Thoughts for endgame activities

[ricky]

So one of the bigger complaints I often see on the forum is a lack of endgame content to keep people busy. currently, endgame content consists of grinding QL 160+ metal/trees/silk/animals. Because every large village can easily attain these goals on their own, trade (as far as I can tell) is more or less stagnant. This leaves those playing with a few options: raiding villages and hermits for no reason other than satisfaction, build magnificent structures and towns, or do nothing.

What I'm suggesting is a portion of the map dedicated to endgame grinding/content. What I have in mind is a tundra/artic waste called The Hinterlands. This area would ideally be along the northern or southern (or both) borders of the map and could only be crossed with a knarr. The Hinterlands would ideally have no 'common' resources such as trees, soil, water, clay, etc. instead there would be snow and permafrost. The idea behind this is that only those capable of building and stocking a knarr would be able to cross the ocean/river and once they have crossed, would have to be able to survive with the supplies they have brought.

Of course, no one would do this if there wasn't large rewards. My idea is to have endgame animals/monsters to fight (trolls, mammoths, yetis, etc.), as well as very high quality metal nodes, instead of having QL160+ metal in the overworld. hinterland specific curios and foods could be added. another small change would be to place a majority of ice spires in the hinterlands, limiting early game monopolization of ice. there are dozens of ideas for what could be placed in the hinterlands.

Hopefully this idea, if implemented, would incentivize acitivites for endgame players besides just murdering and pillaging (not that that is a bad thing) and trading (hopefully with small villages/hermits) instead of just making everything they need. large villages would focus on maintaining a fortress in the hinterlands while a small village could make food to trade with the large village for high quality metal/hinterland spoils.

any suggestions or feedback would be nice. this is just an idea i had late last night for end game content.

[shubla]

I think that devs should add some area where stat cap does not exist. But once you go there you can never come back to the heartlands.
This way people get something to do in endgame without ruining experience for all new players.

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

I think that devs should add some area where stat cap does not exist. But once you go there you can never come back to the heartlands.
This way people get something to do in endgame without ruining experience for all new players.

I'm.... Hesitant. I mean, it does allow you to choose your experience, which I don't hate. But it *also* splits the world population, which means you'd have two dead worlds instead of one.

I'd like to see something like the inverse of what we saw at the end of last world. A sort of global opportunity to open a new area with new resources, but with our present set-up there'd be little to no reason to do any of it. Why bother going to a new land when our world is already empty? Why bother introducing new crops if there's no reason to use any of them? (After all, our stats can only go so high and we already have all the stat gain covered).

The problem with 'end-game' content is that the term 'end-game' is misplaced. What we need is 'ongoing game content'. Something that adds new interesting points, new things to experience, and new challenges. Or even better, on-going challenges.

Ultimately, the world needs to hit us a little harder over the head with the 'survival' stick.

--------------

Make food decay and preservation matter. Create an environment where preparing for the next lean time is going to matter.

Give us seasons, with changing Mobs by season and environmental hazards, including some random weather events.

Winter is Coming - The depths of winter introduce invading Yeti that will trash your wall, break your buildings, and ultimately be a hazard you need to face off against to prevent a threat to your village. They tend to be drawn to large population centers... They tend to smash through anything between them and it (Coming down from the mountains).

The gods are angry, and a blizzard is raising that will have 'cold spots' that travel the land making life difficult, and overall the world is a colder, harsher place. Crops will not grow, bears are in hibernation, Wolves are hungry. Working together the storm can either be beaten back, or made worse by those so inclined.

Things like this add ONGOING content to the world, not 'end-game'. Any of these events can change the way things are played. It stops being about sitting safe behind your wall, and instead being forced to deal with keeping what you have safe, while facing new challenges along the way.

Yetis, Dragons, Storms, Plagues, Droughts, Forest Fires, just to name a few. Make the world fight back in ways that obviate your supposed 'superiority and security'... And *that* would be your end.. excuse me... on-going game content.

[Granger]

For the world to constantly change we would need seasons. This could be done by having a temperate zone at the equator, also used as spawn zone. Climate is as in current world, but quality of stuff to find is very limited.

North and South of it are seasonal, similar to how earth works but more extreme. Spring and fall are somewhat temperate, summer is hot and dry, winter is snow, ice and glaciers.
The farer you move away from equator the more intense the effect is, ending in a burning desert for the summer side and permafrost on winter side, bottomless swamp for spring and fall - all not survivable longterm (could be an effect like in Salem when you entered the darkness: you take damage and die, or in the swap you sink in more and more till you drown, desserts you dehydrate, ice caps you freeze solid and die.

Additionally winter will format the map, redistribute resource nodes and refresh the map by removing all traces of civilization, except extremely fortified structures (but damages them heavily, so it would be an active effort to keep a village intact over winter). Hazards in summer could be drought, sand storms and water shortage.

Idea would be that the more distance from equator the better the quality of resources, but the harsher the conditions in summer (drought and desertification) and winter (no food growing, frost damage to unheated structures)..

Just some random idea to throw around...

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

Not a big fan of the equator thing. We're playing in the frozen North and the map is only about 25km from top to bottom, side to side. So not a big part of the frozen North either.

But that doesn't mean the north couldn't be the frozen arctic, and milder as we go south. Make it 9x9 again and we have a but more room to experience that range, and make some crops able to grow north, some further south.

Make travel in the winter painfully difficult, opening up the option and need for Spring and Winter trade, and get rid of fast travel so roads become a necessary thing. And do NOT nerf Terra forming to make it trivial.

[Fierce_Deity]

I'd like to see mining levels expanded upon to help the late game. I feel that mineholes should be increasingly difficult to make the deeper you go. They could start requiring steel, more HL, something along those lines.
Another thought I had for mining levels is to let us go deeper than layer 5. Maybe have them continue as they are now, or take a different approach with deeper levels. Level 6 could be added as a sort of final level, with an expensive way to gain access to it. Its size could be shrunken down compared to the rest of the world, and be dangerous in some way. Maybe lava, or the spawning of some new dangerous mob. Wyverns anyone?
When I speak of shrinking level 6, I mean it could work similar to how the nether functions in minecraft. Where traveling a block in the nether is equivalent to 8 in the overworld. Would provide an interesting way to travel in the late game if people set up various points to exit.
A last thought i had would be to have a final cave level actually be some sort of magic cavern trees and other surface things. A bluish tinge to the light, crops could grow there at a reduced rate, animals could be more powerful but have a higher average quality.

[ricky]

I think that devs should add some area where stat cap does not exist. But once you go there you can never come back to the heartlands.
This way people get something to do in endgame without ruining experience for all new players.

I think Lunaris is correct in the assumption that creating a capped map and a non capped map would split the player population.

I'm.... Hesitant. I mean, it does allow you to choose your experience, which I don't hate. But it *also* splits the world population, which means you'd have two dead worlds instead of one.

I'd like to see something like the inverse of what we saw at the end of last world. A sort of global opportunity to open a new area with new resources, but with our present set-up there'd be little to no reason to do any of it. Why bother going to a new land when our world is already empty? Why bother introducing new crops if there's no reason to use any of them? (After all, our stats can only go so high and we already have all the stat gain covered).

The problem with 'end-game' content is that the term 'end-game' is misplaced. What we need is 'ongoing game content'. Something that adds new interesting points, new things to experience, and new challenges. Or even better, on-going challenges.

Ultimately, the world needs to hit us a little harder over the head with the 'survival' stick.

--------------

Make food decay and preservation matter. Create an environment where preparing for the next lean time is going to matter.

Give us seasons, with changing Mobs by season and environmental hazards, including some random weather events.

Winter is Coming - The depths of winter introduce invading Yeti that will trash your wall, break your buildings, and ultimately be a hazard you need to face off against to prevent a threat to your village. They tend to be drawn to large population centers... They tend to smash through anything between them and it (Coming down from the mountains).

The gods are angry, and a blizzard is raising that will have 'cold spots' that travel the land making life difficult, and overall the world is a colder, harsher place. Crops will not grow, bears are in hibernation, Wolves are hungry. Working together the storm can either be beaten back, or made worse by those so inclined.

Things like this add ONGOING content to the world, not 'end-game'. Any of these events can change the way things are played. It stops being about sitting safe behind your wall, and instead being forced to deal with keeping what you have safe, while facing new challenges along the way.

Yetis, Dragons, Storms, Plagues, Droughts, Forest Fires, just to name a few. Make the world fight back in ways that obviate your supposed 'superiority and security'... And *that* would be your end.. excuse me... on-going game content.

For the world to constantly change we would need seasons. This could be done by having a temperate zone at the equator, also used as spawn zone. Climate is as in current world, but quality of stuff to find is very limited.

North and South of it are seasonal, similar to how earth works but more extreme. Spring and fall are somewhat temperate, summer is hot and dry, winter is snow, ice and glaciers.
The farer you move away from equator the more intense the effect is, ending in a burning desert for the summer side and permafrost on winter side, bottomless swamp for spring and fall - all not survivable longterm (could be an effect like in Salem when you entered the darkness: you take damage and die, or in the swap you sink in more and more till you drown, desserts you dehydrate, ice caps you freeze solid and die.

Additionally winter will format the map, redistribute resource nodes and refresh the map by removing all traces of civilization, except extremely fortified structures (but damages them heavily, so it would be an active effort to keep a village intact over winter). Hazards in summer could be drought, sand storms and water shortage.

Idea would be that the more distance from equator the better the quality of resources, but the harsher the conditions in summer (drought and desertification) and winter (no food growing, frost damage to unheated structures)..

Just some random idea to throw around...

I like the idea of seasons, but not in a fashion that constantly changes the map. this constant change would force players to scramble to deal with the changing season forcing players to play at the game's pace, not their own.
instead I would like to build upon granger's idea of 'four seasons' but instead of seasons being map wide, they would be localized to a map border. southern - fall; northern - tundra/winter; western - desert/summer; eastern - swamp/spring
having a constant 'seasonal biome' on the map borders would create localized resources, incentivizing trade. a group could set up a summer village to trade with winter villages, etc. again, I believe these areas should only be accessible by knarr, ensuring only capable, prepared hearthlings can access it. Having a lack or scarcity of 'common resources' in these seasonal biomes and instead having rarer, higher quality 'special resources' would force trade and make endgame autonomy harder.

to sum it up: more extreme biomes on the borders with localized resources giving endgame players a reason to play as well as a reason to trade.


I do like the idea of events which keep hearthlings on their toes, with the caveat that events only happen near active settlements. hearthligns shouldnt be punished by missing a flash flood because they lost internet for three days. I do like the idea of ongoing events such as food preservation being more relevant, not as a punishment to players, but as an incentive. perhaps food loses FEP value the longer it ages, incentiving players to eat all their food immediately instead of hoarding it for giant feasts, unless of course they preserve it.

I'd like to see mining levels expanded upon to help the late game. I feel that mineholes should be increasingly difficult to make the deeper you go. They could start requiring steel, more HL, something along those lines.

Another thought I had for mining levels is to let us go deeper than layer 5. Maybe have them continue as they are now, or take a different approach with deeper levels. Level 6 could be added as a sort of final level, with an expensive way to gain access to it. Its size could be shrunken down compared to the rest of the world, and be dangerous in some way. Maybe lava, or the spawning of some new dangerous mob. Wyverns anyone?
When I speak of shrinking level 6, I mean it could work similar to how the nether functions in minecraft. Where traveling a block in the nether is equivalent to 8 in the overworld. Would provide an interesting way to travel in the late game if people set up various points to exit.
A last thought i had would be to have a final cave level actually be some sort of magic cavern trees and other surface things. A bluish tinge to the light, crops could grow there at a reduced rate, animals could be more powerful but have a higher average quality.

I do enjoy the idea of having mineshafts having increasing difficulty to reach level 5. perhaps like you said, environmental hazards increase the further down you dig. perhaps you can dig too deep? (drums... drums in the deep)

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

I like the idea of seasons, but not in a fashion that constantly changes the map. this constant change would force players to scramble to deal with the changing season forcing players to play at the game's pace, not their own.

That's the fucking point. The scramble for preparation gives a constantly shifting need to the game. You can't just sit on your laurels and get comfortable, Winter Is Coming. The village will have to prepare as food gets scarce and hunting becomes perilous, because Winter Is Coming. The wars against enemies have to be set aside, because the rivers and lakes are frozen and the woods are no longer safe... Winter Is Coming.

I do like the idea of events which keep hearthlings on their toes, with the caveat that events only happen near active settlements. hearthligns shouldnt be punished by missing a flash flood because they lost internet for three days. I do like the idea of ongoing events such as food preservation being more relevant, not as a punishment to players, but as an incentive. perhaps food loses FEP value the longer it ages, incentiving players to eat all their food immediately instead of hoarding it for giant feasts, unless of course they preserve it.

Proper preparation means that losing the Internet for Three Days won't impact you directly. FEP is no longer a valid punishment because we have Caps. If you're eating to live, no one cares about the FEP, if you're eating it for FEP, no reason to save it. It needs to rot and decay in order for it to have relevance (Just like Stats need to Rot and Decay so that keeping yourself fed on the right foods is relevant, it needs to never stop being a concern).

I do enjoy the idea of having mineshafts having increasing difficulty to reach level 5. perhaps like you said, environmental hazards increase the further down you dig. perhaps you can dig too deep? (drums... drums in the deep)

Yes... This indeed.

[Granger]

I like the idea of seasons, but not in a fashion that constantly changes the map. this constant change would force players to scramble to deal with the changing season forcing players to play at the game's pace, not their own.

That's the fucking point. The scramble for preparation gives a constantly shifting need to the game. You can't just sit on your laurels and get comfortable, Winter Is Coming. The village will have to prepare as food gets scarce and hunting becomes perilous, because Winter Is Coming. The wars against enemies have to be set aside, because the rivers and lakes are frozen and the woods are no longer safe... Winter Is Coming.

This.

So you have the option to either stock up and sit out the winter (with harsh hazards like the need for keeping fires burning to keep the cold out and having to eat so you dno't starve) or move to greener lands (and let your settlement be restructured by the weather).

[LadyGoo]

[q

The wars against enemies have to be set aside, because the rivers and lakes are frozen and the woods are no longer safe... Winter Is Coming.

Sounds like a perfect time to attack and fight to me.