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End Game or Game?
Ihmotepp
Member Posts: 14,495
Are you leveling, building skills just to get to the end game? Or are you having fun doing quests and grinding mobs, but then when you get to the end game you either start a new character or quit because you're not really into raiding, or RvR?
I'd like to try a game with no end game. Sort of.
New content is never just a top level add on. Like the game starts and it's levels 1-50. then you do an expansion and it's levels 50-60, with a couple of new quests for low levels. then you do an expansion and it's levels 60-70.
Or, maybe it's not levels but gear. You reach the end game and you get raid gear. then there's a new expansion, and you need epic raid gear. then there's a new expanison and you need super duper epic raid gear.
I'd rather see the game go from 1-50, and that's it. All expansions are new content for levels 1-50.
If you have an end game on top of that, fine, but dont' keep adding more levels, more gear, on the top.
I'd say maybe give players a bonus for making a new toon.
Like, you make it to max level, then you can trade in that toon and start over. You get a bonus point to all stats with the new toon, so when you make it to the top again, you're a tiny bit tougher, that's all.
Comments
Games with an endgame tend to bore me pretty quickly. A part of it might be from developers forced to split their developement resources on two BIG parts that are completely NOT mutual.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
Game and end game are the same things.
In Darkfall you start out in the game.
In WoW you go through 79 tutorial levels and play the game at 80.
Not much difference really.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
I mostly care about the Game, but it's good for games to reach a certain point and pull a significant twist to reinvigorate gameplay.
I think WOW's significant twist is a bit too extreme (switching from pure solo to pure grouping/raiding,) but it's got the right idea (and served intentional design purposes too.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think the whole 'end-game' concept is one of the things that's really hindering the MMO community as a whole.
MMO gameplay should go something like this:
1) Log in
2) Find your friends
3) Go do stuff
.. without regard to artificial barriers such as arbitrary group sizes, mandatory group compositions, extreme power differences that make rookies unable to meaningfully contribute, fixed and immutable progression paths, etc. There are MMOs out there that don't have an end-game, some of them quite successful when measured on their own merits.
Games that focus heavily on the end-game force the new player to slog through old, outdated, irrelevent content just to be able to play with everyone else. WoW is the only end-game focused game I've seen where the devs really understand this and thus try to speed up the outdated portions of the game as much as they possibly can without breaking the game.
A game should never have end game, end game ruins the fun in both singleplayer and multiplayer games, and sandbox games could effectively be the answer to a never ending game where content is made by the player's themselves.
One of the most frustrating things for me in the mmo's I've played is that because of end game crap, when you make a new toon 2 or 3 years into the game, no community exists at low levels as it once did; making it hard for new toons to progress in a fun manner as opposed to get to end game quick to join everyone else. Secondly, enticing new players to join a game that is 2-3 years old already would be easier if there was more of a low level community still around instead of everyone at end game.
I hate the idea of leveling all together. It why I enjoy end game more then the way to get there.
--
"Any free people have the right to choose how it wants to be govern thats the essence of democracy. It's sad when America has chosen for the stability and consistency of a dictatorship and doing it democratically" -utnow
I don't have any problem with end game content. I think the problem developers put themseleves into is expansions that raise the level cap. This tends to instantly make a bunch of content outdated and useless. Perhaps they should focus on more random dungeon drop so no matter what raid/instance you run, you have a chance to earn some high end gear. Make more gear drop in larger raids and be smart enough to look at the raid group and select appropriate drops. There seems to be zero development into smarter loot distribution evaluation and static raid boss drop is just stupid. I wonder what WoW would be like if it was still a 60 cap. Imagine all that content to do! For expansions, develop new abilities and skills to expand your chracter but at the expense of giving up some other abilities.
rambling over sorry...
Sandbox and themepark are very shallow concepts on this forum.
You'll need a healthy amount of concepts from both "genres" to create a good game because frankly, the "sandbox" created by this community will never work. It would be just a sweet dream...nothing more.
At the end of the day, it's important to have a proper goal when you create a game(especially a MMORPG), not just limit yourself to these two "types" who are pretty flawed.
I never use to race to the end. Ever since WoW, however, I have this feeling in every game I've played to some extent that I need to get passed all this crap to get to the end game. Not true in Warhammer were it was, I want to get father to see more content. After seeing the content you go back to 1-20 because the rest of the game was garbage.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
if 90% of the end game is not related to players or affected by players that game sux
BestSigEver :P
My first night in SWG (the pre-cu one without levels) ... my mates took me to Lord Nyax Hideout ... and we (meh ... i didn't do much with only pistols 1
) cleared the place .... and I could !!! .... as there were no silly level requirements and no silly mechanics to stop me from going there. I also entered DWB alone and died ... as i should.
That's how a End Game should be.
FFXI - The whole game was important. You could play FFXI for years and never reach the cap level and still think it was the best game you ever played. You could play FFXI and only craft if you chose to (some did). Once you got to end game, you could do Dynamis, BCNM, Sky, Balista, etc.
Basically, this game had EVERYTHING at all levels. Here's some examples of what you had to do while on your way to end game.
One character could be every single class. You never had to do the same QUESTS or CAMPAIGNS.
At lvl 18 you did a quest to be able to get a subjob. At 30 you did a quest to get the keys to go to a zone for lvl 30+. At 30, you had to do quests to "open up" advance jobs (Samurai, Ninja, Dragoon, etc.).
At 50 you did quests for each piece of "Artifact Armor" specific to each class.
At 50, 55, 60, 65, and 70, you had to do quests to allow you to gain xp for the next five levels.
Just to name a few.
In FFXI you could not get to end game by grinding or questing only. The above quests/campaigns were a requirement. Meaning, you had to group up and work together. Because FFXI was solely a pve game, it was in everyone's interest to work together.
EVERY SINGLE QUEST and CAMPAIGN in FFXI was meaningful, rewarding, challenging, and memorable. FFXI was all about the journey to 75, and when you got there, there was something there for you too.
I know a lot of people who tried FFXI hated it, or maybe tried it after playing WoW "couldn't get it into it." But for me to played FFXI before playing WoW for a few years, looking back, FFXI is my favorite MMO of all time.
I just hope FFXIV is just as good.
Sandbox and themepark are very shallow concepts on this forum.
You'll need a healthy amount of concepts from both "genres" to create a good game because frankly, the "sandbox" created by this community will never work. It would be just a sweet dream...nothing more.
At the end of the day, it's important to have a proper goal when you create a game(especially a MMORPG), not just limit yourself to these two "types" who are pretty flawed.
I might just as well give my own "perfect dream" concept a name.
I'll call it ... Interactive World ;p, unless I think of a better name later.
Devs need to get in the player's footstep by doing scenarios or even better, just ask a player what he wants to do, maybe some kind of survey on what exactly they expect or want to do in the game.
I pretty much liked this concept >> Interactive World Concept
Even though it isn't currently running or haven't seen it first hand, the story is funny and entertaining, give it a read and you'll see what I mean. Players take action and that is when interaction is made and communities united.
I want to start a game or log into a game and play. I want to have fun when I log in. Do some dungeon crawling in a grouping game. Why should the fun be found only at level cap? End game offers nothing but grouping. Why do people feel grouping on lower levels is inferior?
Play'd FFXI for 2 years, my main was RDM 45...not even close to cap. when I quite I had just gotten my blu/nin to 32/16 *sigh* then I had to quite so I could actually graduate from school. serously play'd for 6-10 hours a day. and I think what i loved most about it, is even after 2 years I still had only seen about 70% of the game. I tried to go back to it, but after playing newer games the graphics where just not good enough to play. But i'm praying FFXIV with be just as good!
WoW is a good game, and i'm deffinitly not a WoW hater, and I did play it for about a year. but I level capped in WoW in 2 months. got alot of my epic "purple" stuff within 4 months. and by the time a year had rolled around I had play'd 3 more classes to cap. So WoW was a very good game. but deffinitly not a FFXI.
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I agree. You might not have been very useful but you didn't get left out.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
Well usually all the interesting bits, and the reason you bought the game, are put at the end of the leveling curve so you usually end up leveling to get to the fun part.
I can see why developers do that though, if I could play a game and jump into RvR or what have you I would get very bored very fast and I would quit the game in a week or less, but ironically if you make we wait I will probably just get tired of the game and quit before I ever get to the end game anyway.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
I agree. You might not have been very useful but you didn't get left out.
Agree as well. At least when there is no 'Leveling', there is no real endgame. You are free to go where you want, when you want and with whom you want. That is what a MMO should be about. Not about endgame race.
I concur. I'm tired of games that don't let me play with friends. Instead, I'm forced to play with random people that happen to be the same level as myself. Total strangers which I will likely never see again. All this because I'm either on the wrong server, the wrong level, the wrong class, on the wrong side, etc.
Depending on what you consider an endgame.
The endgame in DAoC pre-ToA-NF never bored me, of course it was open ended RvR with real goals, with a 3 way fight, it was very dynamic.
The endgame in SWG for me was part socializing part achieving.
Pure PvE raids as fulltime endgame got boring faster for me, thats part of why I left WoW, WoW did entertain me for a good time tho.
Still I think endgames like DAoC pre-ToA-NF or EVE Online have alot more longetivity, because you are conquering and defending against human players. On the other hand, I also had alot of fun with road to the endgame in DAoC pre-ToA-NF and SWG-pre-CU-NGE, and now having fun with the game in EVE Online.
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site :
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Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online