Maps for end game isn't enough

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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.

Ragnarok online (this is an mmo but the concepts are great)

War of emperium (gvg "event")
-2 times per week, 2 hours each.
-castle defense
-main objective is to break the emperium (than castle goes to the guild of the person who last hit, everybody else is teleported back to town)
-multiple castles (# to suit population size)
- no 2 castles are the same
-castles drop daily loot for the guild that owns the castle when WoE ends
-most important drop are "god item components", which are used to make "god" items. (This takes months, if not years depending how strong your guild is"
-say a normal ring gave 5 strength, a god item would give 40 strength, for example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGencYgmOWg

I believe pvp centric end game is the ultimate endgame, but most games fail to implement proper incentive to pvp, and even more so to gvg.



MVP's (boss mobs)
-1 to 12 hour respawn times
-non instanced maps
-range in difficulty greatly
-FFA (free for all)
-have drop rates as low as .01% for super unique gear
-competing at high end mvps without god items is near impossible

Having non instanced content is key to high end endgame, this gives incentive to progress your character passed being able, but to being able better and faster than anybody else, or you will lose. This also encourages teamwork, which is something else PoE could use at this time I think.



Endless tower
-can bring a party size of people
-instanced
-100 floors
-boss every 5 floors (bosses that exist in the outside world except finale 3 or so)
-starts super easy, difficulty increases every floor
-can run 1 time per week

I was thinking this would be a perfect thing to attach a ladder system to, both a solo and party (id prefer the difficulty to match reaching level 100, allowing for lots of progression and making "speed runs" non trivial when it gets to that point.

Would be judged by floor level cleared followed by time taken to clear that floor to break ties.



Non structured pvp map(s)
-empty non instanced maps anybody can teleport to from towns
-no rules
-mainly for fun, common afk/hang out area
-can be used for duals and testing


Ya, I've played countless games and always come back to ragnarok online, no mmo compares in my books.

I don't think the end game content is the issue. People farmed hell Baal for hours in Diablo II. Maps are essentially an endless dungeon once the drop rate gets tuned and people are forgetting that the quest content will extend to three acts and past level 70.

One thing that's important is to make it possible for max iLvl items to drop in the main game world as well as maps. Right now, you can't get the level 70 base items in the world and even currency drops are penalized if you back to Merciless once you hit lvl 61. If you run out of maps, you're really screwed.

The other big problem in Path of Exile that progression is incremental past level 70. The only big jump in character power is a 5L or 6L chest/2H/bow and those are even rarer than uniques. There aren't any higher-level base items or affixes to find or roll past 70 so you're pretty much just getting levels/passive points. Orbs aren't exciting because you have to use them by the stack. Most orbs have a better chance of rendering a piece of gear useless than improving it. GCP are nice but they're incremental. Well-rolled rare items other than jewelery and belts are more of a heartbreak than exciting because they're such an obnoxious jeweler/fusing/chromatic orb sink so you learn pretty fast not to get excited at yellow text in end game. That's kind of sad.

Diablo II had big jumps. Finish a runeword and kapow, your character had a huge jump in power. It also had sets that were useful for leveling and popular to collect and trade. Instead of tediously sifting through huge piles of white items, in Diablo II you were looking for green or yellow text and listening for the magical sound of runes dropping.

Path of Exile needs collectibles, and somehow it needs more gear that you say "cool" and equip without endless socket-fiddling. I've never played a game before where getting a piece of gear that is an upgrade you equip on the spot is tantamount to winning the lottery twice (sockets AND affixes).

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ultrahiangle wrote:

I belive pvp centric end game is the ultimate endgame, but most games fail to implement proper incentive to pvp, and even more so to gvg.

This is something that has and probably always will boggle my little mind.

You have a game here where you play 95% of the time against monsters, pure PVE game content.

And suddenly, the end game should be totally different then all the other parts of the game one did until reaching it?

This is to me, to use a bit of a fallacious argument, like playing an RTS game where the last map is a FPS match against the end boss. It just doesn't fit to the game.

I mean, people started playing the game (and like the game) for its PVE content during leveling. And suddenly, bam, PVP should be the answer to their needs when they run out of the PVE leveling content?

Can't really understand that...

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Serika wrote:

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ultrahiangle wrote:

I belive pvp centric end game is the ultimate endgame, but most games fail to implement proper incentive to pvp, and even more so to gvg.

This is something that has and probably always will boggle my little mind.

You have a game here where you play 95% of the time against monsters, pure PVE game content.

And suddenly, the end game should be totally different then all the other parts of the game one did until reaching it?

This is to me, to use a bit of a fallacious argument, like playing an RTS game where the last map is a FPS match against the end boss. It just doesn't fit to the game.

I mean, people started playing the game (and like the game) for its PVE content during leveling. And suddenly, bam, PVP should be the answer to their needs when they run out of the PVE leveling content?

Can't really understand that...

Pve is always pridictable and does not evolve, sure it can be challanging when u are undergeared but there is a point when u hit a platue and it becomes about how efficiently can I kill x from can I kill x, this is the problem d3 had.

The logic you use is the same logic most new mmos use ans they try to seperate the likes of pvp and pve, like in WoW where u have "pvp" gear, doing things like this is always a bad idea.
PoE has a great base for not doing this, sure certain stats and skills will be better in pvp than pve but that is for the current meta to decide, not the devs. It fits into the creativity that PoE also strives in where u are given a box of legos and can build whatever u want.

There's always the Disgaea series where they make use of the Land of Carnage, X-Dimensional Stages, and of course: Item world is always fun, because you're doing randomly generated world to level up an item.

I do like maps as endgame, but maps don't have to be all there is eventually. I see there are a number of suggestions for an Endless Map type of endgame.. I posted a definition of such endgame in an older thread (http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/48698/page/1/#p630361).

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Durentis wrote:

I like the "Bottomless Pit" idea (perhaps an old abandoned mine?), where a dungeon has an unlimited number of levels and you see how far you can get. You'd go into it knowing that if you keep going deeper, eventually you will die. There should be a public ladder showing the deepest levels players have reached as incentive to push for "just one more level". So for HC players, you'd have to decide just how deep you're willing to risk going.

It would probably need certain restrictions/features:
- Unlimited levels starting at that of maps.
- Max monster level somewhat less than maps?
- Temporary waypoints every 3-4 levels that expire with the instance.
- No waypoints unless levels between waypoints are in same instance like Pyramid to prevent repeating quality content (in which case, every 3-4 levels).
- No portals, or at least portals that can only return you to the latest active waypoint.
- Limit number of portals similar to maps to prevent abuses. Perhaps one-way portals, but that gives you one load out of loot per run (not necessarily a bad thing). You should be allowed at least the chance to escape from anywhere.
- Can't reset instances for minimal-risk/high-reward repetition.
- Increasing monster levels that reach a cap (to perhaps somewhat less than the max from maps) before switching to increasing mob density, buffs, etc..
- Periodic bosses, perhaps prior to waypoints.
- Slowly increasing item quantity/rarity, perhaps, as further incentive to risk deeper levels.
- Public ladder showing characters' deepest level with perhaps a count of attempts and/or deaths. (This could simply be added columns to the existing league ladder.)

I'm taking this idea from another game I enjoyed playing...

Create a new currency orb which binds to your account and only drops inside maps (any lvl map but higher chance from higher lvl map) and only from champion and boss mobs.

When you acquire 5,10,20,50 etc (depending on drop rate%) you sell them to the vendor in exchange for a new boss map (map would bind to your account as well). Something like 4 boss maps with 4 new Named bosses (can re-use current monster models and tilesets).

Boss Map
Equivalent in size to current boss rooms.
Make boss level scale with highest player's lvl.
New unique names for bosses.
Give bosses a shared, small static loot table (in addition to normal random loot table) with low drop chances for really good items (doesn't have to be new items; think mirror or other high end orbs or really low drop chance uniques).


The psychology is that players will keep repeating these boss runs over and over because they like the idea that they are removing the randomness by knowing exactly where to go and what to kill to get something great (even if it means running the same thing over and over 1000x).

In the meantime they are running maps of all lvls non-stop to build up a chance to fight one of these bosses.

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ultrahiangle wrote:

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Serika wrote:

"

ultrahiangle wrote:

I belive pvp centric end game is the ultimate endgame, but most games fail to implement proper incentive to pvp, and even more so to gvg.

This is something that has and probably always will boggle my little mind.

You have a game here where you play 95% of the time against monsters, pure PVE game content.

And suddenly, the end game should be totally different then all the other parts of the game one did until reaching it?

This is to me, to use a bit of a fallacious argument, like playing an RTS game where the last map is a FPS match against the end boss. It just doesn't fit to the game.

I mean, people started playing the game (and like the game) for its PVE content during leveling. And suddenly, bam, PVP should be the answer to their needs when they run out of the PVE leveling content?

Can't really understand that...

Pve is always pridictable and does not evolve, sure it can be challanging when u are undergeared but there is a point when u hit a platue and it becomes about how efficiently can I kill x from can I kill x, this is the problem d3 had.

The logic you use is the same logic most new mmos use ans they try to seperate the likes of pvp and pve, like in WoW where u have "pvp" gear, doing things like this is always a bad idea.
PoE has a great base for not doing this, sure certain stats and skills will be better in pvp than pve but that is for the current meta to decide, not the devs. It fits into the creativity that PoE also strives in where u are given a box of legos and can build whatever u want.

The idea that end game is pvp is shallow. Pvp is just for me to dick around with, that's all. It's there as a simple addition to the game, its hardly thought provoking or engaging long term. This isn't an fps its an arpg.

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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.

Path of Exile: Maelstrom of Chaos


I wasn't around/high level enough when MoC was around, but from what I understand, this was a randomly generated dungeon that was repeatable.

It could be re-added as another option. Use MoC to keep a steady progress, while Maps could be used as an added boost, seeing as MoC wouldn't have their quantity bonus.

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rflynn74 wrote:

The idea that end game is pvp is shallow. Pvp is just for me to dick around with, that's all. It's there as a simple addition to the game, its hardly thought provoking or engaging long term. This isn't an fps its an arpg.

only way i can see this point of view is if you never played a game with good pvp