In theory there is content that gets progressively harder and combines that with allowing you to gear up for the next successive one as they're launched.
In practice you'll find a broken gearscore system that gives access to dungeons in hard mode with the chance of having not seen them in normal thanks to an xp heavy levelling mechanic. You'll find what seems to be the majority of players wanting to do speed runs by exploiting design flaws that allow them to skip the trash mobs or think that experience means all knowledge is how to cheat your way to a boss kill.
When new content comes you'll look at the gear and realise that there isnt going to be a rise in gear quality, but hey thats fine there's not really content that demands top end gear. Or you may find as I did after unlocking malabogs castle that apparently the only way to beat the end boss without glitching it was to beat the gearscore by 4-5k, use BiS gear, etc (ironically the idiot that claimed that was wearing level 30 greens and had barely any enchants at all in the few purples equipped).
Your best bet for enjoying life at top level is to gear yourself to the level you feel comfortable with and spend time enjoying the foundry content as the majority of that shows how good quests can be and how zen store focussed the folks at cryptic are.
But what MMO truly has "end game" as everyone is describing? If this "end game" has better loot then eventually everyone will achieve that loot and will need new "end game", it's a never ending cycle if you are only in search of PvE for end game. The only true end game in the sense that everyone is asking for would be content that gets progressively harder every time it is done while not rewarding the player with any better gear, therefore providing a constantly more challenging environment without upgrading the player to meet that challenge in the process. But even that system would get boring quickly b/c players would soon be at the point where they can't complete the content any longer and would need P. enchants and R10's to progress maybe 1-2 more difficulty levels.
Granted some would find this fun but few like content without loot it seems, but whenever you offer better loot you've pushed the "end game" to content after that loot is achieved. Therefore it seems to me that PvP is the only viable end game option.
Guild Master of <Enemy Team>
We are definitely dominating, and we are always about to win.
The Foundry could have been limitless end-game content, however, so many of the most popular and innovative Foundry authors have left disgruntled thanks to Module 1 breaking their quests. Also, the Foundry offers insufficient loot, often the chest will give no loot at all, and Foundry authors were never given real bosses such as dragons, severely limiting their creativity.
Sadly, NW has no Epic loots to speak of, a couple of sets (for the lucky classes) that works which you can buy off the AH the minute you reached level 60, after that you start farming for those same sets to sell to the newly level 60, which would allow you to gather enough AD to upgrade slowly but surely your enchants. There is a clear itemization design flaw when the best gear in the game is easier to get than the best enchant. The latter is gained not by defeating monsters, but by either grinding for enchants and fusing or simply buying them with AD. Exception are the malabog weapons/dungeon which clearly shows a new design direction and hopefully this will be maintained for future content.
More importantly, NW has no higher level 10 man+ dungeons/raids which test the best of players in their coordination and team work to achieve the goal of ending evil. I wonder why do we even have guilds in this game as all content is 5 man content....Anyways I hope the devs would really consider this.
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
And that's what I don't get about the endgame in this game. If you have near infinite quests in the Foundry, why do people still complain about lack of content? How much content do people possibly want to be satisfied? Does everything have to be created by the developers to count as content?
I can answer this, I believe:
- no progression in foundries (think raids, gear tiers etc.)
- no PvP competition, or competition of any sort
- no rewards for exceptional/good players
- no group gameplay (this is an MMO)
This is what classic MMOs such as (early) WoW taught most of us. Progression, character development, theorycrafting, hard-earned successes, competition, striving to be better.
Foundry has neither. It cannot be considered legit content, it's more like a side feature for people to experiment with the engine (but why so many limitations? Let people make a raid or PvP maps, let people put real rewards in there, and hard bosses), and other people to play and appreciate the creativity of their fellow gamers.
- no progression in foundries (think raids, gear tiers etc.) [No point, raids are lagfests, obsolete, like WoW is]
- no PvP competition, or competition of any sort [You can always compete if you have a good rival]
- no rewards for exceptional/good players [Again you get rewarded for being aware that you are better than others]
- no group gameplay (this is an MMO) [Group gameplay: Go to point number 2 and make a good group of players]
This is what classic MMOs such as (early) WoW taught most of us. Progression, character development, theorycrafting, hard-earned successes, competition, striving to be better. [Wow, you sure never played any other older mmo]
Foundry has neither. It cannot be considered legit content, it's more like a side feature for people to experiment with the engine (but why so many limitations? Let people make a raid or PvP maps, let people put real rewards in there, and hard bosses), and other people to play and appreciate the creativity of their fellow gamers. [If you let people make real rewards then you will see lots of exploits, ilegal activites, foundry is fine the way it is. JUST TO SHOW AND APPRECIATE THE CREATIVITY OF FELLOW GAMERS]
Not enough for a true MMO endgame...
[You can play gw2 for a mmo endgame game]
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited September 2013
^You sure managed to provide a hateful and lame answer. As for WoW raids being obsolete (lol) and lagfests, get a better computer and internet connection or play at lower settings. This answer was bound to happen, since I can raid at max settings with no lag at all at 1080p and 60fps, with much less than a super PC.
But what MMO truly has "end game" as everyone is describing? If this "end game" has better loot then eventually everyone will achieve that loot and will need new "end game", it's a never ending cycle if you are only in search of PvE for end game.
My comment about endgame being a myth was being kept specific to this particular mmo.
NW had tier 2 gear but when feywild came out the dungeon content that was packaged with it didnt require that level of gear and didnt even give gear that was equal to t2.
A step backwards in gear and dungeon isnt progression, it's the opposite. The only difficulty increase comes during the creation of a group that doesnt think experience equates to knowing exploits.
If you dont engage with that then all you really have is feywild dailies or sitting about the enclave pointlessly reporting spambots.
Endgame is whats left over after you have done everything?
So, endgame is a gear treadmill?
That strikes me as wrong - we should all be gearing up for endgame, not gearing up as endgame.
Well I sure hope so... ^^
I would ask if you have ever tried to implement a game and balance the encounters people will face but my guess is you have not based on your expectation. When you try to balance an encounter, you have to consider the class abilities and their level as well as the gear. During the leveling process, both of these are in flux and a developer attempts to achieve balance based on the max gear you can have and the multitude of class combinations. Once you hit cap level, you move from leveling your toon to leveling your gear, thus the gear score limit is used as a factor to determine difficulty of a dungeon. Also, once toons can no longer level, you at least have base line (or more of a base line) of what they are capable of so balance is easier to manage.
If you were to do things as you suggest, end game content would really be that - end of the game for the toon. In an MMO, you want people to be able to play for a long time, so life begins at 60, and leveling is really just the training period.
This can relate back to the pnp version in the game when you consider Epic chars. In a sense, everyone that is 60 is epic, so their entire focus has changed.
I think that what many of the posters are missing is this is a very immature MMO. We are comparing it to games that have years and years of content already fleshed out. I think if Mod 1 would have been progressively harder, it would have been worse for the game, but rather the introduction of the campaign concept offers a path for something for players to do other than grind the epic dungeons. I assume there will be more campaigns and eventually we will see tier 3 or tier 4 content, Like in DCUO, they are on tier 5 content now.
I would expect the next mod to have evem more high lvl content, so that people have diversity in thier end game grind. Really, any mmo comes to a point where you grind gear, start a new toon, or stop playing.
The bonus of the foundry (and i am yet to play one that i have not enjoyed) is that the devs can focus on the end game much longer as there is a large base o new content of lower level for players to play. I plan to level my next toon entirely in foundry quests the next time i start a new toon.
I think this game is still too young to be as down on it as people are being.
Oh, and i am they type of player that reads all the content when i play through it. I even read the journal entries you find along the way.
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xhritMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
I would ask if you have ever tried to implement a game and balance the encounters people will face but my guess is you have not based on your expectation.
You would be wrong... but that is besides the point. I did not start this thread to talk about my implementation of endgame, or even to talk about Neverwinter's endgame specifically. I just wanted to get a feel for what the communities expectations were. Honestly I start this same thread in just about every game I play. ^^
If you were to do things as you suggest, end game content would really be that - end of the game for the toon. In an MMO, you want people to be able to play for a long time, so life begins at 60, and leveling is really just the training period.
No, what you are describing is what happens when the typical gear-treadmill-as-endgame content runs out. Once you finish gearing up then the 'end game content' is finished, and that is the end of the game for the toon. Gearing up should not be a goal, but rather a means to a goal.
I think that what many of the posters are missing is this is a very immature MMO. We are comparing it to games that have years and years of content already fleshed out. I think if Mod 1 would have been progressively harder, it would have been worse for the game, but rather the introduction of the campaign concept offers a path for something for players to do other than grind the epic dungeons.
I agree with both your assessments - the alternate progression path offered in faywyld was important, but there is something definitely missing in Neverwinter.
Progression, character development, theorycrafting, hard-earned successes, competition, striving to be better.... a true MMO endgame.
I think you are on to something here. There is a distinct lack of competition in this game. Zone events are fun but there are no lasting consequences and nothing of real value to be won. Same thing with the pvp. Without any sort of leaderboards the only long term goal of domination or gauntlegrym is to amass glory and tokens and buy gear.
Comments
But what MMO truly has "end game" as everyone is describing? If this "end game" has better loot then eventually everyone will achieve that loot and will need new "end game", it's a never ending cycle if you are only in search of PvE for end game. The only true end game in the sense that everyone is asking for would be content that gets progressively harder every time it is done while not rewarding the player with any better gear, therefore providing a constantly more challenging environment without upgrading the player to meet that challenge in the process. But even that system would get boring quickly b/c players would soon be at the point where they can't complete the content any longer and would need P. enchants and R10's to progress maybe 1-2 more difficulty levels.
Granted some would find this fun but few like content without loot it seems, but whenever you offer better loot you've pushed the "end game" to content after that loot is achieved. Therefore it seems to me that PvP is the only viable end game option.
We are definitely dominating, and we are always about to win.
More importantly, NW has no higher level 10 man+ dungeons/raids which test the best of players in their coordination and team work to achieve the goal of ending evil. I wonder why do we even have guilds in this game as all content is 5 man content....Anyways I hope the devs would really consider this.
I can answer this, I believe:
- no progression in foundries (think raids, gear tiers etc.)
- no PvP competition, or competition of any sort
- no rewards for exceptional/good players
- no group gameplay (this is an MMO)
This is what classic MMOs such as (early) WoW taught most of us. Progression, character development, theorycrafting, hard-earned successes, competition, striving to be better.
Foundry has neither. It cannot be considered legit content, it's more like a side feature for people to experiment with the engine (but why so many limitations? Let people make a raid or PvP maps, let people put real rewards in there, and hard bosses), and other people to play and appreciate the creativity of their fellow gamers.
Not enough for a true MMO endgame...
[You can play gw2 for a mmo endgame game]
My comment about endgame being a myth was being kept specific to this particular mmo.
NW had tier 2 gear but when feywild came out the dungeon content that was packaged with it didnt require that level of gear and didnt even give gear that was equal to t2.
A step backwards in gear and dungeon isnt progression, it's the opposite. The only difficulty increase comes during the creation of a group that doesnt think experience equates to knowing exploits.
If you dont engage with that then all you really have is feywild dailies or sitting about the enclave pointlessly reporting spambots.
I would ask if you have ever tried to implement a game and balance the encounters people will face but my guess is you have not based on your expectation. When you try to balance an encounter, you have to consider the class abilities and their level as well as the gear. During the leveling process, both of these are in flux and a developer attempts to achieve balance based on the max gear you can have and the multitude of class combinations. Once you hit cap level, you move from leveling your toon to leveling your gear, thus the gear score limit is used as a factor to determine difficulty of a dungeon. Also, once toons can no longer level, you at least have base line (or more of a base line) of what they are capable of so balance is easier to manage.
If you were to do things as you suggest, end game content would really be that - end of the game for the toon. In an MMO, you want people to be able to play for a long time, so life begins at 60, and leveling is really just the training period.
This can relate back to the pnp version in the game when you consider Epic chars. In a sense, everyone that is 60 is epic, so their entire focus has changed.
I think that what many of the posters are missing is this is a very immature MMO. We are comparing it to games that have years and years of content already fleshed out. I think if Mod 1 would have been progressively harder, it would have been worse for the game, but rather the introduction of the campaign concept offers a path for something for players to do other than grind the epic dungeons. I assume there will be more campaigns and eventually we will see tier 3 or tier 4 content, Like in DCUO, they are on tier 5 content now.
I would expect the next mod to have evem more high lvl content, so that people have diversity in thier end game grind. Really, any mmo comes to a point where you grind gear, start a new toon, or stop playing.
The bonus of the foundry (and i am yet to play one that i have not enjoyed) is that the devs can focus on the end game much longer as there is a large base o new content of lower level for players to play. I plan to level my next toon entirely in foundry quests the next time i start a new toon.
I think this game is still too young to be as down on it as people are being.
Oh, and i am they type of player that reads all the content when i play through it. I even read the journal entries you find along the way.
You would be wrong... but that is besides the point. I did not start this thread to talk about my implementation of endgame, or even to talk about Neverwinter's endgame specifically. I just wanted to get a feel for what the communities expectations were. Honestly I start this same thread in just about every game I play. ^^
No, what you are describing is what happens when the typical gear-treadmill-as-endgame content runs out. Once you finish gearing up then the 'end game content' is finished, and that is the end of the game for the toon. Gearing up should not be a goal, but rather a means to a goal.
I agree with both your assessments - the alternate progression path offered in faywyld was important, but there is something definitely missing in Neverwinter.
I think you are on to something here. There is a distinct lack of competition in this game. Zone events are fun but there are no lasting consequences and nothing of real value to be won. Same thing with the pvp. Without any sort of leaderboards the only long term goal of domination or gauntlegrym is to amass glory and tokens and buy gear.
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