End game

[Envy]

Hello, I have suggested this before, but i want to say it again, can you please make the end game progress sort of endless? I mean gear wise and this end dungeon with +1 to gear and difficulty (i know now it is maxed at +5 i think) I enjoy it a lot and enjoy pushing through it, it is sort of like wow mythic+ dungeon in a way or any other game that has good end game, yea it might be a bit hard to balance but it sure will be fun and always keep the player hooked with raids scaling etc, I really would love to see that because i love this game and it inspire me a lot, there are ton of things that can be added to the game and I would gladly give my wallet with everything in it to support it as it does bring me joy

[Fair]

Yes, we are looking into that as well :D

[76561199525477307]

You can try a mod called Endgame Upgraded, maybe is what you are looking for.

[Faust]

Originally posted by Fair:

Yes, we are looking into that as well :D

Could you also look into making it an optional setting so I can make it just not exist in any of my worlds? Infinite power is one of my absolute most hated mechanics in videogames, and neither the roadmap nor anything else on the store page suggested having such a thing when I bought this game.

[Fair]

I don't think it means what you're talking about. It's just a mechanic that allows the players who want to keep playing a bit more to do that, while marginally increasing their power at the same time. Completely optional, and the game will still have an "ending" before that's the case :)
Hopefully that alleviates your concerns?

[Faust]

Originally posted by Fair:

Hopefully that alleviates your concerns?

Not in the slightest, at least with my current interpretation. I will do my best to expand on what I mean in order to reach an understanding.

If you're planning to add an ability to upgrade your gear to +infinity - I want a rigidly enforced (by the game, not by me) means of setting a hard cap that prevents the player from going beyond a certain number. And I want that number to be set by the developers and not me, through whatever means you're willing to provide, be it a world setting, a character setting, whatever. Just let me DELETE it from my game without modding or self-enforced rules.

The reason for my agitation is I despise soft caps and love hard caps for several reasons, including but not necessarily limited to:
- Allowing for a sense of completionism, where I know I reached the peak of my character's perfomance and refined him/her into a perfect state.
- Allowing for more fulfilling theorycrafting, as it's not exactly fun to crunch the numbers when there is no functional end in sight to said numbers.
- In general, I strongly think that limitations require greater problem-solving creativity and make the solutions feel more fulfilling as a result.

Originally posted by Fair:

It's just a mechanic that allows the players who want to keep playing a bit more to do that, while marginally increasing their power at the same time.

The thing is I WILL want to keep playing AFTER I reach +X, I just don't want to keep getting stronger forever. And I don't want to have to avoid upgrades that will be available to me.

Originally posted by Fair:

Completely optional

You say it is completely optional, but what worries me is that, in context, by "optional" the games that have no hard caps usually just mean "Bro, just stop playing/levelling/upgrading". And if I get one more person telling me to just decide when to stop myself, I might get an actual stroke. Not only because it makes completionism feel hollow to just stop at some point during an endless run instead of crossing the finish line, but also because setting my own boundaries takes away from the feeling of overcoming an obstacle when it's the game designer's job to provide the player with an adventurous challenge tuned to the designer's specifications.

Originally posted by Fair:

and the game will still have an "ending" before that's the case :)

An ending to the content is what I presume you mean. But I want an ending to the power, as power in itself is content.



Let me know if I misinterpreted something, because I'm actually really concerned right now on account of thinking this game is on track to become the best in its subgenre and infinite upgrades will just about legitimately ruin it for me. Since I don't have myself to blame for it as such a thing was never announced to my knowledge - I want to do everything in my power to reach as favorable a compromise as I can afford.

[Fair]

I get what you're saying. I guess what sort of confuses me a little bit then, is that it must be well over the majority of games out there you despise? Even Necesse has "infinite" progression in terms of settlement building and optimization?

[Faust]

I do earnestly hope you're not passive-aggressively mocking me with this reply and are genuinely perplexed. So allow me to offer a deeper glimpse into my mindset, so that we can hopefully reach an understanding.



Theoretically infinite settlements end up in not much more than theoretically infinite resources. There is, however, a limit to the application of said resources. It doesn't matter if I have 5 of each alchemical ingredient in my storage or 500000000 of each, I will only be able to make use of one instance of each potion at a time. Matters not if I'm broke and destitute or have 5 billion gold in my pouch from all the crops my villagers are selling, there are only so many enchantments that can be acquired from using this gold. These are all just a means to an end. A very clearly defined end. Infinite levelling, meanwhile, is the definition of no definitive end, however strange it may sound.



Settlement building in this game and most others, beyond a certain threshold, becomes a vanity project, rather than a tangible power boost. And even then, assuming we don't involve mods, the only thing that isn't rigidly defined in this context is the number of vanity projects I can have at a time, due to the endless number of islands. Everything else, the size of a settlement, the furniture I'm allowed to use, the price modifiers, the comfort modifiers of my settlers, has a framework which I am confined to and have to problem-solve within. To that end, even in this secondary mechanic that neither I nor probably at least a good chunk of the players treat as the main attraction, I can theoretically reach a reasonable finish line.



The only exception to that I can think of is the adventurer's party. I don't know if there's a cap on the number of party members. I assumed there was, but I was never able to check. If you can have an infinite party, then... Well, I guess the joke is on me after all, even if by a very obscure technicality. This is not a court room thoughever, so I just hope my position seems reasonable to you. And if it does - then I sure as hell would appreciate an adventurer party cap too, to keep things balanced. After all, you do have an undeniable "intended balance" baseline in the game, otherwise I would be able to conjure infinite summons and set infinite stamina to myself.

[ElDudorino]

You say that building past a certain point is just a vanity project, but why would that not also apply to incursion levels and similar? It's an arbitrary distinction. You're calling for the game to be "completable" by it refusing to give the player more things to do but in a game where by its very nature you cannot run out of things to do.

Personally I love the idea of infinitely scaling challenges and would like to see how far I can go. So when the dev says they're looking into it, that's great news to me and I would hope that they're not put off by someone saying they want the game to stop offering content past a certain point.

Capping the endgame content at a certain point sounds like the kind of niche idea that should be a mod.

[Faust]

Originally posted by ElDudorino:

You say that building past a certain point is just a vanity project, but why would that not also apply to incursion levels and similar?

Because it literally makes you character more powerful against the rest of the non-incursion content. It literally changes your power level. It literally changes the capabilities of your build.

Originally posted by ElDudorino:

It's an arbitrary distinction.

You're an arbitrary distinction. Not gonna read the rest until you learn some damn manners so you don't belittle input that's more thought out than yours.

[Fair]

I was genuinely interested in learning about your mindset. Although I don't have concrete data, I don't think many people have that mindset.

I agree that there is some satisfaction to completing a game, and I want to allow people to have that satisfaction with a 'soft' ending with credits etc. But I also don't want to deny the people who want to play more and see how far they can go. The extreme version of that would be to not allow people to go back to playing in their world after having beaten the final boss. Not many modern games do that anymore.

'Infinite' incursion progression is not implemented yet, and I'm not even sure we'll find the time. It's just something I have on the todo list of things I want to do eventually :)

[Faust]

Although I don't have concrete data, I don't think many people have that mindset.

It does appear to be on the more eccentric side. But hey, it's a coherent mindset, even if not majority-expressed, right? It's not just the majority that matters... Right? :'<

I agree that there is some satisfaction to completing a game, and I want to allow people to have that satisfaction with a 'soft' ending with credits etc.

Well to be honest, it's still a mostly sandbox game at heart. I'm not looking to shelf Necesse when I see "The End". I'll be coming back to it in the post game plenty of times to work on various knick-knacks, which is actually all the more reason why I'm so interested in a "final" power-level, because I'll be prancing around the game with a "finished" character instead of the playthrough being done and over with forever once the final boss is dead. I just want the satisfaction of having a thing be "done" in the game. You know, like making a plane model, or finishing a drawing in real life, stepping away and admiring it.

Originally posted by Fair:

But I also don't want to deny the people who want to play more and see how far they can go.
'Infinite' incursion progression is not implemented yet, and I'm not even sure we'll find the time. It's just something I have on the todo list of things I want to do eventually :)

I'm not faulting you for wanting this infinite power, or expecting you to not implement it at all just because I don't want to so much as hear about it. It's nothing but a matter of preference. And I get it that I'm conventionally a weirdo for even talking about it (but hey, then again, how much more normal are players that go out of their way to ask for it?).

It's just... It's such a "fundamental" mechanic. And one that I'm really tired of. And after quite a streak of surprises where I kept finding this design philosophy in games I got interested in I'm just starting to mildly lose it. Not a sound would escape my lips had it not been for the fact that
a) This is one of the two terraria-likes I care about the most, the other being Keplerth, and this one is on track to occupying a spot in the top 5 of my favorite games of all time.
b) Maybe I'm blind, but after reading the store page before making the purchase I really had no idea that this borderline-dealbreaker mechanic was making it into this game.

I just kinda care a whole lot. I'm not trying to convince you to never add it at all ever (not gonna lie, I would totally make you if I had the power, I'm that far gone and at the end of my wits), I'm just hoping that maybe you'll think my position is understandable enough to consider devising some manner of an ingame method to "opt out" of this thing without aftermarket modifications or self-imposed rules. Let the endless runners do their thing, while giving me a way to obliterate that feature from orbit for myself.

..Maybe a character setting called "Boundless" that, when ticked during character creation, unlocks all the infinite upgrade options for that character and removes all said options when not ticked, along with a "Boundless Characters" world setting that, when forbidden, disallows boundless characters from joining the world. And then you could make some character-bound Boundless McGuffin that gets upgraded and holds all that infinite power and applies bonuses to all the gear while the ACTUAL gear forever stays +5 (or whatever the planned cap is) in order to make it so trading between players is more convenient and avoid "Ah crap, your spider leggings are +7 and I'm playing non-boundless, I can't use this. :(" situations.