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Endgame, where are you?
leoo88556
Member Posts: 135
Hi,
Love the game and all that...
I normally dislike mmos cuz their storylines just couldn't be as good as single player games in most cases, so even though I like those sPvP, WvWvW and dungeons in GW2, they're not the main attraction for me. What make me pre-order this game is the PvE endgame content they talked about. Dame it's like a open world raid with various results, plus the breaking of holy trinity which means you can play as any profession and still enjoy the game.
But well, did anyone see any PvE endgame content yet? I know the game isn't out yet and Anet have already did some videos and blog posts about what happen when you finally reach Orr, but since it's "actually" something new in the mmorpg genre I think many people would like to see those content for themself before throwing their money at it. They should at least show us one or two videos of those event webs they've mentioned, I mean playthroughs by journalists or maybe Anet directly.
Again, PvE endgame, this is indeed an awesome idea if they can pull it off... IF they can pull it off!! And IMO they need to let us see & decide that if it will succeed or it's just another epic fail before released.
Feel free to share your thoughts or verbal abuse!
Peace out 
Comments
Personally, i want my first time seeing it to be my gameplay.
Besides, it isn't about the end game, it is about the whole game. Anyone asking what end game is like should be given this answer, whether it is what they are looking for or not.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
There is actually an endgame mechanic called Skill Point hunt. After you get to 80, you dont stop gaining exp. Your bar fills and you gain 1 skill point each time you level up over 80. WIth those skill points you can buy orbs, which you use to craft more legandary items in the mystic forge. Some of those orbs costs 200 skill points each. Besides even you are 80 you can travel to an uncharted low lvl zone (uncharted by you) and bam! you are sidekicked to that zone's effective level. You can enjoy that content as well with a decent challenge (easier than the original low levels of course).
End game is a fake term companies like blizzard made up to milk your money. GW2 doesnt need that 'end game'. It has the ultimate end game that starts right after level 2. You dont rush to 80, you just play the game and enjoy.
I like to experience it myself the first time instead of when I first see it have flashbacks from some vid I watched. Those still on the fence don't need to be all there at launch, I'm sure we'll see vids of Orr from players within a week after launch, if end game is so important to them they can decide then.
Also I think most vids don't represent the game too well to people that haven't played yet as most don't capture the real feeling / aliveness of the game nor the gameplay mechanics too well and just contributes to the thinking it's just more of the same mmo stuffs with Warhammer / Rift like PQs. It only really comes alive and you only see the underlying complexity when you're actually playing it.
There's no endgame - or so they say.
They think it's brilliant to give you pretty much everything from the get-go - and they rely on their content being varied and fun enough that you'll just do the content over and over again, without a carrot. Then again, you can just stop when you're bored - and there's no subscription. So, it's not a big deal - I suppose.
Unless, of course, you're one of those weird and sick people who like goals and an expanding horizon in your MMO genre. Obviously, in that case, GW2 isn't for you - if you believe the fans
Those same fans who used to love goals and an expanding horizon - but for some reason seem to really hate it now
It couldn't be that they're just sick of WoW being remade constantly - and it couldn't be that the original WoW design (based on EQ/DikuMUD if you insist) was actually pretty strong. It's just that you can only play the same game dressed up slightly differently for so long. But that doesn't mean the formula or power progression is necessarily evil and horrible - does it? I mean, even in singleplayer RPGs you have vertical progression to motivate play.
GW2 does what it can to minimise that drive - and I'm really curious to see if people are going to really love it as much as they say.
I guess what the OP means by "End Game" is gear grind treadmill in private instanced dungeons with 10-20 man raiding ... for the information provided ... there is none of that. The game releases with 8 dungeons with 4 modes ... so in total 32 variations of dungeons. where 24 modes of them will be the so called Hard Modes. Again the so called Low Level Dungeon will not be a waste for high level players. As in advantages for a level 80 to go to a level 30 instance are 1. Its still a skill challenge as you are demoted to 30ish. 2. you get gear from the dungeon appropriate to your level and not the mobs level. So even in a lvl 30ish instance will drop lvl 80 gear if you are 80 and if your partner is lets say 50 he gets lvl 50 gear.
Other possible End game are if a big Raid is your choice ... there will big Epic Dragons and such as already shown by Anet in the world. A guild of 15-20 lets say will have to drive the map quest in a particular direction with dynamic events .. like lets say kill mini bosses .. to reach the final boss. This boss will take minimum 10 people to kill with great coordination as there are multiple objectives and stratergies involved like in any high end final bosses of Raids ... though Random people can join your guild to help along not reducing your involment or diminishing you challenge in anyway. This again is Area wide and at every Zone .. higher zones having higher complexity content and not change in difficulty terms. lets say an lvl 20 zone final boss in terms of difficulty will be same as lvl 60 but not in complexity. Again a lvl 20 zone final boss will drop loot appropriate for your lvl and not its lvl ... so you get to improve your characters gear if you 75 while being in a lvl 20 zone.
Controlled enviroments are only provided ( for the information provided) only for 5 man parties. So if you are looking for 10+ raiding private controlled enviroment content ... to the current knowledge there are none.
And then what i would do when i hit 80 other than what i have already mentioned ... there are too many things to do ... map completions .. achievements ... Daily weekly monthly achievements ... Puzzles ... character gear modification (making them look more epic .. by getting awesome skin for gear from varied zones and also Dyes (there are over 300 dyes at launch and you start off with around 18) ... unlocking all support skills through all skill challemges ... gainging skill points and turning them into awesome looking legendaries ... these are some of the things you can do .. and i have just mentioned the PVE part of it.
And then there are shit loads to do in PVP. WvW (nuf said .. all info already available on how endless its Endgame is) .. SPVP ... challenge to reach higher ranks .. get better looking gear for PVP ... Enter tournaments .. join private tournaments .. create tournaments. I cant mention how endless PVP is in "END GAME"
If all the above stated is not enough for you to do when you hit 80 ... I cant help you ... maybe you can leave the game after hitting 80 as i am sure that will take you more than 30-50 hours of gameplay ... which should make your moneys worth and then play another game. MMORPGs dont and shouldnt force you to play just one game .. there are so many other genres of games go play them when you hit 80 in GW2 and come back for an Expansion few months or so down the line if you enjoied the play thru till 80.
So, basically, you repeat content with a variety of challenge settings for no real reward except aesthetic ones, right?
Exactly like all the other themeparks except for the power progression.
You do it for "fun" instead of the rewards, right? Because all other themeparks are boring because they also provide long-term rewards, right?
Or maybe it's the fact that SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST SICK AND TIRED OF DEALING WITH A MINDLESS GEAR GRIND THAT SUPPOSEDLY MAKES US FEEL STRONG, BUT THEN STRIPS AWAY THAT STRENGTH ONE PATCH LATER AND WE END UP HAVING TO GRIND ALL OVER AGAIN.
Oh, I fully agree with you. I hate that design with the hollow tier upgrade grind.
But I don't see how taking it away will make the actual content last longer or be more fun.
Not sure why those rewards are any more or less real.
Almost like other theme parks, since the lack of gear progression also means you're not locked out of doing any content.
Yes, you play this game for fun. Not sure why you felt the need to put it in quotes. Also, noone made that causal connection you implied there. Other MMOs aren't boring because they provide long-term rewards. Besides, valid-until-the-next-patch isn't what I'd call long-term.
It doesn't. Making content more varied makes it last longer. Not making it one-use-only makes it last longer. Not last forever of course, that's silly. Just longer than what we have in the old model.
Taking the progression threadmill out also has another effect: it makes it valid to just put the game down for a while and not play it when you're not enjoying it. Later when you feel like it, you can just pick it up again and not be locked out because everyone else is 4 tiers ahead.
It's so interesting that putting a game down when it stops being fun is such a foreign concept to MMO players.
I put it in quotes, because fun means different things to different people. I like doing content - but I don't like repeating content.
I don't like doing it for loot - and I certainly don't like doing it just for the sake of doing it.
When I say long-term rewards - I mean rewards that will sustain motivation in the long-term, for those interested in power.
You see, it's my theory that every gamer in the world loves power progression - they just don't like repeating identical content or "grinding" for it. But taking away the power progression will not magically make GW2 interesting to play in the long-term.
That's my point.
At least, I don't see how.
I know a lot of people point to the loot treadmill as the evil of themepark MMOs - but it's really not the loot, it's the treadmill in itself. It's the tired old design being repeated over and over. But power progression was never the problem - it was the grindy nature of having to repeat content - which is something ALL content-driven MMOs will suffer from.
Content can never last - and it will ALWAYS exhaust itself.
That's why the only way to provide a fully satisfying long-term MMO experience is to give content-creation to the players. GW2 doesn't do that.
It's not a foreign concept at all. That's what I tend to do all the time with singleplayer RPGs.
Maybe it's just me, but I actually think the MMO genre should be about something more - and about providing a perpetually interesting playfield that can last for many months or even years.
Also, I have no idea why "putting down" a loot-driven game is any less possible. Unless you have OCD or something, you can always get back to.
It really depends on your motivation to play.
If you need something to chase, how about pretty armor, titles and other status symbols? How about chasing skill points, POIs and vistas?
Vertical progression isn't horrible, in fact it's well-suited for singleplayer RPGs, as you've pointed out. Let's look at some of the upsides and downsides:
Upsides of vertical progression in MMOs
1. "Ooo shiny", easier-to-understand reward system as most people can relate to getting 'stuff' and 'power'
2. Convenient gating mechanism for scarce content
Downsides
1. Trivializes old content, even if player hasn't experienced it earlier
2. Power creep: devs have to constantly tune new content, hence longer dev cycle and increasing scarcity of content
3. Barrier to entry: Painful or nearly impossible for late entrants to catch up
4. Exacerbates inflation, since crafting sub-game etc has to keep up with power creep
5. 'Grindy': game play extended through repetitive tasks because of longer dev cycle (see downside no. 2)
There is a difference between endgame content and endgame goals. In PvE, which is what the OP asked about, there IS endgame content, but only to a certain extent. There are about four lvl 80 dungeons (besides explorable) and one purely lvl 80 zone. At the moment, that's all I can think about.
BUT, after hitting the level cap, you do have incentive to continue playing. But it's not endgame exclusive PvE content, it's endgame goals. Like legendary weapons, aesthetic gear, achievements, 100% map completion, rolling an alt for the personal story, max crafting, minigames, etc.
The original Guild Wars was also lacking in endgame PvE, like bigass dungeons, raids or gear treadmills. Still, it's been seven years and people still play it. Why? Because of the endgame goals, not the endgame content.
You're talking about poor implementation of power progression, not facts about it.
The genre is still relatively new - and it would have grown a lot more if it wasn't for WoW and its impact.
WoW didn't have scarce content - but it did extend lifetime of the content through the loot design, we can agree on that.
If it didn't - people would have stopped playing it for a long time until the first expansion.
There's no reason you can't scale old content successfully - and most modern themeparks are doing that today. Scaling mechanisms are not hard to implement - it's just a matter of what you intend as a designer.
WoW developers are more interested in providing more and newer content than they are in scaling old content. That's because they have the resources to expand the game significantly without too much of a delay. One might argue that they should scale old content more than they're doing - and it's certainly possible even with their power progression model.
Again, yes, the game is "grindy" if you keep playing it for years. Is that REALLY worse than a game you simply stop playing after a few months? I'm not sure.
We'll see if this content repetition model without power-based rewards is sustainable in the long-term. I really doubt it.
Again you are mistaken that there is no power progression in GW2.. LVL 80 gear is better than lvl 50 gear in terms of power. PVE content players like pwer progression i dont disagree .. but they like power progression to not to make content easier but in many ways to get better aesthetic gear. In most MMO more powerful gear has also been more aesthetically apealing gear. Is a reason people first do lets say Normal mode Dungeon and then do hardmode and then do nightmare .. thats the so called power progression ... but relatively its still the same power .. you dont powerfully progress in a repeatable content if the Enviroments power increases as well. All it states is that players always need challenging content ... no matter their power.
Many observers assume MMO players play the threadmill just for the sake of power progression. I can't really agree with that. Power progression used to be the mechanism for gating content. You used to endure the grind because your reward was new content. More power was just the means of unlocking it, it wasn't the actual reward.
This changed in recent years with MMOs providing different means of content gating, and suddenly power progression became essentially pointless. It seems many players haven't caught up with that development yet.
GW2 removes the need for power progression mostly by making content reusable, which lowers the need for stretching and gating it. It will run out eventually of course, but I expect it to last for quite a bit longer.
I know there's a levelling game - so obviously there is power progression from level 1 to level 80. I'm talking about AFTER you reach level cap, and no - not a few hours after, and no the skill point hunt won't suffice for long.
People like to progress - it's in our nature. Whether that's an illusion or not, doesn't really matter. My point is that if people don't FEEL like they're progressing - through tangible rewards - they'll lose interest. That's also in our nature.
I know SOME people are into aesthetics enough to keep them going for a while. But I don't think that's as universal and alluring as power progression.
Maybe GW2 will prove me wrong, and it would be an interesting discovery.
I'd like to reply, but your statement makes no sense at all. Could you rephrase?
I don't know. Scaling old content seems easier to do than creating brand new content, but I'd imagine the WoW devs are pretty busy with tuning new content on an extraordinarily generous (by industry standards) cycle to have resources for old content. Plus scaling would probably shatter the illusion of power built up by the game.
But short of us being actually part of dev teams of either game, it's all just discussion and not 'facts', no?
Well then, it really boils down to your motivation to play, doesn't it?
Again, it's not 'worse' or 'better', just different. And the genre desperately needs different.
Obviously there's a market for horizontal progession, otherwise the relative success of GW1 and subsequent development of GW2 would be somewhat inexplicable.
PS. Personally, I think asking for 'years' of gameplay from a $60 game is also somewhat unrealistic.
Hey I already saw you argue about this on a thread from way back...I thought it cleared up things for you.
Removing power attached to gear makes it less of a requirement for progression. That means I can skip getting the gear if I want to, unlike in most other MMOs where I must have a certain gear rating just to be eligible to a particular dungeon. I run dungeons just so I can "venture" them. I'm only willing to rerun dungeons until I'm satisfied seeing its insides and with a game like this I can do just that. In WoW, I have no other choice but to run Tempest Keep more times than I want to just so I can be eligible for Black Temple.
Can you define your defination of End Game ? What do you need in an End Game for it to be called "This game has awesome END GAME"