What is typical endgame content for more established MMOs that have decades of content? I think that’s a good place to start and then take the good and leave the bad.
What’s WoWs endgame like? ESO? FF?
On a side note. I created a list of what I think would be cool endgame content.
Personally would want:
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Significantly increase the difficulty of the mutation system. Perhaps an M+ system that includes increasing the difficulty of the bosses. Make it insanely difficult instead of just locking it behind GS. I think the core of the mutation system is really cool and eventually we will have thousands of combinations. We just need to crank up the difficulty a bit. Apply it to boss fights or just increase the difficulty of the fights at higher levels.
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PVE coliseum that let’s you fight difficult bosses, similar to PVE arenas now but with weekly mutation options. Give us 50+ different bosses to cycle through each week. Give us wave survival modes as well. The Lost would make for a simple zombie survival mode. Have us fight beasts. Include traps.
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World Bosses with some that are announced server wide and take 100? 200? People to kill.
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10-12 person raids.
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Jump puzzles. Maybe a few. Let us try for record times to earn cosmetic housing items, titles, achievements, song pages. Give us places with Starstone lasers we need to time itself going through, the swinging axes, the admiral’s exploding floor mechanic and have us move from one point to another and if you fall it’s an instant kill. Stuff like that. As random components so it’s not too simply solved.
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Hidden areas in the open world that if you find them you get an achievement. Have it so if you play a specific 5 person song in a specific area it opens a door. Other cool things. Easter eggs. Maybe teach a rare song.
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Casual Invasions. Could be done as the coliseum waves as per above.
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Casual War mode/Challenge other companies to instanced version. Ability to do scrimmages.
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Achievements. Add a shit ton of them with some rare chase titles, cosmetics/housing items, and songs.
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Provide a housing item that is given from each expedition if you complete it. Another for M10 Gold. Finally another for M10+ Gold.
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Create a dynamic and rewarding open world experience. Dynamic weather eventually. Random spawns that can be found by wandering around the open world. Orichalcum meteors, treasure maps, rare single loot chests (disappear when found), random nodes (in addition to static ones), abandoned caravans, rare mobs, rare animal mobs (white stag, bioluminescent moth at night, very rarely spawn), thieves attacking you on the roads, trade caravans just moving between territories, random groups of bards you can play with, etc. When you have 50? 100? Different things built up over time it starts to become a really cool dynamic world and if it’s based on randomized spawns then it can’t be farmed and rewards exploration. Create new exploration skill that gives xp when interacting with dynamic events and randomly generated spawns. Static spawns will remain but won’t give any xp towards exploration skill. As skill levels up, your compass picks up on more random spawns.
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Extremely difficult areas designed for zergs or massive coordinated runs. Kinda like a Myrkgard on steroids. Don’t think AGS thought zergs would ever become a thing, but would be cool if they designed some areas that essentially need zergs. I can currently run through the area without too many issues. Would be cool if there was a place that was literally impossible to do that. Hyper dangerous areas.
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Open World PVP hotspot system. Provide significantly increased PVP rewards at specific locations for a set period of time. Have this rotate. Essentially create GC again but don’t confine it strictly to GC.
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Increase gathering skill cap to 300 but scale it so that the xp required from 200-300 is insane and exponential. Give a grind to people that want it. Keep refining and crafting the same for now.
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Add a shit ton of new housing items. Add new T5 houses that are essentially mansions but require 300k gold to purchase. Housing upkeep system changed to be static and not based on cost of house. Add some cool houses outside of settlements and in the open world.
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Farming skill.
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Leaderboards for gathering skills, PVP rankings, fastest expedition times, etc. Ways for players to complete. Highscore system.
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Make it so xp continues to be relevant but in a non-forced non-obligatory way. Create a system where you can level up past 60, but it’s similar to aptitude and eventually unlock titles, achievements, songs, and perhaps cosmetics/housing items. It would NOT provide any additional non-cosmetic benefits to players. Just an outlet for hardcore players. People wanting to PVP immediately after getting max level, can ignore it completely. Ideally non open world PVP would be an normalized as well.
