Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

Nothing like hearing about failure two posts in a row.

That would have been amazing a month ago.

I wonder who it is that actually believes Megaservers was "always a long term goal"

I can believe increasing server capacities has been a goal of theirs since it's something that would be beneficial regardless of how many people play the game. Whether an MMO is wildly successful or not, allowing more people on each server lessens operation costs some. And considering NCSoft's history with MMOs, something like that would be prudent decision no matter what.

But really, this is really just how MMOs should be operating nowadays. It's just smarter in the long-term. Even if your MMO is wildly successful, there's going to come a point where certain areas just aren't used as much as they once were. Allowing zones to propagate as needed (rather than having two dozen servers, each with their own version) at least makes it more likely that people will still run into other players in these places. With things like cross-server dungeon finders, I think the days of each server developing its own culture are long gone anyways.

Hold Onto Your Butt Cupcake: Omni-Core Mega Drop Inc | WildStar Report

My primary goal at Pax Prime was stalking?I mean ? meeting the Wildstar Devs and finding out more about Carbine?s vision of the future. I attended a panel focused on the future of MMORPGs and Frost divulged some great information on Carbine?s shift in focus. In the true sense of their motto; ?The Devs are Listening? Frost discussed how Carbine is regularly looking at and analyzing gameplay analytics. These analytics are focused on playtime, content and reward loop feedback, all of which have shifted their focus from high end content to solo gameplay. Statistics are showing the majority of Wildstar players enjoy solo play instead of larger raids which really caught Carbine developers off guard. Another trend was limitations in playtime, many players are simply logging in for 15 ? 30 minute intervals

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When Wildstar was launched, it was heavily toted as ?hardcore? especially in the sense of raiding. It now appears Carbine is adjusting its view with both previous and this upcoming patch. I wanted to know whether this was a pivot away from hardcore or a resolve to ?The Devs are listening.? The official word from Frost was ?both?, after seeing the feedback and looking at gameplay analytics they found that there was a real need to focus on solo content.

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Dearest poopsockers; you lose.

Again.

If Wildstar had anything to poopsock I would still be playing it.

wow, that is shockingly honest in a "man... we really have no clue what we are doing" kinda way. They really did think a ton of people were going to login every week and do big raids like EQ/TBC era, didn't they

They should go listen to Scott @ Trion for a day or something, everything they are saying sounds like stuff Trion said 6 years ago. Didn't Trion focus for a while on their own Instant Adventures (1 player dungeons basically), those were fun I remember but dunno if that really was a popular thing.

I think the biggest thing the Wildstar Devs forgot was to make the game world fun. EverQuest did this through rares(pegasus cloak, jboots etc..) and the need to group to farm items that didn't always drop(fungi tunic, every major class epic). TBC did it because well it was new and the raids were fun.

Now I still play Wildstar, to me it has the best combat and raids for my money. I dont pay shit because of Credd, without it I doubt I would be playing. Wildstar really missed the boat by making this just another quest hub grinder. It could have been a great game, instead its just a Wow wannabe with awesome Combat.

Need more zones like Farside. That has been by far the most fun zone for me so far.

Tred_sl said:

Need more zones like Farside. That has been by far the most fun zone for me so far.

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And there is no reason to go back there once you hit cap, which sucks.

Itzena_sl said:

Hold Onto Your Butt Cupcake: Omni-Core Mega Drop Inc | WildStar Report




Dearest poopsockers; you lose.

Again.

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In other news, water is wet....

There is a reason why publishers/devs are not rushing to create a 'hardcore' MMORPG, it's because it would never survive in the current marketplace. This is just another example of it.

Rogosh_sl said:

I think the biggest thing the Wildstar Devs forgot was to make the game world fun. EverQuest did this through rares(pegasus cloak, jboots etc..) and the need to group to farm items that didn't always drop(fungi tunic, every major class epic). TBC did it because well it was new and the raids were fun.

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Wildstardoeshave rares in every zone with unique loot (RareTrackeris a great way of finding them). The problem is they all just drop green/blue loot which isn't any better than what you can get through completing quests or challenges. There's little reason to go out of your way to look for them, especially since - due to how weapons and stats work in the game - they each drop an item that is only good for a particular build of a particular class.

They are supposed to retune a lot of the loot in the game, so hopefully rare drops get a pass. I don't think it'd be too difficult to make these types of drops more interesting and sought after. For one, it surprises me how uncommon it is to find items with attunements. You get one in the starter zone then really don't see them again until you start doing Elder Game content. Even passive effects and procs are pretty rare. Then there are things like housing plugs and recipes - both of which are currently just implemented as random global drops, which mean they are only things you can luck into rather than earn. Between GW2 and Wildstar, I don't really understand why there has been this move in MMOs to have these gigantic, worldwide loot tables. It just makes earning loot so uninteresting.

Cantatus_sl said:

Wildstardoeshave rares in every zone with unique loot (RareTrackeris a great way of finding them). The problem is they all just drop green/blue loot which isn't any better than what you can get through completing quests or challenges. There's little reason to go out of your way to look for them, especially since - due to how weapons and stats work in the game - they each drop an item that is only good for a particular build of a particular class.
They are supposed to retune a lot of the loot in the game, so hopefully rare drops get a pass. I don't think it'd be too difficult to make these types of drops more interesting and sought after. For one, it surprises me how uncommon it is to find items with attunements. You get one in the starter zone then really don't see them again until you start doing Elder Game content. Even passive effects and procs are pretty rare. Then there are things like housing plugs and recipes - both of which are currently just implemented as random global drops, which mean they are only things you can luck into rather than earn. Between GW2 and Wildstar, I don't really understand why there has been this move in MMOs to have these gigantic, worldwide loot tables. It just makes earning loot so uninteresting.

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Jboots gave runspeed, pegasus cloak gave levitation and you could click these from your inventory at any level. Even if they give blues off rares in wildstar no one is going back to get them because they are blue at level 50.

There are mobs out in the world that drop pretty good purple items. But no one knows this because most everyone is dumb.

spronk_sl said:

wow, that is shockingly honest in a "man... we really have no clue what we are doing" kinda way. They really did think a ton of people were going to login every week and do big raids like EQ/TBC era, didn't they

They should go listen to Scott @ Trion for a day or something, everything they are saying sounds like stuff Trion said 6 years ago. Didn't Trion focus for a while on their own Instant Adventures (1 player dungeons basically), those were fun I remember but dunno if that really was a popular thing.

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I'm surprised they thought that. Even in EQ, most players were not in high end raiding guilds, nor did they want to be. But EQ had a ton of content for everyone so it didn't matter.

WoW learned that lesson well. They catered to both casuals and hardcore. plus adding viable pvp, and it worked. I am amazed sometimes by how these simple lessons are so misunderstood by the mass of MMO devs. It's like they have willful blinders on.

The reason why Wildstar failed is that the gameworld as a whole is not any more immersive than WoW was 10 years ago. Why did EQ blow our socks off? First 3D MMORPG. Why did WoW trump it? bigger, more seamless game world, tons less "loading" immersion breaks, areas with story and scripted events, natural 1-1 combat feel. Nothing has really out done WoW in this department yet, and until someone does it will continue to be blamed on things like "features" and "hardcore/casual".

Personally I couldn't give a shit about hardcore or casual features, what drove me to unsub and quit were two things:

1) The first zones for exiles were fun, forest and the other one, with several beatiful things, interesting questlines, bit annoying to navigate, but manageable. On the other hand the following zone was boring me to tears, levelling was so bland and uninteresting and the quests were as tedious as possible, beyond the realm of humanly bearable.

2) It must have been my legendary bad luck with pugs, but I couldn't find a decent group to do dungeons, the tanks were averaging okay-ish quality performances, but the dpsers, omg the dpsers... give that my friends lasted even less than me and all we did was the first two dungeons together, the rest made for a miserable experience. I gave up and went back to WoW (again).

This game has the ability to burn people out so fast... Difficulty can be fun if done right. W* did it all wrong, Most of its contents are tedious except the raid encounters.

Grim1_sl said:

WoW learned that lesson well. They catered to both casuals and hardcore. plus adding viable pvp, and it worked. I am amazed sometimes by how these simple lessons are so misunderstood by the mass of MMO devs. It's like they have willful blinders on.

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I think a bigger factor isn't percentages necessarily, but ratio.

In WoW they probably had the same percent of hardcore raiders that WildStar does, probably around 10%. The big difference is WoW had something like 100 million total accounts created as of Jan 2014. If you have 10% of those players paying a sub to do nothing but raid, you can afford to have big teams design a lot of hardcore content for them specifically and not feel a pinch at all. That amount they were spending on designing that content was still extremely cost effective if we assume 149 million dollars was enough to design all their raids over time. At that point it's probably a bad thing if you didn't have them making content for that small amount of players given overall revenue they are still bringing to the game.

WildStar doesn't/didn't even have 1,000,000 subs yet they started off with the vibe of Raid Til You Die, at least in publicity. So once people (the flock) ran through all the regular shit which pretty much for most people means 1-50 once, a little Rockethouse Barbie time and losing 10 matches in PvP, they unsubbed because there was nothing else for them to do. I bet even most of the raiders who wanted to raid unsubbed and didn't finish the Attunements since I didn't hear of any one guild still beating the top content yet to this day.