I partly agree here, why pve endgame can't exist? Btw I often hear same "pvp is only endgame option" from mmo people, but I think both option should be viable.
i mean it probably can, but its veeery hard to do
when i think about endgame, i think of it like, something after finishing the game that you can play indefinitely while still having fun! so pvp is the obvious choice
!
as for how it can be done, i think i got the general idea while playing poe
was way back when poe was only 3 acts and there were actually full parties of 8 players doing fellshrine and docks...it was very fun to me and many people miss that as well
so i realized, in order to have an endgame, most people require contact with other people! now poe has 10 acts and so much stuff to do, yet it feels so damn empty because people dont connect in any way
people dont connect in poe anymore, you only meet other people when you trade (and even that less and less), and when you show off items in chats (that also less and less because people avoid it due to censorship). thats i guess why poe players have hard burnouts where they get physically sick of the game a week into the league
ehm anyway! so my idea (according to my definition which could be wrong) is this: you have contact with people, you have endgame. but the problem is that games today are going for complexity, and complexity means a large variance between characters so pvp is out as pvp needs the game to be simple. but that complexity also means you need to grind hard to make your char good, so you are forced to lose time to do it, so it becomes a job and not fun. people in poe play like its a job, its very weird and hard to explain
theres so much stuff to do, yet theres no purpose to it. and it actually had good pvm endgame back when it had only 3 acts, i mean yes it had a niche audience, but that audience enjoyed the game and never left
so i guess thats my idea of a pvm endgame
! a game played on a server, not too complex (around grim dawn level), with actual incentives for playing in a party. also definitely a ladder sort of system, so people could compete while collaborating! still i would have pvp as an option because many like that! so yeah i think it can be done, but waaay harder than just implementing pvp