09-17-2009, 05:54 PM
That's where you have to ask, "What's your endgame? I'm max level. I have excellent gear. What now?"
And if the answer to that question is a good one, the next question would be, "Well do you even need the rest of the game, then?"
If you can reach max level, max gear and still have fun (by claiming territory, building castles and smashing other people's castles, perhaps) then do you really need anything else?
The secret is that you don't just get rid of "goals". You still have them. But rather than personal goals for quests and loot, you have guild goals or team goals. WW2O may be one of the best examples of this. I think what stands in the way of that game being popular is simply that it's a WW2 simulation and is very slow paced. Imagine World War 2 Online as a massive battle for control of Europe, as now, but replace all the characters and mechanics with Champions Online.
As I've said before, I think what we really need is a "war game" -- a game that's driven based on a huge, ongoing war rather than individual quest objectives. You would still have objectives but they would be part of a much bigger picture.
That Mechwarrior game you had talked about once is probably a good example of this. You have battlefields with immediate objectives but there's also an overarching campaign. Granted the players had to create an artificial overarching campaign but there's no reason something like that couldn't be built in and made a very real part of the game.
Maybe there would still be individual gains and losses, but not on the scale of an RPG where you log in as "shit" and 3 months later you can finally compete with the big boys. I would rather it be more like Planetside or WW2O where you log in and are immediately capable of killing veterans (under at least some conditions...i.e., a rifleman can't kill a tank, but a private with a rifle can kill a general with a rifle. You aren't just useless. If you make me level up to the endgame you might lose me along the way and perhaps more importantly, if I reach the endgame, love it and sign up 10 friends to join me, it turns out they can't join me until they, too, spend 3 months leveling up.)
And if the answer to that question is a good one, the next question would be, "Well do you even need the rest of the game, then?"
If you can reach max level, max gear and still have fun (by claiming territory, building castles and smashing other people's castles, perhaps) then do you really need anything else?
The secret is that you don't just get rid of "goals". You still have them. But rather than personal goals for quests and loot, you have guild goals or team goals. WW2O may be one of the best examples of this. I think what stands in the way of that game being popular is simply that it's a WW2 simulation and is very slow paced. Imagine World War 2 Online as a massive battle for control of Europe, as now, but replace all the characters and mechanics with Champions Online.
As I've said before, I think what we really need is a "war game" -- a game that's driven based on a huge, ongoing war rather than individual quest objectives. You would still have objectives but they would be part of a much bigger picture.
That Mechwarrior game you had talked about once is probably a good example of this. You have battlefields with immediate objectives but there's also an overarching campaign. Granted the players had to create an artificial overarching campaign but there's no reason something like that couldn't be built in and made a very real part of the game.
Maybe there would still be individual gains and losses, but not on the scale of an RPG where you log in as "shit" and 3 months later you can finally compete with the big boys. I would rather it be more like Planetside or WW2O where you log in and are immediately capable of killing veterans (under at least some conditions...i.e., a rifleman can't kill a tank, but a private with a rifle can kill a general with a rifle. You aren't just useless. If you make me level up to the endgame you might lose me along the way and perhaps more importantly, if I reach the endgame, love it and sign up 10 friends to join me, it turns out they can't join me until they, too, spend 3 months leveling up.)