Endgame vs. levelling

@Charan: Am I missing something? I mean, the previous post asks about levelling, and that's a part of what I wrote about.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

Of course its a point of view ^^ But I dont see the logic behind that 'opposition':

Subjective, again. It's ok if you disagree. There was a stop point at the end with the best things and different things (alvl 85 with Ubers). People rushed to it. That's it.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

eg: if most of time a char is active in maps, then its even more true that having the 'three turns' (or more realistic: 2,5 turns) trough wraeclast before mapping is only a minor thing?!

True, but it's not just about levelling, it's about making the acts a proper parallel endgame that is as useful as maps too. Not wasting the world areas. I think the two aspects can be solved with one system.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

It has multiple, (IMHO) needed purposes:
normal serves as an introduction into the game and its basic mechanics. Its needed to offer a chance to visit all areas even for new/unexperienced players (that maybe face the genre for the first time...) - Imagine the perfect, linear, consistent world: how many of us (the players base as a whole) would never ever see Malachai or even Dominus? It has a huge impact on a game's publicity and reputation if ('suddenly') many players are limited to half or less of the 'real' content.

There are many things wrong there about what I said. I agree about normal, but if you read the alternatives I proposed, I'm not saying normal should go, I just said that after that repeating the difficulties just exacerbates the repetition. I said there should be alternatives, or better, a replacement. I'm not talking about extending the first playthrough until merciless, then you would have the problems you wrote there.

This article partially explains why would be that way. Roughly: themepark is good for guiding, free style/sandbox is good for everything else.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

Then: you need space (areas) to make a balanced levelling possible. And its (IMHO again) not desired to have areas blown up to a crossing time of 30+ minutes; nor its possible to add 'enough' side areas to fill the gap of cutting the higher diff's away. GGG already made this move after CB, with the addition of act 3 they shifted POE from 8 'acts' (2 at 4 diff's) to 9 (with removing one diff and a slightly rebalance of the 'rest'). I expect this will happen again with more added content, but with act 4 'alone' it would have pulled it back down to 8 while it should be an increase. And I doubt that we'll ever see a POE with just one difficulty/playthrough.

I repeat again, it's not about having one difficulty alone. Please read again what I wrote: One basic playthrough, relatively short, then you play relatively free and at higher levels you go to maps if you wish.

Side areas are not the only way to do it (although they would be nice, miniexpansion material like SOTV, in the spirit of Median XL's Uberquests); randomized quests (like in FM) or giving maps early are other ways to do it, and GGG has shown is possible for most of them. It would take time to flesh it out.

While I accept disagreements, at least you should disagree what I really said, else it'll be pointless.

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NeroNoah wrote:

I repeat again, it's not about having one difficulty alone. Please read again what I wrote: One basic playthrough, relatively short, then you play relatively free and at higher levels you go to maps if you wish.

So you suggest to have the 'basic guiding playthrough', formerly known as normal difficulty, rushed and done within 2 hours and then choose your favoured area and level 'more or less freely' until you cross the line to enter endgame? Doesnt really fit into this NON-MMO game which is basically build up around a clear, and more or less linear, playfield.

And even then I expect some feedback that the introduction playthrough would be too boring and even the (free-to-choose) levelling would take too much time ^^

I also cant really imagine POE as a game like old shadowflare with one playtrough only and very hard and very time-consuming content at the upper end; but with some more (linear and optional) content I really could see Cruel be somewhen gone. Maybe have areas with more then 1 WP to cover (much) larger zones in the upper diff then...

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Mr_Cee wrote:

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NeroNoah wrote:

I repeat again, it's not about having one difficulty alone. Please read again what I wrote: One basic playthrough, relatively short, then you play relatively free and at higher levels you go to maps if you wish.

So you suggest to have the 'basic guiding playthrough', formerly known as normal difficulty, rushed and done within 2 hours and then choose your favoured area and level 'more or less freely' until you cross the line to enter endgame? Doesnt really fit into this NON-MMO game which is basically build up around a clear, and more or less linear, playfield.

And even then I expect some feedback that the introduction playthrough would be too boring and even the (free-to-choose) levelling would take too much time ^^

I also cant really imagine POE as a game like old shadowflare with one playtrough only and very hard and very time-consuming content at the upper end; but with some more (linear and optional) content I really could see Cruel be somewhen gone. Maybe have areas with more then 1 WP to cover (much) larger zones in the upper diff then...

The trick is that the replacement would go up to Merciless and then work as a farming spot (given that the risk-reward thing is figured out, of course). So once you get pass normal, you start some activities that extend and scale up to the endgame. Seamless integration (bring the endgame earlier, at least partially). This way to see the world should work as a parallel endgame to maps.

I'd let normal because a similar structure worked for Guild Wars (it goes to level 20, and then you can fool around) and Guild Wars 2 (it goes to level 80, then you can fool around).

Even normal could have parallel content for those that have done it to the death, but I won't propose anything, I think it makes sense to have normal from an inmersion point of view (you start in the beach and ascend to demigod or something).

ARPGs don't have to be linear, also, popular MMOs this days (except Guild Wars, Eve Online and others) are linear as fuck, and you can actually study what people think about that.

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NeroNoah wrote:

The trick is that the replacement would go up to Merciless

obviously ;)

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NeroNoah wrote:

So once you get pass normal, you start some activities that extend and scale up to the endgame. Seamless integration (bring the endgame earlier, at least partially). This way to see the world should work as a parallel endgame to maps.

what would then 'qualify' that maps as 'endgame'? Endgame to me is still an extention that offers things to do when nothing else/regular is left to do for a char; the 'very final' build progression.

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NeroNoah wrote:

Even normal could have parallel content for those that have done it to the death, but I won't propose anything, I think it makes sense to have normal from an inmersion point of view (you start in the beach and ascend to demigod or something).

IMHO, nobody would care about this content if its not kind of 'mandatory' - caused by the given rewards of such sidequests. MXL did a very interesting job here, but a) with the background that the concept of its 'uberquests' was based on the very limited options to add such additional content at all - the could simply not be implemented in another way than this. Then add, that most of the low-level quest items were just too good to miss; and they are char-bound (as far I remember, its been quite a while that I played it): do we - and even more: GGG - really want that?

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NeroNoah wrote:

ARPGs don't have to be linear...and you can actually study what people think about that.

The genre's got mixed and washed out more and more - also driven by (at least partially) silly expectation and demands from the "people"... what is an ROLE PLAYING game without a basically linear progress and development of iots chars? Just a cartoonesque picture of what it should be - no matter how massive 'new thoughts' demand the jump over it.

After... 1-2 month of enjoying "early game" and almost 2 years of rushing/racing whatever, the whole act 1-3 thing is like (act 4 is a skip)... work you have to do in order to have fun. At least in my case there is ABSOLUTELY NO fun left. I tried to level new chars to endgame over the last two month but I always get bored after an hour or two, delete my new char and go back to my higher level chars... when they are all dead and nothing has changed up to then... I am certainly gone too. That's ok, I already got 2 years of playtime out of this and everything has an expiration date, I guess.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

what would then 'qualify' that maps as 'endgame'? Endgame to me is still an extention that offers things to do when nothing else/regular is left to do for a char; the 'very final' build progression.

If nothing can qualify as that (because people can't figure it out, Diablo 2 style), the better. I say that extention is starting too late (the main storyline ends in normal, you then repeat it one and a half time more). Ideally, no one should be making that much distinctions, maps should be something more to do, not the only thing to do at higher levels.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

IMHO, nobody would care about this content if its not kind of 'mandatory' - caused by the given rewards of such sidequests. MXL did a very interesting job here, but a) with the background that the concept of its 'uberquests' was based on the very limited options to add such additional content at all - the could simply not be implemented in another way than this. Then add, that most of the low-level quest items were just too good to miss; and they are char-bound (as far I remember, its been quite a while that I played it): do we - and even more: GGG - really want that?

You are missing yourself in the specifics. One can take some aspects without copying everything.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

The genre's got mixed and washed out more and more - also driven by (at least partially) silly expectation and demands from the "people"... what is an ROLE PLAYING game without a basically linear progress and development of iots chars? Just a cartoonesque picture of what it should be - no matter how massive 'new thoughts' demand the jump over it.

You need to play more RPGs then. Linear RPGs are fairly recent in fact, most of the famous ones are relatively sandboxy (like Fallout, Skyrim, etc.). Linear works well for fairly scripted games that railroad you to the end (story games/themepark games) but not for the rest.

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kcstar wrote:

After... 1-2 month of enjoying "early game" and almost 2 years of rushing/racing whatever, the whole act 1-3 thing is like (act 4 is a skip)... work you have to do in order to have fun. At least in my case there is ABSOLUTELY NO fun left. I tried to level new chars to endgame over the last two month but I always get bored after an hour or two, delete my new char and go back to my higher level chars... when they are all dead and nothing has changed up to then... I am certainly gone too. That's ok, I already got 2 years of playtime out of this and everything has an expiration date, I guess.

How would you change it?

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

NN, it appeared to me, in citing the horrific admission that the core game sucks donkey nads that is D3's Adventure Mode, that the person to whom I was responding sought to do away with the core game and just skip to the 'method' of the end-game. Not a bad thing in and of itself, obviously, but not really running in line with what you've set up, especially with that linked article. The author praised the UO/EQ model, and I experienced both games quite a lot. They were as far from a detached 'adventure mode' as you could get.

True. It was an admission of failure. That being said, something can be applied from that to expand the core game (like Forsaken Masters). It's an example of how to make a game relatively free form.

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NeroNoah wrote:

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kcstar wrote:

After... 1-2 month of enjoying "early game" and almost 2 years of rushing/racing whatever, the whole act 1-3 thing is like (act 4 is a skip)... work you have to do in order to have fun. At least in my case there is ABSOLUTELY NO fun left. I tried to level new chars to endgame over the last two month but I always get bored after an hour or two, delete my new char and go back to my higher level chars... when they are all dead and nothing has changed up to then... I am certainly gone too. That's ok, I already got 2 years of playtime out of this and everything has an expiration date, I guess.

How would you change it?

I remember D2 and GW1 (long time ago, maybe I do remember this incorrectly!?) - super easy rush in no time @ D2 and total skip of the whole story @ GW1.
Probably this is impossible to do in temp leagues - because it destroys the racing competition - but I am 99% of the time a permanent league player and racing isn't anything to consider there in my opinion.

I know, it's possible to get a boost in PoE... and players like Raiz can get to lvl 70 in a day... but first of all, most people (I think) do not have time to nolife PoE 24/7 to get there in a day or two nor do they want to spend another xx days for something they don't like... except they make cash by doing it (twitch!?) ... these are all exemptions! Resulting in a few days of "wasted life"... more or less.

These are just two possible ways that come to my mind in a second, I guess there are more if the community (or even GGG) spend time thinking about solutions... or maybe I am a very small minority and it doesn't matter to waste time on this BUT the situation I (!!) am in right now is unsatisfying.

Perhaps im burned out but i find the core levelling so dull since 2.0, i think its the increased monster life and added act.

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kcstar wrote:

I remember D2 and GW1 (long time ago, maybe I do remember this incorrectly!?) - super easy rush in no time @ D2 and total skip of the whole story @ GW1.
Probably this is impossible to do in temp leagues - because it destroys the racing competition - but I am 99% of the time a permanent league player and racing isn't anything to consider there in my opinion.

I know, it's possible to get a boost in PoE... and players like Raiz can get to lvl 70 in a day... but first of all, most people (I think) do not have time to nolife PoE 24/7 to get there in a day or two nor do they want to spend another xx days for something they don't like... except they make cash by doing it (twitch!?) ... these are all exemptions! Resulting in a few days of "wasted life"... more or less.

These are just two possible ways that come to my mind in a second, I guess there are more if the community (or even GGG) spend time thinking about solutions... or maybe I am a very small minority and it doesn't matter to waste time on this BUT the situation I (!!) am in right now is unsatisfying.

At least you are remembering D2 well, GW1 I can't say.

I don't think you are a minority. I've seen many people complaining, but it hardly goes further than that.

This thread is a witness to that fact.

I decided to finally look in this thread. Glad I did; sad I didn't sooner. Can't be bothered to read every post at this point.

This discussion reminds me of Hand of Fate, a quirky little game with some interesting mechanics - initially difficult to understand all the details, and quite unorthodox. Although it's not an MMO and not exactly a conventional ARPG either, I feel that HoF is a game which truly takes the OP article advice to heart, striking the very soul of the game. Rather than starting with some cookiecutter leveling period of generic gameplay, it thrusts you right in to its "endgame" mechanics. Well, not quite; it has a surprisingly good learning curve of gradually introducing these mechanics, rather than the learning cliff the OP article refers to, where as soon as you get to a certain point a switch gets flipped and all of a sudden everything is different.

If Path of Exile really took the "endgame vs leveling" concept to heart, and introduced its endgame mechanics to players immediately, I imagine it would become a quirky, HoF style game in its own right. Before even picking your character you'd probably meet Zana, no longer a mere Master but a character just as central as your own, your guide to Wraeclast and dispenser of exposition and tutorials. All content access would go through her. The map system would be evident from the very start (Coast versus Tidal Island might be random), giving each leveling experience tileset and monster variety as you work your way towards the Prison to face Brutus and the Caverns of Wrath to dance with Merveil (after a set number of successful clears, hopefully). From the onset currency use could increase drops in an area now or be saved for later. And so on.

Would such a game be better? Not sure; maybe. But it would be so obnoxiously, idk, hipster I guess is the right word. Although I think moving map access as early as Cruel A1 might not be a crazy move (why repeat story mode?), bringing a map system to the very core of early play seems too drastic. PoE follows a lot of genre conventions, and although I feel some of these are detrimental to continue following, if you get too experimental your playerbase will just feel alienated and lost, and soon afterward the developer will be alienated from a lost playerbase.

Thus, what I feel the OP article fails to consider are the advantages of learning cliffs - that is, of abrupt mechanical changes. They allow players to gain a deep understanding of other mechanical systems (in PoE's case, combat) in a less intimidating environment, one which will be utterly absent in the endgame but no longer necessary, having already carried out its function. While I can imagine several endgames less complicated than the map system, and thus many endgames not worthy of a learning cliff, I believe PoE falls rather strongly into the group where such a design decision is not only justified, but virtually mandatory.

TL;DR: OP article holds one design decision as The Better Way while consistently mocking the alternative, when it is actually a complex game design decision with pros and cons for both options.