First off, I'm probably not much like an average RPG player. I'm not even too interested about the main storyline (as in the main pre-written plot) in most cases; I mainly play RPGs for the detailed environments, discovery of hidden secrets, character development, combat, and side quests. I play the game in order to augment my own imagination, and use my imagination to augment the game. Together the game and my imagination provide me with the ultimate interactive fiction. The game sets the rules and the theme and provides me with inspiration, and my imagination fills in the rest; I make up background stories not only for my own characters, but for the different creatures I come across with. That is where the immersion lies for me — the game world, not the story.

With that as preamble, it should be quite obvious that during the process I usually grow quite fond of my character/party. Because of this, finishing the game is more like a loss than a victory to me, unless the game allows me to continue playing after the ultimate boss fight (or whatever). If the main character dies honourably in the heat of battle, I feel loss, but at least the character death happened for a reason. Such is life. If I actually finish the game, I'm supposed to feel pride and a sense of achievement, but actually I feel a greater loss than with true character death, as in this case the character dies for all practical purposes but without any reason. That is, unless the game allows me to continue. I too long for a game mode, in which you can continue gaming after the main plot ends.

So if you give me a game where I can continue exploring the world, fighting challenging battles and finding lost artifacts, I'll skip the main quest altogether and keep on playing the side quests and random battles from now till eternity... [grin]

The important thing is to keep the fighting interesting. If you only have a limited number of post-game random encounter scenarios, they will eventually be used up and become boring. You'd need to create (e.g. generating randomly) interesting environments for the battles to take place in, maybe add some continuity in the form of some shallow random side quest storylines and possibly add some rewards for those who don't do it only for the sake of combat. Also, the game shouldn't act as if you hadn't finished the main storyline if you actually had (NPCs shouldn't keep on shouting "we're doomed" every five minutes and so on).

As for looking at this from another point of view, what else is Diablo than one big bloodbath and carnage with little if any story? Certainly there are people who are interested in combat situations even without a decent story to bind them together. [rolleyes]

There is no one true answer to the question whether RPG players in general would like this kind of end game mode, as different players will look for different things in games. For those who play the game mainly for the experience provided by the pre-written story, well, I can't really speak for them, but I'd reckon they wouldn't be too crazy about such a mode without further motivation; especially those who loathe random encounters could find this more annoying than fun. Those who play the game for the exploration would probably want something new to discover; locations, artifact items, whatever. Those who play the game for the combat would most likely consider it fun, at least if too much repetition is avoided. And these preferences are obviously not mutually exclusive. I really can't know how large a portion of players would consider the story so important that they would completely ignore the possibility to experience the aftermath of the game, especially since we are talking about a game that has been designed with the aftermath aspect in mind.

A bit of a different game, but this is part of the reason I liked Freelancer. When the game ends, (assuming you stick to the storyline closely) you've only really explored something like 25% of the game world. At the end is when they let you loose to explore, discover new star systems, forge new alliances, and start down a new career path. There were lots of neat little adventures and things to find still out there, (the planet of monkey-people hidden way off the map...hehe) and when the game ended, you almost felt like things were just beginning for your career.

I only wish that they had created a few mini-stories that you could encounter. Rather than just picking up a standard "kill him" or "deliver this" mission at a port, it would have been neat to encounter a few NPC's who had a short series of missions for you. I would think it would have been relatively easy to add just a few more scenarios and short story lines that you could stumble onto once in awhile and have fun with. If not in the standard game, then in expansions.

I love post-game wandering. Escape Velocity was great for this, because I could download all sorts of mission packs and take my ship and wealth and secret technology on new adventures.

Fable sort of had this, but by the end your character was pretty much maxxed out and all the missions shut down, so I just spent my time marrying as many girls as possible and killing people so I could buy their houses and shops. Meh.

If you could really start to have an influence on the game world, like actually clear the shadowy forest of monsters so people would start to live there, or start a new crime organization that would control certain roadways, that would be cool. It's that sort of sandbox play that I'm after.

But that would require a lot of work that might have been better applied to lengthening the story or tweaking other systems, and those improvements would appeal to a wider audience anyway. The Fable "cut loose and go" system would be enough for me, really.

This post makes me think of the upside-down castle in Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night. That just rocked way too much ... "I beat the game! I beat the ... w00t!? There is more?" Truly one of my top game memories.