Endgame Solutions - The ultimative Endgame Patch in a Sandbox Environment

Endgame consisting of playing maps only has become stale. Any other grind only content will as well. This game needs sandbox (mmo?) endgame elements & content. Let me introduce you to a set of ideas that I came up with which would make this game a 90%er in magazines, create infinitie fun for years and a real incentive for players to level up and get strong.


A) The Problem
What incentives do players have in e.g. PoE or D3 to level & grind their charackter higher and higher? To be able to grind even higher and more difficult content. Is this the solution of endgame of arpgs? It is not. No solution that ends in itself is. What incentives are there to to create guilds? Not very much honestly. It is not much more than a chat only purpose thing that actually competes with stuff like facebook, skype but doesn't offer any gameplay advantage. The guild stash is a fine thing but cannot be the whole thing about guilds.


B) The Solution
Let guilds/single players create their own camps, towns or fortresses. Create funcionality and utility around these for both PvE and PvP content.





i) Create a set of basic tileset/layout zones where people can set up their camps, bases and fortresses.


ii) Create a set of craftable/obtainable individual upgrades for these camps. This contains indestructables, craftable-destructable and individually (re)placeable fortification that each serve certain purposes in PvE and PvP. It contains vendors that move to this base with maybe even various purposes and players having their stash in this base. It contains the TP of players leads to such a base instead of boring (after a while) a3m. Even an own laboratory for high end bases could make sense. It contains npc camp guards or other defense mechanics like e.g. traps.


iii) Create events PvE, PvP that players partially can trigger themselves.

1) PvE defensive content:
Guild camps should be frequently attacked by ai monsters. This can be common light random attacks (on its guards, destructable fortifications and human players) which trigger when at least one player of the guild is online or is in town. And more rare big time siege events where hundreds of monsters and in the end bosses attack these bases. A guild must decide when to do these hard encounters and they have to do a minimum number of such per week in order to keep their base.

2) PvE offensive content:
Players of the guild who own a base should be able to craft random semi permanent PvE zones around these bases (similar to maps). This should contain dungeons and adjacent zones to the camp that players can continuously extend and grind (maybe each player of the guild can enter such an area once? Maybe its up for a week? alot is possible). Whether or not these zones should stay and how long, how high monster lvl they can have etc. needs to be balanced with currency sink in comparison with the map system.

3) PvP content:
Guilds should be able to decide if they wanna take part in the PvP circuit or not. If so there should be battles in these camps/bases/fortresses. Whether or not guilds should be able to lose bases is a difficult question that depends on the details like currency invested, potential currency loss, potential gains etc. Probably not. More likely there should be other incentives to battle other guilds bases. E.g. to rob a guilds semi permanent PvE environment that they have just crafted and either connect it to your own guilds base or just being able clean/destroy it once. There are hundreds of other things that need to be figured out like how many players of each guild are allowed to take part and what will those who dont take part do in the meantime (as they probably can't use their base for normal town/vendor/stash purposes during such PvP events), how oftenly can a guilds base be attacked? This should be all be something possible to figure out in the end.


iv) Optional stuff/random ideas on this matter:
- enable player bases to have false gods in their town that have some kind of (buff) effect on PvE and PvP events. E.g. these false gods consist of items players (temporarily?) donate so that for example a rich guild would be protected by a false god which carries legacy kaoms, a strong mirror weapon and so on (maybe can carry all items players can wear too).
- allow every player to enter a guilds base, let him decide if he is friendly or hostile or neutral. Connect the ability of entering another guilds place being hostile to certain requirements like if there is anyone of the guild online. Allow hostile players to enter other guilds zones only alone when it is not connected to a pvp event. Friendly players can enter (when a guild admin has decided to allow them to?) to ally up with guild guys for PvE stuff, use his stash and the vendors in there etc.
- create some kind of economy things in the guilds bases that help to deal with currency sink costs for upkeeping the base. This could be alterations farms that go into a guilds base stash tab which can only be used for upgrading/repairing/crafting base items/upgrades in combination with currency the players of the guilds add themselves. These alteration farms could be destroyed/robbed in PvP team 6vs6 events e.g.


v) Problems:
The big problem is balance. As long as there are heavily overpowered builds around like e.g. fyndel's throw build around, which clear 78 map monsters in 1-1.5 screens distance with gmp in 1-2 hits while 6 players are in the party, there is no much room for such PvE events. You can make a monster siege as hard as you want. A certain number of players wont be able to kill fast enaugh with their builds and similar equipment while such a build could clear it alone with 5 others watching. This needs to be balanced (maybe have gmp/lmp reducing crit multi? whatever). Not even talking of PvP here.
How would ppl access a guilds/players zone? A worldmap would be great but is not mandatory at all in my opinion. A simple waypoint like access system that makes members spawn in base and hostiles/neutrals randomly around it would do the job.


vi) The course of action:
As endgame is stale and will continue to be so as long as you just add stale content like a new map or boss there needs to be something new. You could start off with adding this content step by step. First off just create the zones for guilds being able to set up their basements with little PvE content available for craft. Then extend its feautures until stuff sharpens and the implementation for PvP becomes possible at some point.




vii) Conclusion:

What does all this offer to PoE?

1. Incentives to lvl up high/strong
2. new endgame content
3. currency sink
4. reasonable PvP team strategy/tactics not just a training area
5. maps can coexist
6. unlimited expansion options in any direction you feel is suitable
7. the option to restructure PoE economy within such an endgame system. The relation of currency sinks into items, maps and basement could get a new arrangement.
8. Giving guilds a real purpose
9. Having sandbox elements that allow players to be creative with designing/utilizing their base
10. Getting players back into PoE that left long time ago. This is the direction that PoE should walk into. A step into the future and not a step back (what e.g. SFL would be with splitting up player base more and more).





Please give your feedback in this thread. Variations or addings welcome.

Greetings

I like this to some degree. But implementing all this would require alot of balancing for the new system and extra modeling. Since they are trying to improve the game first and its engine, somehow i don't see this coming this year maybe sometimes in late 2015 :), if they every decide.


Note to GGG aswell: I like this guys idea of having guilds build their own camps and complete challenges for resources or gather them trough questing around wraeclast. But than you have to balance this for people who play solo alot, where would they fit in.


IDEA: I would have some bounty rewards scattered around, like daily quests with high rewards or chance of a getting unique, if you manage to kill this rare spawn monster or unique boss.

Best regards, Fary :)

Well sure this is alot of work. Solo players could just as well make a 1 man guild and create their camp and decide not to take part in PvP.


The thing is that solo player neither need to be nor are right now on par with group players. There is not even a reason to give a solo player the exact same rewards/strengths/options. Everyone can decide to join or create a guild and with such a system there would even be a reason for solo players to group up.


About the amount of work. This stuff can be implemented easily step by step. It does not have to be the whole package at once. Lets start with letting guilds have their own town/base/camp wich some simple crafting options and the option to craft dungeons around/below their town. E.g. this could be:
1. craft a well - roll a dungeon for the well. Every player of the guild can enter the dungeon once. Maps can even serve as one of the needed items for crafting these dungeons.
2. craft a way through the jungle - roll a dungeon behind the jungle
3. craft a road to the north (whatever) - guild can roll a dungeon behind the road to the north
4. ...


In second step:
1. add random light monster attack on the camp as soon as one guild member is in the camp.
2. add crafting fortification options that hinder monsters from light attack to pass
3. add crafting guard options that help to defend against light attacks

In third step:
1. add heavy monster siege attacks at the camp zone, make
2. add more fortification that helps to deal with heavy attacks
3. make stuff like crafted dungeons unavailable until the siege is cleared


...........


In 8th step, add PvP stuff



This is actually real content. It encourages team spirit. It encourages the higher/richer players can make the lower ones benefit with e.g. crafting a lvl 73 dungeon on the base. It encourages lvling a second/third char through the 70s and 80s levels with your guild on your crafted common dungeons. Alot of special stuff like random dungeons appearing below the well or whatever can be added at any point of time which would further make stuff more interesting. This would extend the game so much and offers infinite options for the developers to add content that is not only new uniques and gems (which is good anyway, but does not change the experience of most players which use a fixed set of items, a swap can take long and be expensive). This is what PoE needs to increase player numbers. Not more pure rng and not more capitalism. PoE needs group feeling and stuff that reduces emphasize on pure gear/build comparison, farming speed etc. It needs stuff where players contribute for each other and benefit from each other and not are only competitors in any way you look at it. This is what btw makes ppl play D3. Not because it is self found. The fact that ppl can play together and everyone will find about the same gear after a certain point of time makes all the noobs happy. While I hate this direction of D3 totally, PoE seems to be the exact opposite which could use some backpaddeling in this matter.

It's a decent idea.
But, how about we make GGG actually finish this game before we suggest they start making a new one?

I'll give one reason why this won't happen.

PvP.

I consider this being part of the process of finnishing the game. This sounds to me like the people who kept telling "wait until the game is finished, maps are only a placeholder".

How could PvP be a reason that this is not going to happen when PvP is only one optional part of it that can or cannot be implemented in the end? Even this offers options for PvP in various different ways.

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LSN wrote:

I consider this being part of the process of finnishing the game. This sounds to me like the people who kept telling "wait until the game is finished, maps are only a placeholder".

It's kind of a myth that GGG ever said this, they never said "We will eventually remove maps, they are just a place holder".

Now maelstroem of chaos that was an actual place holder for end game.
What GGG actually said was something to the effect of "We don't have the complete end game finished yet, so for the time being you only get the maps part".

"

f3rret wrote:

"

LSN wrote:

I consider this being part of the process of finnishing the game. This sounds to me like the people who kept telling "wait until the game is finished, maps are only a placeholder".

It's kind of a myth that GGG ever said this, they never said "We will eventually remove maps, they are just a place holder".

Now maelstroem of chaos that was an actual place holder for end game.
What GGG actually said was something to the effect of "We don't have the complete end game finished yet, so for the time being you only get the maps part".

lol I wonder why people (people, not GGG again) always get stuff wrong even tho it is not that difficult to read. GGG never claimed this. People did. And other like me told them that maps are going to stay as they serve the purpose perfectly. It is not even a myth that GGG ever said this. People however thought and told it in the forums on a daily basis in threads concerning maps.

This is just the same of what you do with "let GGG first complete the game before thingking about such stuff". You got it wrong. The game is completed, now the question is how to extend the experience in terms of long term motivation. A 4th act wont be it at all when it is going to be settled before the endgame as current acts are. A 4th act anyway will only serve the purpose of reducing the number of difficulties from 3 into 2 (just in case you think, like ppl (not GGG) in the past did believe in the issues about the mapsystem, that a fourth act will be the holy grail for the endgame).


p.s: cmon man is the level of discussion here really that I need to explain you what I wrote and you talking about myths that never have been myths and all that stuff?

"

LSN wrote:

I consider this being part of the process of finnishing the game. This sounds to me like the people who kept telling "wait until the game is finished, maps are only a placeholder".

How could PvP be a reason that this is not going to happen when PvP is only one optional part of it that can or cannot be implemented in the end? Even this offers options for PvP in various different ways.

I'm going to assume you're talking to me since it seems to be about what I said. You should get used to quoting people.

PvP will never be balanced in games like this.

Diablo 2 had some balance where some things countered others much like in the Starcraft games. Nothing was all powerful and nothing was really underpowered. Static Field used to destroy everyone until they made it useless in PvP.

So, unless PoE's "Static Field" skills become useless in PvP, and other builds are buffed and made viable for PvP, most players won't be able to partake in PvP.

Summoners are completely useless as they deal little to no damage, have low survivability especially against CoC/RF builds, and can easily lose their minions to just about any other build before their minions can do anything.

CoC builds are capable of destroying anything out there simply due to the sheer amount of spells they can put out. It doesn't matter what resistances you have, what skills you use, and how much life you have. They can lay out so many varied spells that they will destroy you if you don't kill them.

RF builds are probably the most overpowered simply due to mechanics, like CoC builds. All they need to do is run around you and not even touch you. They can focus on just staying alive while you burn and die over and over. I can only imagine the godly power of a stun-locking RF build, or a Leap Slamming one.

Finally, you have plenty of builds that deal well over 20k DPS, and that means it only takes one shot to kill anyone else. The highest hit points I've seen was an 9k ES build and that would only be able to take two hits at best.

TL;DR: Unless total hit points and total DPS output are completely swapped and then buffed and nerfed accordingly, PvP will never be balanced and will only be fun for those who are either glass cannons or one of the mechanically superior builds.

I agree that PvP will never be balanced. This is what I mentioned in my original post a well (which you totally didn't read). PvP is not even the core of the idea. It can be implemented later on in hundreds of different ways tho (while being imbalanced).

You are basically off-topic with all your last posting. PvP is even in the game at this very moment while not being balanced at all. Why could PvP that is impossible to balance be a reason to not implement endgame PvE stuff is what you should explain me instead of writing a full page of useless since well known information.

Obviously when refering to something that only you wrote that you even understood yourself as being directed to you, I don't need to quote you at all.