Stop Talking About The End Game (Critique)

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

I've used this response in a number of threads, and every time I do, I realize it was deserving as a critique all it's own. Now this may not be a critique of the developers themselves (I hold high hopes for their vision on this game), but perhaps for those who argue about what does, and does not, need to happen in development. I hear "Hey, the developers need to realize this game is sessional." I hear "There's nothing to do but quality grind" when you hit the "End Game."

Therein lies your problem. You're thinking about the "End Game", you're proposing there should be an End Game(tm) scenario.

To do so undermines the entire purpose and intent of what I see the developers working to build here. Admittedly, this is also one man's opinion.

The Problem With The "End Game" Solution
The problem with the End Game solution is it speaks of a goal you intend to reach, some pre-programmed set of Victory Conditions. Haven and Hearth (And truth be told, most Wilderness Survival Games) do not have these, they are not an intended goal or consequence. The creation of stat caps and skills caps further emphasize there is no "End Game". There will come a time when the weakest of us can be as strong as the greatest of us, without the use of botting or any form of underhanded warfare. Simple, straightforward effort will eventually make even a hermit able to hold his own against a single raider. (The fact that raiders never come in ones is a different issue worthy of discussion elsewhere).

So this creates the question... What is the End Game? If you've reached your stat cap and skill cap and have all the best gear and even advancing it another 20/30/40/50Q isn't going to make much of a difference. You're done, log out, you've beaten the game. That's not very 'survivaly' and it's certainly not the sort of thing that speaks of the goals of Haven and Hearth as professed by it's creators.

Villages, Kingdoms, Civilizations, Exploration throughout the world and challenges to face. These cannot exist in the shadow of the "End Game". Kill all the trolls you want, line your Triple-Brick Walled, all Great Hall villages with them and travel the world on your extensive underground network of mined out caves. Occasionally stomp on a newbie who got too big, or squish a hermit because you don't understand why they play. After all, to play alone is to be relegated to being powerless, and what's the point of that?

So.. End-Gamers, what is your obsession with power anyway?

So What's The Alternative?
There are a *lot* of alternatives, some of them are game mechanic based, and some of them are personal goals you can set for yourself, some of them are even bigger.

The World Everchanging (Mechanical)
The first part requires that things are always in flux, that equipment decays, food rots, seasons change, and characters die. There can be no such thing as true safety, no point you reach where you're assured that with the slightest bit of vigilance your place in the world is secured.

Raging storms in winter, beasts that attack towns, plagues on crops, floods, forest fires, and more that can affect even the most securely protected town. Rats get into your food stores and the rains don't fall on your fields. This is the first key to removing the idea of an "End Game".

And So Cultures Grew (Cultural)
Through all of this we're responsible for injecting more than a number grind into the game. If we make every day about survival, then we miss what being even moderately secure as a community means. Organized celebrations, sporting events (Horse races through an obstacle course anyone?), musical competitions, poetry competitions, organize art festivals to demonstrate your creative nature.

Get your community to work together to build great civic works that are obviously the result of a group so secure in their food and power source that they can risk hours and days building long expansive roads in glorious colors lined with flowers and trees. The mark of culture is infrastructure, and we have the ability to make some beautiful works to reach these goals. But we've yet to see anyone spend their idle time building bragging rights. You aren't missing an End Game, you lack ambition.

And new children were born(Meta-Cultural)
We each of us have the ability to stretch out into the world through our friends and family, through visiting gaming sites teeming with players who've never heard of this wonder we play. Rather than hunting newbies we can nurture them and help them grow and build our player-base and create a justification for great sprawling worlds where we aren't packed in like sardines. Reach out and help the game you love so much, create new challenges by nurturing new players, and pass onto them the desire and values to do the same.

This doesn't mean we have to be nice to each other, it just means we get new people to kill once they're worth thinking about. (If you must take the barbaric approach).

So stop thinking about the 'End Game'. The world shouldn't end, and neither should we. We always need new horizons to explore (so broaden the map as time goes on), and new players to play with to keep our game flowing and fresh, and new things to wonder at and new ideas to see grow. It's our excitement (and $$) that keeps our developers developing, and it's new faces and an interesting world that keep some of us playing.

Make your own "End Game" if you must call it that, just make sure that it's finding a way to make it a new beginning without a world reset.

[LadyGoo]

I have been reading what you've got to say in multiple threads. I'm afraid to offend you, but you have created an impression of a person that is unaware of in-game realities.

Get your community to work together to build great civic works that are obviously the result of a group so secure in their food and power source that they can risk hours and days building long expansive roads in glorious colors lined with flowers and trees. The mark of culture is infrastructure, and we have the ability to make some beautiful works to reach these goals. But we've yet to see anyone spend their idle time building bragging rights. You aren't missing an End Game, you lack ambition.

All sorts of projects of this type have been done in this and in past worlds. Without a reward or a purpose, there is no motivation. What is the point of spending 2-3 hours a day on building a road, when you have so much to do in your own village? The only guys I know who have built an actual paved road were doing it to make an article on their web-site. Once there will be an in-game answer to the question "What is the point, if I could spend all this time to maintain my village" there will be more local projects happening.


https://mmozg.net/hah/2016/02/10/svoya-doroga.html#cut

Reach out and help the game you love so much, create new challenges by nurturing new players, and pass onto them the desire and values to do the same.

The thing is, there are plenty of villages who help out and etc. to the newcomers. Yet, the new players quit even without dying or losing anything once they have set up their palisade, planted some crops, built their stone tower, killed the first bear. People leave the game and do not return because they know, that they will have to repeat everything they have done + there is no actual interesting end-game content.

So stop thinking about the 'End Game'. The world shouldn't end, and neither should we.

No, there is no way to stop thinking about the End Game for a person, who has tried and succeed in everything you have listed above.

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

Let me put this more succinctly than I did previously, without the obvious attempts to antagonize.

I believe you are wrong. What sort of reward/purpose are you looking for? Something mechanical?

If so, you've missed my point.

[LadyGoo]

Let me put this more succinctly than I did previously, without the obvious attempts to antagonize.

I believe you are wrong. What sort of reward/purpose are you looking for? Something mechanical?

If so, you've missed my point.

Alright, let's put it even more simple. I want to make my inn, that would be visited by many players. Alas! Your customers will have to travel to you for several hours or get rock crystals + get high charisma. That way you realize, that the place will be pretty damn dead.
So what is the point in trying?

Another example. Last world I have been organizing events and have made community bakery with hq anvil, cauldron, meatgrinder free to use for everyone. It was mainly done to attract more merchants and clients to the market, advertise it. With the charterstone not requiring anything like rock crystals or visiting the place. Right now it is kind of pointless, people cannot reach the place or use it in a regular basis, because of the travel weariness.

[Hasta]

Alright, let's put it even more simple. I want to make my inn, that would be visited by many players. Alas! Your customers will have to travel to you for several hours or get rock crystals + get high charisma. That way you realize, that the place will be pretty damn dead.

You want a big project to fit with that inn of yours? Like, really huge? Build a network of underground roads all through the world - this one is really convenient for that, it's pretty small, - leading to your inn's vicinity. Mineholes with public access, intersections, roadsigns, landmarks, all that stuff. Can't dig or afraid of trolls? Hire someone who can and isn't. I know I'd probably participate. Griefers and enemies wrecking your roads? That gives you and your kin something to patrol, to maintain. Maybe even to fight for. A purpose.

Endgame, shmendgame... The game doesn't end until you tell yourself so. *grumbling through his beard*

[LadyGoo]

@Hasta,

First of all, it is not my inn. It belongs to some other neutral guy, who has been running the inn project.

Build a network of underground roads all through the world - this one is really convenient for that, it's pretty small, - leading to your inn's vicinity.

Right, I can do that. But:
1. What about the rest of the world? The problem with the end-game for an average player still present. Do you expect the newbies to dig out tunnels 30-60 minimaps long and etc.? Better to build actual roads or not to build them at all.
2. It is a death trap that is hard to maintain. People can use the road networks to get to other people's minehole systems and destroy their mining supports, dig out their nodes, or camp their miners.
3. I do not think you realize, what a bad-bad-really-bad-bad-bad-really-really-bad-bad idea is to fight someone underground.

Endgame, shmendgame... The game doesn't end until you tell yourself so. *grumbling through his beard*

(damn, didn't really want to point this out, but) As someone who has tried everything that Haberdash has proposed, from supporting and maintaining noob camps, to doing largest community projects, I can say that there is a need for more end-game content.
If there would be a reason for something community related, it is already present. And that should be introduced via changing the game mechanics (charterstones, for instance), rather than blaming the community for dropping out and lacking the ambition.

[Archiplex]

I might be a fan of Wurm too much- but the "epic" missions that existed on the epic cluster of servers were some of my favorite things.

To summaarize, in that game there would be new global, faction-based "missions" sent by the gods for people to complete. Ranging from sacrificing things to the gods, to building huge, costly monuments in a specific way in a specific part of the world, to killing people or killing specific (tough) monsters that spawn, or hordes of them invading from the moon. Completing a mission granted you "karma" based on your contribution- karma is sort of a mana system. Missions helped a god progress on their goals in a given scenario (which is, a god attempting to beat the other gods at something). Once a god won, special rewards would be given to a random person, with the higher contribution the higher chance of getting it. This ranged from artifacts with huge effects (creating mountains, massive holes, meteors and whatever more) to spellbooks and tomes to give people magical knowledge (which also had drawbacks) and let them cast spells- to very very rare times where a person would eat a fruit of the gods and become demigods- and potentially true gods later on.


I agree, sure, there shouldn't be a "victory" condition. But that's not what endgame means- there still needs to be events and things that a person who has everything can do that's not just watching a number go up every few days.

I still heavily endorse the idea of Haven taking on more "mythical" aspects and introducing global quests for factions to do in a way- and I was a huge fan of the way Wurm accomplished this.

[Hasta]

1. What about the rest of the world? The problem with the end-game for an average player still present. Do you expect the newbies to dig out tunnels 30-60 minimaps long and etc.? Better to build actual roads or not to build them at all.
2. It is a death trap that is hard to maintain. People can use the road networks to get to other people's minehole systems and destroy their mining supports, dig out their nodes, or camp their miners.
3. I do not think you realize, what a bad-bad-really-bad-bad-bad-really-really-bad-bad idea is to fight someone underground.

Excuses, excuses. 1. That was just an example. 2. Too hard to maintain? So, you want easy end-game content? 3. It's not like that someone fighting you someplace else.

Don't bother answering, or do, whatever - I got your agenda here. I'm not into theoricrafting about how would be great to have that and this and how everything is old and have already been done and how we need a mysterious divine marvel called "endgame content" to be bestowed upon us on a silver platter etc. etc., so I'll just leave you guys to it

[dageir]

Casuals can never hope to reach the "end game" anyways.
At some point in the game, every world you start to feel that the time invested in the game yields less and less progression.
People in the village feels the same. They log on more and more rarely. Play less. Everyone starts to feel like this is a chore.
The fun part of this game is in the beginning. Exploring to find a sweet spot. Building. Finding seeds. Get the chars up and running to kill all animals 1v1.
Raise the quality of stuff, make equipment/weapons.
Once there are no or very few new things to discover this game loses its appeal to me.

I believe the stat caps are ok since it does not take so much to reach it and characters become expendable, making drama and wars more likely.

One solution to the boredom is making the world smaller, more competetive. Lower the stat cap even more. Make it easier to break into bases. Drop the brick wall.
Remove skill requierments for killing others. Make it default at start. Simplify the combat system. And let us realise this game is not PvP permadeath. As it stands now it is semi-permadeath.
Maybe just drop the perma thing all together and just make it full loot? You would go to war more readily then? You could still lose your base which would be bad.
My 3.50.

[Archiplex]

Casuals can never hope to reach the "end game" anyways.
At some point in the game, every world you start to feel that the time invested in the game yields less and less progression.
People in the village feels the same. They log on more and more rarely. Play less. Everyone starts to feel like this is a chore.
The fun part of this game is in the beginning. Exploring to find a sweet spot. Building. Finding seeds. Get the chars up and running to kill all animals 1v1.
Raise the quality of stuff, make equipment/weapons.
Once there are no or very few new things to discover this game loses its appeal to me.

I believe the stat caps are ok since it does not take so much to reach it and characters become expendable, making drama and wars more likely.

One solution to the boredom is making the world smaller, more competetive. Lower the stat cap even more. Make it easier to break into bases. Drop the brick wall.
Remove skill requierments for killing others. Make it default at start. Simplify the combat system. And let us realise this game is not PvP permadeath. As it stands now it is semi-permadeath.
Maybe just drop the perma thing all together and just make it full loot? You would go to war more readily then? You could still lose your base which would be bad.
My 3.50.

I would be completly fine with most of these (exxcept removing permadeath, if we lower stat caps then we should readd true permadeath)

But yes, we need events- global missions, things to change the world and shake things up for people, not more quality and stat grinding.