Beat the game now what?

[Conncept.7638]

Most of the games PvE content is cyclical, by definition you cannot "beat it".

[Oglaf.1074]

MMORPGs have never been about "beating" them. Guild Wars to my knowledge is unique in offering a single-player story to go with it. After that is done, you still have all the "unbeatable" content that comes with a classic MMORPG.

Like, personally, I'm collecting the heavy Legendary Armour. Helmet and Chestpiece down thus far!

[tigirius.9014]

Completely agree. It's the danger of every mmo out there. Large titles with the biggest stories eventually reach a stage of stagnation when there's nothing more to do.

It's why game developers begin coming up with other activities such as housing fishing mini taming new crafting styles for furniture sub stories around those systems.

I've been around mmos for a long time now and what I've seen is that eventually all mmos create these systems due to the story not being enough for the gamers to complete. I've heard every excuse, every concern, every argument against having activities for social benefit in these games and what I've found is eventually game developers even ones that have a good setup or the best ever setup for stories dungeons etc, typically break down and added those features if they wish to continue to make a certain level of money from player participation in the game.

People will argue with you and tell you that you can't beat it, which you can there is an actual finale to the main stories. They will likely tell you you don't know what your own experience is tellng you. They'll tell you that you need to go play something else entirely instead of having common sense expectations about the game and it's development. None of those arguments really address the center of the issue at hand, that there's not enough social activities in the game to both appreciate the beauty of the game and to promote the social activity of talking either inside the chat system or with a voice system in place.

The only way of getting to that stage is to realize that dungeons and raiding is not the answer because it's never been the answer even in the largest titles out there. Eventually you need more and that's something that people in these forums can't handle, they can't understand that typical mmorpg activities eventually have an end have a limit to how much enjoyment they can bring to players before ultimately players will need something more.

[Samnang.1879]

find a new game

[Fallesafe.5932]

@PopeUrban.2578 said:

@Chrono.6928 said:First I want to thank anet for making quite possibly the best mmo expansion of all time... Definitely the best STORY I've seen in years. It was so much fun!

Question is now what? I haven't had time to check but are their any new dungeons or raids? Any endgame content?

I suppose I could always go back to pvp or wvw but would rather enjoy any new content I might not be aware of. Any super cool weapons or armor worth farming?

If nothing else there's more map completion i suppose. Not really sure what purpose that serves until they make round 3 of legendary weapons, which i'm guessing is very very far off.

What story did you play? The map content in PoF and associated achievements are great, but the story is a huge step backward in terms of narrative from HoT. The entire "story" consists of nothing but combat encounters broken up by your character standing there and getting exposition thrown at him by various throwaway characters that leave the story as forgettably as they arrive (Vlast, Kormir, Glint, Rytlock). The foes you face are, with the exception of several extremely repetitive boss fights with Balthazar, completely forgettable, and every interesting character (Zalambur, Mordant Crescent, Joko, Literally any sunspear, The Zaishen, The ROder of Shadows, Amnoon's Cavaliers, The High Society of Joko-Controlled Vabbi) is criminally underused.

The entire expansion feels like an excuse to close plot threads that Arenanet doesn't want to deal with any more (The human gods, Rytlock's time in the mists) while not adressing at all several plot threads introduced in the season that was supposed to lead in to this expansion (Braham and Jormag, Marjory's new outlook on life) and adressing the elephant in the room (How to balance dragon energies) by basically handing you the solution, making all of the work Dragon's Watch put in to it effectively pointless. It saddles you with a bunch of milktoast me-too sidekicks with nothing interesting to say or do aside from being stand in for "I need class ability Y for plot reasons" and deliver the occasional one liner. Not a single character in this entire plotline grows, changes, or meaningfully develops in any way. Not one. Go ahead and name someone who has character development. I'll wait. You can't, can you? Oh wait, Rytlock gets a cute nickname, and Kasmeer AMAZINGLY doesn't break up with Marjory (like that was a serious question)

Top it all off with a massively unsatisfying "cliffhanger" ending that doesn't even pretend to be a satisfactory resolution to a story as much as it is an advertisement for content that isn't in the game yet, and that in a year's time players will be expected to buy separately.

Also, the final boss fight was extremely weak after blowing up the giant scorpion thing, the "death sequence" was straight up pointless filler, the origin of the forged and Balthazar's master plan to... build a dragon powered death robot... just felt extremely forced, the existing mythos with the exception of (again) Dragon stuff was just thrown out like so much garbage.

This expansion is act 1 of a story with at least 2 if not 3 acts regarding kralk and his offspring, padded with nonsense in order to artifically extend a narrative that has long needed to pass through a skilled editor to remove the extraneous bits already.

Arenanet's Narrative team is quite skilled at writing an outline, but seems to be having real trouble as of this expansion and the LS leading up to it with effectively pacing stories and telling them with impactful focus.

For all its problems, one thing HoT did extremely well was its story. It had character development, clear motivation all the way through, and really only had a few hiccups that were forgivable because they existed to begin or end decently written character arcs.

Path of Fire literally has no character arcs, its just the tale of the Commander and his/her least interesting friends following around a war god for a week and getting told the master plan to save the universe in the process, then failing to save the universe anyway. It's like ArenaNet forgot what made Nightfall or release GW2 enjoyable in the first place from a narrative perspective. The entire concept of Adventurers as people with lives and motivations and how those encourage them to fight the bad guys. This cast? Rytlock has kind of a motivation (which is a result of an EXTREMELY out of character mistake for him) while everyone else is just kind of going through the motions. In the end, does Rytlock grow, change, or learn anything? Experience any kind of personal moment of truth? become a better, or at least a DIFFERENT person as a result of these experiences? Nope. He just says "Hey, uh, sorry about unleashing a mad god and almost dooming the multiverse' to another god and then PAWNS OFF HIS MAGIC SWORD ON THE PLAYER to absolve himself of the responsibility for redemption he's supposed to be motivated by.

ebin

[Chrono.6928]

@Oglaf.1074 said:MMORPGs have never been about "beating" them. Guild Wars to my knowledge is unique in offering a single-player story to go with it. After that is done, you still have all the "unbeatable" content that comes with a classic MMORPG.

Like, personally, I'm collecting the heavy Legendary Armour. Helmet and Chestpiece down thus far!

sweet. is there new legendary armor in pof? like a second set different from hot raids and wvw?

[Merkin.8412]

Now quit until the next expansion.

[Downfall.4613]

sweet. is there new legendary armor in pof? like a second set different from hot raids and wvw?

No there is neither a new legendary weapon nor new armor.

[Serinetempest.9027]

@Chrono.6928 said:First I want to thank anet for making quite possibly the best mmo expansion of all time... Definitely the best STORY I've seen in years. It was so much fun!

Question is now what? I haven't had time to check but are their any new dungeons or raids? Any endgame content?

I suppose I could always go back to pvp or wvw but would rather enjoy any new content I might not be aware of. Any super cool weapons or armor worth farming?

If nothing else there's more map completion i suppose. Not really sure what purpose that serves until they make round 3 of legendary weapons, which i'm guessing is very very far off.

There are tons tons of achievements to do . meet new ppl and help them there is plenty to do

[crashburntoo.7431]

@Heironeous.4928 is looking for help tonight at 10pm Eastern... he/she and his/her small guild are trying to unlock Windswept Haven. Mail or message him/her in game and bring some friends! EDIT: I shouldn't make assumptions with pronouns, or even nouns for that matter

If you've accomplished everything that you want in this game, look up others that could use help accomplishing their goals. It could be a lot of fun, and you could make some long-term, even life-long, friends.

[Tiny Doom.4380]

You don't beat MMOs. You don't finish them. They exist and you play them until you lose interest then you stop. They are pastimes, hobbies, entertainments. They contain games or game-like elements but despite the misleading name they are not, in and of themselves, "games".

[Genesis.5169]

Nothing you got back to HoT theres nothing in CD to do.

[Ashantara.8731]

"Beat the game, now what?" -- Maybe someone should have told you that MMOs are not to be "beaten" but to be enjoyed. This isn't a single-player action game.

[Mic.1897]

Wow so many people responding only to the OPs title... when they only changed it to avoid spoilers.

Feels bad, man.

[soakman.7539]

I plan on maxing my elite specs (will get tedious I'm sure), map completion on at least 1 character, then work on achievements and attempt to find the things that are out there that you aren't directed to. I'm sure there are plenty. Vabbi and the Desolation feel like the story directs you to about 1/5th of the zone. What's in the other parts? Probably something interesting at least if not rewarding.And eventually when that all fails me, I will continue to work on Aurora. I'm going to have fun just running around exploring for a good few weeks though.

[nacario.9417]

@Chrono.6928 said:First I want to thank anet for making quite possibly the best mmo expansion of all time... Definitely the best STORY I've seen in years. It was so much fun!

Question is now what? I haven't had time to check but are their any new dungeons or raids? Any endgame content?

I suppose I could always go back to pvp or wvw but would rather enjoy any new content I might not be aware of. Any super cool weapons or armor worth farming?

If nothing else there's more map completion i suppose. Not really sure what purpose that serves until they make round 3 of legendary weapons, which i'm guessing is very very far off.

Claiming that u are done with the content is a steep statement. The monthly ATs have unique effects above your char, maybe you could focus effort towards that