Debate topic: Journey vs Endgame

The way I have always wanted but have yet to see it done in a sanbox game though tough it would be the best i believe.
Say you spend the 3 or so months to get maxed out in one skill. Alls well you do it again with the other 5 now. Finally you character is where you want it. However your essentially in a state of lull now. You do the same thing over and over to help your people and over time the joy leaves and you feel like every time you log in your going to work for fake cash. I have been to this point it took years but, what i have always wanted to see and you wouldn’t even need to put this in till 6 or so months after release. Say someone has mastered everything they wanted to. They are getting bored and are more then likely going to take 2 routes, Make an alt if they havent already. Or quit. Now if you were to say add even heavier toll. Such as going from master to Grandmaster and even further to A god among men in your trade. Where people will come from everywhere just to get your weapons or your buildings and they will pay litterally half the land they own just to get one set of armor or weapons etc. Now there were men and women like this in the old days. They had their own tricks to make things far superior and out of the grasp of any other crafters thoughts.
Now if you put a system where once you hit say master in Armor smithing. You conintue this for awhile and say you also did some spell crafting to go with you armorsmithing.
Now you need to earn the title of Grandmaster. So you let your helpers (apprentice’s) if you have them do your daily work or you continue to do it with a time penalty. But you work very very very hard on crafting something working towards something. You work towards makeing a legacy piece of armor for you nations general to wear. You want it to be a gift but at the same time to embrace the symbols he shows as well as the symbol of the nation. So you would need to craft this armor perfectly. And say you really honor the general. Hes fought in wars countless times or hes taken you in when you were sick etc. You take your realtionship and knowledge as well as a little magic that would aid just him in combat. A perfectly tuned set of armor and even a weapons if you’ve done that write. And when you finish it. A year later you present it to him and gain the title of Grandmaster Smith and are now harold by all in your village. Then he takes it out into the field and it helps to drive him to victory once more against a nearly unstopable foe. Now the armor has a true legacy. And should be embued to never need repair. As he can then pass it one when he dies.( leave the game) if he does. If he has no heir it can be displayed on a statue in the town square for generations. However thats much further down the road. So now you’ve reached grandmaster and satisfied till you get all the wealth you need and or could ever want. Your famous with your people and hated by the enemies of your people. So you go into seclusion to hide from assasins. You then set up shop way out of the way. A very long time later you show up with a ox and cart full of weapons and armor that put even the armor you made for the general to shame. This armor is suited for only gods as they would say in those times. It seems to give off its own light. It never scratchs. some of them don’t even make a sound when running over stone yet they are made of the finest heavy metals. How can this be? And thus you are reborn again as a Armor and Weapons God by your people and the word soon spreads. Your country now has allies where enemies used to be not because they have forgotten they hated each other but because they want the good the God crafter can give them for a price. This is the kind of endgame I and I am sure many others would love to see. And i do believe that to reach these 2 levels should easily take 2 1/2 – 3 years if not more depending on the luck you get and if you do indeed become blessed by a diety.

Now if this idea is liked enough i have some ideas on how to impliment it. But i would like pathy’s comments first just know if they could make this happen.

I do see what your saying here pathy and yes it can backfire on the community if not right. However a system that rewards certain players with something that is very hard to reach does have it advantages. If you remember the old Matrix online game, you would remember that they did something though the system they used was flawed it was the most anticipated idea. Certain characters were labeled with the ability to become “the one” on their server. Now if the content of the game had not sucked and if it wasn’t owned by Sony, this game would have done great. People crave the ability in a game to stand out, and by stand I mean in more ways then a unique look. When everyone has the same gear or the same abilities people over time begin to be the same character that just looks diffrent.
And in a Sandbox I have always believed the best thing you could do was provide a way for every character to become unique if they want. So yes for some a goal such as that might be way out of reach, so you add other ways for those people to reach a simular goal with a easier slope to reach their new goal. One such idea would be crafters > grandmasters > Legacy Crafter = very hard to reach max
Fighters > heros > Legend = with sevral ways to reach such a high ability
these are just two simple examples. But say your a warrior you want to become a legendary warrior. You have sevral ways to go about it. Either you go out and do what is unthinkable and slay a dragon solo. All great you bring the head back to your village and you praised. Well someone else is now urged to reach a lvl but doesn’t want to be a copy cat. So they go out and become a world renown pirate with their own followers. Now the only diffrence is that one killed the dragon on their own accord. The other uses the help he gets from the others on his ships. And in return those who sail under him are now essentialy legends as well. Now i realize alot of those ideas would be abit hard to impliment and they probly won’t be put in. But hey a guy can dream no :P

In my opinion the grind in refrence to character progression should not be long and infact be abtained by a casual player within at most a month. If the character progression is too slow then many of the new players who keep the game running will infact be left behind and not play the game.

A good example of this would be Darkfall online and how the grind was long and left new players in the dust that new players simply quit the game.

I understand how Pathy wants to make it a longer grind but make it very rewarding and interesting along the way. However, most casual players will try and find the fastest and most of the time most boring way to level up if they know it will take them many months to achieve their final goal.

When it comes to faction grind such as settlement building I believe like pathy that it should be longer and not built up in a month but rather several months. A good example for why it is better to make it a longer grind on making faction settlements would be darkfall online again. Darkfall online made it too easy and un rewarding to build a city and basicly within a month the entire server had all the preset locations built up. I am using darkfall online as a refrence a lot but all in all many people have played it and its an easy refence.

Basicly to sum it up i believe in a short grind but make it very customizable on how you skill up and what you skill up to make it more fun for the end game. However, I believe in a more rewarding but slow faction settlement buildup.

Lastly Crafting skills should be a longer grind so when players who dedicate their time to the crafting sect of the game they will find a more rewarding and enjoyable endgame for them.