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The "End Game"
kvet
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 2,700 Arc User
I see in the Dev Blogs that talk of the End Game is already starting. BAD WRONG -- GOOONNGGG. Stop talking about that. This is an MMO, if there is a foreseeable End Game, you're going about it all wrong. STO has this problem, with the exception of some of the long (and more or less irrelevant) grind rewards, you can start a character and be done with the game within a few weeks of play. That's really poor MMO design (I'm a fan of STO, btw, despite having just said that).
Unlike STO, though, NW has a unique opportunity to bring something longer term into the game. STO is stuck in that, you're a captain of a ship.... how does that end? You're promoted and eventually you retire and your ship is put in a museum right next to you. yay... so, STO's end game is really end of game, so instead it's just an endless grindfest.
With NW and the D&D universe, though, your talking about a legacy. A time period where ancestors were venerated and future generations carefully moulded. (sometimes anyway, it's an RPG after all!).
So... here's my proposal for an end-game scenario. It even includes revenue potential!
At some point in the game, there won't be a lot of new challenges. A player will have done all the contests 100 times, they'll have finished whatever story content there is to finish, they'll have the +10 Sword of Uberhood, the +12 Cloak of Dorkness and at least three pairs of Boots of Dont-Step-In-That. So, when an adventurer is at this point, what is s/he? I'll tell you. They're OLD. So, let them retire in peace.
When that happens, you create a new character as that dusty oldtimers son/daugther/neice/stepson/god daugther whatever and some portion (all, the monetary value, something like that) is given to that new adventure along with some element of the retiring adventurer's name and maybe some bonuses (history and experience of the past and all that).
Then, that old character is no longer playable -- BUT it still counts as a character slot and cannot be deleted. Why??? Because it's enhanced it's descendant, and it's descendants, and so forth. You wanna play the Bob Bronzeballs the 5th (or start a whole new line for that matter at this point)? There's the revenue potential -- player will have to purchase additional character slots -- or, alternatively, delete the WHOLE LINE, not just the bones of dusty old Bob the First...
Unlike STO, though, NW has a unique opportunity to bring something longer term into the game. STO is stuck in that, you're a captain of a ship.... how does that end? You're promoted and eventually you retire and your ship is put in a museum right next to you. yay... so, STO's end game is really end of game, so instead it's just an endless grindfest.
With NW and the D&D universe, though, your talking about a legacy. A time period where ancestors were venerated and future generations carefully moulded. (sometimes anyway, it's an RPG after all!).
So... here's my proposal for an end-game scenario. It even includes revenue potential!
At some point in the game, there won't be a lot of new challenges. A player will have done all the contests 100 times, they'll have finished whatever story content there is to finish, they'll have the +10 Sword of Uberhood, the +12 Cloak of Dorkness and at least three pairs of Boots of Dont-Step-In-That. So, when an adventurer is at this point, what is s/he? I'll tell you. They're OLD. So, let them retire in peace.
When that happens, you create a new character as that dusty oldtimers son/daugther/neice/stepson/god daugther whatever and some portion (all, the monetary value, something like that) is given to that new adventure along with some element of the retiring adventurer's name and maybe some bonuses (history and experience of the past and all that).
Then, that old character is no longer playable -- BUT it still counts as a character slot and cannot be deleted. Why??? Because it's enhanced it's descendant, and it's descendants, and so forth. You wanna play the Bob Bronzeballs the 5th (or start a whole new line for that matter at this point)? There's the revenue potential -- player will have to purchase additional character slots -- or, alternatively, delete the WHOLE LINE, not just the bones of dusty old Bob the First...
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The idea would be that the bonuses build up from generation to generation so, by the 4th generation, at equal level and equipment as your original character, you'll be that much better because you're benefiting from 3 previous generations of adventure's skills and knowledge being passed on to you. Also, with the bequesting notion, the hard-to-get stuff Bob the 1st had to grind for can be passed on to his first-cousins-stepsister's-former-roomate in-law as the next generation (provided they can use it, otherwise, they can store it as a family heirloom for their rugrat to use when they retire). So, it might have taken Bob 4 months and 800 contests to finally earn the whole Furry Suit of Crazy-Fu set, but Bob 2nd won't have too because it was given to him (and Bob 1st is a corpse, so he can't get it back....). So, when Bob 2nd has the skills, he can wear the Furry Suit early and benefit from it's crazy-powers rather than level up IN ORDER to be powerful enough to grind for it. It also eliminates proliferation since the player did EARN the set, and regardless of what toon is being used, someone in that toon's line did it and passed it down, so you can't question whether a given toon has a right to bear it (no Furry pun intended....) -- as opposed to simply being able to buy the stuff (likely super high-end items will be bound like they are in other Cryptic titles).
But this notion will also let you play new characters, and do new things, try other classes, all without having to actually lose the use of all that good stuff you spend weeks or months grinding for. All you really lose is the specific toon you used -- but you get to keep the bonuses for retiring it. And after 5 generations if you want that one to be uber-immortal.. fine, never retire him/her -- but it means you sort of deserve being major powerful because you played 5 characters through the game at that point, enjoy being Bob The Furry God, you earned it
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
If it ain't broke don't fix it. Especially not with that model you propose, which I'm sorry to say but I'm 100% certain will only keep the server population somewhere between the high double digits and the low triple digits. Noone likes to be forced to delete the character they've put so much effort into... Ok, maybe a few dozen people like you do, but that's hardly enough of an audience to work with...
Personally I prefer playing D&D to enjoy 'the journey' to max level rather than run around as a max level character but I would never want to feel forced or encouraged to sacrifice that level of power.
It would be like Rune scape's PvP mechanic where players actively tried to keep low level stats in order to avoid being put with high level opponents. I didn't like players feeling encouraged to not level there and I won't enjoy it anywhere else.
Player's should always want to level up everything. Nobody, within reason, should ever feel like getting experience on a character is a bad thing.
Personally I think Trophy Items and Achievements give great reasons to continue to play after max level and I hope Cryptic puts a good effort into that style of content in order to promote a sense of purpose after max levels.
But beyond that you have to consider this is a D&D Video Game. While there may be 'campaign endgames' there is no D&D endgame otherwise none of us would be here.
The biggest problem with your proposal is that you consider this to be a game that people will only play one character from start to finish. I plan on playing every class and various races regardless of any endgame. A system such as you described doesn't make logical sense to me as a D&D fan because I will already be starting up new characters (and playing different 'daily' ones depending on my mood/desires) without the game forcing it upon me. ;-)
I hope I am not coming off mean as it's not intended but while a system like that could work in a game which didn't have the ability to make alternate characters it would be nothing more than a punishment to NW Players.
I don't think I could have conveyed my feelings and opinions any better than this. I totally agree with Aabisinisterr here. I am also an alt-o-holic. Seriously, out of all the many MMOs I play regularly, there is not one MMO that I do not have at least 2 accounts with. Heck, I had 20+ accounts with Ultima Online when I played that for a decade. No, that is not a typo.
Also, I DM a High Level FR Campaign that has endured for over 10 years. Just because a character reaches "max listed level" it does not mean that their adventures are over. Far from it, it's more like they're just really starting to begin.
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End game is high level game. After a while we will have epic destiny. Games in heroic,paragon and epic is all D&D has to offer in terms of levels (basically 30 levels). But does that mean the content it has it less? No.
The point of this game is telling and living great stories in a vast world where possibilities are limitless.
Any game updates can include map packs and other new design items as the Foundry users burn through the materials that are released with launch, which won't be for a long time anyway as I understand it. The library already seems quite large.
DDO kind of has this already, it's called True Reincarnation or tr ing for short. It's something lots of us in ddo liked till they kinda borked it with the epic levels and made it not so worth doing anymore.
One thing, you only get extra stats points to place for the first two TR's after no more bonus to stats, to avoid too much power creep. Basically you can go from a 32pt toon to a 36 pt toon. You also get to keep all your previous items you had in your bank and backpack, kind of like an inheretance.
It's something I enjoyed as when you get super bored of endgame you could TR, replay your toon and tweak it's build as you have to relevel it etc.
For the hardcore nerds there's something called completionist where you need a past life of every class in the game for even more extras.
All in all I like the idea except the whole concept of having to lose a character slot just to force people to buy more character slots, this last part is just ridiculous IMHO, this last bit would just be over-greedy.
They can make money with this without doing that.
Neverwinter Thieves Guild
The OP's idea strikes me too much to resemble the legacy system in SWTOR, to my this was a horrible system that did not offer much and really forced player characters into arbitrary relationships.
I have no problem with offering bonuses or perks to get people to play alts, I'm not sure it would work in NW depending on how many character slots we get free. If there is a decent number of free slots then offering account wide perks for alts seems reasonable and not a simple money grab attempt.
I think xp perks should be the foundation of any system the rewards alt making. One of the things that I think has become clear since WoW, love it or hate the days of taking years to get to max level on one character are over. I can't really blame developers for this either, I don't think it is as simple as dumbing down games, I think it is combination of a number of things, one of those things being that developers send a great deal of time designing different classes and races and gear and if you make leveling take years fewer people actually experience all of that content, they might see all of one class, but rarely all of them when leveling is a hurdle. So make xp bonus a perk for those who want to level alts.
Gear that is account transferable is another good idea. The recent addition to STO of the account wide bank would also fit into this category. I hate to see things in any game made Bind on Pick up, but if they do have this I would love to see it bind to the account and not the character.
My biggest complaint about the SWTOR legacy system was it's forcing of all of my characters in to one familial bond, if I wanted them to have a surname they all had to share one, from an RP standpoint (something I hope NW has plenty of) this was a nightmare. I think it is possible to have many of these feature without the need convoluted relationships, sure the tools to create such relationships are nice, when I want them, but make it optional at the very least and don't make me opt into it to take part in the benefits of the system.
This game is running on a self-contained principle. What one character does in a "Multi-gen" (like in the Record of Agarest War and other multi-generational Role-playing games I admit not knowing of this in any MMO,) would not affect the progression of another character when playing here and your actions are developed by one character alone (your group experience may vary,) and even Foundry modules are one adventure cannot affect the outcome of another. Whether this is philosophy, architecture, both or a whole other bunch of things remains unimportant. It's how the game is developed.
So imagine the technical hell if you start linking other characters to prior slots trying to flag multi-relational setups when this game may or may not use a database (flat) similar to this, let alone this complexity!
It would take up to a year of a team dedicated to do this and the errors including item corruption would cause far greater problems than the more likely reason below:
Not interested in this by enough of the D&D/MMO group. This kind of thing has its supporters in Record of Agarest. But the players who do this game are looking for MMO and D&D based lore and tradition or new items, not necessarily a multigeneration play but more likely a connection to one character as that one and only one character, and alts for other options. Trust me, as PvP has shown, if there is a large enough interest in something, it can delay the game to make sure it's added at launch or future endgames. If there becomes some interest in this, I'm sure it can be added too, if technically feasable./
But let's at least add the Epic tier before we start talking about locking character slots.
But we haven't even added Epic tiers yet let alone level "cap" end game options.
This position isn't from anything officially speaking, but from a player of MMO and D&D observation
Certainly foundry might help for the new content and areas to explore. Specially if there are regular updates of new mobs and type of dungeon scenary.
For the power creep, maybe still have things get better, but bring out packs of equipement every so often so noone is left to far behind and can not play as noone is doing the lower stuff any more. There needs to be a way for newer players to catch up, otherwise they would alway be behind, things such as level caps are basic ways of doing that.
Other things I liked are hierlooms for alts, good blue quality gear for leveling that leveled with you.
I also liked the Reincarnation, the extra stats points, which could be like the OP post. Also I liked getting to the high level in a "basic" class then re rolling into a more "advanced" class which gave benefits and required releveling, but was not really more powerful than the basic class. Usually things like teleport, flying etc and maybe a couple powerful moves, but not a huge increase in dps.
But mainly it should be playing the game, exploring and finding.
However, back to the technical end -- I get the engine isn't even remotely designed for what I've suggested here, and no way would I suggest such a change should be around at launch (given that's only a few short months from now) if it were ever to be part of the game... However, for a long term game, some sort of dynastic mechanism, especially in the scope of a single city seems to make sense - especially if such a mechanism operates in parallel. Of course, it would primarily be an RP mechanism... obviously from a pure RP perspective, one can already do this -- just without the benefit of bequests (which makes it rather hollow IMO).
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
Now, here's the problem with this: if you give tangible benefits (like extra feats or attribute points, or anything along those lines) for legacy/reincarnated/whatever you wanna call them characters, you are essentially making the process obligatory. You are flat out saying that unless they reroll, they will never reach the maximum of their potential. Which is the absolute main goal in any and every RPG.
The other option would be to give absolutely no benefits for it. In which case, why bother designing the whole system in the first place, when the players can do that themselves?
There is no middle ground.
/seconded.
Also providing more "benefits" because you just have a high level character is plaain wrong and will create barriers to entry and creeping of character progression. You can already trade for better gear and know most of the areas which should be enough. Any more than that would be unfair.
Frankly, I'm more concerned with the ability to moderate the modders. There's going to be TONS of adventures coming out of the Foundry. Heck, Cryptic barely has to make a game - the Foundry and a few character classes and races are enough to rope me in.
As was also mentioned - the typical MMO endgame - get to max level, be super powerful, run super challenging content with more than one group for awesome gear - absolutely nothing wrong with that in my book. In fact, I love it. And I hope there's a place for it both in Cryptic's content and in the Foundry content. Again, though - I'm wondering just what kind of loot can be pulled from a player-created Foundry quest.
I have been asked:
"
You've often flamed the "casual loot system" and I'm curious what exactly you have a problem with and why it bugs you.
What is so wrong with everyone getting a reward for completing a dungeon? Why shouldn't everyone who has progressed and improved and accomplished something get a reward? Is it really the fact that everyone gets rewarded who makes significant contributions that bothers you, or just the plateau?
"
"What is so wrong with everyone getting a reward for completing a dungeon?"
Absolutely nothing wrong with that and same goes for Events.
"
Is it really the fact that everyone gets rewarded who makes significant contributions that bothers you, or just the plateau
"
That everybody who makes a significant contribution gets rewarded is absolutely ok with me.
I dislike only the Power Plateau. I LOVE when I grow more powerful I mean more then simple stats ... more skills of I a spellcaster new spells or if a fighter new weapon combos. I do like also the stat increase.
Look I don't know if you play Pen and Paper rpg games? I am what people call a powergamer though roleplaying can be fun sometimes. About Elitism. Yes I am partly Elitist. Saying partly because I do not laugh at players with bad gear in WOW. It is sad some Elitists are sadists who like to hurt the feelings of other people, but thats not me. No when I say I am partly Elitist I mean I like to compete for "perfection". Maybe thats why I like sports in real life and like to watch sports from TV.
IF there is a Powerplateau in Neverwinter then it should not be easy or fast to reach. Yes I enjoy the journey, but let it last a very long time.
While we may not have to worry yet about endgame, I'm sure such feedback will give future planning ideas to what could be mapped down the line!
So keep up the good work!
my thoughts on endgame are quite simple.
i HATE grind with a passion. i flatly refuse to run the same content a thousand times simply to try to get item X that has a 0.0001% drop rate. if i run it once, thats enough for me. in fact for most of my previous MMOs, i havent even run the endgame content once, since there is no reason to do so when the chances of getting a usefull item are so close to zero.
as such, NWs approach to casual content and everybody gets something appeals to me.
likewise, the potential of the foundry has encouraged a very optomistic view from me regarding the endgame. with a direct tap into the creativity of the community i'm thinking a player is going to have to actively work at being bored when max level.
as for the OPs ideas and suggestions....
sorry, but no.
i tend to be a single character kind of player. i rarely have more than two in any mmo i play, and one of those is ussualy sidelined for months before i log it in for some play.
while i see the majority here tend towards having the full roster of races/classes, past experience has shown i'm not alone in favoring just one character.
SWTOR's legacy system has already been mentioned in a previous reply. it was something i really did not like, though i can understand why they did it. Bioware had spent an enormous amount of time on money creating what was an awesome leveling experience. the game from lvls 1-49 was fantastic, the story compelling.
but most players only experienced a small portion of that, as they lvled to max on one or two characters and then sat there asking "what now?"
i felt that the legacy system was a very hard shove in a direction i did not care to go as a player.
finaly, i cant pass up the oportunity to point out that while not a focus of the endgame by any means, PvP does constitute a not insignificant portion of a players endgame play time.
some more than others, due to personal prefference. pugging instanced pvp has always been a fun time filler for my while waiting for friends to come online.
I really dislike the elitism, grind, repetition, and raiding that are generally a part of MMO End Games. I also loathe being forced to group with others to experience lore and content. I'd much rather have the choice to either group or go solo as well as not be forced into a group of a specific size. For instance, if I wanted, I should be able to run a Dungeon Delve by myself or with only one other person and not forced to find 4 other players.
I, personally, prefer to run all missions and content for the first time either solo or with someone I know personally. This way I can experience it on my own time and pace and then later on go and do it with a group for a new experience but yet have some inclination of how to proceed. I hate, and I use that word very rarely, PUGs.
[ Support Center • Rules & Policies and Guidelines • ARC ToS • Guild Recruitment Guidelines | FR DM Since 1993 ]
i wholeheartedly agree with everything you've said here.
As do I. I wonder if it's possible to somehow take the reincarnation of DDO, and the Epic Destiny "ending" of 4th Ed D&D and make some NWO "end option" to "reset" or "redo" with the character?
But even if not I'll be there for ya Zeb. Let's take it slow and find all the good stuff we can locate!
I can't tell you how many quests I have speed-clicked through because the players I was with didn't want to read past "Hi I'll give you a quest."
MMO or not, a solo option is great for those who want to enjoy storylines and actually read that text between response options haha.
I'll say this: When our modules start coming out, my dialog will be fun to read, and much better not speeding through. When you start talking back to the chat window, I've done my job
Yeah, I hear ya. I know that will probably be the downside for players who don't care to read and take their time is my Mods will probably be ones that really cannot be rushed through but are more meant to tell a story, as close as possible to PnP D&D as I can get.
[ Support Center • Rules & Policies and Guidelines • ARC ToS • Guild Recruitment Guidelines | FR DM Since 1993 ]
My missions would be like - if you don't read the story - you will take a lot more time to complete them. :-)
I am totally Ilmater's fan when it comes to designing missions.
EDIT: Also, if you are not slow, you will die. If you are slow, you will die. If you breathe, you will die - basically those kind of missions
You no I hate Guild Wars 2 with no end game. In less then 2 weeks you max you character in Guild Wars 2.
What do I think? Raids? YES at least 10 people... however no need for 40 people big raids.
See we did talk about raids before:
Other endgame? Yes hard Dungeons and later PvP. However we know nothing about PvP except that it will be released much later after the release for Neverwinter. Maybe PvP comes 6-12 months after Neverwinter release.