End game content and purpose for the mmo.

Friday, July 21 2017, 05:15 PM

End game content and goal for LiF MMO.

Although this is a huge subject I will try to make it as short as possible.
The game itself is very promising with all the features introduced and the system it already has. However the thing it lacks is end-game content and a purpose for players to keep playing on without the game being repeating or boring after the long run.
To achieve that based on LiF I suggest territory control. Players/guilds have to keep expanding and moving forward to the game as it should not be a static stage to the game so players get bored. There should be a purpose that rewards all guilds over the territory they control as in total and to keep the war system alive and with a purpose.
Although the game faces other problems at the moment and there is still a long shot until it is finished it would be nice to have a goal for atleast the full release of the game as for the moment sadly it is getting repeating.

This could work as the following examples.

1. To start fighting for territory allied guilds need to form an Empire. Empires are non-visual within the game and are simply a mechanic to show that these guilds are allied under that the same side. To form an empire there needs to be a minimum or even a maximum number of guilds, for example the minimum could be 2 kingdoms and 4 countries in order to form an Empire.

2. How to control territory: As the map is already divided into different regions/servers Empires have the gold to control as many as possible of those. To control a region an Empire only needs to have atleast 1 guild or a guilds outpost* settled within that region. Each region can only have settlements/bases from only 1 Empire (any guild that is under the same empire) to be considered under control, if there is more than one different empires within the same region then it is still under conflict. Once the region is under control for atleast 1 week/month from a single Empire then all the guilds within get an economical bonus.

3. Rewards for controlling territories : For each territory that an empire has under control all the guilds could receive a certain of in-game currency or even more special rewards depending on the difficulty of the region (for example the far north servers and the far south ones are considered much harder to settle and maintain due to lack of resources). However each guild within the controlling empire receives a reward separately (at their monument?) for each server they control in total.

4. What to do with rewards? As those rewards could be more specific materials. The choice would be in-game currency as in gold coins. However for this system to work there must be multiple uses for the currency and must expensive in order to maintain its value. Good examples could be more end-game content as to wage and even maintain wars with other guilds (witch is already planned I believe) but also can be spend on more things like T3-T4 armors that are available to be bought, ships?, more siege equipment that is to be added later, OR even could make castle keeps/walls to also cost gold coins in addition to the already resources they cost. Anything actually that could value the effort of players and reward them with end-game content.

Additional features to help this system work:

• *Outposts: As mentioned before outposts could be a feature for guilds within an Empire. Once a country or a kingdom manages to reach t3-t4 monument they can expand on different server/regions by setting outposts. Outposts are much smaller claims (similar to personal claims but start at a 15x15 and stay like that) that a guild within an empire can place on another server/region to try control it. Outposts have no inner-outer claim radius, they are solely for the purpose of building a fort to control that region/server. Once the outpost is settled and there is no other enemy-empire base or outpost within the region then it is considered under control. To destroy an enemy outpost an enemy empire can place a challenge monument nearby (just like the instance battles challenges) and after 12? Hours the outpost can be sieged normally for a certain amount of time just like there was judgment hour on.

What can also be achieved with that system:
• Guilds focusing on expanding through the whole map of the MMO and have a purpose fighting each other over something that has a meaning.
• Multiple siege events happening at the outpost-claims that don’t require so much time as to siege a main claim of a kingdom or country guild. That requires much effort and time already.
• Avoid multiple allied guilds overcrowded in a single server witch not only pushes the game to its limits lag-wise but also making it very hard to oppose them without insane numbers
• Fighting and pvp through the whole mmo map and not just focused on a few specific servers.
• Make some servers that are very hard to settle due to the lack of basic resources have a worth aswell.
• Make players and guilds interested to a higher purpose on the game rather than just fight each other at the same spots over and over.
• Copper/silver/gold mines if they can be used to forge currency coins they have much more value to have control on.

**While Empires can be allied with each other they still have to expand on different regions in order for both of them to receive the rewards of territory control and this helps avoid overcrowded servers and areas and makes the game more challenging.

***Guilds that are NOT within an empire do not count within territory control and do not affect those are fighting for them. So neutrality is an OPTION.