Endgame Content (That isn't lootrunning!)

Hey, what's up Wynncraft. I'm posting here today to explain what I think is one of the major issues with Wynncraft, the Endgame, and I'm also here to offer some fixes.

Wynncraft's endgame is fairly linear. After you finish the main questline, the essentially best way to make money in Wynncraft is simply to lootrun. From a game design standpoint, you can see the immediate clear issue: a lack of options. Sure you can do profs, which might be somewhat profitable after 75+ hours of consecutive grinding, but even then it doesn't really come close to the results that lootrunning yields.

I used to be a major lootrunner. I'd spent about 90le on loot quality gear, food, and the whole thing, I was in the Lootrunning Guild discord to plan out my runs; it was going great. I even found some mythics, but after a few weeks of doing this.. I quit Wynncraft. I never thought to post here; I just thought Wynncraft was going to expand its content out later, but it's been multiple years and no endgame content fix has been released, so here I am, posting about it!

There is another major factor at hand here: what is fun. Lootrunning is not fun. The concept of "ooga booga open box get rich" for 6 hours a day is so bland.. and simply monotonous. Content diversity and its thrill is what keeps games alive, if history has taught us anything. This concept shows in Minecraft itself: the diversity of what you can do, and the thrill, for who want it, in hardcore.

Here's what you've all been waiting for: my proposal for a fix. Personally I love the game Path of Exile. I think it's great, the endgame system is great, but incorporating the map system into Wynncraft is simply something that, sadly, cannot happen. Although I do think we can take one thing away from that game: how they handle bossing. They have a very simple algorithm for most of their bosses: you kill a set number of mini-bosses (known as their "guardians"), each hold a fragment, and when you "turn in" these four fragments you get a portal into the boss room, and the bosses have a drop pool unique to them, and the items are TRADEABLE and FARMABLE.

I think this system should be adopted & adapted to Wynn! One proposed use of this that I think would be nice is in Qira's Hive. You'd keep the quest the exact same, however, when you kill Qira you get a singular random master item (potentially a token, but I personally think a randomized system would be better as to not oversaturate one specific item if it's in the meta), which is tradeable. In order to fight Qira again, you have to fight each of the elemental floormasters again, which would act as the fragments. Each of the previously owned master items would simply be kept untradeable, as a legacy item of sorts.

Also, personally I don't really understand why dungeon items are untradeable. This being the case utterly annihilates any possible dungeon farming; which would be a fun and enticing thing to do, in my opinion. The Silent Expanse dungeon (I've totally forgot what it's called) is such a fun and interactive dungeon, but there is actually zero reason to farm it right now. Sure you can get the items for yourself, but like I said: there's no purpose to getting strong gear if there's nothing to do with it! Note: in this model, we may want to change dungeon boss loot to a randomized pool by simply making the drops you need more fragments for a lower %, and the more common ones a higher %.

EDIT #2: I forgot to talk about the issue of keeping them untradeable. Untradeable items, in theory, are made to engage your playerbase to get the item. It's a great idea, but unfortunately this isn't how it works psychologically. Let me elaborate with yet another Path of Exile analogy. In Path of Exile, everyone looks forward to the endgame content, it's simply the most fun thing in that game. In order to get to endgame content, you have "to suffer through the acts (earlygame)" - Fyregrass, Zizarin, Path of Matth, and many, many more Path of Exile content creators. Path of Exile recently lost 2/3 of its playerbase because everyone hates the acts to much. The devs, due to mass community hate, are currently trying to revamp the acts to make it more fun. You're probably wondering where my point is, so here it is: take a dungeon item that you have to complete the dungeon five times to get that's potentially instrumental for one's build. Psychologically speaking, the player will naturally view the dungeon as the thing they have to "suffer" through; in turn, this lowers player morale and their will to keep playing. However, if you could farm a dungeon and sell the items for good money, player morale goes up because they can finally appreciate the amount of fun the dungeon is and the wonderful design made by you guys.

This system being in place would finally give mythic items and good builds actual value. Right now, there is actually ZERO value to having a really strong build worth 4 stx that can do all content, vs a build that's worth 15 le that can do all content. The 4 stx build will likely do it faster than the 15 le build, but there's no reason to need to do it faster. If there's a need to do it faster, like farming bosses for more LE per hour (otherwise known as min-maxing your farming methods), there's finally a use for having a 4 stx vs 15 le build. Right now, the only "good" build according to general standards is a loot quality build; for like I said before: there is zero uses for a build that can do crazy amounts of damage and is generally strong.

You may be thinking to yourself right now: what makes this any less repetitive and fun than lootrunning? Simply put, the thrill and interactivity of it. The bosses in Wynncraft are so well-designed and fun to fight that I know I could farm it if it had a real economical and, well, actual purpose.

There's plenty more I'd like to see in Wynn, such as: making mass mob farming for money a legitimate strat, adopt a less time-intensive view on crafting (something like where Path of Exile has it [but don't do everything it does] where instead of being blocked by XP and levels, you're blocked by the materials you have. I'd also introduce the idea of killing a boss or doing something unlocks particular crafts, or it unlocks uses of a particular craft; similar to bestiary in Path of Exile without instanced Menagerie's), and a whole lot more. I'm considering applying to the content team, but I'd have to think about it.

Hence, I think the endgame system in Wynncraft is flawed, and I proposed a few of my ideas for fixing them. I explained the one I think could be most easily incorporated into Wynn (and the one that I think I would enjoy the most) in the most detail, but also gave some other ideas I believe could be incorporated with a little more work, but most definitely beneficial. The more fun and interactive alternates to lootrunning and general end-game money making, the happier the playerbase would be.

Notes:

1. I'm NOT suggesting that you gut lootrunning, or remove it's strength. Just recommending alternatives.
2. You'd need to add more bosses into Wynn to make this work, since there's only a few high-level bosses. The market would swiftly be oversaturated as is, even with randomized drop pools. I'd recommend adding 3-4 new bosses.

If you'd like me to make a new post talking about my other recommendations thoroughly like this one, let me know.


EDIT #1: I thought of a perfect analogy to tie together this essay. Imagine you have to sit down for 7 hours a day for a multi-million dollar deal. This sounds actually really good! Except, the only thing you can spend your money on is things to get more deals. It's fairly simple to see how these two sentences contradict each other: there's a deficit of things to do! Getting money and only being able to spend money on making more money without being able to do anything else is extremely counterproductive, and needs to be fixed.

EDIT #3: Moved some paragraphs around to make the essay flow more smoothly.

EDIT #4: Fixed a few grammar mistakes.

 

There's been legendary vs mythic debates since the dawn of time but I do feel that mythics generally speed up most content (raids for example). Loot running still tends to yield more money than raiding as far as I'm aware though.

The way you've phrased this is completely wrong but I do understand what you are trying to say (I think?). Mythics, obviously, serve their purpose as what-should-be-easter-eggs as well as dominating the meta (as they should) because of their typically higher damage output. Easing and speeding up all content involving the killing of mobs.

I like this suggestion. Mob level-scaling in the corrupted dungeons is a thing but I don't feel it scales the difficulty up that much so perhaps something could be done about that or perhaps in general add difficulty levels to dungeons (has been suggested before a million times - especially for EO. A problem I face with Wynncraft every day is that us hyper-committed (tryhard) players are not alone in sharing the opinion that Wynncraft is not in the best of times right now (whole nother tangent we could go off on) and I do feel that loot running is exclusively solo content. You cannot loot run with friends - even mob farming with totems isn't incredibly efficient with others. In my head, your suggestion is easy to implement and, at least for me, would offer more fun to the game and appeal to more players.

P.S. - Eldritch Outlook (EO) ^^

EDIT: Perhaps change the title to indicate money-making endgame content. Might acquire more viewers because the endgame content argument has BEEN had.

 

Yeah, there need to be more ways to accumulate wealth, but I'm not sure about forcing players to fight all the previous minibosses in order to unlock the boss room every time. Good suggestion, I just don't agree.

 

Well, since there are so many people at the level cap and so many people would do this on release, the market would get oversaturated very quickly (in theory, at least). Keep in mind, since lootrunning is the essential "meta", and it's a little boring, so many people would jump on this. Having to kill the minibosses would slow it down, at least little - in theory. Also, this logic is equivalent to someone saying: you're making us complete Doguns one to do Doguns two? What if I want to do Doguns two now!! ..it's toddler logic..

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Where do I change the title? I can only see where to change tags & the actual post.

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Sure, but you can't actually make money by doing this (unless you're offering carries, which you would be bottlecapped by the person you're carrying, so it isn't effective for min-maxing your money/hour). My suggestion is to make a more defined usage for actually having these expensive mythics & builds.

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Yes. Raiding is less money than lootrunning, but that's not the only thing. I've never actually been in a guild since the raid update, but it's my understanding you can do it with multiple people? If so, if you're just in a large enough guild it wont matter if there's that one guy with 4 stx vs like 15 people with 20 le.

 

Yes, they do speed up the killing of mobs. But, killing mobs serves no purpose in the meta right now :p

 

I agree with the fact that getting mythics, which is usually what many players do nowadays (whether ct wanted this or not, it's what the players do, please don't just destroy mythic methods and player gameplay because you don't want them to get mythic items easily)
So, a proper skill based method of getting good gear like boss grinding, or boss drops seems nice.

 

I didn't say it was, simply that I wish it were. I think your mentality of "mythics having a purpose" is a load of waffle. Mythics have as much purpose as any other identifiable item + serving as easter eggs and goals of obtaining for committed players.

Ingredient farming, XP farming (grind spots), ranked players farm mobs for mythics/ingredients with totems during double loot.

 

Sure, all items have a purpose. However, ing farming will 99% of the time yield less results than lootrunning, and xp farming by definition isn't supposed to actually yield a monetary result at all, and that's the primary discussion of this post. Double loot is a temporary thing as well, so I don't think that should be in the same category; same argument could be made for Prof bombs.

Our definition of purpose in Wynn is different. For me, by a purpose I mean some reason to use them. Mythic items obviously have a use, as all items do, but my argument is that there is no efficient use or reason for them; as opposed to loot quality gear.

 

i have come to the conclusion that you are monke. i dont think mythics should be necessary for any content whatsoever - players should not be forced to obtain mythics in order to complete content.

 

About the dungeon items being tradeable thing, I disagree. Sure tradable items means u can grind and sell it for money, but as endgame content and one of the few alternatives to lootrunning, it would be over saturated pretty quickly I think causing it to be worth not a lot to do it
also sure once ppl get items from the dungeons from doing it like 5 times they won’t do it again, but for me on all non endgame dungeons (aka all but eo), I would not have done it more than once if it was not for that. I mean they are cool, but I see it as “oh new dungeons” beat it once and then never touch it again
The untradeable thing causes me to play it more than once I wanna get some cool item
Tho if it doesn’t have anything of value I don’t play it at all sometimes, such as gg

 

..brother, I never said they were/should be necessary for anything; I said, and I quote, "there is no efficient use for them".

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This explains what I think the problem is exactly. "The untradeable thing causes me to play it more than once" is literally my exact point. I know for a fact if I'm forced to do content I won't enjoy it; same reason, like I mentioned, that everyone hates the Path of Exile campaign.

 

True
But making them tradable would not give me the incentive to play it, as it would make me play even less than I already do
(Excluding eo, which I would play the same as it’s actually fun)

 

I guess it's a matter of opinion. My previous reply is my opinion :p