Goal(interest) of the game at the last stage

[Aspero]

Well... This topic might look like philosophical a bit... Though, I hope it would be useful.

Sorry, if this problem had been discussed already. I agree if this topic will be merged.

First of all I'd like to say, that I work in game designing... So analyzing game projects is my money

Well, enough for introduction. What I want to speak of - is the game goal. What is the main goal, course for players in MMOG?
I guess I won't be mistaken if I say that there are two main motivations.
The first and the second:)

Exploring game content and competing with other players.
Different games have different proportions of these parts (When I say it, I mean that the good game designing work - is to lead players through whole course of the game, showing everything the game has, making players to make predestined decisions. So even if a player thinks, he has free will, in fact all his actions were calculated by game developers. Sorry, if is sounds cynical. But otherwise part of art and program job will be lost... Especially this is typical for Free to Play projects.). So on the stage of making game concepts game developers usually decide what audience their game will be focused on. And then... They make features for that audience.
If they want hardcore audience they make massive and balanced PvP system, rewards and achievements, titles and tournaments.
For casual people usually suits easy gameplay, colorful interfaces, possibility to compete with friends and to become the best in their own society.
Etc.

So... That was something like lyrics.
And now to the main idea...

What is the goal of the Haven and Hearth? Does it exist here?
You know, I spoke with players, friends... All games of this type have one great problem. At some moment they become BOOORING.
This happens when you make everything you want or when you know, that the end is near. You've opened all content ("opened" - i mean, you can do it. What is a purpose to spend a week killing the last dragon if you know, that this dragon is the LAST ONE?), achieved everything you've wished...
So... Player becomes bored... And bored player...
"A bored player is a potential and willing subversive."(c)
Then player leaves the game or starts meaningless massacre (yes, it entertains other bored players, but also creates great difficulties and negative emotions for newbies. And the newbies are the most thankful and payful audience)...

There are two main decisions, i saw in games, to prevent player boredom.
1. Content race. When certain percent of players achieves the top, game developers create new top - high level instances, battlegrounds, epic weapons and so on. Say "Hello" to WoW and Eve Online.
2. Replayable content. Most of players just can't achieve the top. They have some grades and degrees of honor, popularity or other rates. They have to do again and again same actions with slightly changing apperance (planting vegetables, killing zombies etc.). They get rewards for the amount of repeating this action, and the amount of repeating required to the next reward becomes more and more and more... Till the last reward becomes nearly impossible. This decision is usually used in facebook "social games".

You know... Of course first decision is much more fair for players... But... Game developers can never win this race. Speaking on my own experience. Making a quest takes an hour, or two of work time... And players will finish it in several minutes (half an hour for difficult ones).
So this decision is too expensive...

Speaking of Haven and Hearth. What is the most interesting part of the game? What stage?
I will take the right to answer myself.
I think, the most interesting stage - is a stage of formation. When you are still forming your village, aliances, making trade contracts...
Later, when all spheres of influence are divided, when all strong aliances have all resources they need, the game loses great part of it's charm...

So... What offers do I have?
1. Not so radical decision... What about making random events? I mean this topic.
If you have rats invasion and hailstones, that will destroy part of your harvest, tornado to destroy(or heavy damage) constructions, rain to slow movement, fires and thunder storm to destroy forrests... That will slows players development and make gameplay more diverse.

2. Making climate zones should also help. For example, everyone starts in the middle part of the world, that has a great lack of resources, though pretty comfortable for getting acqainted with the game and making start luggage of usefull items for exploring wilderness.
Then... Players will conquer deserts with sand storms, wastes with tornados and snowy mountains with deadly cold. Of course, some resources of exceptional rarity in such dangerous terrains will gives more advantages to their owners.

Anyway distributing precios resources for terrain zones (for example, gold weins located only in norh supergrids, and silver is to the east) would be interesting decision, forcing large aliances to trade and making self-sufficient villages more impossible.
That's where begin wars for resources (not thief raids like now, when people just want to get resources with less effort, though they still can get them themselves with hard work), trade relationships etc.

3. Well... Not sure if it can be made... But i guess it is interesting... What if... there will be some force, that will punish people for development?
I mean the more villages grow, the more effort it takes. Like spawning extra strong monsters, extra powerfull decay strikes (that's just to explain) and others unpleasant random events (yes, i think, random events "are needed").

4. And the most radical idea... What about periodical wiping?
I know, now wiping is a part of technological process...
But what about wiping as a part of gameplay?
As I said, the main interesting part - is a part of growing. If you add some great Event, when the main goal of game - is to gain it, that would make game more meaningfull. And wiping after the end of the Event will make game something like Sport.

You know, there is browser game Travian. The main goal there - is to build World Wonder. Wiping the server is a part of game there... It happens each half a year, after one Alliance build the World Wonder. And I know many people that are waiting for wipe to begin the game again, to get more advantages, make stronger alliances and win the game.

Also... Wining the stage could make some benefits (like unical look) to the winners at the next stage.

5. Well, I guess, there is a lot other ways to make game at the high level content interesting ... But I guess, I've already written a lot.

P.S.
Sorry for my poor English

[Brickbreaker]

Come to think of it I'm not entirely sure what target audience H&H is for.
Anyway I think that dev's should find a way to make the endgame be decided by the players rather than have to constantly add things.

My idea for an interesting endgame is this.
The devs give a crown to whomever they decide upon.
The crown has no ingame advantage whatsoever except giving the player the title 'Ruler of H&H'.

This way bored players have a challenge to obtain that crown so they would either raid the ruler's village or trade ludicrous amounts of gold
for it etc...

[Avu]

Where is that facepalm picture when you need it.

[Thijssnl]

First off, its too late for me too entirely respond on your post, I'll do that tomorrow though.

Second off, I think whiping will only bring massive rage to this game, and it will be dead in 2 weeks.
Sure there are new worlds now and then, but that takes a longer time.

Ill update this post tomorrow

Edit: Here ya go Avu

[burgingham]

When I first saw this I thought someone had finally given a good amount of thought to the much needed late game content. Then all I read is: Destroy, Decay, Wipe. Seriously what makes you think that even more tedious maintaining than we already got, would make the game more interesting???

[Aspero]

I you notice, wiping was just the 4-th idea in this post. It is just one of the ways I saw. Though it is pretty easy way.
All you need is to break stereotypes about mmog. All are used to think, that online games are endless and there is no way see Game Over screen. But making a goal to win several months race is quiet interesting, anyway.
And, I repeat, it is not only the one option i meant.

Also I find interesting distributing resources, adding weather (decay and destroy were just the more obvious consequences. But there could also be rainbow, that helps finding treasures, some types of rain, which causes plants to grow faster or respawning some rare plants in forrest) and climatic zones.

[Cookie]

When I first saw this I thought someone had finally given a good amount of thought to the much needed late game content. Then all I read is: Destroy, Decay, Wipe. Seriously what makes you think that even more tedious maintaining than we already got, would make the game more interesting???

If you are finding there is too much tedious maintaining in the game, I think you might need to rethink your game-play strategy.

I think the op has some good suggestions and I think the questions he is asking are the right ones. He's come closer to answering the question of how to keep from getting bored than most of the suggestions I've seen so far. And I think I agree with him about the periodic map and/or character wipes being a good idea. It seems to me that every time they announce a wipe a lot of players lose interest in their current play, so that is a problem with periodic wipes. But the new world opening has resulted in heavy traffic and great enthusiasm among the player base. Getting a fresh start is a very appealing idea.

Another possible good side to the idea of periodic wipes is that the pvp that so many people here seem to dislike, loses a good deal of its sting. A game with a clear ending date lends itself to a whole bunch of new possibilites: No longer is their the need to do maintenance or to protect resources that can be used up. Fire will wash over the land. If the hordes come with sword and flame before the sun actually dies, well who can blame them for hoping to die as heroes? Suppose we want to build a mega project? Hmm? Let's say the dev's were to announce that as of June 3rd, 2010 the world will end. And... the number of mines in the new world will be based on the height of the tallest ziggurat the players are capable of building. This adds a new challenge with a new incentive, and a very teleological situation. It doesn't matter if every cube of clay on the entire world is expended if only we can raise the ziggurat one level higher!

If there are periodic wipes, I think it would be helpful to announce them waaaay in advance so that all the players know what kind of a time frame they are working with. This would allow them to set new goals that work with the time frame, such as visiting every major city, or breeding a q200 mulberry tree before the end of the world.

I also agree that things should get harder rather than easier, the more experienced and organized players get. Yes, there should be advantages to living in a village. And yes, players who put in a lot of time should get better stats than those who put in less time. But let's say that a village over 5 million in total member lp will now be assailed by moose. Moose will automatically kill most ordinary players since they do 300 hp of damage per hit. Happily they only show up near the biggest villages so your ordinary players are only at risk if they wander around under the walls of MegaTown. And this gives the players in MegaTown an additional pair of goals: both surviving the new moose attacks, but also profiting from the moose leather tipis and wagon covers that are the only thing that can be used to make a mobile claim.

Villages over 50 million member lp bring plagues -those sanitation problems you get with large congregations in one place - certain herbs will spawn around that village, certain things will cause the sickness to cause hit point loss. The GigaTown can now can develop the new skills of medicine. But woe betide us all if they fail at this venture because if the plague is not stopped.... we will get an entire character wipe game wide.

I'm not saying that these are great ideas and have no drawbacks. I'm suggesting that ideas like this are well worth exploring to come up with a good end game.

[burgingham]

When I first saw this I thought someone had finally given a good amount of thought to the much needed late game content. Then all I read is: Destroy, Decay, Wipe. Seriously what makes you think that even more tedious maintaining than we already got, would make the game more interesting???

If you are finding there is too much tedious maintaining in the game, I think you might need to rethink your game-play strategy.

Lol, stopped reading here...actually that's not true, I now read it all. Your ideas sound much more appealing than the one in the OP, still I don't think that it is necessary to enflict more experienced players with too many forced challenges. Rather give them the opportunity to achieve new and greater goals. Jorb was once talking about a quest system without any actual NPC's or about trolls holding villagers captive who then have to be freed by really experienced fighters. Stuff like that would make the endgame much more appealing for me than to know that once I have put in all the effort to create a large town (you seem to have no clue how much work that is according to your first sentence or you have clearly no idea whom you are talking to), endless opportunities will arise on how that work could be destroyed.

To sum it up: Reward players who put in much thought and time into the game rather than punish them!

[Pansy]

Heh-heh. I know exactly how much work it takes to build a big town and I know exactly who you are. That's why I threw the gentle gibe in your direction. Seriously though, there are a lot of other paths in game that do not require you to build a town and then get stuck maintaining it. However they are probably all a lot less competitive paths than you would prefer.

[Pansy]

Come to think of it I'm not entirely sure what target audience H&H is for.
Anyway I think that dev's should find a way to make the endgame be decided by the players rather than have to constantly add things.

My idea for an interesting endgame is this.
The devs give a crown to whomever they decide upon.
The crown has no ingame advantage whatsoever except giving the player the title 'Ruler of H&H'.

This way bored players have a challenge to obtain that crown so they would either raid the ruler's village or trade ludicrous amounts of gold
for it etc...

Uh, wouldn't that mean that the Ruler of H&H would stuff his or her crown into an alt vault and smirk about it?