Wonder if anyone here feels this way?

[ZephyrAM]

The whole point of endgame to me: your character is at their skill peak, and thus more fun to play.
(Remember to keep referring to the above sentence as needed. This 'is' an opinion.)

Leveling is the process that slowly grants you new skills and abilities so that you may become accustomed to their use, but it's not as interesting for that very reason. The game 'begins' at the end because complete characters are just more interesting. Heck, I don't even 'like' raiding. Too many people, too much time invested in one activity, and overall too much hassle.

Yet I still enjoy 'endgame' more (if there is a decent one) because of my character.

MMO's have an endgame for more then that reason though. The in-game story has an end. Developer created activities have an end. Everything that devs 'can' build into a game 'will' end eventually. Games like UO relied almost entirely on the community to create their own fun, much like how PvP works, so sure, that could go on practically forever. But I'm fairly sure that players these days are looking for games, not social events. Dress up a virtual sandbox world how you will, it's still really nothing more then a social experience. You chat, you roleplay, you PvP, you complete tasks together that would otherwise be pointless, yet you enjoy your time spent together doing it, so it doesn't seem like a bad thing.

Gaming today is about experiencing and completing the activities that the developers create for you.

[Jynx]

Gaming today is about experiencing and completing the activities that the developers create for you.

Gonna just have to say the I can't agree at all with this statement.

Gaming is much more than just following allong a linear path that has been set out infront of you.

Ask the developers themselves, many developers are often amazed at what the gamers do with the systems they hand to the players. UO is a great example it did have a set of goals to accomplish and players took them and expanded them near ad-infinitum. Ninja in FFXI is another great example a damage dealing class turned into a tank because of how players utalized the mechanics, the developer ran with it.

The gaming experience is about having fun your way, sometimes you have fun by following the dotted lines. Other times you have fun drawing outside the lines.

[ZephyrAM]

Gonna just have to say the I can't agree at all with this statement.

Gaming is much more than just following allong a linear path that has been set out infront of you.

UO isn't today's gaming, nor is XI for that matter. I also don't say anywhere that a game has to be linear; devs can create all sorts of systems and events that let players go all over the place.

While players may find interesting ways to experience things in game, the 'vast' majority of everything we do in current gaming is directly involved in events that the developers specifically created.

[Jynx]

My opinion is law!

Well that's good to know.

Must also be why unscripted Roguelike games and open world sandbox games have been incredibally popular in the gaming scene as well right?

[ZephyrAM]

Well that's good to know.

Must also be why unscripted Roguelike games and open world sandbox games have been incredibally popular in the gaming scene as well right?

Okay, I don't really want to argue this point with you, or argue at all, I'm merely looking at the current state of the game industry.

The article in the OP talks about how 'endgame' is so terrible for the MMO genre... and yet it's not going anywhere. MMO's keep pushing it, and successfully in most cases. Further, the majority of Rougelike's are small Indie games, where success is very minor compared to AAA games, and while there are some exceptional sandbox games out there (Minecraft, DayZ, etc) the majority of games being developed are highly scripted.

[Deathscythe343]

I think that this game in particular is under more scrutiny that others because of the fact that this is the game's second chance at life. People who played the 1.0 version are expecting things to be better this time around.

As for the article in the first post, I think that it accurately discussed that modern state of the genre. The article mentioned some more "grind" games like UP and EQ. I don't think that is the type of game the masses want now a days. The popularity of WoW seems evident of that. People seem to want something that they can feel like they had made progress during their time playing. Not saying that this game doesn't have its grind elements or that players don't get that feeling of getting things done when they are logged on. I will say this though, EQ had probably one of the best features to keep people playing, their Alternate Advancement (AA) system. It was the best hook to keep people playing that I have seen in any MMO to date.

[Sunarie]

I agree with the article.. but I also don't want to go back to the old timey grind till your eyes bleed to get a single level style of things. I would much rather feel engaged the entire leveling experience, and have that be slow. I think where a lot of developers are kind of letting the playerbase down (or designers maybe..) There needs to be rewards for exploring, and not the same old quests rehashed a bunch of times over. When leveling is boring and very grindy, a lot of players are gonna wanna skip it. Grindy doesn't just mean not having quests.. the quests themselves can be very grindy.

The downside is that replay value, for those leveling alts, is a hard thing to account for. Even if an area is very well thought out, rewarding to explore, and has lot of new things to find the first time through.. it can get old when you have to go through that stuff the second time through. The first time through the dungeons in this game I loved them.. after going through them a bunch, not so much. As much as people don't like WoW.. when burning crusade came out they had some interesting quests.. things that hadn't been done before and all. However, after doing the quests a few times, or future quests reusing the mechanic.. that new thing loses it's luster. There needs to be some sort of balance though. As long as the actual leveling part is boring and disengaging, people will want to skip it.

[Jynx]

Snip.

I'll leave it as this as you don't seem to want to actually talk on the subject.

The "Success of AAA games" is a hillarious notion as they teeter on the edge of being closed down with every single game they release, their rate of success is actually smaller than indie developers (If you actually know whats going on in the industry) Studios shut down all the time even when using the "Industry standard" that you seem to be pointing at.

Just because MMO's keep pushing this style of gameplay it would be hard to actually call them a success considering a good portion of them fail and move to a F2P model. Unless you think that's success then I guess you would be suggesting that XIV goes F2P as well because that seems to be doing well for the industry too.

[Aegis]

I miss the ol' Star Wars Galaxies. It wasn't as sandbox as some other games, but it also wasn't "rush to max level, raid for a week, and then bitch for 3 months about there being no content"

Check out 'The Repopulation' it's aiming to be SWG without the SW.

Looks like it's all being included, bio-engineering, Creature handling, droid creation (Yes, I was a bit of a pet-class guy)

[Kyrosiris]

Yes, I also feel that "thing" was the worst piece of drivel to ever be called an "article" on Massively.