The end...game

Lots of diablo comments regarding how much content was available at launch and how fast people went through inferno have come up lately and so I thought it'd be a good topic to explore since it's fairly deep and I started to talk about it last week.

To start I'd like to contrast, briefly, SWToR and WoW. SWToR had an amazing leveling process. It was in-depth, exciting, engaging, and coherent. There was a single quest line that took you through your entire leveling experience. There were side quests and additional environments outside of the primary plot line but it was different for every class and they interacted with each other, it was a really well developed leveling experience. On the other side of this coin, Warcraft uses leveling to introduce you to the game, it's mechanics, and the class that you've chosen. This is helpful to you later in the game and while it is also fairly well developed the major intent behind this game is the endgame. I get the impression that SWToR was aiming for the same thing but failed to deliver the endgame content.

So what exactly is endgame content? Anything that you do that is designed to be completed *after* you hit the level cap. This is usually organized pvp, dungeons, and raids in mmos. In Diablo 3 this was inferno mode, technically late content in hell felt like you should be capped simply because you enter hell mode at 50. The point here is that anything specifically designed to do once you are done leveling is considered "endgame." Endgame also creates a sense of requiring more than just raw time to continue progressing in the game. While leveling you can really just continue to kill really simple things and you'll continue to gain xp, continue to do quests which a mostly a time sink that may provide useful rewards after level cap but the primary benefit to them is through the experience gained.

The important piece of information here is that endgame content is what drives mmos. It is the driving force behind warcraft and, while I'll talk more about motivations behind people playing games and specifically warcraft or other mmos, what brings the boys to the yard so to speak. Sure levelling characters can be fun and some people just love to level characters, however the majority of design time and design decisions are made to reflect the game after everyone has hit the endgame.

Last week I looked at where the design team aims for the endgame content. There's the super hardcore progression raiders who chase world/region/server firsts and those who just log on occasionally to have fun with friends they may not live near anymore. There is also every sort of player in between those two. So how does a developer create a compelling experience for everyone while avoiding alienating either extreme. To put this into perspective the people who play less often or less seriously or, lets face it these people are out there, the people who are just bad at the game may not complete the content and feel left out or punished for not spending more time in the game when they may not want to or are unable to even though they'd like to experience the content the game has to offer at the very least at a lore level. To juxtapose this there are those who ran through the entire content before some groups had even gotten through normal, before some groups had even really gotten through half of the instance. I mean these groups are done normal modes on the first week that it's launched.

So there's a gradient between these two extreme types of players. I've been part of these different groups over my wow career so far and I've settled in a spot I really enjoy. I've played the game and tried to raid without a raiding guild and it's doable, but you have absolutely no chance of really experiencing content outside of LFR (which isn't always the most fun or engaging way to experience content especially with the attitudes of many people who use this feature). I've been in very relaxed raiding guilds and we had problems like 1 healer doing over 40% of the total raid's healing in a 25m raid, but it wasn't something we really cared about because we were just playing the game to enjoy the fact that we were raiding. Now I'm in a guild that really pushes hard and is trying to get past that US100 mark. There are so many different people playing this game that there are those in almost every situation that want to experience the game.

So how do you build content for all of these people? I think the first step in this has already been taken. Heroic modes allow everyone to participate in the real raiding experience to get to the end of content while still providing the incredibly difficult and rewarding content that those of us who really push hard to get those world/region/server firsts. I have a bit of a problem with heroic modes though that I think has come up in several situations previously that isn't restricted to the difference between normal and heroic modes.

To start off, it's a very clear line between heroic modes and normal modes, and I think the difficulty gradient could be a bit smoother (which is very important) but the point is that once you've cleared the instance on normal you are now doing heroics. There's no real small step up that you can make seamlessly. I mean sure looking back on DS H Morchok was extremely easy compared to Spine/Madness on normal, at least in my opinion. As a tank I barely had to consider cooldown use once I figured it out. Just rotate these cooldowns that you have and it's almost no different from any DPS optimizing his dps cooldowns for parts of the fight where it matters (think combustion + impact for fire mages or anyone timing things for feedback on hagara). The numbers weren't too bad and neither was the strategy.

Even outside of raids though I feel that it's extremely important to get the gradient right. Many people get concerned about the jump from 5m dungeons to 25m raids, even to 10m raids it's a fairly large jump, especially for healers. It's daunting and often a large barrier to entry for players who want to start raiding. LFR was a great step in this direction but it also runs into another problem of having the same content over and over again (I will probably spend several weeks on something like that so I wont start) and getting bored of it, which is a problem everyone faces and I've touched on before but if I ran LFR every week on my main in addition to the regularly scheduled raids I'd go insane.

Back to gradients. How do you make a gradient like that. Well Challenge modes sound like phenomenal ideas. It's more intense than 5m dungeons. They get you thinking different and they up the difficulty so it still encourages and inspires you to perform better and strive for more out of you and your character, which is in my opinion the very essence of these types of games. However after challenge modes are done you run into the same problem as before with a slightly different twist.

I will preface this as opinion. I love 25m raids. I wouldn't ever imagine going down to 10m raids for my progression, it just doesn't feel right. I'm sure a lot of that is where I started raiding initially but they are two completely different animals. I think a major problem facing 25m raiding right now is population. During Wrath there were so many 25m guilds that you could basically find one at your level on your own server for the most part. The server on which I play had more than 5 raiding guilds that did 25m alliance side that were consistent and progressing, come to think of it a lot more than 5 alliance side. Now we're down to only 2 guilds on the server (last I checked anyways, which is to say several months since completing DS) counting both horde and alliance. In fact there aren't even any horde 25m guilds anymore. This drastically reduces the player pool for 25m raids and the jump from 5m dungeons to 25m raids even more daunting and pushes a lot of players into 10m raids.

But I digress, this gradient of difficulty is really important and I'll probably spend a lot of time talking about it. This is something that blizzard needs to work on. I think for the most part DS was pretty good with that difficulty gradient which means they're getting better but there were a few hiccoughs in my opinion which made for some awkward going. I liked that the order in which you kill bosses on normal was almost the same as heroic, it gives a good sense of progression in the instance and helps raid organizers. These are tough problems. I think a lot of it stems from the fact that, as I mentioned last week, having heroic encounters as basically the same as normals but "upgraded" really hamstrings you in some respects while allowing you to have a ton more dev time. I don't have an elegant solution to that problem that works with both sides of the everyone can do it and new stuff for hardcore/progression raiders coin.

I'll come back to this next week but in the meantime if you have ideas for how to address the problem of letting everyone see the content while providing fresh intense content for the hardcores out there I would love to hear it. See you guys next week.