End game

kellax3

I know it's a little early for this thread, but it does give us something to think about as we explore Neverwinter and the surrounding areas.

What does everyone want to see for Neverwinter's end game content? Do you want WoW style (boring-as-hell) heroics (grind points until your eyes bleed), raids and the like? Or would you rather have FFXI style content? Or is there another game that does end game better?

I like the premise of WoW's raids and heroics but it always turned into a grind-fest for points. I don't play WoW anymore because of the grind-style mentality. No matter how much the content 'changes', it's always the same once you hit max level. Grind heroics, grind raids, get gear, get bored, wait for new 'content.'

Personally, I liked FFXI's end game. It was hard as hell to ever acquire anything, and every piece of gear you earned was an accomplishment. Abyssea changed their original formula (when the level cap was still 75 and Kirin was king) and completely changed the dynamic of the game.

I'd like to see Neverwinter take after FFXI more so than WoW. When patches come out with additional max level content, the weapons and armor should only be nominally better than what you have. Look at the gear levels WoW uses - they use a Dragon Ball Z formula for gear - IT'S OVER 9000!!! Now IT'S OVER 20,000!!!!! ad infinitum. Every patch makes the previous version's gear obsolete. However, FFXI made marginal improvements on gear - hell, the Kirin's Osode had +10 to every stat and that was the best piece of gear for years - since it was originally introduced until the first Abyssea content rolled out. WoW gear lasts, what, 5 months max?

Also, this controls the amount of DPS being done. I remember doing 2k DPS in WotLK and that was good at the time, and now it's "OMG! You're not doing 50k DPS!!! GTFO!!! You do so much DPS it's silly.

Please don't let Neverwinter get out of control.

Also, should the gear from the end game content come directly from the 4e manuals? I think so. There's so much lore and content, the gear 'should' be able to transfer from a paper to digital medium. Let's hop so, anyway.

What do you guys think?

providentt

Well I'm hoping they aim for the PnP pace like DDO did and have the journey be the game. And having played other Cryptic games which also follow this trend, I'm looking forward to just playing a fun game and forgetting about the whole concept of endgame.

So yeah. D&D + Cryptic... can't imagine the game having or needing endgame.

narcolepticjedi

kellax3 wrote: »

Please don't let Neverwinter get out of control.

I think this sums up my feelings quite well. I have to agree, marginal improvements at max level are just as satisfying, if not more so, than all of the sudden obsoleting everything that you own in the first few weeks of an expansion.

I hope Neverwinter is more about the journey than the destination. I would much rather see multiple endgame, epic-length quest arcs, completable by five people, than three or four raids that require intimate knowledge of boss mechanics to be able to complete, and then having to complete them numerous times in order to get your entire guild geared enough just to say that you are ready for the next expansion. That type of grinding end game has killed more than one MMO for me in the past.

muzrub333

providentt wrote: »

Well I'm hoping they aim for the PnP pace like DDO did and have the journey be the game. And having played other Cryptic games which also follow this trend, I'm looking forward to just playing a fun game and forgetting about the whole concept of endgame.

So yeah. D&D + Cryptic... can't imagine the game having or needing endgame.

Totally agree, and the Foundry will help as well. I'd love to see an end to end game.

selanya

For me I'd have to say it would be the storyline, and the animation that goes into the characters, environments, etc, that makes my day. As well as the skills and attack power, (making sure that they aren't over powering and or under powering). I look for also equipment balancing whether they changed your stats to match character's level.

Reading the dev blog, seems promising, and would love to see how this unfolds, but I also agree with providentt, that I'd love to just enjoy playing the game, aside from what I just stated above

arkangelx3

I really am sorry if i attempt to hi-jack this thread, but since i can't seem to post, i have some questions and concerns about the game before i shell out any money for the different packs available.
1.What is the world like, is it like GW2,where each sub zone is instanced and you can see other players as you kill/quests around. Or more like Diablo 3 where everything is heavily instanced and u dont see many players unless you invite others. Are there community zones/towns where u do interact with others?
2. What is the endgame if anyone that has been announced?
3.Guilds?
4.Movement style? Sounds like its like DCUO where left/right activate abilties, and dont control movement or camera rotation.

I guess ill just stop there and hopefully get some quick answers so until i get posting rights.

providentt

From what I've seen, the game is your typical open world MMORPG with exploration zones and whatnot. Also sounds like there are long epic events that occur which makes it sound like GW2 to me, but hopefully better.

As far as endgame, personally I wouldn't recommend the game to people looking for endgame. It's not what the demographic is about. However I believe they've said there will be difficult 5-man dungeon delves (and hopefully whole adventures) at max level.

Not sure what you're asking in terms of movement, but the control scheme appears to be basically the same as DDO - third person with a targeting reticule.

shado152

i dont think we will really have an endgame point in neverwinter because of the foundary yes we will have a set end of lvling awesome armor set but if the Foundary is implemented and done and refined nicely enough itll end up being kinda like happy wheels where people create seemingly impossible stuff even thru the limitations that have been set for them Happy Wheels and Trials Evolution are perfect examples of what happens when you implement a nice ingame map/lvl editor and let your players create some things that they like people will use the tools you give them in creative ways that you yourself could never have thought of i mean seriously ive seen a map on Trial where someone took a bunch of just plain rocks and made a firebreathing dragon out of it & in Happy wheels ive seen from pokemon to TLOZ maps. all in all ive said it once and ive said it again i do not think that this game will have a set endgame as long as the Foundary is implemented and done in a good fashion

arkangelx3

Third person with targeting reticule sounds just like DC Universe, which isnt too bad once you get used to it, but a def learning curve if you come strait from most normal MMOs(wow, gw2, rift etcetc) I wouldnt know compared to any other DDO game, since ive yet to play any other.
So interesting, it will be an open world MMO type, where we can see other players, at least thats what you make it seem like.
As far as endgame, im not too worried about it, if there is some or not. I dont care either way. ATM i prefer gw2's "endgame" over WOW's. Did the raiding thing competitively for way too long.

fcrowles

You can't just not have a end game. That would make all the hard work they put building this game go to waste. The hardcore players like myself reach max level within a week, maybe sooner and then we sit there and do foundry missions. After a month tops the foundry missions will all feel like the same thing and be boring and the game may hold us for 2 months with ults. Eventually we'll have every class maxed out, foundry missions will all be the same and the games over for us. Years of hardwork on their part to entertain us for 2 months. Not having a end game would be just plain irresponsible.

bluelightninglai

fcrowles wrote: »

You can't just not have a end game. That would make all the hard work they put building this game go to waste. The hardcore players like myself reach max level within a week, maybe sooner and then we sit there and do foundry missions. After a month tops the foundry missions will all feel like the same thing and be boring and the game may hold us for 2 months with ults. Eventually we'll have every class maxed out, foundry missions will all be the same and the games over for us. Years of hardwork on their part to entertain us for 2 months. Not having a end game would be just plain irresponsible.

sad but thats how most games are now.

zylaxx

Well I think endgame gets a bad rep because it is tied to loot and gear. My ideal MMO is one in which random drops from bosses are plntiful but dynamic, meaning I never know if I am going to get something that is uber or useful as long as the drops contain some value to someone somewhere then the endgame discussions almsot always go away. Instead of having the path of least resistant, make a game where there plenty of paths with no resistance. But this is my own personnal opinion.

kyllroy2

fcrowles wrote: »

You can't just not have a end game. That would make all the hard work they put building this game go to waste. The hardcore players like myself reach max level within a week, maybe sooner and then we sit there and do foundry missions. After a month tops the foundry missions will all feel like the same thing and be boring and the game may hold us for 2 months with ults. Eventually we'll have every class maxed out, foundry missions will all be the same and the games over for us. Years of hardwork on their part to entertain us for 2 months. Not having a end game would be just plain irresponsible.

I sure hope you are wrong. Aside from wanting an endless grindfest, I hope the levels aren't that easy to achieve and require players to do a complete apprenticeship before advancement....a week! For gods sake I am expecting much much more.

blizzid

fcrowles wrote: »

You can't just not have a end game. That would make all the hard work they put building this game go to waste. The hardcore players like myself reach max level within a week, maybe sooner and then we sit there and do foundry missions. After a month tops the foundry missions will all feel like the same thing and be boring and the game may hold us for 2 months with ults. Eventually we'll have every class maxed out, foundry missions will all be the same and the games over for us. Years of hardwork on their part to entertain us for 2 months. Not having a end game would be just plain irresponsible.

Sadly im going to have to agree, swtor is a good example of this.

fcrowles

kyllroy2 wrote: »

I sure hope you are wrong. Aside from wanting an endless grindfest, I hope the levels aren't that easy to achieve and require players to do a complete apprenticeship before advancement....a week! For gods sake I am expecting much much more.

The longest game ever to reach max level was FFXI and players managed to do that within a month. I HIGHLY doubt this game will take longer than a week.

keirkin

If you say so, but I was under the impression that it took much longer for the first person to reach 50 in Everquest at release than a month. Now I could be wrong as it has been a long time but I believe I am remembering correctly. Also exploiting your way to max level is not a good stick on how long it takes for a normal person to reach max level. While I agree most games that are released now have extremely short times to reach max level even only playing slightly more than causally. That is because the philosophy of hardcore long term grinding for XP to level was killed by the instant gratification generation.

gwenzelthar

I for one have never really enjoyed the "End Game" content of any MMO.

The journey and constant discovery/surprise is what i love. Sure i dont mind killing a big raid boss, but only once...will not grind for gear.

lawfulstupid

It's been mentioned, but an MMO without an endgame is an MMO that continually bleeds subs after launch. People do everything there is to do and then they leave.

I guess roleplaying is one option of something to do in the end-game, but personally I have always found it extremely difficult to find roleplay that isn't a popularity contest of people sitting around in a tavern wangsting about their personal problems while trying to look cool, so I consider RP to be a variable. I've found extremely rewarding RP, but I am not unsympathetic to people who think its dumb, because 90% of it is.

And I know that the grind sucks, but the opposite problem is everybody having max level characters with legendary equipment because loot and xp come so quickly. I tolerate grinding as an inescapable aspect of MMO gameplay.

And personally, I love raid progression and I love PvP, so as long as Neverwinter has those two things, I'd be content, but what I'm really excited about is the foundry, because any system that empowers the players to create their own content is a system that never runs out of something new to see.

keirkin wrote: »

killed by the instant gratification generation.

Every generation is the instant gratification generation to the one that came before it.

lawfulstupid

keirkin wrote: »

If you say so, but I was under the impression that it took much longer for the first person to reach 50 in Everquest at release than a month. Now I could be wrong as it has been a long time but I believe I am remembering correctly. Also exploiting your way to max level is not a good stick on how long it takes for a normal person to reach max level. While I agree most games that are released now have extremely short times to reach max level even only playing slightly more than causally. That is because the philosophy of hardcore long term grinding for XP to level was killed by the instant gratification generation.

Everquest at launch was a ridiculously arduous grind by modern MMO standards. Ask any oldschool MMO player what the "hell levels" were like (going from 30-40) and they might start twitching involuntarily: weeks and weeks of grinding where one death caused you to lose days worth of work. And they didn't quite figure out how to properly implement quests so, like, you did the starter quest for a crappy lvl 1 pair of boots or something and that was it, time to head out into the field to slaughter rats and skeletons until you dinged lvl 2 a few hours later, and then you've graduated to snakes and spiders and that's what you spent the next night slaughtering.

And dungeons were simply primitive by our standards. Not only was there no point, you just slaughtered random enemies, but you also had to worry about some idiot pulling 20 mobs into your room and causing a wipe (anyone else remember the mob trains in Crushbone and Blackburrow? Anyone remember Fansy?) And if you happened to be unfortunate enough to, you know, want a piece of gear from a boss mob, have fun sitting around for hours on end waiting for it to respawn praying that nobody sneaks up and kill-steals it while farming it for days waiting for something with a 0.0001% chance to drop.

I went back to EQ1 for nostalgia's sake a while back, and man I can't believe some of the stuff that they made you put up with back then.

zebular

gwenzelthar wrote: »

I for one have never really enjoyed the "End Game" content of any MMO.

The journey and constant discovery/surprise is what i love. Sure i dont mind killing a big raid boss, but only once...will not grind for gear.

I'm with ya there. I am not an "End Gamer" or a "Raider," and actually loathe it when MMOs focus on these. I like my games to always continue and not have any sense of End or winding down to some repetitive task like grinding dailies or running the same dungeons over and over for that "uber lewt." I'd much rather continue experiencing new stories, lore and adventures while continung to advance my character through "normal," non-end game play.

So, in answer to the OP's question:

I do not want to see an end game in any Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG.

Hopefully, one day, this "End Game" connotation will be a thing of myth or legend in MMORPGs. For to me, an MMORPG should never have any sense of an end - just like PnP D&D.

keirkin

lawfulstupid wrote: »

Everquest at launch was a ridiculously arduous grind by modern MMO standards. Ask any oldschool MMO player what the "hell levels" were like (going from 30-40) and they might start twitching involuntarily: weeks and weeks of grinding where one death caused you to lose days worth of work. And they didn't quite figure out how to properly implement quests so, like, you did the starter quest for a crappy lvl 1 pair of boots or something and that was it, time to head out into the field to slaughter rats and skeletons until you dinged lvl 2 a few hours later, and then you've graduated to snakes and spiders and that's what you spent the next night slaughtering.

And dungeons were simply primitive by our standards. Not only was there no point, you just slaughtered random enemies, but you also had to worry about some idiot pulling 20 mobs into your room and causing a wipe (anyone else remember the mob trains in Crushbone and Blackburrow? Anyone remember Fansy?) And if you happened to be unfortunate enough to, you know, want a piece of gear from a boss mob, have fun sitting around for hours on end waiting for it to respawn praying that nobody sneaks up and kill-steals it while farming it for days waiting for something with a 0.0001% chance to drop.

I went back to EQ1 for nostalgia's sake a while back, and man I can't believe some of the stuff that they made you put up with back then.

I completely agree. I sometimes still have nightmares about dying in lower guk at 45th level trying to grind exp and not getting a res from a cleric. My point wasn't that I wanted a game like that, just that the statement of FFXI was the game that took the longest for someone to hit MAX level at 1 month was false.

Oh and one thing to remember..... Camping for Ragefire.

denkasaeba

I wish end game to be kinda an accomplishment (exponential level curve), but not too much. A mix of balanced grinding and quest fun.

But i really want end game to be focused on instances (easy, medium and hard ones) where you have the chance to gear up decently and where only the best players have the best equipment.

bluesteel8

Anything but repetitive boring dailies over and over again!

denkasaeba

bluesteel8 wrote: »

Anything but repetitive boring dailies over and over again!

I'm good with weeklies, though. I think there should be some kind of incentive to log in, but it should be on weekly and monthly base.

aeroth001

Just make 2 or 3 main story's each with it's final dungeon & bosses and ta dam you got multiple choice endings.

I really think that the foundry will spawn the most interesting dungeons in this game

fanbase > developers.

sorry developers

aeroth001

bluesteel8 wrote: »

Anything but repetitive boring dailies over and over again!

Kill 3 pigs, fetch 5 flowers, kill 6 goats, go to x and take his quest to collect 10 pieces of garbage.

I bet you a beer it will be just like this

denkasaeba

aeroth001 wrote: »

Just make 2 or 3 main story's each with it's final dungeon & bosses and ta dam you got multiple choice endings.

I really think that the foundry will spawn the most interesting dungeons in this game

fanbase > developers.

sorry developers

It's not that fanbase > developers, because developers surely can make their work better than 99% of fans. It's that the law of large numbers kinda favours fans ^^

bluesteel8

aeroth001 wrote: »

Kill 3 pigs, fetch 5 flowers, kill 6 goats, go to x and take his quest to collect 10 pieces of garbage.

I bet you a beer it will be just like this

Ill take that bet, only cause I want to have a beer together lol

lawfulstupid

denkasaeba wrote: »

It's not that fanbase > developers, because developers surely can make their work better than 99% of fans. It's that the law of large numbers kinda favours fans ^^

You'd be surprised what players will do when they have lots of love and no deadlines.

I am personally quite excited for the foundry and I really hope they pull it off. player generated content is the gift that keeps on giving... sometimes for better... sometimes for worse... sometimes for "ew omg what are those people doing?"

aeroth001

denkasaeba wrote: »

It's not that fanbase > developers, because developers surely can make their work better than 99% of fans. It's that the law of large numbers kinda favours fans ^^

I saw fan made maps in NWN 1 that were better then the ones made by Bioware. And let's be honest Bioware > perfect world&cryptic any day.

denkasaeba

lawfulstupid wrote: »

You'd be surprised what players will do when they have lots of love and no deadlines.

I'm no surprised. I'm both a player AND an extremely gifted and humble DM