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"End Game" mentality has to die and resurrect "Play Time" from the Ashes.
I am seeing many posts making references to "End Game"
This MMO terminology has to stop.
It is a symptom of single player game design that has crept into the MMO genre overtime to the detriment of the true "Massive Multiplayer Online" experience, which is typically associated with the current plethora of theme park MMO games.
All these theme park MMOs have a funneling content burst followed by a prolonged drought. Stitched together with daily crumb quests and login rewards to hopefully hold enough attention till the next expansion whereby all previous content becomes irrelevant or casualized overtime.
Players need to realise this and understand that it is a fundamentally flawed community breaking system.
MMO's should inherently be anti "End Game" the very notion of a final resolute is counter productive.
There was a golden age of MMO's before "End Game" where people/players just interacted and spent time engaged with common goals, pursuits or just meeting new people.
I get the Play Time vibes from Ashes,
But I would appreciate the "End Game" promoters perhaps take a step back and reassess your MMO values.
Perhaps even considering "Play Time" the true MMO motivation.
This MMO terminology has to stop.
It is a symptom of single player game design that has crept into the MMO genre overtime to the detriment of the true "Massive Multiplayer Online" experience, which is typically associated with the current plethora of theme park MMO games.
All these theme park MMOs have a funneling content burst followed by a prolonged drought. Stitched together with daily crumb quests and login rewards to hopefully hold enough attention till the next expansion whereby all previous content becomes irrelevant or casualized overtime.
Players need to realise this and understand that it is a fundamentally flawed community breaking system.
MMO's should inherently be anti "End Game" the very notion of a final resolute is counter productive.
There was a golden age of MMO's before "End Game" where people/players just interacted and spent time engaged with common goals, pursuits or just meeting new people.
I get the Play Time vibes from Ashes,
But I would appreciate the "End Game" promoters perhaps take a step back and reassess your MMO values.
Perhaps even considering "Play Time" the true MMO motivation.
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I feel this is a personality thing more than anything. I enjoy the journey, doing the quests, getting into the story, while others race to the finish, because to them that's when the game begins. Then they get bored and move on.
I really hope Ashes keeps the journey aspect of it and from what I've seen so far, I feel they will.
Devs have to design content that allows players a constant stream of new content - while the devs work on DLCs.
Hence building and destructibility...
spending months building our cities...
and plenty of horizontal progression in addition to vertical progression.
Really depends on the game, like if u look at RS no matter what state you are you are always on your best. But if u look at wow or any other grind to max lvl before youre time become valuable in some sort of a way.
IMO endgame is important.
- If there is no fixed level cap, then there is no "end" so to speak.
- Advancement of nodes, professions and religions might contribute significantly to player "power", not just level and gear. These things might be gained (or lost) over time, so the experience of growth is likely more nonlinear than other games, making the concept of "End" fairly arbitrary.
- If skill and ability are the major factors in readiness for hard content*, rather than just level and gear (read HPS and DPS) as we've come to expect in other MMOs, then there may not need to be this walled garden approach of other games.
*I'd prefer to call it "high skill" content, rather than end game content.Just that at one point, your character will reach the level cap. I guess endgame in ashes sense could also mean finishing up your other non-combat progressions.
The terminology doesn't particularly bother me, it's inevitable that players will hit the level cap before new content is developed. Whether it's raiding, crafting, decorating your homestead, or even hanging around helping other players reach the "endgame".
I personally tend to prioritize getting to the end game quickly because there's where most of the loot has meaning because the bulk of my time playing the game might be at the level cap.
Vanilla WoW 1-60 used to take weeks and was rewarding. not a chore. It was not perfect by any means but it was impactful and satisfying for the most part.
End Game other than it's max level by association, is capped and gated vertical content singularity, behind a typically menial level progression system with instant gratification rewards that have limited if any long term value. It is inherently single player but prolonged in MMO's buy repetition.
It's is Single player with friends on loop. Sustained with box priced expansions to fund the next fix.
Play Time/game time/max level progressive content; is multi faceted horizontal progression that can be enhanced with vertical progression.
there should be no "End" in an MMO.
I enjoy my leveling process in older MMOs and remember them fondly. Adventures and deaths at the lower levels.
I too enjoy the process of seeking improvement to my character through items and cosmetics and shiny things once there isn't any more progression through level's to be had. Many stories about those as well.
I didn't play wow though, so maybe that's why I don't really find it a concern.
My issue is with the prolonged player conditioning towards "End Game" as the defining factor of an MMO genre.
to the point where games are pigeon holing themselves by this self inflicted curse. A visible condition of this curse is the "exp booster" or instant max level purchase.
"End Game" is simply the expectation of post max* level content progression.
But it has overtime made Leveling merely an inconvenience to borderline irrelevance.
Leveling up should feel rewarding with each threshold and facilitate the understanding of mechanics for the player character to promote skill and ability. All the while allowing a journey and player experience. It however has to be done right and paced appropriately to not feel like a burden, which may of been the reason "Endgame" mentality eventuated.
But leveling up is not the only progression system, It should also be seen as a catalyst to promote player interactive progression.
I stopped playing WoW pre Cata around the time flying mounts were introduced.
I hardly raided then but spent countless hours logged in for whatever reason, mainly being the only Boomkin because it wasn't META and online friends at the time. But WoW is the MMO giant that most people can relate to.
I currently login* to gw2 but the lore and forced narrative isn't appealing to me, i enjoy the combat system, however most of my old in game friends left after the expansion. I do however respect that Max level is fixed and items I've acquired are still relevant 4 years later.
ESO at launch was the perfect example of terrible "End Game" though i believe much has improved. however my time spent completing the story of ESO was all I could take from the buggy launch/subscription.
I am not suggesting that Ashes shouldn't have content after max level. Safe to assume levels are implemented.
But that players should respect and enjoy the whole ice cream sundae than criticizing or demanding the cherry on top.
Not everybody likes just cherries.
In addition to all of the character progression paths, we will be trying to bring 5 nodes to max level.
Plus all the other nodes that can become towns and cities. All generating new content.
I hereby approve and enjoin this effort to cast out the limiting phrases of mind control.
Essentially, I agree with what you are saying and share your desire for a new MMO with meaningful content without levelling races and months of content drought. However, its a bit much to demand that people stop using such terms and letting other threads become derailed because someone referred to a raid as end-game as has happened in the recent past. We can probably safely assume there will be content to play at max level regardless of how long and rewarding the leveling/main story experience is, people are going to refer to this in some way or another...
But with MMORPGs my "goal" is to enjoy the experiences of the adventures - the journeys between point A and point B.
To me, there should be no "end game," merely a world which facilitates adventure and allows me opportunities to partake in it.
For some people, not just a few in fact, Endgame(referring to MMORPGs) simply means content that pretty much requires level cap to participate in.
Some will say that is wrong and that's fine and dandy, but since it is a word/phase stolen from its true meaning and applied to MMORPGs in a slang usage, there really isn't a perfect definition in the new context. Anyone that says there is, is just trying to puff their chest and be authoritative.
Not that I have any issue with defining it exactly for AoC. Just that I doubt us doing it here will change the world.
Ashes is going to be an interesting ride down the road.
Mythanon said above, "End game should be when you log out."
A good game will always have things to do for players that keep them involved. That can be fun PVP, events, and other sandbox things that keep a community running.
Where level and story progression takes 3 months at best and endgame lasts 12-24 months...many people now consider endgame to be the real game and level/story progression to be an unnecessary obstacle to reaching the endgame/real game.
In games like EQ and WoW, max level can be used interchangeably with endgame because the two coincide with each other. Max level content is basically the same thing as endgame content.
In a game like Ashes, max level content does not equal endgame content.
For one thing, there are at least a handful of progression paths for which we can reach max level: Artisan, Religion, Soicial, Naval and Adventurer.
For another, we have node progression. Where leveling a node to max level takes months. And leveling different nodes generates different content. Also destroying buildings and building different buildings in a city generates new content.
So, in Ashes, the game does not end just because a character has reached "max level" because the game is not only about reaching max level on the Adventurer progression path.
The terms we used for other games don't necessarily apply the same way for Ashes. We're going to have to adjust those meaning to speak coherently about Ashes gameplay.
Ashes has a wide variety of max level content...and no endgame content. For Ashes, those two concepts aren't interchangeable.
Open world 1v1 and such fighting, ya maybe you need to be max level. But beware the organized teams that know how to utilize all their devoted people.
That was me many many years ago, fresh and wide eyed, stepping into Everquest for the first time and getting wrecked by some passing giant.
A kind druid helped me retrieve my corpse, casted SoW on me and gave me a nice pair of earrings (or were they bracers?) and I was super pleased.
Probably pne of my more significant MMO moments that got me hooked on the genre.
Ashes content is dynamic, so there really is no concept of repetition in the same sense as other MMOs because the world changes from moment to moment.
Ashes encounters are largely outside instances, so they will likely not be gated by level, only by skill, experience and the ability to work as a team.
We want max level content to keep us so engaged -just like the content on the way to max level- that we don't stop playing.
Thus making it unnecessary to "come back" because we will have never left.
And @Kratz, I like your new sig.