Players need to dispense with this idea that games should be designed to be played into perpetuity.
It’s a detriment to gaming.
It a fools errand.
At some point a game needs to end. A condition at which it is over, and you have either won or have lost.
That’s not to say that you cannot start fresh from the beginning again to re-experience a game, OR to try to have a new experience with the same rules.
But this idea that game developers should be creating a never ending experience for you that you only get to experience AFTERE you have played through a game once is just silly and players need to realize that it is a bad paradigm.
An Arcade game has “replay-ability” but the game still ends. You run is over, you have won or lost. You can play again to get a better score, but the game isn’t designed to give you endless variations of a continuous experience after it has ended, that’s what players mean when they say “end game”. That’s why they RUSH to the “end game” since that’s where they believe the experience truly begins.
In my opinion (only mine), i believe you reading it wrong.
Its not about infinite content but about the chase for the best something can give you.
End game is the final run, when you finish the basic, its the run to get the best you can for your character. And in Diablo IV everyone is complaining that this is missing.
Edit.: I limited my view to talk about the character but you can insert here any activity, maybe beating the strongest enemies, finding all the secrets… stuff like that.
It doesn’t mean that someone is aiming to play forever, but the chase for the best usually takes some time.
I think a simple fix would be to open nmd sigils to all dungeons. There are 100+ already built and if we could use them all it would cut down on the monotony.
Diablo 3 has a mini-game that you can play that extends the actual game.
Seasons are, and have always been, the equivalent of putting another quarter into the arcade machine to try and get a better “score”.
All ARPG games have a natural point where they end and the experience is over.
YOU clearly haven’t play ARPGs before, otherwise you would know that this idea of a never ending “end game” is a paradigm that doesn’t really exist and is just a product of unmanaged expectation.
Hoooooly cope. You act as if a game can never be made again that has a sense of end game to it. There’s plenty of examples I can give you, games that have existed for decades that have been played for decades. People may argue “Diablo 2 has no end game”, but guess what people have played it for over 20 years and still cherish it in very large numbers for the age of the game. People can say “there is no end game” but there really is, and it’s in the HELL difficulty where you perfect your character as you level up to 100. And it goes beyond that as you try to find HOLY GRAIL items and get loot for MORE CHARACTERS to play. Diablo 4 is A FAILURE. How about you accept that OP?
that’s some serious bs here. answer me why they went for a live service and 10 years support instead of just making d4 an offline game with some patches if endgame doesn’t matter? it makes no sense. only other reason for perma online live service is to keep cracked copies away and get a little more money through sales, but i don’t think the pirate scene is so big that it’s worth running all the server.
People have played RobotTron 2084 for 40 years, it doesn’t have an “end game”.
Just people players can play a game repeatedly doesn’t imply that there is some kind of specifically designed “end game” activity they can participate in AFTER the actual game has ended.
One may argue the “end game” (by your definition it’s when the credits roll/"the game is won) so that happens at the end of NORMAL diffiiculty in Diablo 2. Then you have 2 more difficulties to complete, beyond that there is a economy with trading (perpetual end game content), there is a small but existent PVP scene, people go bossing, people also do COWS, people go for runs to specific areas for RUNES. There is a end game in Diablo 2. Get over it.
End game doesnt have to consist outside of the campaign to be considered endgame. They do however have cow level, ubers, pvp, and now terror zones. Which is still more than d4. The copium is hard with you.
You are partially correct, that the fun should lie on the journey itself from start to finish and not just after some point where the game suddenly opens up. In fact, 99% of games are designed this way including aRPG’s predecessor which is dungeon crawlers.
But in the context of modern aRPGs, they have evolved to have more content that the base game (structured around a campaign) can provide. In this sense, there should be enough content that keep you engaged until at least lvl 100 (since the campaign can only support you until around lvl 50 in D4). Then afterwards, I agree that there should be no more progression and no content (there could be optional challenges like Uber Lilith) should be designed around lvl 100 characters. This doesn’t mean that lvl 100s don’t have anything to do, things like PvP are open to all. Also there could be things like (public) infinite dungeons in the future where it makes sense to bring a max lvl char.
if it would be communicated from the start that they plan to end the game after the story (so with no endgame) most people probably wouldnt even bought it. Diablo and ARPGs in general arent made for “yey i killed the last boss, im done”