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
