Maps for end game isn't enough

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rflynn74 wrote:

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Sony_Black wrote:

I'm quoting the last part of the Map developer diary:

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Of course, Maps aren’t the only thing to do in Path of Exile’s end-game. There are plenty of other exciting options for high level players:

-Boss runs (the Act Two boss is being added in 0.9.11 as well)
-Farming high monster density areas for items (like the Fellshrine Ruins)
-PvP (arenas are coming in 0.9.12)
-Playing special league events (we run these weekly but are ramping them up as we approach Open Beta)
-Trading/economy
-Twinking alternate characters
-Guild events (in Open Beta or Release)

I disagree with the boss farming runs. The way this game is designed, boss farm runs are pretty much a waste of time. Once you get about 5-10 maps you won't even be bothering with any boss farming runs at all. IN fact, you wont even really be access the normal content within the Acts 1, 2 and 3 when it comes out because there's no real point.

My point is this; This game needs to have not just MAPS for content for fighting, it needs to have very random LARGE UBER monsters that can spawn in random zones. Diablo 2 had UBERS

http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Uber_Diablo

UBER Diablo , Uber DIABLO would appear when a specific amount of a particular item was sold. This is just an example, and I'm not saying that GGG should do exactly this, but they should certainly entertain ideas like this.

I am not into the maps thing, but mentioning ubers cant be the best thing you will come up with. This is an easy content to develop and it was release AFTER d2 was up and rolling.

I think that maps are a boring way of making players come back to certain game areas.

Regnum Online. The game used to be great endgame-wise, before the developers got greedy. It's a realm versus realm MMO (three realms); tactic positional combat, 60 levels, three classes with two subclasses each (mage/warrior/archer). Battles are mainly focused on taking forts/castles, which is in turn related to an invasion system where one realm has to steal 2 gems from each of the two other realms' inner area.
The main problems are disbalance between classes and realms, also the PvE content (read: grind) until lvl 60 is boring and takes forever - no quests after lvl 45, which is <10% of total progress.
The drop rate was recently lowered to 'motivate' players to buy boxes (random rare items with more-or-less good stats. It's theoretically possible to drop similar stuff by grinding but it doesn't happen often. Getting 5 rares during the entire ordeal, which can take months for casual gamers would be considered very lucky.) in the game's shop system with real money.
The developers have recently taken some efforts to bring the graphics up to date and add low-level content, though in the same fruitless manner as some penguins have tried to fly.
Oh and ping from NZ/Australia is atrocious as the only servers are located in Sweden.

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Chris wrote:

What game have you guys played that had a great end-game? Please disregard any super content-heavy ones like MMORPGs that cost two hundred million dollars to make.

Edit: I'm not asking this rhetorically - I am interested in actually getting names of games to research.

*Probably just people voicing their disappointment with that recent Blizzard outing that had no content for long-time play.*

I think you are doing great. For me it seems there is a lot for players to do when the game actually is released

-With maps that have random character, enemies and loot
-Add an act or (fingers crossed) two
-Introduce player-versus-player combat,
-Have occasional character wipes to start everything anew (like ladder seasons)
-Ladder races

That ought to keep players busy for quite a while.

EDIT

And there will be expansions too, right?

I apologize for bringing an MMORPG into this, but not all their end-game features have massive development time.

The feature I'm thinking of is Alternate Advancement. Originally developed in Everquest and more recently added to Rift. It was originally designed for max-level players, but later introduced a switch/slider for exp going into normal or alternate leveling.

The idea, which I'm sure you are familiary with, is that during your everyday gameplay, all the exp you get gives you tiny incremental bonuses. In PoE it would probably be something like 10 million xp for 1 point and some tree/place where you can buy for example +1 str permanently for 10 points. So you get to level 70 or something and since death penalties are harsh and you are happy with your build, you decide to stay at 70 and instead farm some items, maps, whatever.. all the while still gaining in power slightly.

Now that I've written it, it doesn't seem such a small thing, but then again it's probably easier than implementing raiding or housing or vehicles.

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Chris wrote:

What game have you guys played that had a great end-game? Please disregard any super content-heavy ones like MMORPGs that cost two hundred million dollars to make.

Edit: I'm not asking this rhetorically - I am interested in actually getting names of games to research.

And my 2nd post about an MMO (*sigh*), but since you are implementing PvP and arenas anyways, then PvPvE is something that has been tried and was successful. The MMO is/was Aion. It's a PvP enabled (preferably) dungeon area full of hard mobs and a few bosses, that two teams (either randomly composed or pre-made) enter at the same time. That's pretty much it. Players are free to either go for super-fast PvE and try to kill the bosses for loot or go for PvP to distract the enemy team doing the same or split the forces between these tasks. It's immense amount of fun and the most replayable content I've experienced in my 20 years of gaming.

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Chris wrote:

What game have you guys played that had a great end-game? Please disregard any super content-heavy ones like MMORPGs that cost two hundred million dollars to make.

The mother of all RPG endgames: Disgaea/NIS-style item world.

In PoE parlance it would be inputting an item (and possibly a currency item for admission cost) and generating a map/boss/macguffin with mods based on the mods on the item. You can't use the badass item while you're inside it, and the more badass the item the much harder the area.

The suggestion thread "Shrine of Exile" was pretty close, but that was for transmogrifying items into runnable areas. This would be more for min/maxing the mods on the gear.

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Chris wrote:

What game have you guys played that had a great end-game? Please disregard any super content-heavy ones like MMORPGs that cost two hundred million dollars to make.

Edit: I'm not asking this rhetorically - I am interested in actually getting names of games to research.

One game that I consider to be my favorite is an old single player roguelike using ascii graphics by the name of ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery). I know the genre is not quite the same, although roguelikes feel like the grandfather of the current ARPG genre. ADOM also used a similar monster system to what you have, in that there are base monster types, and then each monster is given a level which determines its stats and drop potential. Anyways, onto the main point I'm trying to make.

ADOM had a fairly open and explorable world, with a main area, and several dungeons to dive down into, one of which was the main dungeon that contained the final boss, where there was a option to fight the boss and never return, or to simply lock him away behind a portal. If you locked him behind the portal, you were then free to explore the rest of the world at your leisure.
One such dungeon was an "Infinite Dungeon", which was for all intents and purposes, truly infinite (monster level got harder, to the point where at about floor 200 even a common rat was stronger than the average player, on my most godlike of characters, I made it to floor 1337, at which point everything was too difficult to kill, I had to run past things and kite like my life depended on it). As it is, this Infinite Dungeon has always been one of my favorite types of end game. Each floor the monsters get stronger, and each time you enter a floor it is randomly generated, so you can always stay between the floors where you feel most comfortable. For example I could hop up and down between floor 62 and 63 and have an endless supply of monsters of that level, if I felt like higher levels were likely to kill me. While this is fine and dandy for a single player game, I've thought of a way of adapting it to a multiplayer ladder type ARPG as as secondary means of an end-game ladder (I do incredibly enjoy the map system, despite the need for some tweaks which you are doing).

That is, to have an Infinite Dungeon that is solo play and starts at monster level 60 (or higher/lower as "end-game" changes), and monster level increases by 1 each floor. The floors of course would be randomly generated with random monsters, although floors could follow a varying theme for each floor (60=undead, 61=bandits, 62=monkeys/spiders/jungle, etc.) and a boss on each floor. You would have to clear all monsters on the floor to progress to the next, so you can't just have a survival only build that phase runs past everything to the down staircase. There would have to be limited ability to port between town for free life/mana/flask refills, maybe having a neutral zone like the eternal lab where players can get out to take a breather, go to the bathroom, or deal with real life for a few minutes. If they go from there all the way back to town or log out, then they would be dropped down 1 floor (to prevent abuse of just rerolling the same floor until you got it as you like), but a player should be able to reasonably clear more than 1 floor in a dedicated session.
Having also put in a lot of thought as to the reward vs. risk vs. purpose of this system, I would imagine this as a leaderboard only system, with no risk or reward. How high level of a monster you can kill (and thus floor number) determines your place on the leaderboard. No reward means that nothing will drop, and monsters will give no XP. No risk means that if you die, there is no experience penalty, and for hardcore characters, you stay hardcore, however, all dungeon progress resets if you die. This lack of risk encourages players to test the limits of their build, knowing they don't lose anything when they actually do find their limit. The lack of reward makes it so that players who can't get the farthest and can't progress don't feel like they're being left out of any awesome farming places. The fact that progress resets when you die will make it so that while players can test the limits of their build, they do so by playing smart, not by taking random risks.
This system would split the "end-game" into two paths, one where you progress your character by leveling up and finding gear in the normal end-game, the Map system. and the other where you test the very limits of your build and can compare it to other people's builds in the secondary end-game, the Infinite Dungeon system. And think about it, how awesome would it be to brag to your friends that "I was one of only four people to ever beat a level 146 boss all on my own". =)

Something as simple as Uber boss' like the Diablo 2 mod MedianXL (http://modsbylaz.hugelaser.com/) added, extends the games playtime by a lot. Just adding 8 challenging bosses extended the gameplay by a lot.

Having a extremely challenging boss with a unique reward (either a powerful item or a neat cosmetic look) actually gives reason to get more powerful items. Right now there is little to no purpose to farm strong/the best gear. It feels like the same problem D2 had, there was nothing at all to do with your shiny loot.

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pneuma wrote:

The mother of all RPG endgames: Disgaea/NIS-style item world.

In PoE parlance it would be inputting an item (and possibly a currency item for admission cost) and generating a map/boss/macguffin with mods based on the mods on the item. You can't use the badass item while you're inside it, and the more badass the item the much harder the area.

This would be more for min/maxing the mods on the gear.

Oh god this does bring back good memories, Disgaea was so awesome. If PoE had a system where the current map endgame could be linked to a means to current gear improvement, I would simply never ever stop playing.

Basically you get an extra incentive to keep running these "maps" because when you successfully complete them you get to improve (random or manual) the item that you used to start the "map" with. You can also do this for gems to increase their quality.

You are still limited by the base item level and the max mods that said item can have. And you could make it so each stat can only be improved by a certain percentage, as to not remove all incentive to trade with people or hunt for new items.

[edit]: Also in terms of development this should not be stretching it too far. In stead of putting maps in the current device you would be putting gear in it (or in a similar device somewhere else). Six generated portals, the "map" behind it, it all exists. You just need rules, limitations and interface to improve the stats of the item on completion.