A Proper Endgame

Suggestions
1

I hate to add to the pile of suggestions but I think this one really deserves a stuffing: Endgame. Currently, what is endgame? From my perspective (I have two 50+ characters that do everything I need including but not limited to forging, crafting, mining, surface gathering, hunting, and exploring) endgame is essentially to get all your machines to max power and craft end-game tools/weapons. The only endgame is essentially a “makes life easier” tier where the only benefit is being able to do things easier (crafting, hunting, gathering, forging, and mining).

This is where I want to suggest something: I want a longer challenge.

Whenever you play a game and you first start out, what motivates you most to push onward and grind? For me, it’s the fantastic end-game. Imagine seeing giant fortresses or special portals that you couldn’t craft/unlock that have a really tough challenge inside. What is in there? What loot do they drop? How far does that dungeon go? Is it hard even for max level players?

I think dungeons (as mentioned in this post: An extended idea for Dungeons in Boundless) would be a good fit for this end-game; but I don’t just want to vouch for the idea in this post, I want to expand it a bit.

Does anyone remember Titans and Protectors? I think this would be a perfect way to implement them. I’m not talking about something parallel to meteors in function (I think meteors fulfill a separate role by incentivizing exploration and combat). Dungeons would partially fulfill a sort of end-game version of meteors. I know there are a lot of players who have reached the peak of progression and are getting bored. I know that adding dungeons (as they’ve been conceptualized) wouldn’t entirely fix the slump at the peak of progression. I know developing lots of content is tough (and I sympathize with the developers and their hard work). Of course simply adding a bit more content wouldn’t fix the endgame slump, it would just delay it.

Suggestion: Regeneration (Reincarnation? Idk I’m still figuring out what would sound cool and fit with the lore)

I know I know, It sounds like I’m throwing tons of ideas at a wall but trust me it will tie in with dungeons soon, give me a paragraph.

Regeneration would take place when you reach level 50. You’d have two options: continue leveling and get skillpoints for your other skill set OR trade in 100 skillpoints at any time for an Oort Artifact. An Oort Artifact unlocks several things and comes in one elemental flavor. You choose an element (Toxic, Corrosive, Burn, Blast, Shock, or Chill) and you are given the respective Oort Artifact permanently.

What does the artifact do? Each one unlocks one specific planet for you to explore. The planet would spawn gems of the element chosen (like existing planets) and a bunch of elemental dungeons. It would also unlock several previously unexplorable dungeons on lower-tier elemental planets (For example if you got the Blast Oort Artifact, you would unlock Dungeons on the new planet as well as Serpensarindi).

I feel like this solves several things:

  • Reduces the scarcity of gems by blocking them behind a much more specialized skill wall that not everyone will be able to rush into like the current planets
  • Incentivizes specialization even further-- You can’t really progress on the planets without heavily specializing in one thing: hunting, mining, etc.
  • Is completely optional, and won’t anger casual players because it only offers a challenge and fun loot, no core mechanics kept away
  • Prolongs progression even further and gives us level 50s something to do besides build and sell (you’d need to level each character, and even then, you need to unlock SIX planets for one character to utilize all the content, most people have 3 characters, so that adds up to about 18*50 levels of progression/content)

…So yeah, there’s my idea. I do have a small problem that I can’t seem to solve correctly, and that is how you would make the difficulty on these new planets. If you make it harder than the current ones, then the player basically can’t even visit the planet until they’ve leveled again. Make it easy, and people will try to skip the current planets just to unlock the new one and bypass the grind.

My half-assed solution right now is just to make dungeons completely locked behind that 100 skillpoint wall, and you use the newly unlocked dungeons (from T1-T7) to grind on the lower-tier planets until you can finally visit the new planet with your newly leveled character and reap the resources.

What do you guys think? Is this too wordy, silly, and complicated or am I onto something here?

P.S. It’d be really cool if they called them Oortifacts hehe

4 Likes
2

The unlock process should not be permanent

I like the concept of “keys”
It’s used with success on games with limited content like Path of exiles, Warframe, and many more.
You grind to obtain keys with access to specific maps/worlds. It’s a oneshot travel and you can’t come back without crafting another one.

This way old content is still relevant to obtain keys. And hardcore players can’t stomp the market by camping the same world 24/24h. They are forced to leave at some point.

3

A couple issues I have with this

  • That is a really expensive key. The only way to not make it as expensive is to lower the cost, and that would make it something that isn’t end-game. Not my goal.
  • Hardcore players will always “stomp the market.” Unfortunately. There is no utopia of solutions, and I see equal amounts of hardcore players visiting your version of the worlds and my version.
  • Old content is still relevant with the newly unlocked dungeons and difficulty of the new world (remember, you’re level 1 again and there’s new low-level dungeons on the original planets)
  • Your idea, while a good one, is a completely separate idea. I am thinking in terms of end-game content that fills the progression. Your idea is more like a very optional add-on to get really nice materials or dungeons. Your idea could be more of an end-end-game or supplement to worlds to reduce scarcity.
4

As the writer of that other post, I generally approve of a lot of your ideas. Let’s think about the cost/effect of what you’re proposing though:

If each special planet can only be accessed by the players that have that one special bonus, that’s a lot of content that isn’t really much beyond an additional grind. Sure it gives you an additional goal, but once you unlock the new planets, what do you do there?

You build, gather, mine, etc. It’s not really adding much in the way of “new stuff to do” beyond just giving you a longer goal. There isn’t a way to deal with the “end of the endgame” problem, and everything just extends it and hopes that it’s enough and fast enough to get players to stick around. Even my dungeon idea, as you mentioned, wouldn’t last players forever. Presumably if they are working on titans, those will be added to existing planned T7-8 worlds, so they may add a good amount of endgame content to that as well.

The “prestige” mechanic works for some games, but in this, you’re not even really taking much away from the player by forcing them to re-level. All people would do is stock up a ton of resources, start a metric ton of crafts, then “reincarnate” and reap their massive experience rewards. And let’s be honest, by the time they got the system in place and working, everyone would have so many skill points to spend that they likely wouldn’t even have to de-level their characters to drop 100 SP on something like this. (Related, there’s definitely going to need to be something to do with extra SP eventually, every game with infinite leveling needs a way to dump extra experience)

No matter what they do, I’m really interested in what their execution for titans and stuff are going to be. I’m a big builder, so the current endgame will certainly satisfy me for a while, and I think the biggest longevity-related feature is the economy/community. Any new mechanics definitely need to encourage player interaction, and the more people are encouraged to interact and work together, the easier it will be to draw new people in.

5

Dang! I missed your other post Zerax.
You explained it better than me :sweat_smile:

1 Like
6

Dungeons are kind of the novelty behind all of this. Dungeons add a lot of content in my opinion. They could be unique per element just like each gem, and offer trophies for completion of certain hard dungeons to show off your progression or sell the cosmetics. Don’t forget it adds dungeons for lower level elemental planets as well, which is more unique content on top of that. Maybe a boss for each world that is a 5+ person task to take him down with each one having unique combat mechanics. Even without dungeons the idea is a canvas that can easily be painted on with content ideas.

You can always add more resources on top of the 50 levels, I just left it like that for simplicity. The quick experience/leveling issue is a bit different and I won’t touch on that, as it is more of a balancing problem.

I don’t think that’s an issue. The low-level endgame is obviously optional, and they’re not really skipping too much by using their excess points, just a few low-level dungeons. The new world is still new, and could be expanded or modified beyond just being a world/dungeon unlock. That would only really be a problem in the beginning. If you had even one character with more than 600 skill points by then, I’d be impressed. Like I said it’s about 18*50 levels of content. Not easy to rush through even for people constantly pooling in skillpoints.

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The way I would want endgame is the ability for players to make stuff for end game, i.e. player made dungeons. That way instead of adding one content it adds a system that allows for more content to be added without extra work necessary by the devs

2 Likes