Progression My Issues With Wynn, Pt. 3 (the Endgame)

This is part three of my series. Part two is here

The Endgame Issues​

There is no real progression system: Once you hit level 103, you’re basically done. Sure, some people might aim for level 104, but that’s purely because there’s nothing better to do.


In vanilla Minecraft, there’s a relatively clear progression system for getting stronger tools that goes like this:

Wood->Stone->Iron->Diamond->Weakly Enchanted Diamond->Strongly Enchanted Diamond+Elytra->Beacon-boosted Everything else

Accordingly, stronger gear can only be found by taking on harder challenges. Wood and Stone can be made easily, iron tools can be found in villages, dungeons, mineshafts, and by digging a bit deeper than stone, Diamond gear can only be found in Mansions, and Strongly Enchanted Gear can only be found in End Cities, along with Elytras. Then, getting a fully powered beacon requires a serious commitment to resource grinding, and killing the Wither. There’s a clear path you need to go through to get gear, and each step provides more challenge to reach, but provides gear that’s actually markedly stronger


Compare that to Wynn, where the progression system for weapons goes like this:

Mob drops/Loot Chests->Mob drops/Dungeons/Boss Altars/Loot Chests->Hive items/Loot chests->Crafted Items/Mythic Drops (from any mob or loot chests).

See the problem? Because there’s a few.


First off, Loot chests are game-breaking. There’s a reason that pretty much everyone who owns a mythic or a relatively big shop gets their items from loot chest runs. Not only do they have a metric ton of items exclusive to them, not only are they the most rewarding thing in the game by a long shot, but they are also the best way to get Mythics and the only way to get the mythic armors. And to top it all off, they’re the easiest activity in the game since they, by nature, require little to no combat. And by the way, the fact that combat, the main portion of the game, is usually the least rewarding is really unhealthy for the game.


Second, The vast majority of items are world drops, and the ones that have targeted grinds are usually fixed rolls. Probably the best example for a targeted grind in Wynn is the boss altar system. With it, I can actively grind for a god roll Nona, and I know that I’ll actually get it eventually from the Aerie of the Recluse. There’s only two layers of RNG in the system: Whether Nona drops from the boss, which it does like 66% of the time, and whether the roll is good. I’m encouraged to get it because I know there’s a specific activity where it drops from, but the RNG in rolling it makes it so getting the item is not a one-and-done thing. The boss itself also provides at least some challenge. Compare that with trying to get a well rolled Taurus. First, I’d need to go loot chest running to get it, then I need to get an UnIDed legendary chestplate in the level range (god knows the exact chances for that), then it has to be the right chestpiece (a 33% chance), and then it needs to be a good roll. That’s three levels of pretty heavy RNG, tied to a mind-numbingly easy activity. The only reason this isn’t universally hated is because loot chests give so much loot that it you’re basically guaranteed to get at least an inventory full of items and then some.


Third (and probably the most controversial), the trade market dominates balancing and progression, and it’s killing the game. For example, mythics are way too rare and unbalanced, not for any gameplay related reason, but because there would be riots in the trade market if they were made too common or less insanely powerful compared to everything else. When like a third of the complaints about balancing changes focus on how people can’t afford the constant balance changes, and not about how they need to grind for the new items, you know you have issues balancing the trade market with every other progression system.

Then there’s also the fact that there’s nothing to do, and that nothing is extended by artificial grinds. In terms of endgame activities, you have

• Corrupted Dungeons, only two of which remotely pose a challenge to a level 100 player
  
  
• Three boss altars
  
  
• One dungeon
  
  
• The Uth shrines
  
  
• LI, and
  
  
• Qira

Of these five activities, only Qira doesn’t require an arbitrary grind just to be able to enter the content. Boss altars I can at least kind of understand; being able to farm out an item every five minutes is a bit much, so having to grind junk to get to the boss at least makes sense to slow progression to a reasonable pace. But Dungeon guardians are unnecessary, LI’s paywall doesn’t do shit besides discourage poor players from doing it (which is awful and a really bad way of making a money sink given that it’s practically the only pinnacle activity in the game), and Corrupted dungeons are just recklessly stupid to enter. In order to get rewards from them, you need to

• Find a key guardian somewhere, randomly
  
  
• Find one to three Nii guardians, randomly OR
  
  
• Find a golden Avia randomly and do the Uth shrine
  
  
• Do a 10-20 minute dungeon
  
  
• Repeat these steps.

That is two layers of RNG and three steps just to do one run of a dungeon, not even including the dungeon itself. It’s not fun. It’s like if strikes in Destiny cost planetary materials and masterwork cores just to run them, or if strongholds in Anthem cost a few (thousand) embers. Yes, I’m comparing this to Anthem, and Anthem actually has the better system here. It’s that bad.


So how would you fix this? First, take advantage of content you already have, and put every legendary at the very least in the loot pool for a specific activity. For example, instead of having to grind chests for the Uth weapons, make them part of the pool for the Uth shrine bosses. This would give you a reason to do that activity beyond corrupt dungeon keys. Speaking of corrupted dungeons, restrict the pool of items in the loot drop to a select few. For example, Black, Sitis, Nether’s Scar and Hetusol can only drop upon completing CSST, while Ivory, Cascade, and Lunar Spine can only drop from CIB. Brass Band, Booster Plate and Steamjet Walkers are now drops specific to Fallen Factory. This would give reasons to grind dungeons even after getting all of its items. In addition, give the bosses of the Qira Hive loot pools: Gale could drop Gale’s Force and Ventus Tail, the Solar Vanguard could drop Ignition and Greaves of the Veneer, the oceanic judge could drop Tidebinder and Torrential Tide, ETC. Also make them drop powders of their respective element.

By doing this, you'd be opening more avenues for making builds by playing the game itself, rather than having to rely on the trade market for everything.

Second, add pinnacle activities and quests that give a greatly increased chance of dropping a mythic. Things like raids, or a horde mode, or even leveling up a character all the way in the challenge modes. Things that actually require multiple people playing with coordinated mechanics.


For example, you could tie Weathered into a time valley raid, where you and your team are split between the past, present and future where each affects the other and you need to communicate to do everything correctly. For example, if the boss begins charging up the wipe mechanic in the future zone, the guy in the present needs to interrupt it. (Seriously; I may actually make a separate thread detailing that raid in the future because there's just a lot of cool stuff you can do with time manipulation mechanics.)


You could tie Inferno into some Molten Heights horde mode, where you cross through mineshafts fighting waves of mobs that get progressively harder. It would last for like 50 waves, with Inferno being a guaranteed drop on the 50th wave, but only accessible to those with perfect play and coordination.

Also important to note is that the mythic wouldn’t be the only drop for the activities; They would still drop items with better loot than the average from other sources. It’s just the most sought after, and it wouldn’t be a guaranteed drop in the case of raids. The point is that the game needs something that engages players and challenges them, but gives them rewards to match.

As mentioned in Part II, these activities would have their own servers, with a player cap that prevents 50 player rundowns of them, and dictates the way the mechanics are run.

Would this break the trade market? Absolutely. But again, the trade market shouldn’t dictate the endgame. It should be a supplement for lazy people and overachievers, not the thing the whole endgame revolves around.


Fourth, make Corrupted Dungeons level 90+, and adjust their loot and difficulty accordingly. This is probably controversial, but I feel like it’s kind of wasted potential considering that most, if not all people breeze through their level 70s with relative ease. The lack of content in the endgame hurts it a lot more than a lack of content in the 70s, especially since you’re usually able to grind quests to get to the 80s and beyond.


Fifth, Add corrupted boss altars to the Forgery. All of these activities have bosses that differ somehow, and even if some are objectively better than others (Blade of Shade), having them all in would still do wonders to both the Loot endgame and the content endgame. All of these bosses would be for level 100+ and would drop empowered versions of their normal items. They would act as solo pinnacle challenges, and would have loot and difficulty close to other high level endgame activities. The one exception would be the Wybel, since that’s already endgame and used in multiple places.


Sixth, Remove Dungeon Keys entirely. Yeah. It’s an artificial extension to the grind. It hurts a lot more than it helps. Give Uth and Nii Runes a different purpose; maybe enchanting items to give them a free maxed out ID?


Seventh, improve PvP with new items, modes, and maps, and untether it from the nether. Seriously, it makes like 0 sense lore wise and while the map is cool it’s also way too big and nothing ever happens there. Lock the new mode to a level 80+ quest, so those poor level 5s that wander into the nether and get their asses handed to them can’t do that anymore. Then add new team and objective based modes like CTF or, god forbid, wizard fortress (or some variation thereof) rather than it all being a free-for-all all the time. Than lower both the damage people do to each other and the amount of damage elemental defense, defense and agility absorb so it’s not just a matter of the invincible guy capturing the flag repeatedly while everyone else gets wiped by their glass cannon archer friend camping in the back and spamming bombs. It’d give everyone something to do after every other PvE activity rather than just loot running for the 1000th time or padding out their banks with LE.

Finally, Give people titles for accomplishing certain tasks. Solo'd LI, got the legendary medallion and all of the diamond tier gear from it? Congrats; you get the Legend title! Got a character to level 103 with Iron man, Hardcore, or Craftsman? You can now have those as shiny titles next to your name! Got a character with all three at once to 103? You now have the Trinity title!

These titles would appear with shiny colors and in bold in front of your name. They'd vary wildly in difficulty to get, with the most prestigious ones having multiple objectives required to complete. The objectives themselves can vary from fully leveling professions to finding every discovery in the game. The point of these is to give the most dedicated players something to chase beyond loot; if you have a rare title, people know you mean business (or at the very least way too much time on your hands).

Parts 4 and 5 will be here soontm, and will focus on the story and storytelling respectively.

 

I agree with a lot of your points. Wynncraft has a loot grind, but not a meaningful loot grind. Now, while I wouldn't really put Wynncraft in the same category as something like Destiny (loot isn't really the entire point of the game), there is a definite lack of replayability and endgame. I'll just address all your ideas here, and add a few of my own:

Loot Pool Changes
Dungeons could definitely use a 'drop table' with different rewards each completion. This is RNG where you're always getting something meaningful, even if it isn't necessarily what you want. However, I would caution against updating the Hive - I've never really seen it as something to repeat, although I could see an 'endless' mode (where you go through as many rooms as you can, collecting rewards along the way) unlocked upon completion of the quest.

Pinnacle Activities
Raids would be something I would personally love to see in Wynncraft: activities that encourage co-op play and actually require coordination are few and far-between, and dungeons are so short they get old very quickly. I'm still holding out hope that the Realm of Light dungeon (if it ever arrives) will be a more grandiose affair than previous dungeons. The trick is to make it easy for people to find groups for raids so that they don't become dead when the majority of people have the rewards. Your Time Valley idea definitely sounds like it would be awesome, obviously as long as the execution is up to par.

Corrupted Dungeon Changes
The two quickest level ranges, in my opinion, are 1-10 and 70-80. There are so many quests that the lower-level Corrupted Dungeons are pretty much neglected. Rebalancing them for higher levels (and providing drop tables to keep people playing) is a fantastic idea.

Boss Altars
Honestly, I've never been that big a fan of boss altars or pursued them, but that's a personal choice. If there were to be 'harder' versions of each boss altar, I think it would be an optional modifier you apply right at the boss altar, and not tied to corruption (the lore concerning The Forgery is already nonexistent, so I'm not sure creating more problems to eventually explain (such as Gavel bosses being corrupted) is the right route.

Dungeon Keys
I agree, this is just time-padding. The goal is to make it easier and more rewarding for people to run dungeons, so these should be removed (at least for normal dungeons; corrupted dungeons should require some unique entry method but I'm not sure what that would be). Runes should have a use beyond IDs, though. Maybe you can apply one rune per item, and it gives it a special effect? (Obviously, the CT would have to figure out something here.)

PvP
Honestly, I'm not sure how you would balance PvP unless you gave it a completely separate progression system. Personally, I would prefer the CT devote resources to adding more replayability to existing PvE content before looking at PvP. Your points are 100% valid, I just think it's a matter of priorities.

Titles
Honestly, this or some sort of achievement system would be much appreciated. It would give the completionists something to do besides mindlessly grinding every character to 104. I'd love challenges tied to specific cosmetics (titles or otherwise).

In conclusion, I think you have a lot of great ideas, and I'm looking forward to seeing your thoughts on other aspects of the game!