I want to play GW2. I'm not wanting to gear up, or reach max level, or be the first to say "been there, done that".  I just want to explore and take my time.  I want to play the game, not beat the game.  So when I've finally decided that I am no longer wanting to just have fun, then I will think about end game.

Originally posted by eyelolled
I want to play GW2. I'm not wanting to gear up, or reach max level, or be the first to say "been there, done that".  I just want to explore and take my time.  I want to play the game, not beat the game.  So when I've finally decided that I am no longer wanting to just have fun, then I will think about end game.

You know, its wierd, but I think of exploring as endgame, and I only played one beta testing weekend of GW2 so I'm not going to say it's the best exploration ever, but I'm very hopeful it does have some decent exploring. I kind of miss just traveling around looking at strange environments running into oh sh$$ moments.

 

Oddly enough, I only raid cause my guild makes me(I'm always the designated puzzle solver, ALWAYS!!! I hate puzzles lol), but in all truth I hate raiding at about the 2 time I beat the damn thing. Am I the only person that doesn't play games over and over again? How is running the same bs over and over and over again fun. Run it 12 times to get the rare boots some boss drops or some other crap treadmill carrot on a stick. My god, my guild in swtor made me run the same crap nightmare modes over and over, and for what? A title and crap vanity pet, THOSE BASTARDS! I only do it to be friendly, but secretly I hope my friends get testicular cancer for dragging me into raids cause I've solved the great mysteries of raiding (not standing in AOE's lol)

Originally posted by william0532

Originally posted by eyelolled
I want to play GW2. I'm not wanting to gear up, or reach max level, or be the first to say "been there, done that".  I just want to explore and take my time.  I want to play the game, not beat the game.  So when I've finally decided that I am no longer wanting to just have fun, then I will think about end game.

You know, its wierd, but I think of exploring as endgame, and I only played one beta testing weekend of GW2 so I'm not going to say it's the best exploration ever, but I'm very hopeful it does have some decent exploring. I kind of miss just traveling around looking at strange environments running into oh sh$$ moments.

 

Oddly enough, I only raid cause my guild makes me(I'm always the designated puzzle solver, ALWAYS!!! I hate puzzles lol), but in all truth I hate raiding at about the 2 time I beat the damn thing. Am I the only person that doesn't play games over and over again? How is running the same bs over and over and over again fun. Run it 12 times to get the rare boots some boss drops or some other crap treadmill carrot on a stick. My god, my guild in swtor made me run the same crap nightmare modes over and over, and for what? A title and crap vanity pet, THOSE BASTARDS! I only do it to be friendly, but secretly I hope my friends get testicular cancer for dragging me into raids cause I've solved the great mysteries of raiding (not standing in AOE's lol)

Like I said a few posts earlier, I hope those types of raids don't get added. We already have enough wannabe WoWs on the market as it is; no need to throw this promising game into that same pile.

Wow raiding is dead anyway. If you look at the raids objectively and cut out the noise you end up with empty dungeons with a series of rooms with average to small sizes end bosses that are pretty dull, and certainly not spectacular- the only thing 'epic' about them is that they need the trinity to be able to deal with the sequence of boss skills. Compare to the end boss in gw2 - maybe 10 times bigger, maybe more?! That scales automatically in difficulty so the number of players that fight it can scale- that's a lot more exciting and 'epic'

For me endgame starts if you run out of progression and you run out of content. Now the phase of repeating existing content starts which is called endgame. In endgame you:

- do instances over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, they focus here on group instances

- do open world encounters over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, that they have DEs here and due to player-scaling you can go back to lower zones. But the time will come, you have played all branches and then you will do it over and over again.

- do non-combat activities, which is mainly crafting. So you will craft stuff (mainly high-level) over and over again.

- do endless progression. The endless progression in GW2 is cosmetic progression. You will hunt for new shiny stuff over and over again.

- do pvp-battles over and over again. Even the WvW content is limited.

You will repeat this endgame until they launch an expansion with new content and perhaps a bit of further vertikal/horizontal progression, too. You will play it and then you are again in endgame.

On a high abstraction level, i dont see a big difference between GW2 and any other themepark here. There are no repeatable raid instances and no stats progression. This is replaced by group-content and a cosmetic item treatmill. The DEs could make the endgame different to a certain extent, if ArenaNet can change and extend them very fast between expansions. Something which seems far more difficult with classic questbased storycontent. However, a game-provider will never produce content fast enough for hardcore-gamers. These gamers will reach their endgame, even with expandable DEs.

The question is the same like in every theme-park: Will this repeatable content be interesting enough to keep players until next expansion and how fast they can produce expansions and content patches in order to keep these endgame-phases rather short for the majority. Arenanet expects, that players who love raid instances and endless stats progression are a minority. So you guys better dont buy GW2, if this is your one and only interest.

However it does not matter in the B2P model. Buy the game, enjoy it as long as you can and stop playing until the new expansion; rinse and repeat. This is of course not a solution for players not playing a game, but looking for a virtual world to live in for years. They might become problems if their personal rate of content consumption is way higher than content production by Arenanet and if they are not interested to repeat content as described above.

This problem is a bit different in sandboxes, because player-driven content is endless by nature. And open mainly horizontal and lateral skillprogression can be de facto endless, too. But that does not mean they would not have an endgame. Its just different and it can become boring in a different way.

Originally posted by UsulDaNeriak

For me endgame starts if you run out of progression and you run out of content. Now the phase of repeating existing content starts which is called endgame. In endgame you:

- do instances over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, they focus here on group instances

- do open world encounters over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, that they have DEs here and due to player-scaling you can go back to lower zones. But the time will come, you have played all branches and then you will do it over and over again.

- do non-combat activities, which is mainly crafting. So you will craft stuff (mainly high-level) over and over again.

- do endless progression. The endless progression in GW2 is cosmetic progression. You will hunt for new shiny stuff over and over again.

- do pvp-battles over and over again. Even the WvW content is limited.

You will repeat this endgame until they launch an expansion with new content and perhaps a bit of further vertikal/horizontal progression, too. You will play it and then you are again in endgame.

On a high abstraction level, i dont see a big difference between GW2 and any other themepark here. There are no repeatable raid instances and no stats progression. This is replaced by group-content and a cosmetic item treatmill. The DEs could make the endgame different to a certain extent, if ArenaNet can change and extend them very fast between expansions. Something which seems far more difficult with classic questbased storycontent. However, a game-provider will never produce content fast enough for hardcore-gamers. These gamers will reach their endgame, even with expandable DEs.

The question is the same like in every theme-park: Will this repeatable content be interesting enough to keep players until next expansion and how fast they can produce expansions and content patches in order to keep these endgame-phases rather short for the majority. Arenanet expects, that players who love raid instances and endless stats progression are a minority. So you guys better dont buy GW2, if this is your one and only interest.

However it does not matter in the B2P model. Buy the game, enjoy it as long as you can and stop playing until the new expansion; rinse and repeat. This is of course not a solution for players not playing a game, but looking for a virtual world to live in for years. They might become problems if their personal rate of content consumption is way higher than content production by Arenanet and if they are not interested to repeat content as described above.

This problem is a bit different in sandboxes, because player-driven content is endless by nature. And open mainly horizontal and lateral skillprogression can be de facto endless, too. But that does not mean they would not have an endgame. Its just different and it can become boring in a different way.

Intelligent post, Usul, I think that you've summarized it perfectly.

A good post, Usul. I agree with you on most points. The beauty of GW2 is the B2P model. Personal, I do not find the end game of GW2 very compelling. I see a pretty similar story to SWTOR to play out here, at least for me. I could play it for few months, play the story content and do the challenges, but I would probably run out of interesting things to do pretty quickly and the FUN would come to an end. After that, I would be looking for something else. The good thing is that we have so many good titles coming out in the next few years, all kind of RPGs, so I really do not see any problems in the horizon for my entertainment needs.

Originally posted by UsulDaNeriak

For me endgame starts if you run out of progression and you run out of content. Now the phase of repeating existing content starts which is called endgame. In endgame you:

- do instances over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, they focus here on group instances

- do open world encounters over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, that they have DEs here and due to player-scaling you can go back to lower zones. But the time will come, you have played all branches and then you will do it over and over again.

- do non-combat activities, which is mainly crafting. So you will craft stuff (mainly high-level) over and over again.

- do endless progression. The endless progression in GW2 is cosmetic progression. You will hunt for new shiny stuff over and over again.

- do pvp-battles over and over again. Even the WvW content is limited.

You will repeat this endgame until they launch an expansion with new content and perhaps a bit of further vertikal/horizontal progression, too. You will play it and then you are again in endgame.

On a high abstraction level, i dont see a big difference between GW2 and any other themepark here. There are no repeatable raid instances and no stats progression. This is replaced by group-content and a cosmetic item treatmill. The DEs could make the endgame different to a certain extent, if ArenaNet can change and extend them very fast between expansions. Something which seems far more difficult with classic questbased storycontent. However, a game-provider will never produce content fast enough for hardcore-gamers. These gamers will reach their endgame, even with expandable DEs.

The question is the same like in every theme-park: Will this repeatable content be interesting enough to keep players until next expansion and how fast they can produce expansions and content patches in order to keep these endgame-phases rather short for the majority. Arenanet expects, that players who love raid instances and endless stats progression are a minority. So you guys better dont buy GW2, if this is your one and only interest.

However it does not matter in the B2P model. Buy the game, enjoy it as long as you can and stop playing until the new expansion; rinse and repeat. This is of course not a solution for players not playing a game, but looking for a virtual world to live in for years. They might become problems if their personal rate of content consumption is way higher than content production by Arenanet and if they are not interested to repeat content as described above.

This problem is a bit different in sandboxes, because player-driven content is endless by nature. And open mainly horizontal and lateral skillprogression can be de facto endless, too. But that does not mean they would not have an endgame. Its just different and it can become boring in a different way.

excellent response. if this is not satisfatory to answer the question of the post. nothing will

Originally posted by UsulDaNeriak

For me endgame starts if you run out of progression and you run out of content. Now the phase of repeating existing content starts which is called endgame. In endgame you:

- do instances over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, they focus here on group instances

- do open world encounters over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, that they have DEs here and due to player-scaling you can go back to lower zones. But the time will come, you have played all branches and then you will do it over and over again.

- do non-combat activities, which is mainly crafting. So you will craft stuff (mainly high-level) over and over again.

- do endless progression. The endless progression in GW2 is cosmetic progression. You will hunt for new shiny stuff over and over again.

- do pvp-battles over and over again. Even the WvW content is limited.

You will repeat this endgame until they launch an expansion with new content and perhaps a bit of further vertikal/horizontal progression, too. You will play it and then you are again in endgame.

On a high abstraction level, i dont see a big difference between GW2 and any other themepark here. There are no repeatable raid instances and no stats progression. This is replaced by group-content and a cosmetic item treatmill. The DEs could make the endgame different to a certain extent, if ArenaNet can change and extend them very fast between expansions. Something which seems far more difficult with classic questbased storycontent. However, a game-provider will never produce content fast enough for hardcore-gamers. These gamers will reach their endgame, even with expandable DEs.

The question is the same like in every theme-park: Will this repeatable content be interesting enough to keep players until next expansion and how fast they can produce expansions and content patches in order to keep these endgame-phases rather short for the majority. Arenanet expects, that players who love raid instances and endless stats progression are a minority. So you guys better dont buy GW2, if this is your one and only interest.

However it does not matter in the B2P model. Buy the game, enjoy it as long as you can and stop playing until the new expansion; rinse and repeat. This is of course not a solution for players not playing a game, but looking for a virtual world to live in for years. They might become problems if their personal rate of content consumption is way higher than content production by Arenanet and if they are not interested to repeat content as described above.

This problem is a bit different in sandboxes, because player-driven content is endless by nature. And open mainly horizontal and lateral skillprogression can be de facto endless, too. But that does not mean they would not have an endgame. Its just different and it can become boring in a different way.

Well said.

I stated this in plenty of posts about mmorpg's having player driven content. A themepark mmo is limited no matter how you stretch it or paint it. Unfortunately we seem to be stuck in this type of mold until some company decides to take a risk and break it.

Originally posted by UsulDaNeriak

For me endgame starts if you run out of progression and you run out of content. Now the phase of repeating existing content starts which is called endgame. In endgame you:

- do instances over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, they focus here on group instances

- do open world encounters over and over again. The difference with GW2 is, that they have DEs here and due to player-scaling you can go back to lower zones. But the time will come, you have played all branches and then you will do it over and over again.

- do non-combat activities, which is mainly crafting. So you will craft stuff (mainly high-level) over and over again.

- do endless progression. The endless progression in GW2 is cosmetic progression. You will hunt for new shiny stuff over and over again.

- do pvp-battles over and over again. Even the WvW content is limited.

You will repeat this endgame until they launch an expansion with new content and perhaps a bit of further vertikal/horizontal progression, too. You will play it and then you are again in endgame.

On a high abstraction level, i dont see a big difference between GW2 and any other themepark here. There are no repeatable raid instances and no stats progression. This is replaced by group-content and a cosmetic item treatmill. The DEs could make the endgame different to a certain extent, if ArenaNet can change and extend them very fast between expansions. Something which seems far more difficult with classic questbased storycontent. However, a game-provider will never produce content fast enough for hardcore-gamers. These gamers will reach their endgame, even with expandable DEs.

The question is the same like in every theme-park: Will this repeatable content be interesting enough to keep players until next expansion and how fast they can produce expansions and content patches in order to keep these endgame-phases rather short for the majority. Arenanet expects, that players who love raid instances and endless stats progression are a minority. So you guys better dont buy GW2, if this is your one and only interest.

However it does not matter in the B2P model. Buy the game, enjoy it as long as you can and stop playing until the new expansion; rinse and repeat. This is of course not a solution for players not playing a game, but looking for a virtual world to live in for years. They might become problems if their personal rate of content consumption is way higher than content production by Arenanet and if they are not interested to repeat content as described above.

This problem is a bit different in sandboxes, because player-driven content is endless by nature. And open mainly horizontal and lateral skillprogression can be de facto endless, too. But that does not mean they would not have an endgame. Its just different and it can become boring in a different way.

Excellent post! I agree with you. I don't think there is a themepark out there that could satisfy hardcore gamers now and there probably never will be. A sandbox MMO would be great, but I think that the best bet at this point would be to combine many elements of a sandbox with a themepark. GW2 has the right idea with the payment model and dynamic events, but a sandbox is much more then that. I think they could make GW2 more of a sandbox, but not to the extent some people want. Personally I think with the content in the box alone I could last a good 3-4 months, but if they provide enough additional content it should last me until each expansion. Housing is a big one here, and I feel like housing is pretty much one of the biggest draws of a sandbox that we rarely see these days in a tripple A title. Its kinda sad in that way =/ They will be adding it to GW2, but I doubt it will be anytime soon. WoW has already written it off pretty much.

The 3 main differences between gw2 and standard mmorgs is the level scaling, gear plateau and removal of trinity. The first simply means where in a traditional mmorg you would repeat the last 3-6 hours of content, now you have 500 hours of repeatable content. The game has dungeon grinds as with mmorgs (a raid is just a dungeon for x people btw). So typical mmorgs keep people occupied with a couple hours of repeatable content, which means ge2 offers the same, but much much richer.

^^ housing would be a great extension to gw2. I would also love to see a public viewable museum where you can display anything, armour etc.

Usul

You are correct in that eventually you will do everything GW2 has to offer. The key is how long it's going to take you to do it. In other themepark MMO "endgames" you are stuck wih the last 15%, in GW2 you are not. Some hardcore players are not going to care and will consume the quickest route to 80 and follow the same pattern they have with other games out there. For those who will enjoy the whole game they will likely still be doing so when ANet releases updates and/or cycles DEs.

It's not a sandbox system like you lead up to in the end but it's currently the best for a themepark from a "things to do" standpoint.

Originally posted by Bladestrom
Wow raiding is dead anyway. If you look at the raids objectively and cut out the noise you end up with empty dungeons with a series of rooms with average to small sizes end bosses that are pretty dull, and certainly not spectacular- the only thing 'epic' about them is that they need the trinity to be able to deal with the sequence of boss skills. Compare to the end boss in gw2 - maybe 10 times bigger, maybe more?! That scales automatically in difficulty so the number of players that fight it can scale- that's a lot more exciting and 'epic'

I'm doubtful WoW raiding will ever be dead.  Some it gives em a sense of accomplishment and superiority over others, however shallow this makes the person.  Also trivilizing content gets some people gonads off.  Even Blizz has stated WoW will conitinue along with "Titan" for those that enjoy the grind progression.

Just as we see a rehash of the same encounter for the 20th time for that special epeen item as pointless, just as those that enjoy that grind will see our enjoyment of cosmetic items, exploration, dungeons for the sheer challenge, or PvP with no tangible rewards as pointless.

^^ it is worse, rather than the last 15% in a teas mmorg you rush to the Last 1% it's almost perverse, the more successful you are the less content that is left as challenging fun. Very broken model with 1 strong side - it is cheap to deliver and addictive.

Originally posted by Bladestrom
^^ it is worse, rather than the last 15% in a teas mmorg you rush to the Last 1% it's almost perverse, the more successful you are the less content that is left as challenging fun. Very broken model with 1 strong side - it is cheap to deliver and addictive.

Does kind of make one wonder what exactly Blizzard does during that 6 - 8 month period; they always seem to take forever with raids.

Originally posted by Celcius

Originally posted by baphamet

this game needs a means to truly progress your toon past max level. if it was like Daoc and had realm points, that would be a huge step in the right direction.

I would like to see something like realm points as well, thats about the only thing here I agree with. But no character advancement through stats,ect. They already have items you can buy as rewards with the tokens you recieve. I just want to see titles. This is honestly something they will probably add anyways due to popular demand. I am afraid if you want to advance the stats of your character just to own people just starting in the game then you are out of luck though.

We had already some Beta Weekend Feedback which went into that direction :)

It was suggested stuff like "With RR 1 you can hold 5 Supplies more" or something like "RR 2 can build Siege Weapons 5% faster" and so forth. All stuff where no stats are involved. And i think, as an new released MMO, why not looking for that in the future? ANet has shown that they listen to the community much more than others do. And that alone makes me eager to see what they have in their backhand :) I cant wait for that! :) But also i dont need that "now". I have enough to see/discover/to play with when it comes out.

Considering their £ 400 million a year + clear profit I would hazard a guess at 2 million a year on token dev of raids, 40 million on Titan and 350 + million straight to shareholders as pure greedy profit.

Originally posted by UsulDaNeriak

For me endgame starts if you run out of progression and you run out of content. Now the phase of repeating existing content starts which is called endgame.

A very nice definition of "endgame" is certainly "when you run out of content". Just a small note on this, the way GW2 is made, players won't "run out of content" as easily as in other games. The main reason is that at level 80 the whole map is relevant/challenging and enjoyable to play.

In other MMOs you can skip parts of the map or skip quests and never go back because the rewards aren't worth it. That means that "running out of content" means "running out of level-cap content" in most MMOs. The level scaling takes care of that easily. The world is huge, lots of zones, that are very large filled with lots of content everywhere, GW2 has some of the most desnely packed zones, full of stuff to do almost everywhere. Combined with scaling, it means that reaching the point of "endgame" will take longer than in other major themeparks out there.

The devs already said there will be a huge (probably, depends on how the game sales) Live Team that will provide new content on a regular basis. While creating some new quests is generally easier than making a new dynamic event, DEs can be more easily intergraded into the map. Usually when they add new quests they have to create new zones as well. In GW2 a few changes here and there will allow the addition of new events everywhere, making even the earlier zones feel like new, increasing the time needed to reach the "endgame".

It remains to be seen how fast the Live Team can change events and add new ones. But unlike regular quests, DEs have a much bigger impact on the zones.

Originally posted by otinanai123
You just dinged 80. You don't like leveling alts and want to finally experience GW2's endgame. What will keep you occupied for a whole year until the next expansion?

the same stuff you've been doing? i get the feeling that if you don't like gw2  in the beginning, you probably won't like it at the end. moreover, if you're just playing to hit cap, you shouldn't be playing in the first place.