Showing Posts For Viking.1950:
1 2
Madmartigan was a warrior wasn’t he. I think you have already decided deep down inside. But be a Norn, because Norns are cool.
Ah, now Sky has touched on the core of the subject. End game doesn’t have to mean lvl 80. Belcross, one thing I noticed in your post is that you seem to have more than one definition of endgame. Mostly you are defining endgame as what to do once you reach the level cap. But then later you also refer to “endgame content”. So one might ask, is endgame a when? or a what? We must not conflate the two ideas. But it is easy to do because that is what the industry has consistently done for a long time now.
Endgame is the harder content (what) you do after you reach the level cap. (when)
ArenaNet appears to be trying to decouple these two idea in order to meet a primary goal of their’s. The designers mentioned that they didn’t want the game play to change significantly once players reached the level cap. In other words, they didn’t want the leveling game to be different from the endgame. (in terms of when) To this end they have allowed some of the greatest challenges of the game (engame in terms of what) to be taken on before the level cap.
The best examples of this are the explorable dungeons. People are running head long into the explorable and are routinely getting their butts handed back to them. People are finding out that explorables are not just marginally more difficult. They making players to really need to know how to play to the strengths of their character. They are needing to plan and practice combos and put in some real team work and effort. What does that sound like? Sounds like the level of commitment that is often needed by people who raid in other games. Not in terms of the amount of time and dedication taken to grind tokens for a gear set but the kind of try and try again until you learn how to fight the boss kind of dedication that is needed. These are not pug friendly dungeons.
Explorables are the endgame versions (what) of the 5 man dungeons in this game. They are hard and they take time to conquer. For most people. The only difference is that you can try the endgame content known as Explorable Ascalon Catacombs as early as lvl 35. So does it make these instances not endgame if they can be done before level cap? only if you define endgame as a when rather than a what. Would it make the instance endgame if say there was a harder version that could be done at level 80? Well, explorables are the harder versions of storyline dungeons and yeah, they can be done at 80. The only difference being that the game levels you back to the dungeon rather than creating a version of the dungeon that is leveled up to 80 and then called expert or heroic.
You said that the game was not hard enough to be able to consider the leveling up as endgame. And I would agree that most of it isn’t. Exploring. doing hearts. doing most DEs. Crafting. That is the “leveling” or “normal mode” game. And it doesn’t stop when you reach level cap. You can continue to finish out maps and gain more karma, cash and skill points. But then there is also the “end” or the “hard mode” game. And these also are not strictly limited to being done after the level cap. The explorables. The world bosses. Some hard mode DEs in the end zones. Working on getting Legendary weapons. Some of the jumping puzzles are also freakishly hard to find and do.
Any game can and will run out of things for us to do. All we can do when that happens is either find something else to work on that we might not have thought of before or take a break until the next expansion comes out. But just because we can start playing really hard content before the level cap and still play easy content after it doesn’t mean that GW2 has less to offer than other games. It just has it laid out differently.
Also, as an added observation. Consider that, because of the way we can level back to earlier dungeons and zones and still enjoy them at the level cap, what that will mean for expansions. GW2 expansions don’t have to be at the level cap or add another 5 or 10 levels to be fun for most players. Anet can add say zones from lvl 25-80 over in Maguuma Wastes that would essentially add a new and unique level path that could be more naturally used by future Asura and Sylvari. They could also add another dungeon into these zones half way though and yet everyone who is already at level cap would be able to play these zones and its dungeon just like they did every other. Thanks to the auto leveling, expansion content can be offered to both those still leveling and those long since capped. The design is masterful once you let it sink in.
1 2