Things to keep us playing end game

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I think I'm content with what we are theoretically getting.

I don't really think it's worth trying to sort through 'what Intrepid has confirmed' vs 'the stuff I am imagining based on my own interpretation of design'.

So, basically, trade and change based on the Node system, Dynamic and randomized boss functions, group-balanced PvP, legendary items and item maintenance, and enough clear, soft roleplay options to keep the world feeling like an actual story instead of what sandbox competitives normally turn into.

To me, Intrepid already seems to have this well set to achieve their concept of 'no real endgame', the question is how many players will be willing to play after they hit 'maintenance point' due to the rivalries/soft RP, until the next 'expansion'.

I want slow enough gear acquisition to prevent the majority of players from just getting full BiS in a month or so. That, coupled with all the pvp content in the game, and a deep enough support for RP should support the game for years to come. Obviously there's gonna be expansions, which will most likely support that slow gear grind upwards, but that's a discussion for a much later date.

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You can't buy gear if there's not enough gear to go around. And I want that to be the case

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Acquisition rate of the materials is most likely what @NiKr is referring to.

Certainly the strongest and wealthiest will have BiS quickly, but if BiS sword drops off a Weekly mob spawn, 'the Majority' isn't going to be geared in a month.

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Like Azherae said, you literally can't buy what isn't there. If there's only 5 pieces of any given BiS gear on the server - 100 people can't "just buy" more.

And if the top people are greedy enough (usually are), then those 5 pieces will put a tax on any incoming mats, because they need repair.

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Yes, but again note 'the Majority'.

Some games don't limit the number of spawns, they allow players to enter instances to earn their BiS gear materials, or 'Spawn a World Boss once a day and everyone who participates has at least some chance of getting it'.

I'm talking about things like "This boss spawns once every 4 days and has a 10% chance of dropping a single one of the material needed to make this weapon'.

No matter what you do in that case, even if only a hundredth of the players on a server needs that item, they will still be 'working on it for years'.

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I would like a concrete source on this.

Nothing I have read indicates this is guaranteed at all.

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Yes, and a gear piece might need 15 of those items and the boss that has a 7-day respawn only gives one. There you have yourself a 15-week craft of a single piece of gear. Now even I'd say that this is a bit too long, but that's roughly along the lines of what I'm talking about.

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I'm not sure what you're referring to.

If my guild has control over Metropolis A, there's a chance that the guild controlling Metropolis B will want Metropolis A to be brought down for some reason. Maybe even just to weaken my guild.

That would result in new rivals, new bosses, new RP.

You basically defined it as 'what if every dynamic aspect of the game stopped being dynamic, what other new and exciting ideas do you have?'

Is that right?

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That was just an example. My point was to just keep the inflow of mats on the slower side rather than the classic instanced mmo speed of "whoever the fuck wants it gets it asap".

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I think all the bicycles of the genre have been reinvented already. Not much you can come up with outside of bosses/quests/pvp.

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I don't know if Ashes will live up to the standards of the games I play, sure.

My favorite one has 2278 bosses/encounters, though (that I can find, obviously these have been added over years and years).

My other one is 'a simulation of the entire milky way galaxy, the section humans are in is thousands of inhabited star systems'.

I'm easy to keep happy, so I'm probably not the best person to answer this.

If Ashes has even 300 unique and interesting encounters, even if only 30 of those are actually 'strong', I probably wouldn't get bored for YEARS.

I guess I just can't see how with dozens of nodes, hundreds of bosses, and thousands of opponents/RP partners, 'boredom' is going to be a thing in less than 'years'. So... I guess I just disagree with you, actually.

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This is like trying heroin and then saying "but what if there's something even cooler"? Unless Intrepid are about to drop fucking SAO on us - there's not gonna be content that's somehow better than 20+ years of attempts at, well, better content.

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Could you come up with at least a single example of what this content would even be though?

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Well, if we're just brainstorming and we've already got 'dynamic characterization', 'dynamic bosses', 'dynamic locations and dungeons', and 'political intrigue'...

Ashes already has the 'monster events' and 'monster sieges' and 'monster coins' and will also have Naval content...

Infinite progression is impossible... I guess they could add more 'level restricted' content to expand the flow, and make a bigger deal out of the social organization stuff like letting players create them in specific curated ways.

I just don't know what one adds when the game already has plans to have 'everything' that it can have within its own scope (Magic Fantasy MMO).

Are you asking for something so exciting that it doesn't exist in ANY game yet?

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That's that SAO shit. The good shit. I can't wait for that, but I doubt Intrepid's gonna be the ones to do it

NiKr wrote: »

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That's that SAO shit. The good shit. I can't wait for that, but I doubt Intrepid's gonna be the ones to do it

Would that even have any effect though? That's just an interface back to the same stuff.

I know I'm an abstractor, but within the realm of what OP is 'talking about', I doubt that counts either. That's why I'm drawing a blank.

If RP would get boring, literally no amount of NPCs or game story could possibly change that...

If at least 64x combat opponent 'characters' would get boring, no amount of changing the game itself will alter that too much.

If hundreds of bosses isn't enough, there's definitely no functional PvE that will ever scratch the itch of the person who wants more.

I guess Ashes could add a Legend of Mana level Crafting System, just bump some stuff around from their already-planned SWG-style, so that we could craft gear 'forever', but even that would still have limits and only a subset of people would care.

You're just too easy to make happy too, NiKr, I think.

Azherae wrote: »

You're just too easy to make happy too, NiKr, I think.

I mean, I love idlers I'm at the bottom of the foodchain when it comes to pleasing me with a game.

But as I said, OP is a heroin addict who somehow thinks there's something better out there, when there's not. SAO would add the only missing "dynamism" to the equation - the full immersion. A monitor and a kbm/controller can only take you so far. I mean, I guess there's the literal infinity of thought but some people can't access that freely, so D&D-type stuff doesn't apply.

For me a non-SAO peak mmo would be a game where you can create your own spells. I had an idea of an elemental particles-based system, where you start with pretty much a pixel of a single element and go as far as "combination of all elements into "a something" that draws upon the mana of everyone in a 500m radius around your character".

And as you pointed out, this kind of freedom of choice could be applied to other kinds of content in the game, but I can't even begin to imagine how difficult this type of game would be to design/develop, let alone balance.