Is this specifically gated at 40 lvl, or at least 35+?
Because it it's not, then it's not an edgame content but regular leveling content.
Which actually has no meaning when this video serves more to highlight how pointless are our difficulty settings in any content, endgame or not.
But it does not qualify as an "endgame" if it isn't specifically level gated, be it by actual level lock, or entrance being placed in a high level zone.
Actually, we don't really have any endgame solo content -- the endgame stuff is rampages, special alerts, and lairs, none of which are solo content. The closest you could do with solo content would be the adventure pack final boss fights, all of which would be tricky though not necessarily impossible (in particular, NPCs can do most of the tanking in Resistance and Aftershock).
Rampages are 35+ (and if you can arbitrarily set the requirement for something being endgame to lvl 35, then why can't we arbitrarily set it to any other number other than max level?). Custom Alerts open up way before that. We have zero lairs that are restricted to level 40 players (go ahead and check TT, you can get the quest and enter before lvl 40). If you want to go by strict definitions like that, then we have no endgame content at all. You have to get to the basics of what end game means, which is simply: what max level characters do to get relevant rewards. The only commonality between end game in all games is that it's stuff you do to get stuff once you're done leveling.
The mission in the video is something level 40s will be running to gather relevant rewards. Unity missions, rampages, and all the alerts count as well. Hell, farming pre-40 mobs in Vibora Bay to get costume pieces counts as well, because it involves a reward that is very much relevant to the nature of the game, and it's something many max-level characters have done over the years. Our endgame may overlap with our early and mid game, but it still counts as end-game going by the basic definition of what end game is.
It's also what 17s will be running because they don't want to level in the Desert or Canada. And it's what some low-20s will be running because to be honest there's kind of a dead spot in there, and this is at least an interesting way to pass the time.
I do find it interesting, however, to note that earlier conversations on the topic of difficulty have insisted that the proper method of increasing difficulty is to improve the AI, not to just make the mobs tougher and make then hit harder - and our basis of comparison in this thread has become WoW, where difficulty is increased by (come on, kids, sing along at home!) making the mobs tougher and making them hit harder. The things running around the Outlands are no smarter than the kobolds in the tutorial zone outside Stormwind, they're just bigger.
(Also, WoW has mobs respawn in instanced content - you can't clear the halls behind you and feel safe, because in ten minutes they'll be back. Thank Kirby that's not the case here!)
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
WoW, where difficulty is increased by (come on, kids, sing along at home!) making the mobs tougher and making them hit harder.
See: Raid Mechanics.
Mobs in wow don't actually get tougher or hit harder relative to your character unless you purposely go to a zone that you are not high enough level for, or attempt a raid that you are not geared for. That's not difficulty, that's gating. Difficulty in WoW comes from fight mechanics that become progressively more complex and demanding of precision as you get further into a dungeon.
Let's be honest, when we say "AI" in a video game, we're not actually talking about real artificial intelligence; no game on the market has actually created NPCs that have gained self awareness, it's all just mechanics... or in our case, a lack of.
People keep referencing WoW because every day millions of people have fun playing that game because it has mechanics for them to think about, react to, and overcome. By comparison, CO seems like the tutorial never actually ended, and we're all still waiting to leave the starting area.
but...but face rolling on the keyboard works like 98% of the time! So anytime that it doesn't is a departure from the usual norm and sometimes unexpected...therefore it is difficult.
Kay so I am actually in the "this game is kinda easy" crowd btw...
but I played a lot of WoW back in the day(first mmo I ever played infact and I am 100% certain I am not alone!)
but I was never a fan of the hard stuff and therefore never really did much endgame.
At this point I have done almost everything there is to do in CO and I am still thirsty for more.
So I guess I prefer facerolling most of the time, though something harder is ok too...
I wouldn't really say I did the AT any justice at all. (pun wasn't intended) I wouldn't really say I played with a great deal of skill, however I wouldn't say that it didn't need "skill" or knowledge to complete it. If both skill and knowledge isn't something that is needed in a game then what are you left with? Is it even a game anymore?
It ends up getting to the point where he is paying someone else to play the game to get the stuff so he doesn't have to and can spend his time doing other things like... Playing a new free to play MMO. It's just where you wonder if it's even a game anymore kinda thing.
That's like Blizz announcing their next expansion, and someone revealing "We'll be able to do all the end game in the new content wearing the gear we were grinding last year, and using tactics we used to beat the tutorial area".
You cited gear and tactics so I had to counter your claim about gear.
Is what he's doing really considered a demonstration of "high skill"?
So what's low skill... standing without moving while rolling your face across the keyboard? Because most content could actually be dealt with like that if the person playing is wearing gear.
What the OP proves is that high skill compensates for lack of gear - which is true for most MMOs. So the player in the video is skilled. That's cool and all, but to really show how little skill is needed for the game I think you gotta show how easy it it is to use as few buttons/movement as possible and do as many stupid things like stand in fire and facetank attacks as possible, even if it requires some low end gear. Not that it hasn't been done before.
If you want to go by strict definitions like that, then we have no endgame content at all.
You still did not adress your obvious mistake/lie - you called something as being specifically our endgame, when it is not something comparable to WoW endgame lairs, but to WoW regular leveling patches.
And technically you shouldn't be able to get TT quests before lvl 35. Besides, lvl 35+ plus is at least a late game, as opposed to things unlocked as soon as are adventure packs.
It's also what 17s will be running because they don't want to level in the Desert or Canada. And it's what some low-20s will be running because to be honest there's kind of a dead spot in there, and this is at least an interesting way to pass the time.
^This. Sums. It.
And maybe CO needs specifically and exclusively lvl 40 gated and balanced content, but have a nice time trying to convince PWE to do so.
(Also, WoW has mobs respawn in instanced content - you can't clear the halls behind you and feel safe, because in ten minutes they'll be back. Thank Kirby that's not the case here!)
I actually always felt it was a good idea to keep players on their toes. Places like Stratholme are not supposed to be safe at all.
The mission in the video is something level 40s will be running to gather relevant rewards. Unity missions, rampages, and all the alerts count as well. Hell, farming pre-40 mobs in Vibora Bay to get costume pieces counts as well, because it involves a reward that is very much relevant to the nature of the game, and it's something many max-level characters have done over the years. Our endgame may overlap with our early and mid game, but it still counts as end-game going by the basic definition of what end game is.
Stop using word "endgame" when you can't do it properly. Something that can be started as soon as level 11 or 20, and even more - it is made to scale to solo play on every level, is not an endgame by any definition.
A Nemcon could be called endgame. A Therakiel's Temple could be. They at leats start very late in the game.
But something that is basically an equivalent of an adventure pack mission playable at every level is not an edgame no matter how many times you will call it that way.
If you expect it being something special because you can walk into it with toon at 40 lvl instead at 11, well... Pity, but your expectations were just wrong and the problem is on your end.
You cited gear and tactics so I had to counter your claim about gear.
You do realize that I mentioned the gear because gear was mentioned in the OP right? Remember the OP.. where part of the whole thing was IMP demonstrating that you can run new content wearing no gear? That was kind of the whole point of me making that claim about gear. Yes, there's no connection between skill and gear... I never made that claim, so on that you're not actually disagreeing with me (in fact, I don't think anyone has ever made that claim... what sort of person would ever think there's a connection between between skill and gear? o3o).
However, if the claim I was making was somehting like "A certain level of gear is generally required to run a certain level of content". Wouldn't you agree that that is something that applies to WoW, and many other games, and maybe was intended to apply to CO in some form as well? Maybe that was the claim I was making, since that was the direct connection to wow's situation that I made.
That's like Blizz announcing their next expansion, and someone revealing "We'll be able to do all the end game in the new content wearing the gear we were grinding last year, and using tactics we used to beat the tutorial area".
You'll notice I conveniently separated the claims about gear and skill in the statement that you quoted, so that they would each be within their own context (I left out a lengthy explanation of how people generally need a certain tier of gear to attempt a certain tier of content because I thought that was general knowledge). Of course you would have to read past the parts that you colored red to see that
Now, how about that claim about tactics that you so conveniently and completely ignored?
So then you agree with me, low skill effectively translates into standing there, randomly mashing buttons without any thought as to what's going on in the game, and then throwing the arms up into the air and loudly exclaiming "WHAT HAPPENED?!"... sounds like an episode of Game Grumps with Arin at the controller.
How long should the game be manufactured to cater to that level of "skill"? I think level 10 is a good cutoff point personally. What do you think?
You still did not adress your obvious mistake/lie - you called something as being specifically our endgame, when it is not something comparable to WoW endgame lairs, but to WoW regular leveling patches.
And technically you shouldn't be able to get TT quests before lvl 35. Besides, lvl 35+ plus is at least a late game, as opposed to things unlocked as soon as are adventure packs.
We're not playing WoW though. Going by that definition of endgame, we don't have any, so the entire discussion becomes moot and now we're talking about the skill demands of the entire game's content... which doesn't really help the "the game isn't easy" argument. It doesn't help it one bit. If that was your angle in this, sorry but it won't work, it just puts the low-skill-demand nature of the game even closer under the magnifying glass (of course I have an inkling that you just want to argue semantics and not the original issue, but I'm fine with that).
If your issue is that you disagree about the specifics of what "end game" means, well that's fine you're allowed to interpret it the way you like. I prefer to go right for the mechanical reality of it as it applies to all games, since as we see here you cannot take the specifics of WoW's endgame and apply it to a game like CO. Yes, WoW is big, and some people think it was the original MMO, but that doesn't mean it defines the genre.
Again, if your arbitary definition of "at least a late game" can be lvl 35+, why not everything past lvl 20? That's later than earlier.
Stop using word "endgame" when you can't do it properly. Something that can be started as soon as level 11 or 20, and even more - it is made to scale to solo play on every level, is not an endgame by any definition.
A Nemcon could be called endgame. A Therakiel's Temple could be. They at leats start very late in the game.
But something that is basically an equivalent of an adventure pack mission playable at every level is not an edgame no matter how many times you will call it that way.
Again, you're going by the standards of another game, WoW, which is very different from how CO operates. I notice you're using "could be" a lot... and the only thing you're connecting that "could be" with is this notion that some arbitrary level is "late in the game", so again I ask why those levels and not any other point after the mid point? You may disagree with my definition, but at least you can agree that it's a lot more defined and specific than what you're pushing.
If you expect it being something special because you can walk into it with toon at 40 lvl instead at 11, well... Pity, but your expectations were just wrong and the problem is on your end.
What an interesting turn you've taken here. How does what you typed here make sense considering many of the examples I gave of what CO's endgame is didn't fit the notion of "special because you walk into it with a toon at level 40"? In fact, the whole idea I'm pushing is that our endgame is something that both level 40s and pre-level 40s will be running (overlaping endgame, remember that?) This whole time you've been the one pushing WoW's "special top level content" idea of endgame, not me.
And how do you reconcile that notion with the fact that in this game, walking into certain areas at level 40 does in fact make them different from if you walked into them at a lower level (i.e. scaling instances)?
You sure there aren't any problems on your end? Specifically in the basis of your argument?
You do realize that I mentioned the gear because gear was mentioned in the OP right? Remember the OP.. where part of the whole thing was IMP demonstrating that you can run new content wearing no gear? That was kind of the whole point of me making that claim about gear. Yes, there's no connection between skill and gear... I never made that claim, so on that you're not actually disagreeing with me (in fact, I don't think anyone has ever made that claim... what sort of person would ever think there's a connection between between skill and gear? o3o).
However, if the claim I was making was somehting like "A certain level of gear is generally required to run a certain level of content". Wouldn't you agree that that is something that applies to WoW, and many other games, and maybe was intended to apply to CO in some form as well? Maybe that was the claim I was making, since that was the direct connection to wow's situation that I made.
Typically gear checks are done as DPS checks and afaik the only DPS check in CO is Duraclad, so nope, I don't think that really applies to CO PvE. In CO the main impact of gear is that it cuts down the time needed to kill stuff, so you farm faster.
You'll notice I conveniently separated the claims about gear and skill in the statement that you quoted, so that they would each be within their own context (I left out a lengthy explanation of how people generally need a certain tier of gear to attempt a certain tier of content because I thought that was general knowledge). Of course you would have to read past the parts that you colored red to see that
Now, how about that claim about tactics that you so conveniently and completely ignored?
I did see that and replied to it. Reread post #48 again. I really don't feel like bolding and underlining stuff again.
So then you agree with me, low skill effectively translates into standing there, randomly mashing buttons without any thought as to what's going on in the game, and then throwing the arms up into the air and loudly exclaiming "WHAT HAPPENED?!"... sounds like an episode of Game Grumps with Arin at the controller.
How long should the game be manufactured to cater to that level of "skill"? I think level 10 is a good cutoff point personally. What do you think?
Honestly, the earlier the better and I am a bigger fan of ARPGs over MMOs because of that.
Most MMOs including CO, Aion, Rift etc are, as I said, based on tab target + autohit and the skill cap is very low. In just about every tab target game you pretty much go herp derp accept quest, go to area, Tab, 1 2 3 3 3 4, collect loot, repeat all the way to cap, and many of them do offer a welfare endgame gearing path where you accept a repeatable daily and do the same thing all the way till you get geared.
I'm actually quite bored of CO right now because of that and waiting for them to do something interesting again, otherwise messing around on PTS is more fun than playing the actual game atm >_>
Typically gear checks are done as DPS checks and afaik the only DPS check in CO is Duraclad, so nope, I don't think that really applies to CO PvE. In CO the main impact of gear is that it cuts down the time needed to kill stuff, so you farm faster.
It's a bit more than that. Gear checks are actually used a lot more often as Tank and Healer checks, because no matter how well geared your dps is, if your tank goes down there's no way you're going to kill that boss before the wipe. That said, DPS checks do actually exist in CO, though certainly not in abundance. Ao'Qephoth is a DPS check (that a lot of people apparently fail), as is Warlord (the longer it takes, the more fire there is to get knocked into). The last phase of Fire and Ice is... well that's a pretty mild dps check, unless the group really messes up. Mega-Destroid in M-City is a dps check as well... albeit one that is rarely failed for several reasons. Basically, and fight with any sort of "You better kill the boss before this time" or "you have to put out this much dps or you'll never beat the boss" is a dps check, and we do have a handful of those.
The real question is, do you think "make stuff die faster" was, in the grand scheme of things, the only intended effect for gear to have? If so, why does gear have stats other than offense and crit chance on it?
I did see that and replied to it. Reread post #48 again. I really don't feel like bolding and underlining stuff again.
You really minimize what goes on in raid dungeons in WoW in that post. Your description really leans more towards describing CO. I've run wow raids, and they're definitely more mechanically complex than anything in the tutorial areas, or the general leveling zones. Blizzard has been quite creative with their little tab-target scheme, more so than most other MMOs.
Most MMOs including CO, Aion, Rift etc are, as I said, based on tab target + autohit and the skill cap is very low. In just about every tab target game you pretty much go herp derp accept quest, go to area, Tab, 1 2 3 3 3 4, collect loot, repeat all the way to cap, and many of them do offer a welfare endgame gearing path where you accept a repeatable daily and do the same thing all the way till you get geared.
Yes, that would be the experience if you never stepped into a raid dungeon. I do have to agree with the people who say "If you've never raided in WoW, then you never even started to experience what that game is really about". As for other games that offer exactly and only what you just described... well, those games are garbage imo, all filler no deliver ( though I'm sure someone enjoys it nonetheless ).
Trust me on this... if you try to herpderp your way through wow raids (at least the ones while I was playing) you probably won't be invited back next time, because nobody enjoys wiping repeatedly for hours cause of someone who thinks they can tunnel vision their way through that stuff.
I'm actually quite bored of CO right now because of that and waiting for them to do something interesting again, otherwise messing around on PTS is more fun than playing the actual game atm >_>
Yes. That would be a side effect of the really really low "activity requirement" of the game. Refresh my memory, what was it you were disagreeing with me about again?
Endgame content is the stuff that you do to increase your character effectiveness once you've reached the level cap. For the most part, there's no gray area here. First endgame content we get is UNITY. Run these missions enough and you get really good gear. Second endgame stage is running any Rampage that requires you to be level 40 to enter. The only gray area I see is ranking up mods to increase character effectiveness, but seeing as though you can help doing that with alts of any level, it doesn't really fit.
Grinding for costumes isn't endgame just because you can do it when you're level 40. Only thing you can't do at level 40 is the tutorial, that doesn't mean anything past that is endgame.
I don't see any reason why Champions would require a different set of rules to define endgame content, as it pretty much lines up (although sometimes in a wonky manner) with the widely accepted standard.
I don't see any reason why Champions would require a different set of rules to define endgame content, as it pretty much lines up (although sometimes in a wonky manner) with the widely accepted standard.
It doesn't need a new set of rules at all. All level-based games have the same definition of end-game: Stuff you do at max level to get relevant rewards. It's not restricted to character effectiveness, because that's not the only thing players care about, especially in a game where the Tailor constitutes at least 50% of the reason that people are playing the game. There's also questionite, which you'll find a lot of people care a lot more about than gear once they hit max level. End game is about rewards, not just gear rewards but all the rewards that players care about and are willing to put effort into at max level, and this is true in all games.
If they added a level 40 instanced 10 player mission and the only reward was one of a set of 20 possible costume pieces, would that be endgame?
All level-based games have the same definition of end-game: Stuff you do at max level to get relevant rewards.
That's a rather - ah - idiosyncratic definition. As Smacky points out, by that definition practically the entire game is endgame; the only things you can't rerun are the tutorial and the Crises.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
I wouldn't call that end game really as that is most of the game other than the old lower level missions before you get to 40.
I'd consider end game as the final challenge where everything you have built for on your character is challenged. We could really do with "challenge mode" or something versions of all the lairs in the game or atleast the best ones suited for making into challenging content. If they added these with some kinda leaderboard with how smoothely runs went / time completed etc and actually made it so you need a team by using certain mechanics to make all 5 players need to do their job well... Well I think that would truly be what I would consider end game.
But as it stands technically rampages are the most challenging content that you aim as the final thing to complete the game. Of course getting all your justice gear certainly doesn't mean you've done everything in the game, but what I'm saying is it's pretty much what the final mission would be in a single player game.
It doesn't need a new set of rules at all. All level-based games have the same definition of end-game: Stuff you do at max level to get relevant rewards. It's not restricted to character effectiveness, because that's not the only thing players care about, especially in a game where the Tailor constitutes at least 50% of the reason that people are playing the game.
It's not just stuff you do at max level, it's stuff you unlock specifically at max level to obtain those relevant rewards. And if we're using the same general set of rules, this does not include costumes.
There's also questionite, which you'll find a lot of people care a lot more about than gear once they hit max level. End game is about rewards, not just gear rewards but all the rewards that players care about and are willing to put effort into at max level, and this is true in all games.
Questionite is collected and used starting at level 6 (or 10?) so that can hardly be considered specifically endgame stuff. Is it useful at endgame? Yeah. But so are the potions you get from the VIP club (well, they are to me, dangit) which I can start buying at level 31. I wouldn't start labeling them endgame potions
If they added a level 40 instanced 10 player mission and the only reward was one of a set of 20 possible costume pieces, would that be endgame?
That would be a gray area, but in the most technical of terms, since it doesn't have the benefit of making your character more effective, then no I wouldn't consider it endgame content. But like I said, it's a gray area, and also a hypothetical, so let's not start bending the rules based on things that don't exist.
To put it succinctly, I'd say that endgame content is exclusive to those that have reached the level cap and that offers rewards to advance your character beyond just level. That would include anything that increases your numbers (again, though, exclusive to the level cap) or gives you extra abilities.
I'd consider end game as the final challenge where everything you have built for on your character is challenged.
The way I understand it, it's the final challenge, plus everything that gets you ready for that final challenge, as well.
But as it stands technically rampages are the most challenging content that you aim as the final thing to complete the game. Of course getting all your justice gear certainly doesn't mean you've done everything in the game, but what I'm saying is it's pretty much what the final mission would be in a single player game.
The wonkiness continues. I think all rampages should be only accessible to level 40 characters. I guess it's kinda nice that you can start getting some of the currency for Justice gear early, but at the end of the day, the endgame content looks like an ice cream cone with like 20 scoops on top with little rhyme or reason as to why they're all there.
First scoop is UNITY. Second scoop is the first Rampage mission. Next one is the second Rampage mission, and so on. It looks all sloppy because it doesn't seem to have been put together with a specific, unified goal in mind. Like if they said, before even implementing the first Rampage, "Okay, Rampages will be the second stage of endgame which will be team-only content that you can obtain Tier 2 equipment (Heroic gear being Tier 1), which you unlock after completing X amount of UNITY missions/reputation," then we'd have a neat-looking banana split, where UNITY is the banana, Rampages are the ice cream, and Justice Gear is the cherry on top. But since there's no rhyme or reason to it, we get this goofy ice cream cone that can be eaten from the middle, because there's no clear rules on how to eat it.
With some structure, the endgame could be clearly defined. It's kind of all there already, ready to be structured, but since it was built in such a piecemeal way, it just kinda wonked.
That's a rather - ah - idiosyncratic definition. As Smacky points out, by that definition practically the entire game is endgame; the only things you can't rerun are the tutorial and the Crises.
And as I pointed out (several times in fact) that is the case, because CO's endgame dramatically overlaps its mid game. The only way you can tell its endgame is because max-level players do it to get rewards that are actually relevant to them, in spite of the fact that they're doing it along side level 10s.
It's not just stuff you do at max level, it's stuff you unlock specifically at max level to obtain those relevant rewards. And if we're using the same general set of rules, this does not include costumes.
Yes, it is also those. But how does that mean costumes aren't included? Costumes are one of the most important rewards in this game. Would you be more upset if we took away all your costume unlocks, or if we took all your gear?
Questionite is collected and used starting at level 6 (or 10?) so that can hardly be considered specifically endgame stuff. Is it useful at endgame? Yeah. But so are the potions you get from the VIP club (well, they are to me, dangit) which I can start buying at level 31. I wouldn't start labeling them endgame potions
Again, like I just pointed out to Jon, I never said it was specifically endgame stuff... in fact I repeatedly stated that our endgame overlaps our midgame (go ahead and check, I actually typed that several times now already, not sure how people keep missing it). That kind of tends to happen when you have a system in place where max level characters can run the same content as level 10 characters and both be relevantly rewarded. Keep in mind that it is the relevancy of the rewards to a max level character that is key to determining if something is an endgame reward.
I wouldn't call the potions endgame content either. I don't think world of ******** players would call the potions they buy off the auction house endgame content either. On the other hand, farming mats and making elixirs certainly felt like a big aspect of endgame content in my day.
That would be a gray area, but in the most technical of terms, since it doesn't have the benefit of making your character more effective, then no I wouldn't consider it endgame content. But like I said, it's a gray area, and also a hypothetical, so let's not start bending the rules based on things that don't exist.
See that's where the limited definition of "stuff that makes your character more effective" is flawed, because it ignores so many of the things that players do once they hit max level simply because they don't have to do with combat. This definition especially falls short in a game like CO, where sitting in the tailor for hours is an activity that many people enjoy more than the combat; those people would likely stop playing the second that tailor stopped being a part of the game, the same as many WoW players would stop if raids disappeared as a game element.
To put it succinctly, I'd say that endgame content is exclusive to those that have reached the level cap and that offers rewards to advance your character beyond just level. That would include anything that increases your numbers (again, though, exclusive to the level cap) or gives you extra abilities.
And this definition would be entirely valid in another game. The problem is, you're using the context of that game to describe endgame in Champions Online, which just doesn't work because you're ignoring too much of Champions Online. You need a more all-inclusive defenition, one that can define end game seperate of any individual game. The only common threads between end game in all these games is that it's stuff you do once you're max level, and it's stuff you do to get rewards that are in some way relevant. In CO, end-game is not exclusive to max levels, by virtue of the game's own design.
With some structure, the endgame could be clearly defined. It's kind of all there already, ready to be structured, but since it was built in such a piecemeal way, it just kinda wonked.
Which is why our endgame overlaps with our mid-game.
It's a bit more than that. Gear checks are actually used a lot more often as Tank and Healer checks, because no matter how well geared your dps is, if your tank goes down there's no way you're going to kill that boss before the wipe. That said, DPS checks do actually exist in CO, though certainly not in abundance. Ao'Qephoth is a DPS check (that a lot of people apparently fail), as is Warlord (the longer it takes, the more fire there is to get knocked into). The last phase of Fire and Ice is... well that's a pretty mild dps check, unless the group really messes up. Mega-Destroid in M-City is a dps check as well... albeit one that is rarely failed for several reasons. Basically, and fight with any sort of "You better kill the boss before this time" or "you have to put out this much dps or you'll never beat the boss" is a dps check, and we do have a handful of those.
The real question is, do you think "make stuff die faster" was, in the grand scheme of things, the only intended effect for gear to have? If so, why does gear have stats other than offense and crit chance on it?
CD Redux and Cost Discount lets you spam big cooldowns and high energy attacks which should, theoretically at least, raise your DPS, although we all know cost discount is quite redundant because many high energy attacks aren't the best attack in their class. Defenses on gear lets you ignore mechanics so you need to kite/block less which again raises DPS.
You really minimize what goes on in raid dungeons in WoW in that post. Your description really leans more towards describing CO. I've run wow raids, and they're definitely more mechanically complex than anything in the tutorial areas, or the general leveling zones. Blizzard has been quite creative with their little tab-target scheme, more so than most other MMOs.
That's because I've never touched WoW. Until you describe what actually happens I'm not going to be able to say much about WoW in particular.
However, what I will say is that other games like TSW and GW2 have reputations for fun/challenging dungeons but even then I feel the skill cap is very low compared to other genres.
Also, the tactics to beat those dungeons are simply more intense skill checks for what you've been doing for the rest of the game, i.e. moving out of nasty-looking stuff on the floor, going pewpew and pressing the Interact button on interactible things at the right time.
Yes. That would be a side effect of the really really low "activity requirement" of the game. Refresh my memory, what was it you were disagreeing with me about again?
You were saying
That's like Blizz announcing their next expansion, and someone revealing "We'll be able to do all the end game in the new content wearing the gear we were grinding last year, and using tactics we used to beat the tutorial area".
That would be the point here. Yes, you have to jump around and use line of sight... but is that really the benchmark for challenging end game content? WoW players would laugh hysterically at that notion... as would most people playing most games that aren't specifically crafted to be played with one hand.
So that's 2 points:
First, that there's a gear check, based on "gear we were grinding last year".
I'm saying most MMOs don't actually emphasize that they have a gear check - I think that part is settled.
Second, that the tactics are "tactics we used to beat the tutorial area", and whether that is "really the benchmark for challenging end game content".
And I'm saying - yes. Many of the tactics used to beat the tutorial area are the same ones you use in the raid.
Just that instead of a tiny red circle on the ground that you simply need to sidestep out of within the next hour, you get bigger circles and lines and zigzags and spirals of nasty stuff to not stand in while adds come at you.
Occasionally, you may also need to use Ability X when the boss goes into Attack Y, which is exactly what CO used to teach in the tutorial with Block, but can be applied to anything from boss buffs that need to be purged to player debuffs that need to be cleansed to healing/defensive cooldowns or simply blocking that needs to be popped ahead of a burst of unavoidable damage, to casts that need to be interrupted, to LOSing some gigantic beam or somesuch.
So yes, IMO MMO endgame skillchecks are indeed based on the same tactics used to beat the tutorial area unless you care to describe how WoW does things differently. I do remember watching a video of a raid - I think LK era -where players drive around on some ridiculous-looking vehicle but even then the mechanics still looked like a typical MMO.
CD Redux and Cost Discount lets you spam big cooldowns and high energy attacks which should, theoretically at least, raise your DPS. Defenses on gear lets you ignore mechanics so you need to kite/block less which again raises DPS.
"Cake doesn't taste good, it just makes you not hungry".
All that stuff you mentioned before it also makes stuff die faster as a secondary effect also happened though uwu so I guess gear does do more stuff than just make stuff die faster.
However, what I will say is that other games like TSW and GW2 have reputations for fun/challenging dungeons but even then I feel the skill cap is very low compared to other genres.
Before I respond to this.. have you played TSW or GW2? u_u
Also, the tactics to beat those dungeons are simply more intense skill checks for what you've been doing for the rest of the game, i.e. moving out of nasty-looking stuff on the floor, going pewpew and pressing the Interact button on interactible things at the right time.
Yes, that's basically what I said earlier, remember?
First, that there's a gear check, based on "gear we were grinding last year".
I'm saying most MMOs don't actually emphasize that they have a gear check - I think that part is settled.
You do realize I wasn't actually implying that the big fat guy comes out on the stage at Blizzcon and talks about "next year we have gear check"....right? o3o
Second, that the tactics are "tactics we used to beat the tutorial area", and whether that is "really the benchmark for challenging end game content".
And I'm saying - yes. Many of the tactics used to beat the tutorial area are the same ones you use in the raid.
Just that instead of a tiny red circle on the ground that you simply need to sidestep out of within the next hour, you get bigger circles and lines and zigzags and spirals of nasty stuff to not stand in while adds come at you.
Occasionally, you may also need to use Ability X when the boss goes into Attack Y, which is exactly what CO used to teach in the tutorial with Block, but can be applied to anything from boss buffs that need to be purged to player debuffs that need to be cleansed to healing/defensive cooldowns or simply blocking that needs to be popped ahead of a burst of unavoidable damage, to casts that need to be interrupted, to LOSing some gigantic beam or somesuch.
So yes, IMO MMO endgame skillchecks are indeed based on the same tactics used to beat the tutorial area unless you care to describe how WoW does things differently.
You never played wow... and yet you talk about it as if you know what's going on in there.
First of all... there's no circles to not stand in in the tutorial area. You don't actually run into those until much later in the game. Most of open world stuff is the same kind of stuff we have: run in and beat stuff up. Most dungeons before the raid dungeons are the same thing, it's all fairly simple before you enter the raids. That's why a lot of players aren't prepared for their first raid; they think they're in for another tank-n-spank and suddenly the raid leader is talking about stuff like "Okay tank 1 you tank that guy over there, tank 2 you tank that guy over there, every twenty seconds bring your tanking targets close together so they debuff each other then seperate them again before they blow up. Ice mage, you kite that guy around the room, when you get the bomb debuff let the warlock aggro him and kite him the other way then you run away from the group so you don't blow anyone up. Okay when the boss freezes the room everyone remember to run behind the ice columns so he doesn't perma-freeze you, if anyone does get frozen everyone make sure to dps the ice to free them, but right before it bursts everyone but the tanks back off so you don't get hit by the aoe. In the meantime the warlock is gonna spam hellfire while the paladin heals him to aggro the swarms of murlocks that keep running in, just let the warlock and the paladin handle them. All right guys, phase 2 just started, now we're gonna...". That's why all the wipes; it's not like here where there's just 1 thing you have to watch out for... there's all sorts of things to watch out for and do in a fight, and it often changes from phase to phase.
"Cake doesn't taste good, it just makes you not hungry".
All that stuff you mentioned before it also makes stuff die faster as a secondary effect also happened though uwu so I guess gear does do more stuff than just make stuff die faster.
Yes but the end goal is still to cut down the time to do a run.
Then why are you referencing wow and talking about what happens in the game if you never played it? o.o
You were the one that referenced WoW I believe
Before I respond to this.. have you played TSW or GW2? u_u
Yes.
Yes, that's basically what I said earlier, remember?
Ok we are in agreement.
You do realize I wasn't actually implying that the big fat guy comes out on the stage at Blizzcon and talks about "next year we have gear check"....right? o3o
Then what are you talking about?
You never played wow... and yet you talk about it as if you know what's going on in there.
First of all... there's no circles to not stand in in the tutorial area. You don't actually run into those until much later in the game. Most of open world stuff is the same kind of stuff we have: run in and beat stuff up. Most dungeons before the raid dungeons are the same thing, it's all fairly simple before you enter the raids. That's why a lot of players aren't prepared for their first raid; they think they're in for another tank-n-spank and suddenly the raid leader is talking about stuff like "Okay tank 1 you tank that guy over there, tank 2 you tank that guy over there, every twenty seconds bring your tanking targets close together so they debuff each other then seperate them again before they blow up. Ice mage, you kite that guy around the room, when you get the bomb debuff let the warlock aggro him and kite him the other way then you run away from the group so you don't blow anyone up. Okay when the boss freezes the room everyone remember to run behind the ice columns so he doesn't perma-freeze you, if anyone does get frozen everyone make sure to dps the ice to free them, but right before it bursts everyone but the tanks back off so you don't get hit by the aoe. In the meantime the warlock is gonna spam hellfire while the paladin heals him to aggro the swarms of murlocks that keep running in, just let the warlock and the paladin handle them. All right guys, phase 2 just started, now we're gonna...". That's why all the wipes; it's not like here where there's just 1 thing you have to watch out for... there's all sorts of things to watch out for and do in a fight, and it often changes from phase to phase.
I was talking about MMOs in general and you extrapolated that to WoW without caring to explain why it is different until after the fact.
Based on what I gather from this, you're saying WoW's tutorial is terrible, but otherwise what is required of each player is still the same thing they're expected to do in a typical MMO's endgame content aka the "dance"?
Again, like I just pointed out to Jon, I never said it was specifically endgame stuff... in fact I repeatedly stated that our endgame overlaps our midgame (go ahead and check, I actually typed that several times now already, not sure how people keep missing it).
That's one reason we won't agree. You have a much more loose interpretation of the word 'endgame'. The way I've always known it, endgame content is something you start only when you get to the last level as a way to further develop your character, it's not endgame. (And repeating your version over and over again doesn't make it more true. I guess it's up for debate who's right here, but we're not convincing one another, so we just won't agree on this.)
No circles to not stand in in the Tutorial? Has it been that long since you ran it? Black Talon calls down Orbital Strikes (usually just after trying to entangle you), and if you don't move you hurt. It's not that dissimilar in concept from, for instance, the fire patches Warlord lays down in the Harmon alert. If you stand there when the damage starts, you will die, something you should have learned in the Tutorial and honed fighting Arsonists in Westside.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
"Endgame" is universally understood as things you do in game when character progression has finished in terms of experience and levels. All skill / power points to do with said progression also has to be completely utilized.
The only form of progression, or what I call "enrichment" that's left is entirely external; be it in practical terms with gear or something purely cosmetic like costume unlocks or dyes. Either the gear or cosmetic items are unlocked by doing content exclusive to players having reached max level, or are so sought after that a lot of resource grinding by repeating endgame content to be able to afford them at player markets.
Endgame also doesn't have to do with doing content exclusive to max level players. If a level 40 in this game is still doing low to mid level stuff like APs or Lairs that scale accordingly to their level then that counts as endgame.
Trying to say that mid level stuff, if done at any level before the max is reached, counts as endgame makes no damn sense at all. Endgame primarily is about finding things to do at the end when doing everything else before the end has already been completed.
"Endgame" is universally understood as things you do in game when character progression has finished in terms of experience and levels. All skill / power points to do with said progression also has to be completely utilized.
The only form of progression, or what I call "enrichment" that's left is entirely external; be it in practical terms with gear or something purely cosmetic like costume unlocks or dyes. Either the gear or cosmetic items are unlocked by doing content exclusive to players having reached max level, or are so sought after that a lot of resource grinding by repeating endgame content to be able to afford them at player markets.
Thanks for saying that in smarter words than I could muster. :P
Endgame also doesn't have to do with doing content exclusive to max level players. If a level 40 in this game is still doing low to mid level stuff like APs or Lairs that scale accordingly to their level then that counts as endgame.
This part I don't agree with, though. I think there's a distinction to make. In Serpent Lantern, do you get anything at all that helps your character progression at endgame, or do you just get the same type of rewards as doing it in lower levels, with the only difference being the item level?
The reason I make a distinction between the two is because it's just another repeatable mission, not meant to do anything for your endgame progression. If it's the same gear you can get fighting any other level 40 mobs in any other mission, then it doesn't really have any specific place as endgame content.
For instance, you wouldn't count the last few missions of a late-game story arc that you reach at the last level, as part of end-game content, right? They're just missions that happen to be level 40 that don't offer anything special.
Endgame progression typically has gear/ability rewards exclusive to the endgame, that's why it's set apart from other content.
seems this argument has been on lots of other forums before.
IMO it looks like a "and/or" situation of what end game is in an MMO. Thing is that CO's "hardest content" can be played at level 35 which is sort of a conflict on the argument of what end game is. I'm going to put it like this, CO doesn't have a true end game.
Yes but the end goal is still to cut down the time to do a run.
For some people that is the end goal. There are others who build their entire setup around survivability without really thinking about making it go faster; they just want to be invincible. Then there are those few precious souls who still build their character entirely around being a healing god; they didn't build with the goal of making the run go faster, they just want to make others invincible. Both have the side effect of making the run go faster by there being less dying and running back from respawns (but only if that had a chance of happening if they hadn't built the way they did; in some cases their builds are actually making the run go slower because no one would have died anyways so all they did was lower the combined dps of the group).
That's like Blizz announcing their next expansion, and someone revealing "We'll be able to do all the end game in the new content wearing the gear we were grinding last year, and using tactics we used to beat the tutorial area".
Blizz announces a new expansion. Then someone reveals that all the content will be runnable using gear from the previous year. Notice I said Blizz announces the new expansion, but did not say that Blizz reveals that the content will be runnable with previous gear. The someone is probably a player like Brou who finds stuff out before everyone else. You went to a weird place thinking I was saying a blizz guy was on stage talking about gear checks o3o it's also a mystery why that would be relevant to the conversation.
I was talking about MMOs in general and you extrapolated that to WoW without caring to explain why it is different until after the fact.
I didn't realize I needed to explain what happens in WoW because you talked as if you knew what goes on in the game... you did that by directly talking about in game events as if you knew for a fact that they were all that the game consisted of. If you do that, people may assume that you know what you're talking about; not everyone is going to assume that you're pretending to know what you're talking about o3o
Based on what I gather from this, you're saying WoW's tutorial is terrible, but otherwise what is required of each player is still the same thing they're expected to do in a typical MMO's endgame content aka the "dance"?
You asked me to say what goes on in WoW so I told you. You made the claim that end game in wow asks the player to only use the stuff they learned in the tutorial, so I told you that's not the case. That is what I am saying o3o. Maybe you think the tutorial in WoW is bad, but it is actually very well designed: you don't just dump everything on the player right at the start of the game. You start them off with the basics and then gradually ease them into more and more complex content; this is one of the reasons WoW became so popular, it has a nice easy learning curve.
This part I don't agree with, though. I think there's a distinction to make. In Serpent Lantern, do you get anything at all that helps your character progression at endgame, or do you just get the same type of rewards as doing it in lower levels, with the only difference being the item level?
The reason I make a distinction between the two is because it's just another repeatable mission, not meant to do anything for your endgame progression. If it's the same gear you can get fighting any other level 40 mobs in any other mission, then it doesn't really have any specific place as endgame content.
For instance, you wouldn't count the last few missions of a late-game story arc that you reach at the last level, as part of end-game content, right? They're just missions that happen to be level 40 that don't offer anything special.
Endgame progression typically has gear/ability rewards exclusive to the endgame, that's why it's set apart from other content.
You're right, there isn't any real character progression doing SL at level 40 as compared to doing it at say 20 and there isn't any real endgame-specific rewards. The gameplay experience however with how you interact with enemies with a level 40 build would be different than what it was at level 20 with a less-developed build. That IMO could make for new gameplay experience at level 40.
It's repeatable content just like any content exclusive to max-level players. Only difference that it's content tailored universally for low to mid to max level ranges, so technically IMO it can count as endgame content.
That's one reason we won't agree. You have a much more loose interpretation of the word 'endgame'. The way I've always known it, endgame content is something you start only when you get to the last level as a way to further develop your character, it's not endgame. (And repeating your version over and over again doesn't make it more true. I guess it's up for debate who's right here, but we're not convincing one another, so we just won't agree on this.)
Thanks for saying that in smarter words than I could muster. :P
Wait... so you agree with me or you don't? Which one is the real Smackwell? The thing you just thanked Jenny for saying is in large part the point I've been making that you've been vehemently disagreeing with
No circles to not stand in in the Tutorial? Has it been that long since you ran it? Black Talon calls down Orbital Strikes (usually just after trying to entangle you), and if you don't move you hurt. It's not that dissimilar in concept from, for instance, the fire patches Warlord lays down in the Harmon alert. If you stand there when the damage starts, you will die, something you should have learned in the Tutorial and honed fighting Arsonists in Westside.
We were talking about the WoW tutorial area Jon. If you had read further than halfway through the first sentence in that paragraph, you would have seen that
Endgame progression typically has gear/ability rewards exclusive to the endgame, that's why it's set apart from other content.
End game isn't defined by the gate, but by the players doing it. If over in WoW they let players 1 level less than max start running end game raids and made all the gear usable by them... does the game suddenly no longer have any end game?
End game isn't defined by the gate, but by the players doing it. If over in WoW they let players 1 level less than max start running end game raids and made all the gear usable by them... does the game suddenly no longer have any end game?
Actually it's very much defined by the gate. Rampage alerts have an entry level of min level 35 and they're intended very much as endgame content. NemCon has it at 40.
I never played WoW but have read enough about how stringent raiding parties can be with who they let into the group, elitist at that even. I don't know if your example is meant to be purely hypothetical or an actual game mechanic, but if a player 1 level away from the max is allowed to join up, there's either already a general consensus within the party that there's a minimum level gate, or the game has already decided it for the player.
Also isn't there a "gear rating" gate for raids in WoW, like in if your overall gear rating doesn't meet the intended score, you're considered not qualified for the raid?
Actually it's very much defined by the gate. Rampage alerts have an entry level of min level 35 and they're intended very much as endgame content. NemCon has it at 40.
I never played WoW but have read enough about how stringent raiding parties can be with who they let into the group, elitist at that even. I don't know if your example is meant to be purely hypothetical or an actual game mechanic, but if a player 1 level away from the max is allowed to join up, there's either already a general consensus within the party that there's a minimum level gate, or the game has already decided it for the player.
The actual in game gate is changed to 1 level less than max level. According to Smackwell this means that WoW no longer has any endgame content because nothing in the game is exclusive to max-lvl players according to the game mechanics. Or at least that's what I gather by his hard line stance on "End game content is only accessable by max level players".
"
Endgame also doesn't have to do with doing content exclusive to max level players. If a level 40 in this game is still doing low to mid level stuff like APs or Lairs that scale accordingly to their level then that counts as endgame.
Nemcon and Unity are two things that you must be maximum level to do. Rampages and Lairs are high level stuff, but you do not have to be max level to do them. Nemcon and Unity are unquestionably endgame, but they are not the only things worthwhile to do at level 40.
Now get into Nemcon and ask all your teammates to leave, then solo it with your ungeared inferno AT and post another video!
Wait... so you agree with me or you don't? Which one is the real Smackwell? The thing you just thanked Jenny for saying is in large part the point I've been making that you've been vehemently disagreeing with
Do not agree. The way I read it, it was more within my area of thinking, barring that other part that I disagreed with. Endgame content is introduced at the end of the game. Not at level 11 when you can start gaining Questionite and running Comic Series/Adventure Packs.
End game isn't defined by the gate, but by the players doing it. If over in WoW they let players 1 level less than max start running end game raids and made all the gear usable by them... does the game suddenly no longer have any end game?
The actual in game gate is changed to 1 level less than max level. According to Smackwell this means that WoW no longer has any endgame content because nothing in the game is exclusive to max-lvl players according to the game mechanics. Or at least that's what I gather by his hard line stance on "End game content is only accessable by max level players".
Well, they've changed their rules since I've played. If their endgame stuff can be accessed a level early, fine. But this is where the wonkiness of Champions' seemingly-not-very-well-thought-out endgame content comes into play.
If any of the endgame content was thought out in advance, I really believe that it would have been UNITY missions first, then Rampages. It's progression. You do the easier stuff first to get the easier-to-get gear, then move up to the next level. With the way stuff was made, though, with seemingly not a real goal in mind, it's full of wonk. For our progression, we have a strange cobble of Partial Tier 3 -> Tier 1/Tier 2/Tier 1 -> Partial Tier 3.
That is, Rampages before 40 to get some tokens -> UNITY/Lockbox Legion/Mercenary -> Level 40 Rampages.
But from the cries of many players who can't be bothered to get a stinkin' dude to level 40 ("All new content should be playable by anyone!") Rampages became pre-40 content (and this was even before they probably even had Justice gear in their scopes).
Generally, you want to acquire gear in the proper order anyway, so you can be effective and not be a stinky leech in the hardest Rampages. So the obvious route is to start with UNITY missions. Or you can buy your way into power by buying equivalent Mercenary gear or be lucky and get some Legion gear too. Regardless, you probably want to do all this stuff (which I think is poorly designed) before you fire off into the harder, level 40 Rampages.
This is why I said earlier that all Rampages should be level 40, to have a clear path of endgame progression. Throwing lockboxes into the mix really muddled it up, and having pre-40, already-existing Rampages tacked on as a requirement for the final pieces of gear was a mistake in my eyes. The whole thing lacks focus, because it was jury-rigged (har har) by different development teams just trying to give something to the players.
All that crap said, I still don't consider Adventure Packs/Comic Series, pre-40 Rampages (well, maybe bend the rules as partial-endgame, I dunno, it's too cobbled together to pin down - WONK!), Questionite Farming, Costume Farming, and pumping quarters for lockboxes any kind of end-game content.
Nemcon and Unity are two things that you must be maximum level to do. Rampages and Lairs are high level stuff, but you do not have to be max level to do them. Nemcon and Unity are unquestionably endgame, but they are not the only things worthwhile to do at level 40.
I could be wrong, but I thought you can get the mission for Nemesis Confrontation at 38 or 39? It's been a long while since I've run it.
For some people that is the end goal. There are others who build their entire setup around survivability without really thinking about making it go faster; they just want to be invincible. Then there are those few precious souls who still build their character entirely around being a healing god; they didn't build with the goal of making the run go faster, they just want to make others invincible. Both have the side effect of making the run go faster by there being less dying and running back from respawns (but only if that had a chance of happening if they hadn't built the way they did; in some cases their builds are actually making the run go slower because no one would have died anyways so all they did was lower the combined dps of the group).
In other words, the end goal is to make the run go faster, but not all people do it optimally.
You also referenced it a bunch of times, directly describing what you believe happens in the game. You really gonna make me quote it?
Please do so I can clarify.
Good, cause I haven't so I don't really have anything to say about those games. See how that works?
Not really, see above.
Blizz announces a new expansion. Then someone reveals that all the content will be runnable using gear from the previous year. Notice I said Blizz announces the new expansion, but did not say that Blizz reveals that the content will be runnable with previous gear. The someone is probably a player like Brou who finds stuff out before everyone else. You went to a weird place thinking I was saying a blizz guy was on stage talking about gear checks o3o it's also a mystery why that would be relevant to the conversation.
Okay, so a player says they can do it undergeared. Doesn't that happen all the time in just about every game?
I didn't realize I needed to explain what happens in WoW because you talked as if you knew what goes on in the game... you did that by directly talking about in game events as if you knew for a fact that they were all that the game consisted of. If you do that, people may assume that you know what you're talking about; not everyone is going to assume that you're pretending to know what you're talking about o3o
As above - please quote so I can clarify.
You asked me to say what goes on in WoW so I told you. You made the claim that end game in wow asks the player to only use the stuff they learned in the tutorial, so I told you that's not the case. That is what I am saying o3o. Maybe you think the tutorial in WoW is bad, but it is actually very well designed: you don't just dump everything on the player right at the start of the game. You start them off with the basics and then gradually ease them into more and more complex content; this is one of the reasons WoW became so popular, it has a nice easy learning curve.
First of all... there's no circles to not stand in in the tutorial area. You don't actually run into those until much later in the game. Most of open world stuff is the same kind of stuff we have: run in and beat stuff up. Most dungeons before the raid dungeons are the same thing, it's all fairly simple before you enter the raids. That's why a lot of players aren't prepared for their first raid...
I think the argument was about whether the tactics in MMO endgames are drastically different from their tutorials which eventually got sidetracked to my knowledge of WoW for some reason.
In other words, the end goal is to make the run go faster, but not all people do it optimally.
No, the end goal was tankiness or healing. Making the run go faster was a side effect. If you ask those people "why did you build this way?" they will say "I wanted to survive anything" or "I wanted to be able to heal people through anything". That is their stated end goal; you can't speak for them.
Okay, so a player says they can do it undergeared. Doesn't that happen all the time in just about every game?
So now you want to switch to an argument about whether players are trustworthy or something? o3o why? Also, you don't seem to understand the implication: In WoW "we can run the upcoming content with last year's gear" has much much bigger implications than saying the same thing in CO. WoW's content is very specifically gear-gated.
Both of course. Wouldn't you say that 80+ levels of easy content to learn how all your abilities work is an easy learning curve? Learning raid mechanics starts with the first raid (kind of makes sense o3o) which is why players are often not prepared for the addition of stuff they have to think about. Both statements are 100% accurate.
I think the argument was about whether the tactics in MMO endgames are drastically different from their tutorials which eventually got sidetracked to my knowledge of WoW for some reason.
It's because you wanted to lump WoW in with other games and as a result were making the claim that WoW's endgame only has the same mechanics as it's starting areas, which isn't even close to true; you weren't aware of this because you've never actually played the game....so maybe trying to talk about it at all was a bad idea. Should have just said "Well I've never played that game, so I don't know anything about that" o3o
Do not agree. The way I read it, it was more within my area of thinking, barring that other part that I disagreed with. Endgame content is introduced at the end of the game. Not at level 11 when you can start gaining Questionite and running Comic Series/Adventure Packs.
"Endgame" is universally understood as things you do in game when character progression has finished in terms of experience and levels. All skill / power points to do with said progression also has to be completely utilized.
The only form of progression, or what I call "enrichment" that's left is entirely external; be it in practical terms with gear or something purely cosmetic like costume unlocks or dyes. Either the gear or cosmetic items are unlocked by doing content exclusive to players having reached max level, or are so sought after that a lot of resource grinding by repeating endgame content to be able to afford them at player markets.
"Stuff you do when you're level 40 to get rewards, which can include cosmetic stuff like costumes"
Endgame content is the stuff that you do to increase your character effectiveness once you've reached the level cap. For the most part, there's no gray area here. First endgame content we get is UNITY. Run these missions enough and you get really good gear. Second endgame stage is running any Rampage that requires you to be level 40 to enter. The only gray area I see is ranking up mods to increase character effectiveness, but seeing as though you can help doing that with alts of any level, it doesn't really fit.
Grinding for costumes isn't endgame just because you can do it when you're level 40. Only thing you can't do at level 40 is the tutorial, that doesn't mean anything past that is endgame.
It doesn't need a new set of rules at all. All level-based games have the same definition of end-game: Stuff you do at max level to get relevant rewards. It's not restricted to character effectiveness, because that's not the only thing players care about, especially in a game where the Tailor constitutes at least 50% of the reason that people are playing the game. There's also questionite, which you'll find a lot of people care a lot more about than gear once they hit max level. End game is about rewards, not just gear rewards but all the rewards that players care about and are willing to put effort into at max level, and this is true in all games.
Well, they've changed their rules since I've played. If their endgame stuff can be accessed a level early, fine. But this is where the wonkiness of Champions' seemingly-not-very-well-thought-out endgame content comes into play.
I'm almost tempted to interpret this is you saying that WoW sets the rules for what end game is for the entire genre o3o but I won't do that.
And personally I think CO's lack of strict level gating and avoidance of a rigid gear ladder is a strength of the game, and I think I've seen many other people echo those sentiments ^_^
No, the end goal was tankiness or healing. Making the run go faster was a side effect. If you ask those people "why did you build this way?" they will say "I wanted to survive anything" or "I wanted to be able to heal people through anything". That is their stated end goal; you can't speak for them.
So why do they want to survive or heal people through anything? Is the end goal not to get stuff done efficiently i.e. more quickly? Also, do the elitist speedrunner guilds build that way in WoW? I am genuinely curious. On Aion and TSW what we'd do is once the tank or healer got their survivability/healing covered they'd stretch their DPS as far as they could while still being able to perform their main job. On TSW it went a step further with healtanking and then leechtanking, i.e. a healtank that covers all healing/tanking needs while still doing DPS.
Nothing above this seems to apply. Please clarify.
I meant I have no idea where you got the impression I was talking about WoW so you need to quote that before I can address that point.
So now you want to switch to an argument about whether players are trustworthy or something? o3o why? Also, you don't seem to understand the implication: In WoW "we can run the upcoming content with last year's gear" has much much bigger implications than saying the same thing in CO. WoW's content is very specifically gear-gated.
Sure, explain to me how big an implication gear makes in WoW. In Aion back when the cap was 55 we actually used to run endgame lv55 instances in level 40 gear and no one raised an eyebrow. On TSW I got my friend set up with a healing build in all blues and explained the rotation and she could put out more HPS than a fully raid-geared healer who had a terrible rotation.
I'm also under the impression that undergeared/undermanned runs of MMOs and RPGs on Twitch or YouTube are a thing and generate a lot of Likes along with the occasional cries of "exploit" and "nerf". That's what I meant by players do this all the time
Both of course. Wouldn't you say that 80+ levels of easy content to learn how all your abilities work is an easy learning curve? Learning raid mechanics starts with the first raid (kind of makes sense o3o) which is why players are often not prepared for the addition of stuff they have to think about. Both statements are 100% accurate.
It's because you wanted to lump WoW in with other games and as a result were making the claim that WoW's endgame only has the same mechanics as it's starting areas, which isn't even close to true; you weren't aware of this because you've never actually played the game....so maybe trying to talk about it at all was a bad idea. Should have just said "Well I've never played that game, so I don't know anything about that" o3o
Well from what you described, it sounds like what is required of each player in the average WoW raid is no different from what is required of a player running endgame content in another MMO. At the end of the day you still run and jump and LOS in a certain order while pressing a sequence of numbers on your skill palette. Same thing you do in many tutorials, even if not WoW's.
UNITY missions = technically end-game cause they can only be accessed at max level
Rampages = late-game content, and can be end-game content for those already at lvl 40
Side-kicking throws a bit of a wrench into the equation. So to me, it'd come down to whether you accept a non-lvl 40 who is side-kicked to max level to be at the end-game or not in a Rampage. Even if its lvl 35-39 accessible, no hero is below max level from the vantage point of the actual content.
If it was otherwise, then certain mechanics, for ex, would not affect non-max characters in the same way, which isn't the case in CO- you just feel the weight of having weaker gear/stats. In the Rampages there aren't different levels of potency of a spell depending on the actual level of the target- its all max-level assumed. Thus, imo, Rampages are an example of content that is tuned to be end-game, but is late-game accessible thanks to a game-specific system (sidekicking).
Its a weird area just because there's a variable that somewhat defies conventions of when terms like 'end-game' were originally setup.
UNITY missions = technically end-game cause they can only be accessed at max level
Rampages = late-game content, and can be end-game content for those already at lvl 40
Side-kicking throws a bit of a wrench into the equation. So to me, it'd come down to whether you accept a non-lvl 40 who is side-kicked to max level to be at the end-game or not in a Rampage. Even if its lvl 35-39 accessible, no hero is below max level from the vantage point of the actual content.
If it was otherwise, then certain mechanics, for ex, would not affect non-max characters in the same way, which isn't the case in CO- you just feel the weight of having weaker gear/stats. In the Rampages there aren't different levels of potency of a spell depending on the actual level of the target- its all max-level assumed. Thus, imo, Rampages are an example of content that is tuned to be end-game, but is late-game accessible thanks to a game-specific system (sidekicking).
Its a weird area just because there's a variable that somewhat defies conventions of when terms like 'end-game' were originally setup.
More so is that even for "endgame" content (rampages), the demands on an *individual player basis* are that much lower (yes, even F&I). Yes, they require one (or two, for F&I) players in basically "endgame gear" (which includes heroics, funnily enough), but beyond that gear checks in this game are almost absent. Prefer to have it this way, actually, as opposed as to how most Asian MMOs handle it.
Ps For the record, I did tank gravitar at lvl 37. In heirloom. A good rampage team is still a wonder to behold. So keep queuing your endgame chars.
Ah the ever elusive beast rarest among rare among MMO. End Game, a nearly mythical creature, some say it has never been proven to exist, while others say it is the light at the end of the tunnel for those with faith enough to see it shining bright.
Its no secret here City Of X was my most beloved of MMO, and a large part of that was it didnt ever seem to worry over the idea. At least not until its final era of the Incarnates and having a real aspect of character power that was only useable or even needed in the most recent and fine tuned of content. Ofcourse there was plenty of debate and hate even on that. Some loathed how now the more casual players with the aid of incarnate power where venturing into old lvl cap TFs like Lady Grey and Imperious and doing quite well compared to pre incarnate.
Personally I had loved CoX and their sidekick exemplar system and mission sharing/synching probably more then any other aspect as far as party mechanics go. And while we technically had those things on CO, it didnt feel nearly as polished or well planned out.
I really never got tired of spending a few hours every time I logged on to CoX running a few low to mid lvl TFs or SFs with one of my maxxed out characters. Partly because even if working on a new alt who wasnt ready for the TFs I wanted to run, the characters who did run, could always pass on their earnings via hero merit bought IOs like the Luck of the gambler global recharge special which would always net healthy amounts of inf. Or even just keep a lvl 25 LOTG for when the new alt was ready for it since all my builds had 5 of them slotted.
Frankly to me the idea of end game content is just a pipe dream, and the ideal goal is make it so any content is viable to run with any toon at any time. This makes pugging so very much more friendly, especially to new comers who usually get turned off rapidly by seeing certain bits of content ground out over and over.
Id personally think them taking time to fine tune the way side kicking up and down in lvls works here would be a great thing. as would making it so content rewards where generic tokens that could be turned in for just about anything a character could want of any lvl range.
Id imagine for example that when ever you start a character actually getting to pre select all their level up aspects at creation, removing the need to even go to a power trainer unless they wanted to respec, and then allowing players when they side kick up to get access to those future abilities. In a way being shown how and or having higher end gear and abilities being accessible due to the presence of a mentor. Robin after all didnt get to take the batwing out on his own early on, but might well be ordered to use it while in the field with bats.
So why do they want to survive or heal people through anything? Is the end goal not to get stuff done efficiently i.e. more quickly? Also, do the elitist speedrunner guilds build that way in WoW? I am genuinely curious. On Aion and TSW what we'd do is once the tank or healer got their survivability/healing covered they'd stretch their DPS as far as they could while still being able to perform their main job. On TSW it went a step further with healtanking and then leechtanking, i.e. a healtank that covers all healing/tanking needs while still doing DPS.
Because that is what they wanted their character to do well. Sometimes they do it because they want to be "most survivable tank in game" or "strongest healer in game". And that's where it ends; that was the end goal. You can tell because there are cases where them building that way slows down runs, and they are fully aware of this, and yet they continue to build that way because they set a very specific goal.
S
I meant I have no idea where you got the impression I was talking about WoW so you need to quote that before I can address that point.
You used very general statements where WoW was lumped in as one of "those" mmos. More specific examples would have helped. When you talk about "those" mmos, you're waving your hand at a very broad area.
Sure, explain to me how big an implication gear makes in WoW. In Aion back when the cap was 55 we actually used to run endgame lv55 instances in level 40 gear and no one raised an eyebrow. On TSW I got my friend set up with a healing build in all blues and explained the rotation and she could put out more HPS than a fully raid-geared healer who had a terrible rotation.
I'm also under the impression that undergeared/undermanned runs of MMOs and RPGs on Twitch or YouTube are a thing and generate a lot of Likes along with the occasional cries of "exploit" and "nerf". That's what I meant by players do this all the time
WoW is much more tightly balanced than those games then. There's a reason that those undergeared runs are considered an accomplishment, and it's because the vast majority of players will not be able to accomplish them; not only that, most players won't even bother attempting them because they know they'll fail.
In Champions Online, the same feat isn't an accomplishment close to that. It isn't an accomplishment at all. Here it's not "hey I ran a thing with gear thats a bit under the required ilvl" it's "I ran without any gear at all and we don't even know what that means because the concept of a required ilvl is fairly nebulous here".
No-gear runs of end-game content in WoW. Find me one of those. Well-geared tanks barely managed to survive same-tiered content when I played; a tank with no gear would drop from the first hit, then the rest of the ungeared raid would be dead a few seconds after that.
Well from what you described, it sounds like what is required of each player in the average WoW raid is no different from what is required of a player running endgame content in another MMO. At the end of the day you still run and jump and LOS in a certain order while pressing a sequence of numbers on your skill palette. Same thing you do in many tutorials, even if not WoW's.
Champions Online is another MMO right? Well, then I would like for you to explain how what is required of each player in the average wow raid is no different from what is required of a player running endgame content in CO. And make sure to cite specific fights and compare them to fights in CO, keeping in mind that the number of mechanics is important, as is the type of mechanics. If you like, you can simply answer "We don't have raids, so there's really no basis for comparison- what we consider difficult end game content is equivalent to what WoW players do in dungeons while leveling up".
The only form of progression, or what I call "enrichment" that's left is entirely external; be it in practical terms with gear or something purely cosmetic like costume unlocks or dyes.
She called your gear external as well. Soooooo... the external gear you agree with, but the external costume unlocks you don't? Is the external gear external in some different external way? o3o
Nemcon drops costume unlocks, questionite, and mods that people will use u3u but not gear that anyone would ever use....well, unless you count using it for a laugh o3o
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Rampages are 35+ (and if you can arbitrarily set the requirement for something being endgame to lvl 35, then why can't we arbitrarily set it to any other number other than max level?). Custom Alerts open up way before that. We have zero lairs that are restricted to level 40 players (go ahead and check TT, you can get the quest and enter before lvl 40). If you want to go by strict definitions like that, then we have no endgame content at all. You have to get to the basics of what end game means, which is simply: what max level characters do to get relevant rewards. The only commonality between end game in all games is that it's stuff you do to get stuff once you're done leveling.
The mission in the video is something level 40s will be running to gather relevant rewards. Unity missions, rampages, and all the alerts count as well. Hell, farming pre-40 mobs in Vibora Bay to get costume pieces counts as well, because it involves a reward that is very much relevant to the nature of the game, and it's something many max-level characters have done over the years. Our endgame may overlap with our early and mid game, but it still counts as end-game going by the basic definition of what end game is.
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I do find it interesting, however, to note that earlier conversations on the topic of difficulty have insisted that the proper method of increasing difficulty is to improve the AI, not to just make the mobs tougher and make then hit harder - and our basis of comparison in this thread has become WoW, where difficulty is increased by (come on, kids, sing along at home!) making the mobs tougher and making them hit harder. The things running around the Outlands are no smarter than the kobolds in the tutorial zone outside Stormwind, they're just bigger.
(Also, WoW has mobs respawn in instanced content - you can't clear the halls behind you and feel safe, because in ten minutes they'll be back. Thank Kirby that's not the case here!)
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See: Raid Mechanics.
Mobs in wow don't actually get tougher or hit harder relative to your character unless you purposely go to a zone that you are not high enough level for, or attempt a raid that you are not geared for. That's not difficulty, that's gating. Difficulty in WoW comes from fight mechanics that become progressively more complex and demanding of precision as you get further into a dungeon.
Let's be honest, when we say "AI" in a video game, we're not actually talking about real artificial intelligence; no game on the market has actually created NPCs that have gained self awareness, it's all just mechanics... or in our case, a lack of.
People keep referencing WoW because every day millions of people have fun playing that game because it has mechanics for them to think about, react to, and overcome. By comparison, CO seems like the tutorial never actually ended, and we're all still waiting to leave the starting area.
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Kay so I am actually in the "this game is kinda easy" crowd btw...
but I played a lot of WoW back in the day(first mmo I ever played infact and I am 100% certain I am not alone!)
but I was never a fan of the hard stuff and therefore never really did much endgame.
At this point I have done almost everything there is to do in CO and I am still thirsty for more.
So I guess I prefer facerolling most of the time, though something harder is ok too...
It reminds me of this animation: http://youtu.be/TnzafqZqFf0
It ends up getting to the point where he is paying someone else to play the game to get the stuff so he doesn't have to and can spend his time doing other things like... Playing a new free to play MMO.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Here:
You cited gear and tactics so I had to counter your claim about gear.
I believe I also addressed this too:
You still did not adress your obvious mistake/lie - you called something as being specifically our endgame, when it is not something comparable to WoW endgame lairs, but to WoW regular leveling patches.
And technically you shouldn't be able to get TT quests before lvl 35. Besides, lvl 35+ plus is at least a late game, as opposed to things unlocked as soon as are adventure packs.
^This. Sums. It.
And maybe CO needs specifically and exclusively lvl 40 gated and balanced content, but have a nice time trying to convince PWE to do so.
I actually always felt it was a good idea to keep players on their toes. Places like Stratholme are not supposed to be safe at all.
Stop using word "endgame" when you can't do it properly. Something that can be started as soon as level 11 or 20, and even more - it is made to scale to solo play on every level, is not an endgame by any definition.
A Nemcon could be called endgame. A Therakiel's Temple could be. They at leats start very late in the game.
But something that is basically an equivalent of an adventure pack mission playable at every level is not an edgame no matter how many times you will call it that way.
If you expect it being something special because you can walk into it with toon at 40 lvl instead at 11, well... Pity, but your expectations were just wrong and the problem is on your end.
You do realize that I mentioned the gear because gear was mentioned in the OP right? Remember the OP.. where part of the whole thing was IMP demonstrating that you can run new content wearing no gear? That was kind of the whole point of me making that claim about gear. Yes, there's no connection between skill and gear... I never made that claim, so on that you're not actually disagreeing with me (in fact, I don't think anyone has ever made that claim... what sort of person would ever think there's a connection between between skill and gear? o3o).
However, if the claim I was making was somehting like "A certain level of gear is generally required to run a certain level of content". Wouldn't you agree that that is something that applies to WoW, and many other games, and maybe was intended to apply to CO in some form as well? Maybe that was the claim I was making, since that was the direct connection to wow's situation that I made.
You'll notice I conveniently separated the claims about gear and skill in the statement that you quoted, so that they would each be within their own context (I left out a lengthy explanation of how people generally need a certain tier of gear to attempt a certain tier of content because I thought that was general knowledge). Of course you would have to read past the parts that you colored red to see that
Now, how about that claim about tactics that you so conveniently and completely ignored?
So then you agree with me, low skill effectively translates into standing there, randomly mashing buttons without any thought as to what's going on in the game, and then throwing the arms up into the air and loudly exclaiming "WHAT HAPPENED?!"... sounds like an episode of Game Grumps with Arin at the controller.
How long should the game be manufactured to cater to that level of "skill"? I think level 10 is a good cutoff point personally. What do you think?
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We're not playing WoW though. Going by that definition of endgame, we don't have any, so the entire discussion becomes moot and now we're talking about the skill demands of the entire game's content... which doesn't really help the "the game isn't easy" argument. It doesn't help it one bit. If that was your angle in this, sorry but it won't work, it just puts the low-skill-demand nature of the game even closer under the magnifying glass (of course I have an inkling that you just want to argue semantics and not the original issue, but I'm fine with that).
If your issue is that you disagree about the specifics of what "end game" means, well that's fine you're allowed to interpret it the way you like. I prefer to go right for the mechanical reality of it as it applies to all games, since as we see here you cannot take the specifics of WoW's endgame and apply it to a game like CO. Yes, WoW is big, and some people think it was the original MMO, but that doesn't mean it defines the genre.
Again, if your arbitary definition of "at least a late game" can be lvl 35+, why not everything past lvl 20? That's later than earlier.
All that sums up is my point about our endgame overlapping with our mid and early game.
Gated lvl 40 content is up for debate; I believe they tried that and it wasn't very popular. Again, that's because this just isn't World of ********.
Again, you're going by the standards of another game, WoW, which is very different from how CO operates. I notice you're using "could be" a lot... and the only thing you're connecting that "could be" with is this notion that some arbitrary level is "late in the game", so again I ask why those levels and not any other point after the mid point? You may disagree with my definition, but at least you can agree that it's a lot more defined and specific than what you're pushing.
What an interesting turn you've taken here. How does what you typed here make sense considering many of the examples I gave of what CO's endgame is didn't fit the notion of "special because you walk into it with a toon at level 40"? In fact, the whole idea I'm pushing is that our endgame is something that both level 40s and pre-level 40s will be running (overlaping endgame, remember that?) This whole time you've been the one pushing WoW's "special top level content" idea of endgame, not me.
And how do you reconcile that notion with the fact that in this game, walking into certain areas at level 40 does in fact make them different from if you walked into them at a lower level (i.e. scaling instances)?
You sure there aren't any problems on your end? Specifically in the basis of your argument?
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Typically gear checks are done as DPS checks and afaik the only DPS check in CO is Duraclad, so nope, I don't think that really applies to CO PvE. In CO the main impact of gear is that it cuts down the time needed to kill stuff, so you farm faster.
I did see that and replied to it. Reread post #48 again. I really don't feel like bolding and underlining stuff again.
Honestly, the earlier the better and I am a bigger fan of ARPGs over MMOs because of that.
Most MMOs including CO, Aion, Rift etc are, as I said, based on tab target + autohit and the skill cap is very low. In just about every tab target game you pretty much go herp derp accept quest, go to area, Tab, 1 2 3 3 3 4, collect loot, repeat all the way to cap, and many of them do offer a welfare endgame gearing path where you accept a repeatable daily and do the same thing all the way till you get geared.
I'm actually quite bored of CO right now because of that and waiting for them to do something interesting again, otherwise messing around on PTS is more fun than playing the actual game atm >_>
It's a bit more than that. Gear checks are actually used a lot more often as Tank and Healer checks, because no matter how well geared your dps is, if your tank goes down there's no way you're going to kill that boss before the wipe. That said, DPS checks do actually exist in CO, though certainly not in abundance. Ao'Qephoth is a DPS check (that a lot of people apparently fail), as is Warlord (the longer it takes, the more fire there is to get knocked into). The last phase of Fire and Ice is... well that's a pretty mild dps check, unless the group really messes up. Mega-Destroid in M-City is a dps check as well... albeit one that is rarely failed for several reasons. Basically, and fight with any sort of "You better kill the boss before this time" or "you have to put out this much dps or you'll never beat the boss" is a dps check, and we do have a handful of those.
The real question is, do you think "make stuff die faster" was, in the grand scheme of things, the only intended effect for gear to have? If so, why does gear have stats other than offense and crit chance on it?
You really minimize what goes on in raid dungeons in WoW in that post. Your description really leans more towards describing CO. I've run wow raids, and they're definitely more mechanically complex than anything in the tutorial areas, or the general leveling zones. Blizzard has been quite creative with their little tab-target scheme, more so than most other MMOs.
I agree, earlier is better. Which is why it's unfortunate that in CO it basically waits until the very end, and then only mildly ups the ante.
Yes, that would be the experience if you never stepped into a raid dungeon. I do have to agree with the people who say "If you've never raided in WoW, then you never even started to experience what that game is really about". As for other games that offer exactly and only what you just described... well, those games are garbage imo, all filler no deliver ( though I'm sure someone enjoys it nonetheless ).
Trust me on this... if you try to herpderp your way through wow raids (at least the ones while I was playing) you probably won't be invited back next time, because nobody enjoys wiping repeatedly for hours cause of someone who thinks they can tunnel vision their way through that stuff.
Yes. That would be a side effect of the really really low "activity requirement" of the game. Refresh my memory, what was it you were disagreeing with me about again?
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Grinding for costumes isn't endgame just because you can do it when you're level 40. Only thing you can't do at level 40 is the tutorial, that doesn't mean anything past that is endgame.
I don't see any reason why Champions would require a different set of rules to define endgame content, as it pretty much lines up (although sometimes in a wonky manner) with the widely accepted standard.
It doesn't need a new set of rules at all. All level-based games have the same definition of end-game: Stuff you do at max level to get relevant rewards. It's not restricted to character effectiveness, because that's not the only thing players care about, especially in a game where the Tailor constitutes at least 50% of the reason that people are playing the game. There's also questionite, which you'll find a lot of people care a lot more about than gear once they hit max level. End game is about rewards, not just gear rewards but all the rewards that players care about and are willing to put effort into at max level, and this is true in all games.
If they added a level 40 instanced 10 player mission and the only reward was one of a set of 20 possible costume pieces, would that be endgame?
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I'd consider end game as the final challenge where everything you have built for on your character is challenged. We could really do with "challenge mode" or something versions of all the lairs in the game or atleast the best ones suited for making into challenging content. If they added these with some kinda leaderboard with how smoothely runs went / time completed etc and actually made it so you need a team by using certain mechanics to make all 5 players need to do their job well... Well I think that would truly be what I would consider end game.
But as it stands technically rampages are the most challenging content that you aim as the final thing to complete the game. Of course getting all your justice gear certainly doesn't mean you've done everything in the game, but what I'm saying is it's pretty much what the final mission would be in a single player game.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
It's not just stuff you do at max level, it's stuff you unlock specifically at max level to obtain those relevant rewards. And if we're using the same general set of rules, this does not include costumes.
Questionite is collected and used starting at level 6 (or 10?) so that can hardly be considered specifically endgame stuff. Is it useful at endgame? Yeah. But so are the potions you get from the VIP club (well, they are to me, dangit) which I can start buying at level 31. I wouldn't start labeling them endgame potions
That would be a gray area, but in the most technical of terms, since it doesn't have the benefit of making your character more effective, then no I wouldn't consider it endgame content. But like I said, it's a gray area, and also a hypothetical, so let's not start bending the rules based on things that don't exist.
To put it succinctly, I'd say that endgame content is exclusive to those that have reached the level cap and that offers rewards to advance your character beyond just level. That would include anything that increases your numbers (again, though, exclusive to the level cap) or gives you extra abilities.
The way I understand it, it's the final challenge, plus everything that gets you ready for that final challenge, as well.
The wonkiness continues. I think all rampages should be only accessible to level 40 characters. I guess it's kinda nice that you can start getting some of the currency for Justice gear early, but at the end of the day, the endgame content looks like an ice cream cone with like 20 scoops on top with little rhyme or reason as to why they're all there.
First scoop is UNITY. Second scoop is the first Rampage mission. Next one is the second Rampage mission, and so on. It looks all sloppy because it doesn't seem to have been put together with a specific, unified goal in mind. Like if they said, before even implementing the first Rampage, "Okay, Rampages will be the second stage of endgame which will be team-only content that you can obtain Tier 2 equipment (Heroic gear being Tier 1), which you unlock after completing X amount of UNITY missions/reputation," then we'd have a neat-looking banana split, where UNITY is the banana, Rampages are the ice cream, and Justice Gear is the cherry on top. But since there's no rhyme or reason to it, we get this goofy ice cream cone that can be eaten from the middle, because there's no clear rules on how to eat it.
With some structure, the endgame could be clearly defined. It's kind of all there already, ready to be structured, but since it was built in such a piecemeal way, it just kinda wonked.
And as I pointed out (several times in fact) that is the case, because CO's endgame dramatically overlaps its mid game. The only way you can tell its endgame is because max-level players do it to get rewards that are actually relevant to them, in spite of the fact that they're doing it along side level 10s.
By your definition then, we have no end game... and probably never will.
Yes, it is also those. But how does that mean costumes aren't included? Costumes are one of the most important rewards in this game. Would you be more upset if we took away all your costume unlocks, or if we took all your gear?
Again, like I just pointed out to Jon, I never said it was specifically endgame stuff... in fact I repeatedly stated that our endgame overlaps our midgame (go ahead and check, I actually typed that several times now already, not sure how people keep missing it). That kind of tends to happen when you have a system in place where max level characters can run the same content as level 10 characters and both be relevantly rewarded. Keep in mind that it is the relevancy of the rewards to a max level character that is key to determining if something is an endgame reward.
I wouldn't call the potions endgame content either. I don't think world of ******** players would call the potions they buy off the auction house endgame content either. On the other hand, farming mats and making elixirs certainly felt like a big aspect of endgame content in my day.
See that's where the limited definition of "stuff that makes your character more effective" is flawed, because it ignores so many of the things that players do once they hit max level simply because they don't have to do with combat. This definition especially falls short in a game like CO, where sitting in the tailor for hours is an activity that many people enjoy more than the combat; those people would likely stop playing the second that tailor stopped being a part of the game, the same as many WoW players would stop if raids disappeared as a game element.
And this definition would be entirely valid in another game. The problem is, you're using the context of that game to describe endgame in Champions Online, which just doesn't work because you're ignoring too much of Champions Online. You need a more all-inclusive defenition, one that can define end game seperate of any individual game. The only common threads between end game in all these games is that it's stuff you do once you're max level, and it's stuff you do to get rewards that are in some way relevant. In CO, end-game is not exclusive to max levels, by virtue of the game's own design.
Which is why our endgame overlaps with our mid-game.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
CD Redux and Cost Discount lets you spam big cooldowns and high energy attacks which should, theoretically at least, raise your DPS, although we all know cost discount is quite redundant because many high energy attacks aren't the best attack in their class. Defenses on gear lets you ignore mechanics so you need to kite/block less which again raises DPS.
That's because I've never touched WoW. Until you describe what actually happens I'm not going to be able to say much about WoW in particular.
However, what I will say is that other games like TSW and GW2 have reputations for fun/challenging dungeons but even then I feel the skill cap is very low compared to other genres.
Also, the tactics to beat those dungeons are simply more intense skill checks for what you've been doing for the rest of the game, i.e. moving out of nasty-looking stuff on the floor, going pewpew and pressing the Interact button on interactible things at the right time.
You were saying
So that's 2 points:
First, that there's a gear check, based on "gear we were grinding last year".
I'm saying most MMOs don't actually emphasize that they have a gear check - I think that part is settled.
Second, that the tactics are "tactics we used to beat the tutorial area", and whether that is "really the benchmark for challenging end game content".
And I'm saying - yes. Many of the tactics used to beat the tutorial area are the same ones you use in the raid.
Just that instead of a tiny red circle on the ground that you simply need to sidestep out of within the next hour, you get bigger circles and lines and zigzags and spirals of nasty stuff to not stand in while adds come at you.
Occasionally, you may also need to use Ability X when the boss goes into Attack Y, which is exactly what CO used to teach in the tutorial with Block, but can be applied to anything from boss buffs that need to be purged to player debuffs that need to be cleansed to healing/defensive cooldowns or simply blocking that needs to be popped ahead of a burst of unavoidable damage, to casts that need to be interrupted, to LOSing some gigantic beam or somesuch.
So yes, IMO MMO endgame skillchecks are indeed based on the same tactics used to beat the tutorial area unless you care to describe how WoW does things differently. I do remember watching a video of a raid - I think LK era -where players drive around on some ridiculous-looking vehicle but even then the mechanics still looked like a typical MMO.
Don't bother, that's not an actual person you're talking to.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
haha... take a look around... it's pretty obvious... unless you've only been copybuilding for 5 months
"Cake doesn't taste good, it just makes you not hungry".
All that stuff you mentioned before it also makes stuff die faster as a secondary effect also happened though uwu so I guess gear does do more stuff than just make stuff die faster.
Then why are you referencing wow and talking about what happens in the game if you never played it? o.o
Before I respond to this.. have you played TSW or GW2? u_u
Yes, that's basically what I said earlier, remember?
You do realize I wasn't actually implying that the big fat guy comes out on the stage at Blizzcon and talks about "next year we have gear check"....right? o3o
You never played wow... and yet you talk about it as if you know what's going on in there.
First of all... there's no circles to not stand in in the tutorial area. You don't actually run into those until much later in the game. Most of open world stuff is the same kind of stuff we have: run in and beat stuff up. Most dungeons before the raid dungeons are the same thing, it's all fairly simple before you enter the raids. That's why a lot of players aren't prepared for their first raid; they think they're in for another tank-n-spank and suddenly the raid leader is talking about stuff like "Okay tank 1 you tank that guy over there, tank 2 you tank that guy over there, every twenty seconds bring your tanking targets close together so they debuff each other then seperate them again before they blow up. Ice mage, you kite that guy around the room, when you get the bomb debuff let the warlock aggro him and kite him the other way then you run away from the group so you don't blow anyone up. Okay when the boss freezes the room everyone remember to run behind the ice columns so he doesn't perma-freeze you, if anyone does get frozen everyone make sure to dps the ice to free them, but right before it bursts everyone but the tanks back off so you don't get hit by the aoe. In the meantime the warlock is gonna spam hellfire while the paladin heals him to aggro the swarms of murlocks that keep running in, just let the warlock and the paladin handle them. All right guys, phase 2 just started, now we're gonna...". That's why all the wipes; it's not like here where there's just 1 thing you have to watch out for... there's all sorts of things to watch out for and do in a fight, and it often changes from phase to phase.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Yes but the end goal is still to cut down the time to do a run.
You were the one that referenced WoW I believe
Yes.
Ok we are in agreement.
Then what are you talking about?
I was talking about MMOs in general and you extrapolated that to WoW without caring to explain why it is different until after the fact.
Based on what I gather from this, you're saying WoW's tutorial is terrible, but otherwise what is required of each player is still the same thing they're expected to do in a typical MMO's endgame content aka the "dance"?
www.smoochan.co.jp
haha ^_^
but seriously, folks, Champions Online's solo content is hard... if you're a prepubescent copybuilder.
<-- meanie :P
Eh as if that wasn't obvious enough when the original account disappeared only for a new one with the exact same posting style to show up
I take it you lost your diamonds in space.
That's one reason we won't agree. You have a much more loose interpretation of the word 'endgame'. The way I've always known it, endgame content is something you start only when you get to the last level as a way to further develop your character, it's not endgame. (And repeating your version over and over again doesn't make it more true.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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The only form of progression, or what I call "enrichment" that's left is entirely external; be it in practical terms with gear or something purely cosmetic like costume unlocks or dyes. Either the gear or cosmetic items are unlocked by doing content exclusive to players having reached max level, or are so sought after that a lot of resource grinding by repeating endgame content to be able to afford them at player markets.
Endgame also doesn't have to do with doing content exclusive to max level players. If a level 40 in this game is still doing low to mid level stuff like APs or Lairs that scale accordingly to their level then that counts as endgame.
Trying to say that mid level stuff, if done at any level before the max is reached, counts as endgame makes no damn sense at all. Endgame primarily is about finding things to do at the end when doing everything else before the end has already been completed.
Thanks for saying that in smarter words than I could muster. :P
This part I don't agree with, though. I think there's a distinction to make. In Serpent Lantern, do you get anything at all that helps your character progression at endgame, or do you just get the same type of rewards as doing it in lower levels, with the only difference being the item level?
The reason I make a distinction between the two is because it's just another repeatable mission, not meant to do anything for your endgame progression. If it's the same gear you can get fighting any other level 40 mobs in any other mission, then it doesn't really have any specific place as endgame content.
For instance, you wouldn't count the last few missions of a late-game story arc that you reach at the last level, as part of end-game content, right? They're just missions that happen to be level 40 that don't offer anything special.
Endgame progression typically has gear/ability rewards exclusive to the endgame, that's why it's set apart from other content.
IMO it looks like a "and/or" situation of what end game is in an MMO. Thing is that CO's "hardest content" can be played at level 35 which is sort of a conflict on the argument of what end game is. I'm going to put it like this, CO doesn't have a true end game.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
For some people that is the end goal. There are others who build their entire setup around survivability without really thinking about making it go faster; they just want to be invincible. Then there are those few precious souls who still build their character entirely around being a healing god; they didn't build with the goal of making the run go faster, they just want to make others invincible. Both have the side effect of making the run go faster by there being less dying and running back from respawns (but only if that had a chance of happening if they hadn't built the way they did; in some cases their builds are actually making the run go slower because no one would have died anyways so all they did was lower the combined dps of the group).
You also referenced it a bunch of times, directly describing what you believe happens in the game. You really gonna make me quote it?
Good, cause I haven't so I don't really have anything to say about those games. See how that works?
Makes you wonder how an argument happened o3o
Well:
Blizz announces a new expansion. Then someone reveals that all the content will be runnable using gear from the previous year. Notice I said Blizz announces the new expansion, but did not say that Blizz reveals that the content will be runnable with previous gear. The someone is probably a player like Brou who finds stuff out before everyone else. You went to a weird place thinking I was saying a blizz guy was on stage talking about gear checks o3o it's also a mystery why that would be relevant to the conversation.
I didn't realize I needed to explain what happens in WoW because you talked as if you knew what goes on in the game... you did that by directly talking about in game events as if you knew for a fact that they were all that the game consisted of. If you do that, people may assume that you know what you're talking about; not everyone is going to assume that you're pretending to know what you're talking about o3o
You asked me to say what goes on in WoW so I told you. You made the claim that end game in wow asks the player to only use the stuff they learned in the tutorial, so I told you that's not the case. That is what I am saying o3o. Maybe you think the tutorial in WoW is bad, but it is actually very well designed: you don't just dump everything on the player right at the start of the game. You start them off with the basics and then gradually ease them into more and more complex content; this is one of the reasons WoW became so popular, it has a nice easy learning curve.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
You're right, there isn't any real character progression doing SL at level 40 as compared to doing it at say 20 and there isn't any real endgame-specific rewards. The gameplay experience however with how you interact with enemies with a level 40 build would be different than what it was at level 20 with a less-developed build. That IMO could make for new gameplay experience at level 40.
It's repeatable content just like any content exclusive to max-level players. Only difference that it's content tailored universally for low to mid to max level ranges, so technically IMO it can count as endgame content.
Wait... so you agree with me or you don't? Which one is the real Smackwell?
We were talking about the WoW tutorial area Jon. If you had read further than halfway through the first sentence in that paragraph, you would have seen that
End game isn't defined by the gate, but by the players doing it. If over in WoW they let players 1 level less than max start running end game raids and made all the gear usable by them... does the game suddenly no longer have any end game?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Actually it's very much defined by the gate. Rampage alerts have an entry level of min level 35 and they're intended very much as endgame content. NemCon has it at 40.
I never played WoW but have read enough about how stringent raiding parties can be with who they let into the group, elitist at that even. I don't know if your example is meant to be purely hypothetical or an actual game mechanic, but if a player 1 level away from the max is allowed to join up, there's either already a general consensus within the party that there's a minimum level gate, or the game has already decided it for the player.
Also isn't there a "gear rating" gate for raids in WoW, like in if your overall gear rating doesn't meet the intended score, you're considered not qualified for the raid?
The actual in game gate is changed to 1 level less than max level. According to Smackwell this means that WoW no longer has any endgame content because nothing in the game is exclusive to max-lvl players according to the game mechanics. Or at least that's what I gather by his hard line stance on "End game content is only accessable by max level players".
I'm just gonna randomly put this quote here o3o
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Now get into Nemcon and ask all your teammates to leave, then solo it with your ungeared inferno AT and post another video!
Do not agree. The way I read it, it was more within my area of thinking, barring that other part that I disagreed with. Endgame content is introduced at the end of the game. Not at level 11 when you can start gaining Questionite and running Comic Series/Adventure Packs.
Well, they've changed their rules since I've played. If their endgame stuff can be accessed a level early, fine. But this is where the wonkiness of Champions' seemingly-not-very-well-thought-out endgame content comes into play.
If any of the endgame content was thought out in advance, I really believe that it would have been UNITY missions first, then Rampages. It's progression. You do the easier stuff first to get the easier-to-get gear, then move up to the next level. With the way stuff was made, though, with seemingly not a real goal in mind, it's full of wonk. For our progression, we have a strange cobble of Partial Tier 3 -> Tier 1/Tier 2/Tier 1 -> Partial Tier 3.
That is, Rampages before 40 to get some tokens -> UNITY/Lockbox Legion/Mercenary -> Level 40 Rampages.
But from the cries of many players who can't be bothered to get a stinkin' dude to level 40 ("All new content should be playable by anyone!") Rampages became pre-40 content (and this was even before they probably even had Justice gear in their scopes).
Generally, you want to acquire gear in the proper order anyway, so you can be effective and not be a stinky leech in the hardest Rampages. So the obvious route is to start with UNITY missions. Or you can buy your way into power by buying equivalent Mercenary gear or be lucky and get some Legion gear too. Regardless, you probably want to do all this stuff (which I think is poorly designed) before you fire off into the harder, level 40 Rampages.
This is why I said earlier that all Rampages should be level 40, to have a clear path of endgame progression. Throwing lockboxes into the mix really muddled it up, and having pre-40, already-existing Rampages tacked on as a requirement for the final pieces of gear was a mistake in my eyes. The whole thing lacks focus, because it was jury-rigged (har har) by different development teams just trying to give something to the players.
All that crap said, I still don't consider Adventure Packs/Comic Series, pre-40 Rampages (well, maybe bend the rules as partial-endgame, I dunno, it's too cobbled together to pin down - WONK!), Questionite Farming, Costume Farming, and pumping quarters for lockboxes any kind of end-game content.
I could be wrong, but I thought you can get the mission for Nemesis Confrontation at 38 or 39? It's been a long while since I've run it.
In other words, the end goal is to make the run go faster, but not all people do it optimally.
Please do so I can clarify.
Not really, see above.
Okay, so a player says they can do it undergeared. Doesn't that happen all the time in just about every game?
As above - please quote so I can clarify.
Okay, so which spinnytop is correct here?
I think the argument was about whether the tactics in MMO endgames are drastically different from their tutorials which eventually got sidetracked to my knowledge of WoW for some reason.
No, the end goal was tankiness or healing. Making the run go faster was a side effect. If you ask those people "why did you build this way?" they will say "I wanted to survive anything" or "I wanted to be able to heal people through anything". That is their stated end goal; you can't speak for them.
All right, I'll do it in a later response.
Nothing above this seems to apply. Please clarify.
So now you want to switch to an argument about whether players are trustworthy or something? o3o why? Also, you don't seem to understand the implication: In WoW "we can run the upcoming content with last year's gear" has much much bigger implications than saying the same thing in CO. WoW's content is very specifically gear-gated.
Both of course. Wouldn't you say that 80+ levels of easy content to learn how all your abilities work is an easy learning curve? Learning raid mechanics starts with the first raid (kind of makes sense o3o) which is why players are often not prepared for the addition of stuff they have to think about. Both statements are 100% accurate.
It's because you wanted to lump WoW in with other games and as a result were making the claim that WoW's endgame only has the same mechanics as it's starting areas, which isn't even close to true; you weren't aware of this because you've never actually played the game....so maybe trying to talk about it at all was a bad idea. Should have just said "Well I've never played that game, so I don't know anything about that" o3o
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
So then your position is...
"Stuff you do when you're level 40 to get rewards, which can include cosmetic stuff like costumes"
then who is this guy? o3o
the gray area appears to be yellow o3o
Some things line up here, some do not o3o
Remember this hypothetical? You never really responded to it directly... but...
I'm almost tempted to interpret this is you saying that WoW sets the rules for what end game is for the entire genre o3o but I won't do that.
And personally I think CO's lack of strict level gating and avoidance of a rigid gear ladder is a strength of the game, and I think I've seen many other people echo those sentiments ^_^
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
So why do they want to survive or heal people through anything? Is the end goal not to get stuff done efficiently i.e. more quickly? Also, do the elitist speedrunner guilds build that way in WoW? I am genuinely curious. On Aion and TSW what we'd do is once the tank or healer got their survivability/healing covered they'd stretch their DPS as far as they could while still being able to perform their main job. On TSW it went a step further with healtanking and then leechtanking, i.e. a healtank that covers all healing/tanking needs while still doing DPS.
I meant I have no idea where you got the impression I was talking about WoW so you need to quote that before I can address that point.
Sure, explain to me how big an implication gear makes in WoW. In Aion back when the cap was 55 we actually used to run endgame lv55 instances in level 40 gear and no one raised an eyebrow. On TSW I got my friend set up with a healing build in all blues and explained the rotation and she could put out more HPS than a fully raid-geared healer who had a terrible rotation.
I'm also under the impression that undergeared/undermanned runs of MMOs and RPGs on Twitch or YouTube are a thing and generate a lot of Likes along with the occasional cries of "exploit" and "nerf". That's what I meant by players do this all the time
Well from what you described, it sounds like what is required of each player in the average WoW raid is no different from what is required of a player running endgame content in another MMO. At the end of the day you still run and jump and LOS in a certain order while pressing a sequence of numbers on your skill palette. Same thing you do in many tutorials, even if not WoW's.
UNITY missions = technically end-game cause they can only be accessed at max level
Rampages = late-game content, and can be end-game content for those already at lvl 40
Side-kicking throws a bit of a wrench into the equation. So to me, it'd come down to whether you accept a non-lvl 40 who is side-kicked to max level to be at the end-game or not in a Rampage. Even if its lvl 35-39 accessible, no hero is below max level from the vantage point of the actual content.
If it was otherwise, then certain mechanics, for ex, would not affect non-max characters in the same way, which isn't the case in CO- you just feel the weight of having weaker gear/stats. In the Rampages there aren't different levels of potency of a spell depending on the actual level of the target- its all max-level assumed. Thus, imo, Rampages are an example of content that is tuned to be end-game, but is late-game accessible thanks to a game-specific system (sidekicking).
Its a weird area just because there's a variable that somewhat defies conventions of when terms like 'end-game' were originally setup.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
More so is that even for "endgame" content (rampages), the demands on an *individual player basis* are that much lower (yes, even F&I). Yes, they require one (or two, for F&I) players in basically "endgame gear" (which includes heroics, funnily enough), but beyond that gear checks in this game are almost absent. Prefer to have it this way, actually, as opposed as to how most Asian MMOs handle it.
Ps For the record, I did tank gravitar at lvl 37. In heirloom. A good rampage team is still a wonder to behold. So keep queuing your endgame chars.
Well you pick up the mission in Unity HQ and it cannot be shared with characters under level 40.
Its no secret here City Of X was my most beloved of MMO, and a large part of that was it didnt ever seem to worry over the idea. At least not until its final era of the Incarnates and having a real aspect of character power that was only useable or even needed in the most recent and fine tuned of content. Ofcourse there was plenty of debate and hate even on that. Some loathed how now the more casual players with the aid of incarnate power where venturing into old lvl cap TFs like Lady Grey and Imperious and doing quite well compared to pre incarnate.
Personally I had loved CoX and their sidekick exemplar system and mission sharing/synching probably more then any other aspect as far as party mechanics go. And while we technically had those things on CO, it didnt feel nearly as polished or well planned out.
I really never got tired of spending a few hours every time I logged on to CoX running a few low to mid lvl TFs or SFs with one of my maxxed out characters. Partly because even if working on a new alt who wasnt ready for the TFs I wanted to run, the characters who did run, could always pass on their earnings via hero merit bought IOs like the Luck of the gambler global recharge special which would always net healthy amounts of inf. Or even just keep a lvl 25 LOTG for when the new alt was ready for it since all my builds had 5 of them slotted.
Frankly to me the idea of end game content is just a pipe dream, and the ideal goal is make it so any content is viable to run with any toon at any time. This makes pugging so very much more friendly, especially to new comers who usually get turned off rapidly by seeing certain bits of content ground out over and over.
Id personally think them taking time to fine tune the way side kicking up and down in lvls works here would be a great thing. as would making it so content rewards where generic tokens that could be turned in for just about anything a character could want of any lvl range.
Id imagine for example that when ever you start a character actually getting to pre select all their level up aspects at creation, removing the need to even go to a power trainer unless they wanted to respec, and then allowing players when they side kick up to get access to those future abilities. In a way being shown how and or having higher end gear and abilities being accessible due to the presence of a mentor. Robin after all didnt get to take the batwing out on his own early on, but might well be ordered to use it while in the field with bats.
The part about those things being "completely external."
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Because that is what they wanted their character to do well. Sometimes they do it because they want to be "most survivable tank in game" or "strongest healer in game". And that's where it ends; that was the end goal. You can tell because there are cases where them building that way slows down runs, and they are fully aware of this, and yet they continue to build that way because they set a very specific goal.
You used very general statements where WoW was lumped in as one of "those" mmos. More specific examples would have helped. When you talk about "those" mmos, you're waving your hand at a very broad area.
WoW is much more tightly balanced than those games then. There's a reason that those undergeared runs are considered an accomplishment, and it's because the vast majority of players will not be able to accomplish them; not only that, most players won't even bother attempting them because they know they'll fail.
In Champions Online, the same feat isn't an accomplishment close to that. It isn't an accomplishment at all. Here it's not "hey I ran a thing with gear thats a bit under the required ilvl" it's "I ran without any gear at all and we don't even know what that means because the concept of a required ilvl is fairly nebulous here".
No-gear runs of end-game content in WoW. Find me one of those. Well-geared tanks barely managed to survive same-tiered content when I played; a tank with no gear would drop from the first hit, then the rest of the ungeared raid would be dead a few seconds after that.
Champions Online is another MMO right? Well, then I would like for you to explain how what is required of each player in the average wow raid is no different from what is required of a player running endgame content in CO. And make sure to cite specific fights and compare them to fights in CO, keeping in mind that the number of mechanics is important, as is the type of mechanics. If you like, you can simply answer "We don't have raids, so there's really no basis for comparison- what we consider difficult end game content is equivalent to what WoW players do in dungeons while leveling up".
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Oh, this part?
She called your gear external as well. Soooooo... the external gear you agree with, but the external costume unlocks you don't? Is the external gear external in some different external way? o3o
Nemcon drops costume unlocks, questionite, and mods that people will use u3u but not gear that anyone would ever use....well, unless you count using it for a laugh o3o
My super cool CC build and how to use it.