AQ3D | How Does it Impact on Your Life?

Ideas can always change, and has numerous times before. For instance, item fusion was planned for the game but was scrapped in favor of cosmetics. Popular demand can influence certain decisions, so if tons of players want a feature, it's possible.

 

Ideas change over time and think about it, wouldn't it be strange that the majority of items in game were non-tradable? What's the point of trading if you can barely trade anything?

 

Makes sense. I wouldn't be against the idea of being able to trade every item except maybe HeroMart stuff.

 

Kickstarter items would be out of the question as well.

 

Legion chronomancer just got confirmed as the 2020 calendar class/armor. Too bad I'm not a legion fan

 

The theme doesn't really make much sense anyway, especially legion. Legion's been a theme for over 8 years now, and there's hardly any evolution to a newly-defined theme. I just see AE as "playing it safe" for all these years, even after Dage left AQWorlds to work on AQ3D. They have guest artists produce legion-themed items now, instead of Dage, and it doesn't seem like there's progress to new ideas as much.

 

Well aq3d Isn't a game that makes you spend alot of hours at endgame , events are an exception so...

 

AQ3D doesn't really have any endgame to speak off, but it's more like we have endgame in between when you look at the gearing progress.

 

I don't think there's any endgame content, but I do think the game consumes a lot of hours from the grind that come off of releases from time to time. When you spend hours farming for Midas' Curse, A Frogzard Ate Your Helm, and so on, those are hours being spent farming for a single item. It would be nice to see more alternatives, especially pay alternatives/shortcuts like most other games (that aren't as excessive as EA or Blizzard's), but the whole "pay2win" mentality that players go against hinders freedom and versatility for other players. People who are busy with life often don't get a chance at making progress that people with a lot of time get, and it's probably what stops those paying players from putting commitment in a game like AQ3D. Then there are people with a lot of time who don't care about grinding, but will point out how there's no actual main content like PvP, and they'll often AFK in Yulgar's Inn or chat in-game.

 

You pretty much could call the grind you have to do while leveling and gearing "endgame content".

 

MMORPGs don't really have an endgame as releases keep getting added. It's more like "post-release content" than endgame content as its usually content outside of a story release. That's the term I would consider for anything extra outside of the usual story release.

 

I suppose the term endgame doesn't really fit a MMORPG like AQ3D right now (or at all) but it's such a common term to throw around so I can see why people want to use it.

 

Maybe for a long saga, the term endgame makes a little more sense. For instance, AQWorlds has the long chaos saga, and some might say that the Queen of Monsters saga is the endgame content. But others might argue that it's just another saga, and that there will be more saga. It's hard to pinpoint what the endgame of an MMORPG is when the game continues to add more content without developing another major story.

 

The thing is that AQ3D isn't really an expansion based MMORPG where endgame is clearly defined and it's the stuff you do after reaching max level, but in AQ3D it's something that happens at the end of a saga and reaching a high enough level to do the highest level content in that saga. Right now it would be Arcangrove saga and maybe it will be Lolosia saga next.

 

There's usually not much after the end of a saga though, especially considering Ashfall is the only "completed" saga and we don't even have the post-story for the Ashfall Guardian Tower yet. Ashfall does have the Akriloth dungeon and the craft items from Senna (requiring daily tokens), but I consider that to be content tied with Mt. Ashfall release than an actual post content. I don't think better gear necessarily defines an endgame or post content to a saga. When I think of post content, I think of content that encapsulates the entire saga (like an entire quest chain where you return to older areas of that particular saga and do stuff differently) or new, but related extra content that isn't required for completion of the saga but is just bonus content to fill in gaps of the saga's story (like a back story) or a new story (usually after you defeat the villain).

 

At least Ashfall has something and technically Arcangrove has some as well.

 

I'd consider some stuff to just be optional side quests, some similar to previous ideas implemented in the game for other sagas. Like for Arcangrove, there's Rayst's set that you can farm for (which is like a parallel to Darkovia's Shadowslayer set). There's also the Unicorn Pet side quest, which is sort of a parallel to all of the other pet side quests. Almost every saga has some form of optional side quest since sagas tend to follow a certain template; it doesn't add anything to the story or present a new zone, mainly gives players something else to focus on when they have nothing else to do.

 

And that's what endgame generally is and that is just optional content.

 

I think the definition is a bit complicated than just optional content. If endgame was just optional content, then all of the side quests and non-required dungeons would fall under that category, especially the optional content for new players, which doesn't make much sense to me. I think if endgame was rephrased as "stuff you do at the end of the game", that would explain what an endgame is, but an endgame still wouldn't really fit an MMORPG given the constant updates, unless we draw a line [after every minor saga (Darkovia/Lolosia/Ashfall)? after every major saga (Vane saga which encompasses all of the minor sagas, which is currently still ongoing)? at the end of every expansion (AQ3D doesn't really have expansions)?].

 

You could say that we have one expansion and it's this Vane saga that's going on right now. It's pretty difficult to pinpoint where an endgame should be when we get constant updates and at this point we could call it "stuff you do when there's nothing else to do" but that doesn't really feel right does it or maybe it's just the right thing to call it?