community let us wage our own wars or band together against a common foe. Give me the tools and let me do with them what i please.
Thats all I ask.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
I agree completely. You could try Ryzom. I tried it when it came back and it wasn't bad it just didn't grab my attention for some reason other then that you could try good old UO. All the sandboxes currently in development are very pvp focused. So if you are more into pve beside those 2 options you are pretty much SOL.