I'm curious - what keeps a player playing? It seems to vary from person to person.

Initially, for the majority of players, it's likely the level grind - but once you're max level, then what? Level new skills and repeat the process?

Or perhaps you're waiting for a new race so you don't have to repeat your progress after sampling the game?

For me, at least, after messing about at the level cap of 50 for quite sometime - whenever the level cap increases, the process feels rather trivial, almost as if I'm repeating what I've already done at level 50 but with different monsters. Eventually, I might acquire a full yellow set, trivialise the content and wait for the next bump in the road to come along - yet, after repeating this process once or twice, I tend to just dispose of my gear and move on as best I can.

It eventually becomes apparent that this isn't the end game, and we're putting in a lot of time/effort into getting the best lv70 (currently) gear which will soon be replaced - a pretty common trend in MMOs, but the feeling of progression feels vague at best.

Likewise, as soon as that next wave of content is released, the level cap increases - two things happen - firstly, some skills outright get left behind (regarding level caps), but more importantly - a lot of the older content becomes.. irrelevant, almost - beyond the occasional trip for a specific purpose (such as the wolf quest for Dark Chapel).

Anyway, to each their own; if they want to min-max at each level bracket, that's okay. It helps find "broken" builds and should, in theory, help the long-term balance of the game - but that's not what I want to address here.

Somewhere along the way, the sense of wonder, intrigue and amazement is lost. In the past, I've attempted to rally players for fresh-character challenges, though I've come to realise this won't likely ever work due to how much of a time investment a player's main character can have behind it.

So I think we need to look at a new approach - I mention this now because of Halloween. Last year, Halloween largely yielded an entire yellow equipment set. I hung around, farmed some bosses, got the set, then eventually ditched it. It had very little lasting significance, but I enjoyed getting the set regardless.

More importantly, limited-time goodies - such as the fireworks guide, or the spooky punch, felt like vastly superior rewards than the short-lived equipment. This is largely because of where the game is right now - going from beta to launch, most of this equipment will be lost. Each time the level cap increases, the gear you may have spent months acquiring and tweaking - will quickly become irrelevant.

I think, then, at this stage in Project Gorgon's life cycle, we need to see more.. well, fun stuff - for lack of better words.

For example, the Purple Fire Wall, the various Druid forms, and even unexpected shapeshifts - like the Giant Bat & Bunny - are interesting additions to the game. They seem to get - well, me at least - excited and engaged once more. That initial motivation I'd have as a new player was immediately rekindled.

So what would I like to see to keep players engaged, especially at the end of the road?

Well, I'm not sure - but I can think of some examples.

Example One: Factions

Each week, a faction will ask you to kill a certain number of bosses; you earn currency for doing so.

Example Two: Diminishing Returns Tokens

Each day, some sort of token drops randomly from all monsters within a certain level range of your currently equipped skills. The amount starts off high - but decays as you acquire those items. Unique boss kills have a higher drop rate, and bosses/monsters in higher tier dungeons have more token drops.

Example Three: Treasure Cartography

Instead of finding maps and leveling treasure cartography through what is essentially surveying, you'll instead find map fragments via foraging or fighting, which you can combine to craft a map - which leads to unique treasure, often within dungeons.

These are just some quick ideas, the actual methodology itself is irrelevant, more-so I'm interested in the sort of rewards we can get.
Importantly, RNG should be used, however, you should also receive a currency or "fail stack" which makes getting rare goodies more likely over time.

At any-rate, the rewards shouldn't be something you can reliably get quickly, but should be varied and interesting - see the above Purple Firewall, but this could include things like cosmetic hats, costumes, alternative animal skins - anything that has a lasting usefulness beyond equipment.

I apologise for the rambling mess of words, but hopefully that's made some sort of sense - I'd really like that motivation to get out and do stuff to come back - and more importantly, for other players to get on board with things like dungeons and such; right now, everything end-game related feels fairly tedious and repetitive knowing that it'll largely be for naught.

Consequently, I find the early-game much more engaging & exciting as you struggle through the world.