One Word - Endgame
As far as I can make out, endgame is the way pay-monthly MMOs keep you paying and playing after you’ve exhausted all the meaningful content. It started out as a desperate bid to keep player numbers high by offering tantalising rewards (read: better gear and bragging rights) and now some players are so used to it that they feel something is ‘missing’ without it.
Oh, and what people are asking for when they ask for better ‘endgame’ is the chance to earn superior armour and weapons or mini-games like ‘raiding’ – essentially, it’s anything to keep them occupied.
Thanks for your input! =)
So what it boils down to is showing off and feeling superior; they can grind the ultra-rare stuff for 8 hours a day and you can’t (because you have a life). GW2 isn’t cut from that cloth because it’s action/skill based combat rather than gear/stats so they complain there’s nothing to do at 80.
For me I set out with the aim of four max level characters, with all crafts at 400 and 100% map completion on my main. At the pace I get to play that’s going to take at least six months. I’ll worry about the so-called lack of content once I get there…
WoW 85 (yes I last played cataclysm donno what it is for pandas) was...
1. "Yay I’m 85" Choose a spec. Look up the exact traits you are supposed to have for that spec. If you do not have thise traits identical, you fail and need to respec. From this point forward it’s ideal traits or GTFO.
2. Start grinding special harder heroic mode dungeons* that you can only do once per day.
3. Get the best gear you can possibly get for your spec through heroic dungeons.
4. Get a guild. (Or not as optimally advertise you are looking for a raid, where you will be filling in for missing members for a guild, in that case you have to trust that they will distribute loot fairly. Many do not.)
5. Do 10 or 25 man raids, which are big super dungeons that take 2 hours straight to complete on a good run much longer on bad. They can only be done once per week. Study the raid before attempting, perfection is expected, especially from a non-guildie,
6. Do those enough times to get the best gear available for your spec. If 2 people wanted an item that dropped only one person could get it. (as a feral druid I averaged one piece every 2 runs)
7. With best raid gear available do heroic raids, which like dungeons are bigger harder versions of raids. Also on one week lockout.
8. Repeat step 6 for heroic raids
9. Have best gear available, complain about how WoW endgame sucks.
10. Another content patch or expansion comes out. Repeat steps 1-10.
*Difficulty equal to current GW2 story mode dungeons.
(edited by Greiger.7092)
I would love to see some new ideas for “end game” content. To be honest, I could care less about raids. I am beyond sick of raiding, it’s just the same schlock over and over again, I want something new.
Would love to see competitive mini-games inside GW2. How fun would an organized Keg Brawl league be?!? I want to see content like that for a change.
Honestly, my problem with “end game” isn’t that I’m not getting better gear than anyone else, I don’t really care about that… it’s that I feel there is too little reward for doing stuff once you hit 80.
You have the legendary grind, which is horrendous, but I’m ok with that. The problem is if I play for 8 hours, I want to feel like I’ve made 8 hours progress. There are no more goals to attain once you hit 80 other than to acquire a legendary weapon.
What I think would be great is the addition of a wide range of cosmetic items that drop, including weapon skins and the like. Housing items and such when that is implemented (and this very well may be the answer). You look at a game like EQ2 and there are people that login solely to mess with designing their house. Something like that is acceptable endgame for me at least, without needing to be overpowering gear.
I sinked quite some hours into this game and not bored at all.
There’s enough reasons why someone would find guild wars (endgame) boring or bad though. The lack of gear based progression is only one of them.
In the end it simply comes down to preference.
Craft a Legendary is essentially GW2s endgame.
Legendary is too many hoops, just like bosses that are 1000000k hp = the new hard.
Yes Similar was in GW, but the road to these bosses was fun. Never hear anyone saying in GW that the dungeons were boring en-route to boss.
Alas we have a different fanbase now. Peeps with TDKR posters allover their walls, ah well, I got 5 years out of GW. Thats good!
There are about 2000 hours of gameplay in just PvE if you play at least 3 chars and want all the different exotic sets (zerk, knight, etc).
We also have 33 unique dungeon quests, DEs, etc.
They said they will make boss hunting profitable (even champs) so hopefully we’ll get boss hunting as endgame activity too.
Lol, all this talk about superiority…. I personally am not very pleased with the end-game, but not at all because I can’t grind better gears and show off that I am “superior” or what not… it’s the fact that I don’t like jumping quests, find legendary armors ugly, and got bored of the same skills by lvl 80 (unless you take it into PVP or WvWvW and actually have dynamic builds, in PVE there’s no challenge or motivation for a player to “raise his/her ability to use skills”… because the complexity takes about 10 mins to learn). To address the OP’s question, all I find meaningful to do now at level 80 is:
a) Do occasional EXP dungeons (takes 2 hours to do so afterwards I feel tired and is done for the day).
b) Play on my lvl 53 warrior and lvl 40 guardian toons (explore places that I possibly have missed with my lvl 80 main or again do more dungeons).
c) Rarely do PVP or WvWvW (because I don’t like GW2’s PVP… I play more Dota2 when I want to PVP & WvWvW is so much of a zerg…).
I would say the selling point of this game is exploration because all of my 300+ hours or something on GW2 is probably on either trying out new dungeons and exploring. But after I’ve done ALL the dungeons and explored 80%+ of the map and hit max level… I just lost interest. Not a big deal, but for some others who “needs” GW2 to be their everyday ‘hardcore’ type of game and plays the game for its PVE contents, this game won’t do you good in the long term.
TL ; DR, A Summary of GW2 End-Game: If you don’t PVP, do jump puzzles, hunt for legendary items (by grinding EXP dungeons), or play WvWvW (with a guild is better), then this game won’t do for you. But if you like them, then hey!… The game’s the right choice. Simple as that.
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There are about 2000 hours of gameplay in just PvE if you play at least 3 chars and want all the different exotic sets (zerk, knight, etc).
We also have 33 unique dungeon quests, DEs, etc.They said they will make boss hunting profitable (even champs) so hopefully we’ll get boss hunting as endgame activity too.
No way it’s 2000 hours (that’s a huge over shoot). I played for maybe almost 300 close to 400 hours… got a lvl 80 mesmer, 53 warrior, 40 guardian, and deleted a few lvl 10s a few times (and got through all the areas). Hitting 2000 hour would be for “each of the 3 characters” you do:
- Map completions
- Get through all the dungeons (both EXP & Story)
- Fought every single the zone bosses
- Finish story (choosing different paths)
I’ve experienced 90% of all the contents referred above “at least once or twice”, and it took me less than 400 hours. So… that’s to say you REALLY REALLY love repeating doing the same stuffs, then 2k hour I would buy it… but naw, no way it takes 2000 hour to touch on every aspects of GW2.
(edited by FluffyDoe.7539)
endgame usually means character progression past level cap, meaning once your max level you can still get stronger by grinding for gear, and usually there wont really ever be an end to it because the devs will periodically add new content that raises level cap and adds new higher level gear. this is the “standard” setup mmos will have to keep people interested and playing after they’re done leveling, and oftentimes, the ratio between effort and reward will be just right so that the grind feels worthwhile.
a lot of people like it and a lot of people dont.
gw2 doesnt have any of that at all, and while its great for the casuals that dont like gear grinds, it really sucks for those of us who do like it, because they didnt really replace it with anything, they just left it out and thats it – so endgame is pretty nonexistent when you’re looking at it from that perspective.
when people complain about the lack of endgame, i always see the same responses and i find them really stupid lol. it’s always “well have you done all your map completion? have you done all the different paths in the dungeons? have you grinded out every armor set you can? have you made new toons to see different personal stories?”
- map completion ends. it’s not endgame content in any way.
- dungeons may be okay to go through a few times for the fun of it, but why would you just keep doing them? in that mindset, you may as well say its endgame content to go back and do the random events over again that you liked while leveling. sure that’d be fun for a while but how many times can you do the same thing over with no reward before it gets boring and feels pointless?
-armor skins from dungeons. i think its sooo stupid when a person says that gear treadmills are stupid and not real game content, and then defend this game by saying getting the armor skins is part of the endgame. It’s EXACTLY the same in terms of what you’re doing, it’s just the rewards that are different. in my eyes, its the closest thing to endgame content there is really… but the rewards just dont make it worthwhile, since they dont give you any sense of progression. vanity is cool but there needs to be more than that.
-rolling alts. it’s not endgame content. maybe if the personal stories were cooler (as in better cutscenes) longer, and more diverse, as in, your choices really making an impact, affecting your personality and the overall feel of the story, but honestly the whole thing feels flimsy and not done very well, its kind of hard to put my finger on exactly why
overall gw2 is just very casual, not a terrible thing, but it doesnt work for a large amount of gamers
Legendary is too many hoops, just like bosses that are 1000000k hp = the new hard.
Yes Similar was in GW, but the road to these bosses was fun. Never hear anyone saying in GW that the dungeons were boring en-route to boss.
Alas we have a different fanbase now. Peeps with TDKR posters allover their walls, ah well, I got 5 years out of GW. Thats good!
A lot of people are complaining but what a lot of peopole dont know is Guild Wars. I played the first one for 5 years as well and one thing I know is content is always added. Rest assured there will be new free content to keep you entertained over the nex few months, and Im sure some kind of expansion is in the works for a whole new area maybe not to release next year but it will release at some point.
The first guild wars had endless content that was alway being added to keep the fun alive, im sure GW2 will be no diffrent.
Plenty of games exist for those who say they prefer gear grinds. We don’t need another game like that. Let me conquer the content with skill and tactics rather than out-gearing it please, thank you.
It would be nice with some kind of coop-content for more than 5 people though.
not asking for a gear treadmill, i came into this game knowing there wouldnt be one, it just woulda been nice if devs had thought up anything at all to put in it’s place to keep hardcores occupied and happy. but instead, hardcores are being told, as a whole more or less, to “go to a different game”, which absolutely sucks and is really disappointing, cause i’ve been waiting for this game for years and i really do love it in a lot of ways despite my not being happy with its overall design at endgame. it was also hyped so insanely much that its kinda surprising to see an entire type of gamer just being told to go away now after all of that.
also, if “all hardcores” just start leaving because the game isnt meant for them, it might impact the community as a whole. people get unmotivated and quit games when they see friends quit, and its not impossible for casuals to have hardcore friends.
Interesting use of language there, Chasing. ‘Hardcore’ gamers played GW1, which lacked the gear grind/post-cap stat progression that keeps people occupied in other MMOs. There are people who put thousands of hours into that game, and there are people who will do the same in GW2. Not all gamers who identify as ‘hardcore gamers’, are leaving. For some, the vanity system is enough.
That isn’t to say I don’t think the developers should add more content. I look forward to the Hallowe’en patch, and am insanely excited about potential expansions.