Endgame Feedback

Ianir

Hi everybody,

While we have a general plans, we want to gather general feedback on endgame - your problems with it, your general ideas for it, etc. to make sure we move in the right direction.

Please post any thoughts below.

Xenthos

One thing that I have brought up before is a power based on the premise of wondercrystals.  It is a leveled power that you can buy for increasing amounts of essence (10 mil base, + 10mil per level, capping at 100mil for every level past 10).  Its only effect is to add an additional sorting level to xp rankings, letting you grind your way up.

This lets you ditch the xp diminishing returns & provides long-term competition from those who want to pursue that.

Everyone who is on the same level of power purchase would be sorted by essence within that rank.  If two people are demilevel 5, the one with 20 million essence is ranked above the one with 10 million.  Both are ranked higher than a demilevel 4 with 40 million, though.

Edit: Basically the intent is to provide an ongoing task that people can keep working on even if all else is bought.

I would like to be able to see more end-game people with Omniscience too btw... it is so darn limited.  Even if it was just unlinking it from cult head so anyone else can use it...

Daraius

Cults for demigods not associated with an order.

Xenthos

I wouldn't mind seeing some cult tweaks like that.

1) Ability to be marked by your cult leader as "viceAvatar".

- You must have bought the cult demipower (make available to non-Avatars)

- Lets you use any cult power as if you were avatar, but does not give you control of the cult (so you can't induct/change ranks/etc).

- Possibly has a personal essence cost to maintain it each weave?  You need to spend effort to stay linked to the cult or some such..?

2) Ability to make a generic cult untied to an order.

- All such cults share the same generic messages (since order cults are built from the ground up by divine, having someone hand-write for non-order cults seems like excessive work).

- Must buy the cult demipower (make available to non-Avatars).

- Increased costs for powers?  Should be incentivized to join a cult if you are in an Order at least, or have that option available to you.  But the goal of this would be to give an option when a cult isn't a possibility at all.  Other alternative options to achieve that end could also be pursued.

I guess one downside would be that offerings will not provide any cult essence, it would all have to come from the cult leader.

Xenthos

I would also really like to see what your ideas are, btw!

Kistan

Can we revisit the idea that a demigod has to do 4x as much stuff as a novice to get daily credits?

ElrynGreythane

If I can make a suggestion - maybe ways of guiding/initiating player events of all gameplay modes (in a less lore-centric, game defining way than volunteers)? Kind of acknowledging that Demigods have excelled at triumphing through the activities of the main game, so should be the right people to know how to generate (and participate) the best kind of gameplay involving other players. And then reward them significantly for getting people involved.

That includes more RP-centric cult stuff, plus maybe things like:

• Using their essence to create their own godrealm equivalents in aetherspace (if they can't already)
• Using their essence to create, maintain and mobpossess their own NPCs, perhaps limited to emerging from their realm (and expensive to take out of their realms) so they can't be mistaken for crossing over any existing game lore.
• Using their essence to create mini-events for their nation, based off a set of templates. They wouldn't need to design everything themselves, maybe they just choose/create some main variable flavour things - a few NPC types, an object type, etc - and pick from a list of pre-defined goals with a clear and motivating reward for success. Examples could be:
  • your team/all players have to defend against waves of planar invaders (PvE/bashing);
  • your team retrieves the key item from enemy nation stronghold on plane y and holds for x minutes (PvP/capture the flag);
  • your team has to find the way out of a randomly generated deathmaze (PvE/puzzle);
  • your team has to uncover the secret imposter hiding amongst your nation mobs (PvE/influence);
  • all players have to kill and collect dangerous creatures of your choice that spawn in random areas (PvE/bashing), and so on.
• Using their essence to trigger a demigod-flavoured conflict zone event at a time of their choosing (like equivalents to village revolts, timequakes, wildnodes, aetherflares, etc - but not actually unlocking any gameworld villages/bubbles/etc for capture) that a segment of the playerbase they choose (eg - all players, allied nations, their nation, between levels x and y) can participate in for unique rewards.

Enya

What's in scope here, just personal progression stuff or also domoths? I feel like that latter have gotten really stale recently and most people agree that absolves and some other features aren't great.

Xenthos

As was pointed out in a previous thread, being demigod doesn't equate to "excelling at triumphing in the main areas of the game." Mostly it means "Joined a few astral bashes and got Demigod pretty swiftly."  Assuming that demigod = fully conversant in game lore is a bit of a stretch.

Some of your ideas could be fun, but demi probably is not the right gating mechanism.

Coraline

A couple of suggestions:

- the option for characters to be married at the Hall of Records without needing a Divine/Avatar for it, while keeping the other option open (I think this was suggested in ideas at some point, but just bringing it up here again)

- designing to generate a (small amount of) family honour 

Enya

Those are both good things, but I'm not very clear on what they have to do with the endgame. People have been asking for some kind of secular weddings for AGES, and I would have thought designing already gave family honour.

Coraline

I might have misunderstood what Endgame means oops. Thought it was just give all suggestions

Jolanthe

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like viewing Lusternia as having an endgame is unhealthy, especially with how daily credits presently work.

Enya

Aside from domoth woes, the big thing with the demishop for me is that most of the reasonably achievable options are just not useful, and the useful powers are SO EXTREMELY AND FORBIDDINGLY EXPENSIVE that I can't see the point in investing time into them. I look at the prospect of grinding for countless hours so that in a few RL months I can get a new big ticket power and just ditch the whole thing as they aren't really applicable to me anyways: I've been sitting on pretty much the exact same essence for RL years.

When I was a new demigod, there were enough cheap and clearly useful powers in the stat-ups and so on that I could grind for a week or possibly two and get a brand new power. There was enough payoff in the shortterm to make it useful. I could see myself now going for powers like dessicate if only they weren't so darn useless or incredibly niche! Power weights are also all over the map, needlessly restricted and complicated in a post-stats era. It's a bit silly to have purely flavor and game enrichment powers compete for resources with combat utility powers.

In regards to the demishop I think a key step will be to examine what the point of the powers and mechanics are. Assuming the underlying goal is "keep endgame players engaged with the game", what parts of the game are good to foster engagement with? For me, and I suspect most other players most of the time, grinding for experience wasn't really a key positive feature of a game, but a tax I paid for access to more interesting parts of the game. I was very happy to have purchased all the powers I wanted and be done with that frustrating and boring portion of the game. I was frustrated that right around when I was getting demigod, things changed from automatic demigod powers to the demishop: I was really looking forward to the rewards of hitting demigod and got "rewarded with the opportunity" for more awful grinding. All in all, I don't really understand wanting more and more infinite scaling powers that require players to keep on tediously grinding or be left behind especially as it's not like the "endgame" bashing is fundamentally different from 0-100. Yay you hit demi, now GET BACK TO MONOTONOUS BASHING.

 Ultimately, it just means that demigod isn't the end game. The end game comes once there are no more powers that you want enough to justify the ages to bash them out. No amount of adding shinies or putting in pointless "you can just bash forever if you really really want to" powers will do anything but kick that can further down the road. The paradigm for play should transition once you're a demigod away from mindless bashing.

Some spitballing suggestions:

First, remove xp death loss period, across the board. It's time for this aged mechanic to be ushered peacefully into the grave. It doesn't do anything particularly useful for the game. Use lockout timers and stacking maluses to control over-risky behavior, but only when it involves other players. If you want to run in and die to PvE be my guest, do that all day, it's fine. I suggest doing what Imperian does with death lock out, and allow players to raise defenses while locked out (and/or make most defenses NOT drop on death). That way, the duration of the lockout is the actual duration of the lockout, it's not lockout + defense routine, which varies widely.

Second, decouple essence and experience entirely. Essence could even be split up into different types, either based on domoth or on other categories, and be used for different things according to its sourcing! I'm going to keep calling it essence for convenience, but it could work in many different ways, it's just "demigod points".

Once you're a demigod you can keep on gaining experience just like anyone else, but you stop scaling to it. You can still offer corpses, use bashing to make gold, use them for quests, bash to generate credits, or just for the sake of seeing your experience numbers go up if that's your bag, but that's it. If you don't want to really grind anymore you don't have to, you're done! That part of the game is pretty tedious as is anyways, there are constant requests to overhaul it or otherwise make it more interesting: no more need, problem solved. You can just end bashing by getting to demigod.

Essence can still be gained, but now is gained through engaging in other more interesting game mechanics. You gain essence by participating in conflict events, designing, writing plays, that kind of stuff. There could also be other sorts of interesting mechanics building out from that chassis.

Third, work in those essence generating (and using) mechanics:

I'd remove the domoth realms part of domoth fights as part of an overall overhaul of domoths. It's already been whittled down, and for good reason: it's frustrating for no reason. This frees up the conceptual space of domoths for various *other* types of domoth activity. You could allow demigods to do research-like investment into various domoths and their powers. Perhaps picking one domoth to specialize in and being able to spend time and essence branching out into other domoths. Domoth realms could  also be expanded into a special PvE type area with more unique objective-based PvE for essence rewards. Investment in particular domoths could automatically unlock some of the frillier demigod powers like choice enter and look, either based on participation levels with that particular domoth or as an overall measure of demigodness.

I actually really like the idea of demigods being, well.. demi-gods. I just think that @ElrynGreythane has IC-Gods and Admin-Gods mixed up with their suggestions (which I don't like as a result). However, there are many god-like things that it WOULD be cool to have demigods able to do, as they've fanned their divine spark to the point that their will literally consumed and reformed their body. Things like creating demigod-realms, being able to coalesce together cults with other players - though not centralized around a single leader, more like a mini-order -, confer little blessings, and so on. Bashing and sacrificing corpses would still have a role there in helping to generate cult essence for demicults

Please please think outside of the box and go with anything but "We'll just add more grinding in". Something to encourage actually engaging with the game, and not just camping an astral/aetherbash and checking out.

Saran

Agreeing on a definition of what endgame is, where it starts, etc is probably a starting point. The seemingly typical MMO definition is that "Endgame" is what you do once you're finished levelling. (so basically everything from the moment you hit demigod) The concept also typically ties into systems that allow consistent growth in power because players will cap out if things aren't being consistently added. 

Demicults 
Makes me think more about something that denizens who haven't stepped through the portal might join. 

As a slight alternative

• Demigods can invest their essence in a non-ship manse that doesn't already have someone investing in it to create a demi-realm. Themed as demigods aren't powerful enough to create wholly on their own so they use the manse as a shell and the presence of algontherine actively conflicts with that process. (Probably easier to just say only the owner can invest)
• Investing is a large initial cost and then a smaller per room cost (every room has to be done individually). The number of invested rooms functions as a limiter.
• Players would be able to attract, abstracted, denizens as followers through activities that correlate to each of the domoths with a cap determined by invested rooms. (Could track the demicult makeup, like if someone mostly does harmony things they have a primarily "harmony" cult)
• Demigods could then build bonuses and rewards which require a certain number of followers and an essence spend. This could be powers, manse upgrades (like a high priest in your manse that sings your praises), upgradeable things (once you have a high priest maybe you can also spawn a bunch of follower denizens), etc.
• Have "assemblies" of demigods which have linked their cults together as mentioned.
• Build bonuses into the existing order system

Economy
To mention it again, one of the things I've seen a lot with endgame is that it expands on systems you've already been using and isn't always limited to just being max level content because the goal is really just to keep people invested and playing.

Dungeons shift from a character levelling focus to an item levelling focus, there's things like reputation systems create loops that reuse areas that players have progressed past.
Comments have indicated people see getting cool looking outfits and customising a house is "endgame" for FFXIV crafters because you can spend days and weeks just on that.

Doing the economy and all that first would also provide more activities for people and then it could be expanded into the end game.

ElrynGreythane

Enya said:

I actually really like the idea of demigods being, well.. demi-gods. I just think that @ElrynGreythane has IC-Gods and Admin-Gods mixed up with their suggestions (which I don't like as a result). However, there are many god-like things that it WOULD be cool to have demigods able to do, as they've fanned their divine spark to the point that their will literally consumed and reformed their body. Things like creating demigod-realms, being able to coalesce together cults with other players - though not centralized around a single leader, more like a mini-order -, confer little blessings, and so on. Bashing and sacrificing corpses would still have a role there in helping to generate cult essence for demicults

Please please think outside of the box and go with anything but "We'll just add more grinding in". Something to encourage actually engaging with the game, and not just camping an astral/aetherbash and checking out.

Fair enough, but I just want to clarify I was suggesting that those cult/engagement options be not lore-centric, and therefore not require a player to be fully conversant with lore understanding.

That is, optional demi-realms completely made out of aetherstuff so they were clearly not based on any existing game threads (just like manses can be anything and are not based on lore). Starting player mini-events and contests that are more like initiating pre-defined arena games, just with an option to choose a few flavour options (pick an NPC type, shortdesc, or whatever), and have it take place in 'the real Lusternian world'.

If that doesn't work, all good. I'll cede to those who have been at end-game for a while. It's just a personal preference that setting up grind to accumulate more power/artis/whatever isn't usually a type of end-game/elder-game that interests me.

Kali

A couple things - I think aethertrades are not good for the game in their current form

Also, I'd love to see more types of curio pieces being rewarded from thematically linked quests (ex: bubble curios from their specific areas, light set from the inner sea stuff, torture from asylum/similar quests, face set from duum, etc etc) There's a lot of curio sets that no-one's really going to pay real money for (excluding super-completionists), but if given the chance to earn them in game I'm sure people will happily grind and trade for.

I know it's not really endgame specific, but it can be very grindy and I don't think it would be too hard to implement, as both the quests and the curios themselves are already in the game.

Saran

As an extrapolation on the economy bit

1. Update the trading systems with concepts like a loot mechanic which can be incorporated into current designs.
2. Update bashing as an activity with a focus on making it a more interesting experience. (For example, implementing mob afflictions, combos, rotations just for mob killing etc)
3. Add in an instanced dungeon/quest mechanism that loops in with and expands on the loot mechanism and provides varying challenges. Have some scale wholly with player level, others that scale only within a range. 
4. Expand the instance mechanism into a loop for demigods where the demi-instances drop loot which enables you to get more powerful, which lets you scale up the difficulty on the instances to get more/more powerful loot make more powerful equipment to scale up further, and so on. (The buffing mechanism would be set up so that it only works inside demi-instances)
5. Potentially split the demi-instances on thematic lines (different planes, the domoth realms, etc) and introduce rankings for them for a competitive element. This could make it so progressing along one line doesn't mean progress along all of them and people may be incentivised purely to see if they can push their numbers higher than anyone else.
6. The loot from demi-instances could also be used elsewhere. For example, demi-orders might have bonuses and the like which consume the loot, potentially scaled relative to the scale the loot was gained at.

You can technically do things out of that order but the idea would also be to build and make new things available, rather than like... if you did demi-instances first with the scaling, but then went back and tried to incorporate them into a trading update later, or needed to change the difficulties of the challenges inside based on a bashing update. 

Inanna

Kistan said:

Can we revisit the idea that a demigod has to do 4x as much stuff as a novice to get daily credits?

Even a scale down to 2x for a start would be great.

Orael

Inanna said:

Kistan said:

Can we revisit the idea that a demigod has to do 4x as much stuff as a novice to get daily credits?

Even a scale down to 2x for a start would be great.

These really aren't endgame feedback but I'm interested in opening up about this more. I'm going to make a new thread in regards to it.