Endgames are backwards

I've been thinking a bit, and perhaps this will come as a big "duh" to people who play a lot of MMOs, but I've only really experienced this and one other (which shall remain nameless), so if this is second nature to most who are familiar with the genre, then whoops, but it felt like a bit of an epiphany to me.

Basically, to my mind, there are two forms of content: stuff to do and stuff to get. The former are things like missions, Incarnate raids, zone content; the latter would be things like Inventions, or Incarnate Powers. I've noticed, though, that in this game (and the other), that once you get to the max level, the get-content massively outweighs the do-content. There's a ton of stuff one can seek to make their level 50 even level 50-er, or something, but it inevitably involves grinding a very small amount of content.

That's basic, of course, but the realization I've had is as detailed in the topic title. It makes very little sense, and ought to be the other way around. When the get-content outlasts the do-content, it just ends up further aggravating the problem that it was designed to solve. You get twinked out with your purples and your very rare Destiny, and, um, hooray? Now you have nothing to do again.

On the flip side, by having the do-content outweigh the get-content, there is the problem mentality of "why do it, if not for some reward"? But it occurs to me that most rewards in this game, at least at this point, are easily shared. This makes sense for a game with some double-digit number of servers I forgot each with up to 48 character slots. Expanding do-content over get-content is basically a way to also provide incentives to the next 50 levels of content. Furthermore, it helps fix the "players do content faster than it can be written" by encouraging players to re-run the material not to grind to a plateau, but instead with a larger number of characters.

A system like this just seems so much more beneficial to both sides of the page. So why do games instead focus on get-content? Okay, so that question's a bit rhetorical. But it's a dreary Sunday morning and I'm curious what people's thoughts are.

The get content is a lot easier to produce then the do content is my guess so there is way more of it.

The End Game content's 'get-stuff' is also an alternate leveling system. Rather than just tack on another 10 levels, there is Incarnate content that levels you up by what you get from it.

So, in reality, levels 1-49 was also 'get-stuff' because you had to do that content to level up which gave you XP and thus access to more powers. Incarnate content gives you the components to access more powers. Pre-Incarnate gives you XP.

It's not simply a problem of the 'do-stuff' content not offering relevant rewards. It's also the fact that a player's power gains plateau. As zombie-man pointed out, the grindy get-stuff is a way around this, but there's still a very hard cap on player growth and that also means a cap on difficulty. 1-49 'do stuff' is easier to make because it has an easy reward and the difficulty can scale as you get further and further along, but that ends at 50 too. You can only scale up difficulty so high before the numbers hit a ceiling and the content difficulty is not feasible. I think we're seeing that with the Incarnate Trials actually, Dilemma Diabolique is a 54+4 trial, meaning at the worst, you are 8 levels below or at the best only 5. Level difference is the end all be all in this game and with only limited ways to get levels above 50, you hit the ceiling.

Plus you get ridiculous things like Purpled out, IO'd characters at the caps that can practically ignore any threat and solo GMs. So it makes producing quality 'do-stuff' that presents a challenge to most players kind of hard to keep kicking out.

The Incarnate system in particular and MMO end-game systems in general are a boring time sink. They're intentionally designed to be one. Developer can't create content faster than players consume it, so the only way to keep players from reaching "the end" is to throw down a slow field generator and run like hell. End game systems are not designed to entertain, and ours is no exception. They're designed to slow and impede while giving a false sense of progress, like any Skinner box worth its salt.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with a game having a definitive, final end. Sure, you can linger after that point and finish what you haven't done, repeat what you have done and so forth. Many RPGs do that already. It used to be that level 50 was that end, and it was good. It was final, it was satisfying, and the team could always add new stuff for us to do without having to worry about that stuff being too much fun and having to think of ways to spoil our fun with more time sinks. When the development team embraced "the end of the game" and worked to enhance the experience, I was very much on board.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't mind them moving the goal posts all that much. I objected to a level cap increase because of exactly the problems we see here - people will be there in a week and asking for more. And it happened, despite the time sinks. But I'm not against moving the goal posts if it comes with the admission that those goal posts still exist. Sure, we got an extra package of content, we got more progress to play around with, but like any expansion, that too ended, and we reached the new, hopefully more satisfying end. I'd have been fine with that. And you know why?

I'd have been fine with moving the goal posts because admitting that the game has an end means I don't have to deal with ******* time sinks and being consistently told I'm progressing too fast and I should be taking longer! Because it means more stuff to do can be added without having to worry about people having stockpiled tons of resources and skipping it, or worrying about how to make people repeat it endlessly with bribes and bait.

When he spoke about the Incarnate System, Matt Miller made it a point that he wanted to make this "a system," rather than a piece of content. People would be done with the content in a week, he postulated, whereas what he wanted was something that they could keep coming back to. The trouble is that that particular idea just means you're designing a time sink and a treadmill where you expect people to replay the same content over and over and OVER again.

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The real crime of the Incarnate system is it reduced the "stuff to do" at the end of the game because it moved the end past the huge body of content at the old end. Classic level 50 content doesn't give Incarnate progression, and it's becoming increasingly underpowered against Incarnate-strength players. So what, really, CAN we do if we want to progress? Six Trials and that's about it.

Well, Dark Astoria, of course. As far as I'm concerned, this is the kind of "stuff to do" we needed all along. It's probably not going to be enough, but it's a start. Years ago, I ran out of content at level 38 and was left with nothing to do but street-hunt or replay story arcs I've already done with other people who haven't run out yet, but content was added to that level range and now I don't have to run out. I'm sure I'll run out of content in Dark Astoria, but it's a fairly new "level range." It'll get filled up eventually.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Awesome discussion. A few points I would like to make:

We already have near limitless do-content with the AE:
The AE system is a way to have do-content that is made almost as fast as people can consume it since it is crowd sourced instead of dev sourced. BUT I think at least for me, if I am not earning progress (XP, IOes, Powers in this game) content seems to feel hollow no matter how cool the story is.

But... for some of us do-content is not what we want:
Every game I have ever played is some sort of competition. For me a game has never worked like a book or movie, its never been passive experience it do-content. I wonder how many other people are like this.

COH endgame can be a fun treadmill:
I have found the end game content in COH is more interesting gameplay than WOW endgame, mostly due to the streamlined raid group formation, and the ease of sucess.

This treadmill has a TV on it!:
I know Sam will never agree with me on this, but I do find the incarnate treadmill a interesting way to feed game lore and stories to the player. A treadmill doesnt have to give you a story it just needs to run forever and spit out a carrot every few minutes, but I like that this treadmill also has a TV hooked to it.

I am excited to see the new DA treadmill. I think we all know that hardmode older trials will be coming one day, it was a pretty big miss that they didnt add them along with the BAF and LAM but you cant always be right.

My favorite way I have seen these things handled is on console games. Where you redo the entire game with the tricked out character, and with harder enemies, better rewards (even more shineys!). Can you imagine starting your pimped and purpled 50 at level "1" and getting level 50 drops immediately from all mobs? I would solo the entire game twice on that character, once redside, once blue, collecting every badge as I went. Not sure exactly how it would be handled. The Ouro thing is nice, but does not address the situation fully. An "Ouro" server would be sweet, where you enter it at level 50/1, with all your 50 bonuses but at level 1. You never have to level up, but you act as if exemplared, except you have all set bonuses as if 50. you "earn' your way back to 50, turning off exp if you want to not outlevel content. When you leave the Ouro server you go back to the "real" world as a 50. Then, when you cross back into Ouro you pick up where you left off, living two lives as it were.

For me, and I believe for the vast majority of players, the joy of an MMO is to develop my character. I want to see a build go from 1-50, learn how it works and watch it become powerful as my level increases. Sure, I enjoy zones and missions somewhat, but they are repetitive and tend to be monotonous. The thing that keeps the game novel is the fact that every so often, I ding a new level and get either a new power, or more slots to make my powers better.

This in turn, allows me to fight more and tougher enemies, feeding that craving for novelty for a while, but then these new foes start to feel samey. Ultimately, my character is the only thing that changes significantly throughout my run from 1-50. So in my mind, the endgame is not backwards at all -- the entire game is a "get game". All themepark MMOs are about getting new powers, new items and new effects.

The reason endgames are so hard to design is because your character is "done." For most players, this means there isn't much reason to continue on because the "do game" isn't all that interesting taken on its own merits. This has been the case throughout the history of MMOs and so you get raids, EQ's AA points, and WoW's gear grind. Incarnate trials are CoH's gear grind. You pound the same set of missions over and over to get currency to make your character better to be eligible for the next set of missions/grinds.

You either like it or not... but in my mind, nothing is backwards, you have been "getting" all game.

I would be all for making the "do game" more interesting, and I think sandbox games achieve this to one degree or another. Darkfall and Eve Online are two that I can think of off the top of my head. Both games have cash and character progression, but focus more on PvP and inter-guild politics, so there really is no true end game.