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It's the end game that matters
I've played beta 2 and will play beta 3 starting tomorrow. There has been a lot of discussion about soul trees, questing, and other minor points about RIFT. However, we haven't had any exposure to the end game yet and I feel nowadays, that is the most important factor in whether an mmo will successful or not.
AoC was a lot of fun levels 1-20. A lot of the combat mechanics showed promise. But when you got to max level, you found that there was no end game. Zero. You just had to reroll another char. As a side note, the developers made a lot of empty promises regarding eta on updates. Basically, "I know there is no endgame but we will be pushing our great endgame concepts to test server in 3 weeks!" only to be empty handed 3 weeks, then several months down the line with no explanation. Funcom = fail.
Aion has rifting pvp which is fun, but too much of a grind to earn enough to buy high end rewards. You would find yourself in the abyss grinding for guards for weeks to try to buy a coveted pvp rewards piece of armor. IMO, Aion has some great large scale pvp. If you like following the orders of a raid leader on vent and coordinating to take over forts, then this game is win. If you are into soloing or small group pvp, you can rift but the pvp rewards are a lot harder to come by and becomes grindy very quickly.
In Wow, I remember being forced to join a guild after hitting max level. Personally, I hated guilds or pretty much any kind of large organization but I acquiesced when I found out that end game consisted of raiding. Yes a guild of well coordinated fighters at max level taking down an epic boss so that the guild leader can handout the epic loot to one of his buddies. Rinse and repeat. Wasn't for me and I quickly started looking for another type of game.
End game is where it's at.
RIFT, what will be your end game?
Comments
End game won't matter if everyone quits before they get there. Just look at Aion. It had how many? ...2 million+ subscribers? It lost 90% of them in the first 2-3 months...
I think the big downer for Rift is there is no point to more than 1 main and 3 alts. Limits the replay value.
Since the game is modeled heavily on WoW and EQ2 I'd expect the end game to be identical. You've have rift raids, dungeon raids, and PvP warfronts.
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Personally the journey is more important than the destination to me.
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
who cares what the end game will be like, as long as you are having fun, isnt that what counts?
if you rush to get to the end game, how much content will you miss out on? where is the enjoyment of maxing a toon in 3 days?
these are games that you play to have fun in, if you are not having fun, just dont play any more.
i find that the end game is not the be all and end all of why you play the games.
you ever play asherons call? that will screw you up rushing to the end game, because every month they put new content in, so you rush to that end game, only to have to wait for next patch to get more end game content - only to find they sneaked a few new low lvl quests in your character is too high to play now
dont know if rift will be a good game or not, been in both beta's and keen to start b3, but i doubt if i will be the only one in the beta that wont be rushing to get to the level cap if i'm having fun on the way there
i look this wrecked because i've got GIST.
Whats your excuse?
http://deadmanrambling.com/
Those subscribers were needlessly lost, the only thing blocking aion from a coveted top mmorpg spot was the sheer grind. Everything else was there, the graphics, the fluid gameplay and some fun mechanics to boot. The grind killed the mmorpg star.
Rift well theres alot of info out there, the pvp afaik is mass style with ranks which allow you to purchase loot much like warhammers system. PvE wise there are 10 and 20 man raids with 2 raid instances at launch plus a whole load of small group dungeons.
Crafting takes an important role as well you can decide not to set foot into anything and come away with a reasonable armour set that most casuals would be proud to wear with a smile. Then theres the massive zones and gathering professions. Theres some things i have missed but you have a small idea now.
To the poster above me, the end game is one of the most important factors to research perhaps unlike me you have money to throw around without a wife beating you for wasting it on a game lasting 2 months to be put in a box and left to collect dust. I look at mmorpgs as an investment an investment of my time and my potential money at 15$ a month its around $180 dollars for the year for three years that hits $540 oooo I think I can do maths. I detract... my point is, is the game worth my investment instant gratification is not normal for mmorpgs its the long term pleasure with colleagues aiming towards a goal that is.
In all sincerity, you really should ask that question on the Rift forums http://forums.riftgame.com/forumdisplay.php?3-General-Discussion
Do a little search there before ya do, then ask away. You'll get far superior responses there than from this forum, I think. The one thing that many watchers are going to ensure that Trion doesnt get away with, I think, is a bland end-game consisting of Raiding the same bosses over and over again.
Here is one recent review of what to expect with Rifts' Endgame. http://www.riftjunkies.com/2010/12/17/rifts-endgame-progression-and-raids-explained/
I'm not certain about the PvP aspects of it, but Trion has said that their game is going to ship "complete", meaning full end-game, and I dont consider "end-game", personally, to be just PvE Raiding and Dungeon Crawling.
I dislike the "end game" dynamic, but since we're stuck with it, I agree. Lack of an endgame gives an MMO a very short lifespan. DCUO comes out very soon, and the middle game is great, but I'm worried that there will be nothing to do past level cap. If level cap wasn't such an easy goal, nor such a gate in terms of power and participation, then we could talk.
I have to agree about Aion, btw. Abyss PvP looks really cool, but the leveling process in that game was so awful that I couldn't stick with it. It would do better to skip the leveling entirely.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
Full endgame / a complete game when it launchs.. LOL boy are they really sitting themselfs up for complete failure.
There has YET to EVER be a MMO that has launched complete. The reason being is that a MMO is never complete. The day the game is considered complete its getting ready to close down. There WILL ALWAYS be things to improve upon, things to add to the game, ect. If you want a complete game then you goto a different genre then MMO's. MMO's are evolving beasts that continuely change based upon what the market wants.
As far as endgame goes. Show me a game that doesnt involve PVE Raiding, PVE Repping or PVP as endgame. There are really very FEW options when it comes to endgame. The whole Rifting / Dynamic world is a interesting ideal. Until you see it in action and realize its really nothing more then a PQ that triggers every so often at set static points. One could argue that, that is all Rifting is. That is going to get old real quick for alot of people after you have done it for several days. There is really nothing dynamic about it.
Rift promises alot of things but in reality is not delievering much of anything. It doesnt bring a single NEW ideal to the market and it sure doesnt run or look better then most other MMO's out there. Like myself and several of my guildees say. If this game had came out back in 2000 then it would stand a real chance. But in todays market its going to be spin the drain really fast and be eatten by the bigger fish that bring new features, polished ideals, and continue to push the market.
Faction based pvp (outside side the pve).
~server inbalance, server mergers, all the things you normally see in faction games~
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
End game: the point where the game is at it's end. Theres nothing else.
I see that state is you beat our game, you've worked hard but we are not ready for you to take on more. We however don't want you getting bored and doing nothing so heres some stuff you can repeat until we get more content out.
The game is suppose to be fun during the game part and the end game is suppose to be interesting enough so i don't leave the game while you work fast to get more content out.
If the actual game (before you reach end game) is so boring and bland that all i'm doing is rushing to end game to get to the interesting stuff, then something is wrong.
It's not suppose to be boring for the game then interesting at the end. It's suppose to be fun and then interesting at the end. Fix your content so it's not boring then end game won't matter.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
yup...what he said.
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
ive always wondered why its called endgame when you actually are still playing.......:)
anyways, i figure endgame is a given, you'll reach it eventually.
if the game doesnt have enough content, immersion factor and/or (whatever floats your boat insert here), then the endgame wont matter because people wont stay around to find out.
ive done both closed beta's and i havent quite formed an opinion about Rift yet, im still in the wait and see come release time.
After reading through the info Cik linked I'm actually reconsidering to give this game a shot. This is how end game should have been done in that other game as well. Lets hope they don't listen some whiners who eventually are going to complain about various grinds there will be on max level.
Great info. I'm surpised I haven't seen this before. As I'm patching to enter Beta 3 now, I feel I have a better idea of what to expect post lev 50.
However, as I've stated before, I hate raiding. I've always preferred solo, duo, and occasionally small group play. Raids to me are as appealing as marching in formation in the military. Definately not for me. Maybe I need a western mmo. I like being the high plains drifter type. Not a member of a 24 count posse.
I find end game to be overrated because to me I think it should be the journey to end game be the most important. You'll never see end game if you don't even like the path chosen before you.
As one of the first people to hit 80 in AoC I can tell you there was end game. Yes, a lot of it was incomplete (bosses didn't function properly, exploits were abundent, group dungeons weren't itemized and were incomplete, etc.), but saying there was no end game is false. However at it's start AoC had a large raid dungeon with 2 working wings, 2 other raid dungeons, and another dungeon with a single lone raid boss in it. It had 2 single group dungeons, although they weren't properly itemized. It had PvP scenarios and should have had siege PvP (but it was a complete disaster that didn't work properly for MONTHS).
I will agree that the experience just started gradually tapering off post 20 (in AoC). The game was obviously designed with more thought for and more budget put into it's lower levels. There were serious issues, multiple broken quest lines, stuff just not functioning properly, and more on the post 20 levels.
As far as Rift goes we have the promise of end game content. I believe they said they currently have 11 large raid bosses in place already and they have heroic dungeons and multiple instances (I think it was 10?). They also have PvP battlegrounds and prestige ranks too. Pretty similar endgame to what you'd get in WoW and likely more content than Vanilla WoW had on release.
MMO's are a complete package, it better be complete from start to end or it will get lit up like a chirstamas tree on these forums.
Thinking back to when I played UO in the first few months of release, I remember leveling my archery to grandmaster (grinding to max level) so that I can then enjoy the game (end game). You could walk around naked and no one could tell you apart from a complete noob since there were no levels. Then suddenly, you whip out a xbow and whoop some traveler's ass.
Thinking back to DAOC, again first few months of release, I grinded out levels on a runemaster. Both doing quests, and a lot of plain vanilla grinding spawn points. Once I got to level 47 or so (max being 50), I had the skills to participate in rvr. But not only would I participate in large scale battles, but by hiding behind trees, I could stay off the radar of large groups and pick off stragglers for realm points.
So in my mind, I've always looked forward to the great stuff you can do after your char gets developed to max power/skill. But things seem to have changed. I can't get into raid centric end game at all. I've never been into uber loot. I want fun game mechanics involving interaction with other gamers. Not the eternal endless grind for loot in purple letters that you can link to make people jelaous.
"It's the end game that matters"
No. It . isnt.
It's the WHOLE game that matters.
The journey is as important as the destination. Stop buying into popular lazy thinking.
The so called 'end game' is only put in to keep people subbing until more journey is added. these are MMO, there is no 'end game'... they never end.
Jesus people, start thinking a little outside the box, please?
Amen.
If all you're doing on a daily basis is watching your exp bar in hopes of getting to the magical endgame as quick as possible, then MMO fails to provide what it should. So far in the beta, i've not once stared at my exp bar, nor have i factored out how many mobs i need to kill til i level. These are things i normally always do, so it's nice to see i haven't had to.
I typically hold some crazy pace to get to endgame and then feel burnt out and find myself with nothing to do or bored because the end game is just a different type of grind.
I find that I enjoy end game much better when I actually enjoy the content in-between compared to just picking the fastest path to level cap
The reason why Endgame is so important is because that's when you have all your skills and everything. That's when you finally use your character with all the bells and whistles.
Amen to these two.
Truth be told, I actually looked at my exp bar sometimes, but just because I was sort of anxious to get my next skill points and unlock that skill I wanted to try out, not because I wanted to get to level 20 as quickly as possible.
I prefer my MMO's to be fun from start to finish, thank you.
I want the entire journey to be fun and interesting. I'm sick and tired of some MMO companies saving all of the unique content for stupid raiders, denying 80% of the paying customers that content by hiding it behind the raiding hamster wheel.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I don't think anyones questioning it's importance, as much as disagreeing that it's all that matters. You'll never have all your skills at once with how the trees and points are set up, so you may as well enjoy the content on the way.