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The fundamental problem is that you're assuming that the end-game is supposed to be fun. It isn't.

MMOExposedMMOExposed Member RarePosts: 7,387

I was reading a comment from another post and this caught my attention.

Never really thought about endgame in such a way, or better yet, lets not confuse people. Lets call endgame for what it is.

the game after the levels.

Well for the game after the levels, who ever said this part of the game was ever meant to be fun?

 

Some games have no levels, and endgame is day 1. So who said it had to be fun? What about rough. Most sandbox (aka so called sandbox) MMOs have no character levels. Their endgame starts when you jump in. And it has a large setback of FFA gank fest environment. Thats not fun.

 

but again who ever said its suppose to be fun?

 

But on the flip side, what would endgame be, if it was suppose to be fun? How would that change the outcome of most games?

 

Would long term appeal increase or decrease from whatever changes were needed to make the endgame fun, instead of not fun?

 

 

Philosophy of MMO Game Design

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Comments

  • muffins89muffins89 Member UncommonPosts: 1,585

    who ever said it's not supposed to be fun?

  • moosecatlolmoosecatlol Member RarePosts: 1,530

    No endgame? Well every single mob in the starting zone better have 20+ attacks. If not, it's highly unlikely I'll trudge through boring and mediocre content for nothing. Which for whatever reason seems to be the trending for game design.

     

    As far as endgame is concerned, the game simply needs to challenge players, not just at end game, but progressively through out the leveling experience. Even Elite Zones would help. Things to teach players what will be expected of them in the later game. When the player arrives at "endgame", they shouldn't breeze through it with nothing to show but loot from the experience. A player should be challenged by a dungeon designers bosses, moreover a player should come out a better player than he/she was when he/she first entered the dungeon.

    For instance the entire evolution of Guild Wars 2's players play style boils down to:

    Starting with Knights and stacking Guardians,

    Ending with Berserkers and stacking on each other.

     

    That's some mighty fine emergent game play right there!

  • whisperwyndwhisperwynd Member UncommonPosts: 1,668

     IMO Mmo's seem to be divided into two phases. The progression TO lvl cap, and the progression AT lvl cap. Namely gear and collectibles, etc. like most themeparks. The PvP oriented endgame Mmo have the first progression but have little to no need for the second, as the players become the content for the content. The games themselves obviously must have something 'fun' for them to do then. 

    It's really the individual that decides for themselves what their tolerance level for each is and when they eventually find it boring. There is no 'barometer' or formula to find out where it gets 'boring' as that's very subjective.

  • TheBigDRCTheBigDRC Member Posts: 162

    Any and all video games - doesn't matter the genre - IS supposed to be fun! And engaging for that matter. Challenge is part of the thrill but if it's to the point of growing frustration, blood boiling, and damn near popping a blood vessel, then I wasted my money and time. Hiccups do occur, but if it is happening in two-thirds of the game as a whole . . . Yeah . . .

    If I'm not enjoying myself playing a video game then I would consider said video game a loss. The last thing I want to play is a video game that the difference between it and life is that one uses an external device and the other makes me want to forget it all.

    You know what's fun about chaos? I do, but I won't tell.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775

    End game is obviously fun .. for those who spend hours and hours at it. Otherwise why would they?

    Just look at those who dump thousands of hours in Diablo 2.

    You can make end-game fun by having good combat, and nice itemization.

  • zekeofevzekeofev Member UncommonPosts: 240
    Originally posted by MMOExposed

    I was reading a comment from another post and this caught my attention.

    Never really thought about endgame in such a way, or better yet, lets not confuse people. Lets call endgame for what it is.

    the game after the levels.

    Well for the game after the levels, who ever said this part of the game was ever meant to be fun?

     

    Some games have no levels, and endgame is day 1. So who said it had to be fun? What about rough. Most sandbox (aka so called sandbox) MMOs have no character levels. Their endgame starts when you jump in. And it has a large setback of FFA gank fest environment. Thats not fun.

     

    but again who ever said its suppose to be fun?

     

    But on the flip side, what would endgame be, if it was suppose to be fun? How would that change the outcome of most games?

     

    Would long term appeal increase or decrease from whatever changes were needed to make the endgame fun, instead of not fun?

     

     

    I tend to like endgame because I like:

     

    1: difficult and challenging combat/gameplay

    2: Grouping for progression of my character (you can read this as raiding but I also like group pvp or group logistics activities like crafting, scouting/exploration)

    3: Non linear progression

     

    Most leveling experiences lack a lot of these 2 aspects. So I just enjoy endgames for a lot of games. I wish MMO games would give me more of these types of gameplay. I usually end up having to play mobile games without using the cash shop at all to get difficult and challenging gameplay.....

     

     

  • DamonVileDamonVile Member UncommonPosts: 4,818
    If it's not fun, it's a job. If you're paying someone to do a job instead being paid to do it...you're an idiot.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347

    The thread title is something I said on another thread, but shorn of its context, I could understand why people didn't follow the argument.

    I define endgame rather more narrowly than Mr. Exposed does.  It's not "once you hit the level cap, you're at the endgame".  If a game doesn't have a clear transition point where everything radically changes, I'd argue that it doesn't have an endgame at all.

    The original context was someone complaining about raid lockouts in FFXIV.  That it was FFXIV isn't the point; a lot of games have raid lockouts.  But I strongly doubt that any serious game designer ever implemented raid lockouts because he thought that players would think they were fun.

    The same is true of a lot of the other common features of MMORPG endgames.  Do you really think that any game designer ever thought that players would love it if they had to go through a raid 10 times fighting the same mobs in the same order using the same tactics in order to gear up for the next one?  And then repeat the next raid a bunch of times, and so forth.  If he did, why didn't he start that at low levels?  The answer is obvious:  because basically everyone hates it, and nearly everyone knows that basically everyone hates it.

    That's not to say that game designers implement raid lockouts or extreme grinding because they're stupid.  To the contrary, the implement it because it's the endgame.  All of a game's interesting content is outside of the endgame.  The problem is that players can play through content pretty quickly.  Some players even try to skip as much content as they can so that they can hurry up and start whining that there's nothing to do, apart from what they skipped, which is nearly everything.

    In a subscription game, you don't want people to play through everything in two weeks and then quit.  You want them to keep playing for months.  If you've got a lot of good content, then a lot of players can keep themselves entertained for months.  But some of your players are boring people who get bored easily.  Those who want to get as powerful as possible as fast as possible usually can't--and some of them will complain loudly about a lack of content once they've maxed out their power.

    Enter the endgame.  The idea is to have a portion of the game that takes players a long, long time to play through.  Players get steadily stronger from it, but slowly.  But because the point of the endgame is slow grinding, not content that is interesting for its own sake, it doesn't matter much if the content is any good.  What matters tremendously--and more so than anywhere else in the game--is what loot or other forms of powering up players get and how quickly.  Very little of the work in developing a game goes into the endgame, as it's going to be nearly as boring if you put a lot of work into it as a little.

    That's why the common endgame mechanics are implemented.  If you only have to beat a raid once to get all of the gear from it and be ready for the next, then people would play through the endgame within days.  That defeats the point of it.  Raid lockouts likewise make it so that even if you progress as quickly as possible, it takes weeks or even months to be done with one raid and ready for the next.

    Players who want to do interesting content for the sake of doing interesting content will hate this, of course.  That's why there are common complaints about raid lockouts and extreme grinding and mandatory large groups and dragon kill points and so forth.  But such players are going to hate your endgame no matter what you do with it, apart from not having one.  And really, almost your entire game is designed for such players.

    The endgame is designed for the grinders who really only want to be as powerful as possible, and don't care much what they have to do to get there.  A "good" endgame (meaning, appropriate carrots, not interesting content) can keep them playing--and paying--for months after they've already done everything interesting in the game and don't care to go back to it.  That's months longer than they'd have played if you didn't have an endgame at all.  And that's why endgames exist.

  • Kevyne-ShandrisKevyne-Shandris Member UncommonPosts: 2,077
    Originally posted by DamonVile
    If it's not fun, it's a job. If you're paying someone to do a job instead being paid to do it...you're an idiot.

    Which is why I've been saying, if these publishers/devs want to make games so "challenging" and "rough and tough", and it resembles joining the USMC in the process, I need a pay grade to play the game. As the relationship is no longer about publisher providing entertainment, but a job as a game tester.

     

    What's the going rate for Q&A positions in the industry these days? $30/hr?

     

    Start paying up, otherwise the relationship is publisher+consumer, and the consumer isn't paying to work for the publisher. It's paying for goods, and those goods are entertainment content. That content differs to different people, but it's not one-size-fits-all.

  • askdabossaskdaboss Member UncommonPosts: 631
    Originally posted by DamonVile
    If it's not fun, it's a job. If you're paying someone to do a job instead being paid to do it...you're an idiot.

    This is what I was going to say. Thanks.

  • niceguy3978niceguy3978 Member UncommonPosts: 2,047
    Huh?  I need a beer.
  • iridescenceiridescence Member UncommonPosts: 1,552
    Originally posted by Kevyne-Shandris
     

    Which is why I've been saying, if these publishers/devs want to make games so "challenging" and "rough and tough", and it resembles joining the USMC in the process, I need a pay grade to play the game. As the relationship is no longer about publisher providing entertainment, but a job as a game tester.

     

    Some people find that challenge adds to their fun. This is why hard difficulty settings exist in single player games which allow the computer to cheat to make the game harder for the player. Why would anyone play like that when they could just breeze through on the easiest difficulty? Because challenge can add to the fun.

     

    As for the OP topic it boils down to different people defining fun differently. I personally hate repetitive gear treadmill endgame but some people must like it or else WoW wouldn't be so popular. I don't accept those those people are just brainwashed somehow. A lot of them are obviously having fun.

     

    I just hope more games come a long that cater to what I find fun (endless character progression with no level cap).

     

  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    Originally posted by Quizzical

    The thread title is something I said on another thread, but shorn of its context, I could understand why people didn't follow the argument.

    I define endgame rather more narrowly than Mr. Exposed does.  It's not "once you hit the level cap, you're at the endgame".  If a game doesn't have a clear transition point where everything radically changes, I'd argue that it doesn't have an endgame at all.

    The original context was someone complaining about raid lockouts in FFXIV.  That it was FFXIV isn't the point; a lot of games have raid lockouts.  But I strongly doubt that any serious game designer ever implemented raid lockouts because he thought that players would think they were fun.

    The same is true of a lot of the other common features of MMORPG endgames.  Do you really think that any game designer ever thought that players would love it if they had to go through a raid 10 times fighting the same mobs in the same order using the same tactics in order to gear up for the next one?  And then repeat the next raid a bunch of times, and so forth.  If he did, why didn't he start that at low levels?  The answer is obvious:  because basically everyone hates it, and nearly everyone knows that basically everyone hates it.

    That's not to say that game designers implement raid lockouts or extreme grinding because they're stupid.  To the contrary, the implement it because it's the endgame.  All of a game's interesting content is outside of the endgame.  The problem is that players can play through content pretty quickly.  Some players even try to skip as much content as they can so that they can hurry up and start whining that there's nothing to do, apart from what they skipped, which is nearly everything.

    In a subscription game, you don't want people to play through everything in two weeks and then quit.  You want them to keep playing for months.  If you've got a lot of good content, then a lot of players can keep themselves entertained for months.  But some of your players are boring people who get bored easily.  Those who want to get as powerful as possible as fast as possible usually can't--and some of them will complain loudly about a lack of content once they've maxed out their power.

    Enter the endgame.  The idea is to have a portion of the game that takes players a long, long time to play through.  Players get steadily stronger from it, but slowly.  But because the point of the endgame is slow grinding, not content that is interesting for its own sake, it doesn't matter much if the content is any good.  What matters tremendously--and more so than anywhere else in the game--is what loot or other forms of powering up players get and how quickly.  Very little of the work in developing a game goes into the endgame, as it's going to be nearly as boring if you put a lot of work into it as a little.

    That's why the common endgame mechanics are implemented.  If you only have to beat a raid once to get all of the gear from it and be ready for the next, then people would play through the endgame within days.  That defeats the point of it.  Raid lockouts likewise make it so that even if you progress as quickly as possible, it takes weeks or even months to be done with one raid and ready for the next.

    Players who want to do interesting content for the sake of doing interesting content will hate this, of course.  That's why there are common complaints about raid lockouts and extreme grinding and mandatory large groups and dragon kill points and so forth.  But such players are going to hate your endgame no matter what you do with it, apart from not having one.  And really, almost your entire game is designed for such players.

    The endgame is designed for the grinders who really only want to be as powerful as possible, and don't care much what they have to do to get there.  A "good" endgame (meaning, appropriate carrots, not interesting content) can keep them playing--and paying--for months after they've already done everything interesting in the game and don't care to go back to it.  That's months longer than they'd have played if you didn't have an endgame at all.  And that's why endgames exist.

    People who think like this don't understand it and probably never once did get it.

    end game (raids) can be very fun even though it is the "same content" over and over again. 

    The point of raids is to keep people paying money yes.  But that does not mean it is not fun. 

    Some people actually like playing the game with friends and understand the combat is the combat.  The combat has been the same the entire game. IT does not matter if it is a rat or a dragon.  It is fun to work with friends as a team to beat content that you could not do a lone.  It is fun to be in a group where the groups is greater than the sum of the parts. 

     

    This is not for everyone.  Some people want to see a different set of pixels to kill.  Some people don't care what the pixels are.  They just want a challenge where they can work as a team to beat something that is very difficult to beat.

     

    Matter of perspective.  Different strokes for different folks.  I do find it funny when people make claims that no one finds it fun or that it is not suppose to be fun.  Complete failure to see something from any perspective that is different than ones own. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • Kevyne-ShandrisKevyne-Shandris Member UncommonPosts: 2,077
    Originally posted by iridescence
    Originally posted by Kevyne-Shandris
     

    Which is why I've been saying, if these publishers/devs want to make games so "challenging" and "rough and tough", and it resembles joining the USMC in the process, I need a pay grade to play the game. As the relationship is no longer about publisher providing entertainment, but a job as a game tester.

     

    Some people find that challenge adds to their fun. This is why hard difficulty settings exist in single player games which allow the computer to cheat to make the game harder for the player. Why would anyone play like that when they could just breeze through on the easiest difficulty? Because challenge can add to the fun.

    People play various difficulties for their own reasons. When I played those F.E.A.R. games, I sure didn't turn the game up to extreme to have a shoot out every step of the way, I played it for the immersion and story. For the extreme, that was to literally nail the Kung Fu boys balls to the wall in MP, though.

     

    When I played Deus Ex, heck, I spent more time trying to climb buildings with LAMs (because it could be done without cheating) and setting up elaborate explosive traps, than trying to be the next Rambo (that was a dime a dozen). That game gave so many possible replays and play styles still novel to this day...l-o-v-e that game!

     

    And it was all fun, as a player could be creative and seek to play the game how s/he liked. The "challenge" is what I made out of the games, not what some dev forced me to do, instead. I'm not a sadistic dev's Guinea pig, if I play the game *I* choose my challenge, not him. If that challenge is building a zone wide Cata level trap to kill 200 animals, and it took me 4hrs to cart and set up the various traps...so be it. That shattering will look soooooo spectacular in a video too! }:>

     

    But no, I'm not going to play games that are about active combat as THE game. It's boring, tiring and cheapens the possibilities of being more creative than pewpewpew. Was boring in 2001, as it's still boring in 2014, no matter what color the lipstick is now on that "challenge" pig today.

  • KonfessKonfess Member RarePosts: 1,667
    Originally posted by Kevyne-Shandris
    Originally posted by DamonVile
    [edit]

    [edited for space]

    What's the going rate for Q&A positions in the industry these days? $30/hr?

    [edited for space]

    Nope.  Try $10/hr or if you are lucky $15/hr.

    $30/hr is a skilled labor rate.

    Pardon any spelling errors
    Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven
    Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
    Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
    As if it could exist, without being payed for.
    F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
    Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
    It costs money to play.  Therefore P2W.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by MMOman101

    People who think like this don't understand it and probably never once did get it.

    end game (raids) can be very fun even though it is the "same content" over and over again. 

    The point of raids is to keep people paying money yes.  But that does not mean it is not fun. 

    Some people actually like playing the game with friends and understand the combat is the combat.  The combat has been the same the entire game. IT does not matter if it is a rat or a dragon.  It is fun to work with friends as a team to beat content that you could not do a lone.  It is fun to be in a group where the groups is greater than the sum of the parts. 

     

    This is not for everyone.  Some people want to see a different set of pixels to kill.  Some people don't care what the pixels are.  They just want a challenge where they can work as a team to beat something that is very difficult to beat.

     

    Matter of perspective.  Different strokes for different folks.  I do find it funny when people make claims that no one finds it fun or that it is not suppose to be fun.  Complete failure to see something from any perspective that is different than ones own. 

    That explanation is contradicted both by widespread player behavior and widespread game design decisions.  If the point is that you're doing something in group with your friends and the "something" doesn't matter so much, people would be just as happy if there was only one raid rather than many.  People would also be just as happy if no loot was dropped.

    If the point were a challenge, then people would quit as soon as the raid went on farm status--or protest that it was too grindy if getting one raid to farm status wasn't enough to be ready for the next.

  • IGaveUpIGaveUp Member Posts: 273

    If endgame isn't supposed to be fun, what is it supposed to be?

     

  • KonfessKonfess Member RarePosts: 1,667
    Originally posted by askdaboss
    Originally posted by DamonVile
    If it's not fun, it's a job. If you're paying someone to do a job instead being paid to do it...you're an idiot.

    This is what I was going to say. Thanks.

    One person's drudgery, is another's Fun.

    Pardon any spelling errors
    Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven
    Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
    Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
    As if it could exist, without being payed for.
    F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
    Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
    It costs money to play.  Therefore P2W.

  • nerovipus32nerovipus32 Member Posts: 2,735
    If the game is not fun i am not playing, simple.
  • KonfessKonfess Member RarePosts: 1,667
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    [edit]

    The original context was someone complaining about raid lockouts in FFXIV. 

    [edit]

    The same is true of a lot of the other common features of MMORPG endgames.  Do you really think that any game designer ever thought that players would love it if they had to go through a raid 10 times fighting the same mobs in the same order using the same tactics in order to gear up for the next one?  And then repeat the next raid a bunch of times, and so forth.  If he did, why didn't he start that at low levels?  The answer is obvious:  because basically everyone hates it, and nearly everyone knows that basically everyone hates it.

    That's why the common endgame mechanics are implemented.  If you only have to beat a raid once to get all of the gear from it and be ready for the next, then people would play through the endgame within days.  That defeats the point of it.  Raid lockouts likewise make it so that even if you progress as quickly as possible, it takes weeks or even months to be done with one raid and ready for the next.

    Players who want to do interesting content for the sake of doing interesting content will hate this, of course.  That's why there are common complaints about raid lockouts and extreme grinding and mandatory large groups and dragon kill points and so forth.  But such players are going to hate your endgame no matter what you do with it, apart from not having one.  And really, almost your entire game is designed for such players.

    The endgame is designed for the grinders who really only want to be as powerful as possible, and don't care much what they have to do to get there.  A "good" endgame (meaning, appropriate carrots, not interesting content) can keep them playing--and paying--for months after they've already done everything interesting in the game and don't care to go back to it.  That's months longer than they'd have played if you didn't have an endgame at all.  And that's why endgames exist.

    12 years ago an MMO tried varied content raids.  One content rose to the top and all other options were avoided.  The Return On Investment (ROI) was negligible for the other options.  Lesson learned don’t waste time and money on more than one raid script.

    You may call them grinders who enjoy endgame.  The Industry calls them the vast majority of the paying player base.  Gamers who complain about raid lockouts, extreme grinding, mandatory large groups, dragon kill points and so forth are identified as those who want content handed to them on a silver cash shop plater.

    Pardon any spelling errors
    Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven
    Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
    Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
    As if it could exist, without being payed for.
    F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
    Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
    It costs money to play.  Therefore P2W.

  • reignfyrereignfyre Member UncommonPosts: 19
    Wat.  I assume every aspect of a game is supposed to be fun.  HELLO its a game!  Soon after realizing a game is not fun, I'm done.  Way too much stuff to do to waste entertainment time being bored.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Konfess

    You may call them grinders who enjoy endgame.  The Industry calls them the vast majority of the paying player base.  Gamers who complain about raid lockouts, extreme grinding, mandatory large groups, dragon kill points and so forth are identified as those who want content handed to them on a silver cash shop plater.

    That is nonsense.  In pretty much any game ever, the majority of players will barely play before they quit.  Even the majority of paying players typically don't play that long--usually not reaching the level cap and rarely participating meaningfully in the endgame.

    The argument in favor of having an endgame isn't that most players will love it, or that most players will pay to play it.  It's that a small fraction of players will pay to play it long after they would have quit without an endgame.  The players who complain that your endgame is, like basically all others, terrible would have quit soon without an endgame anyway, as they've already played through the content.

    Complaining about the endgame has nothing to do with wanting a cash shop.  The underlying issue is usually wanting more content, as they've run out.  But good content costs money to build, and MMORPG budgets are limited.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by reignfyre
    Wat.  I assume every aspect of a game is supposed to be fun.  HELLO its a game!  Soon after realizing a game is not fun, I'm done.  Way too much stuff to do to waste entertainment time being bored.

    So you think that the billing process is supposed to be fun?

    There are some things that companies do, not because they think players find it fun, but because they want to make money on the game.  They do, of course, try to make the game fun enough to get players to stick around and put up with paying for the privilege of doing so.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by reignfyre
    Wat.  I assume every aspect of a game is supposed to be fun.  HELLO its a game!  Soon after realizing a game is not fun, I'm done.  Way too much stuff to do to waste entertainment time being bored.

    So you think that the billing process is supposed to be fun?

    There are some things that companies do, not because they think players find it fun, but because they want to make money on the game.  They do, of course, try to make the game fun enough to get players to stick around and put up with paying for the privilege of doing so.

    you are obviously taking his comment out of context.

    How about "every aspect of a game, when you are playing, is supposed to be fun"?

  • zekeofevzekeofev Member UncommonPosts: 240

    I enjoy challenges. The majority of content in an MMO while leveling is not challenging.....its mostly requires only endurance with how easy developers have made games to cater to the general audience.

     

    Therefore the only gameplay content I get to enjoy is "endgame". I can enjoy story or environments while leveling as well.

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