[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Deleted]

Keep all this talk coming, it's making me want to dust off my old raiding boots

[Keyboard Champion]

So Wildstar is turning into WoW after being proven that their original hardcore "recipe" was actually a recipe for disaster.

I did not see it coming. *sarcasm*

[Shambala]

Just suggested 10 man raids to the subreddit as a tier starter raid for casual players. The response shows how many people don't want that karazhan experience in Wildstar as i describe it.

Reddit Post

Good old Timetravel, still doing his best to make sure Wildstar never approaches financial stability.

[geekx]

Good old Timetravel, still doing his best to make sure Wildstar never approaches financial stability.

Well 20 man being the only supported raid size in the future was a step in the right direction if only we could get some smaller group content that isn't 5 or less people.

I just hope they don't make it easy, i like the difficulty of the game but i would like some small group stuff that's not 5 random people walk into a cave/spaceship/virtual world/infested land.

My reddit post turned into game v game for a bit there too.

[LazarusLong]

Well 20 man being the only supported raid size in the future was a step in the right direction if only we could get some smaller group content that isn't 5 or less people.

I just hope they don't make it easy, i like the difficulty of the game but i would like some small group stuff that's not 5 random people walk into a cave/spaceship/virtual world/infested land.

My reddit post turned into game v game for a bit there too.

With all due respect, I think that 10 man is not the answer for Wildstar. They really need to work of Flex as an easier difficulty.

[Deleted]

With all due respect, I think that 10 man is not the answer for Wildstar. They really need to work of Flex as an easier difficulty.

Flex basically is 10 man, isn't it?

[Osmeric]

Flex basically is 10 man, isn't it?

There is no raid difficulty in WoW called "Flex" anymore. Both Normal and Heroic raid difficulties have the flex mechanic now.

The ability to flexibly add/drop players without great concern (as long as you have enough tanks/healers) is a huge convenience for a guild.

[Acidbaron]

Some people have the notion that "more raiders = taller boss numbers = harder challenge = epicness. That's why they don't want smaller raid scales.

- - - Updated - - -



Obsidian Sanctum experimented Ulduar's idea; the boss was the same on both raid sizes but depending on how he was killed resulted in different ilevel drops. Gave a new dimension of depth to killing bosses. Too bad they didn't do that for more raids, but they do now have the same drops for both raid sizes. All that matters now is the difficultly setting which determines the ilevel.

The notion is the fact that more players up to a point allows for more combination more counters to have to deal with from class specific or abilities angles.
More coordination required in combat required and so on, this all comes down to encounter design on individual player responsibility, if we go out that individual responsibility is equal in both format the greater size will always offer more dynamic and greater challenging content.

How much is the minimum and how much is the maximum size is something only the game developers can correctly evaluated based on the fight mechanics and class mechanics to provide counters, anything else are just requests that fit that person asking it and ignoring everything else, then again people here think LFR is an interesting raid format what says enough with some folks their regard for interesting gameplay.

So gradually shrinking raid sizes to accommodate purely to a request that it's "easier to setup" is not a good way to go about things, there's a reason blizzard didn't make 10 mans base line and just stuck with 20 as 20 was the lowest they could go without starting to chop away in mechanics they wanted to add.

10 mans were easier in WOTLK by default, that's why they worked there and not in Cataclysm where they tried so hard to make them equal creating obvious gaps in difficulty and messing raiding up all together with some fights being harder on 10 and some being harder on 25. Luckly what we assumed then is now proven and that is we cannot simply make multiple formats and expect it to be equal, it can't be done without removing counters from a fight or playing them down significantly.


And yes the lower Itemlevel loot on 10 mans were fine as there were plenty of groups doing just 10 mans with a mixture of 25 mans on off days and it created better in guild management were you had your casual groups running 10 mans tagging together on alt runs of the 25 mans with the more hardcore groups, when you had more experience and time you moved on to the 25 man group if there was room and you wanted to full time and if you had less time you dropped back down. This was also when "itemlevel" requirements were just starting to become a thing and not fully blown out as they are today.

- - - Updated - - -

So Wildstar is turning into WoW after being proven that their original hardcore "recipe" was actually a recipe for disaster.

I did not see it coming. *sarcasm*

In what way is the game turning into WoW, none of the changes i've seen so far suggest this care to elaborate your vague statement with actual details and examples?

[geekx]

The notion is the fact that more players up to a point allows for more combination more counters to have to deal with from class specific or abilities angles.
More coordination required in combat required and so on, this all comes down to encounter design on individual player responsibility, if we go out that individual responsibility is equal in both format the greater size will always offer more dynamic and greater challenging content.

How much is the minimum and how much is the maximum size is something only the game developers can correctly evaluated based on the fight mechanics and class mechanics to provide counters, anything else are just requests that fit that person asking it and ignoring everything else, then again people here think LFR is an interesting raid format what says enough with some folks their regard for interesting gameplay.

So gradually shrinking raid sizes to accommodate purely to a request that it's "easier to setup" is not a good way to go about things, there's a reason blizzard didn't make 10 mans base line and just stuck with 20 as 20 was the lowest they could go without starting to chop away in mechanics they wanted to add.

10 mans were easier in WOTLK by default, that's why they worked there and not in Cataclysm where they tried so hard to make them equal creating obvious gaps in difficulty and messing raiding up all together with some fights being harder on 10 and some being harder on 25. Luckly what we assumed then is now proven and that is we cannot simply make multiple formats and expect it to be equal, it can't be done without removing counters from a fight or playing them down significantly.


And yes the lower Itemlevel loot on 10 mans were fine as there were plenty of groups doing just 10 mans with a mixture of 25 mans on off days and it created better in guild management were you had your casual groups running 10 mans tagging together on alt runs of the 25 mans with the more hardcore groups, when you had more experience and time you moved on to the 25 man group if there was room and you wanted to full time and if you had less time you dropped back down. This was also when "itemlevel" requirements were just starting to become a thing and not fully blown out as they are today.

- - - Updated - - -



In what way is the game turning into WoW, none of the changes i've seen so far suggest this care to elaborate your vague statement with actual details and examples?

TLDR: The idea is to give casual players a different dynamic to raiding instead of trying to make the two sizes equal.

Look at the 10 man model of TBC and you see guilds starting in Kara to build up a core and work from there, the strong guilds survive and progress the weaker ones stagnate and get poached. The same thing can happen inside of a guild where they have a 10 man team of players who want to play casual and the main group for 20 mans, the 10 man team is pretty much the bench for the 20 man.

In wrath players complained they had too much to do so blizzard gave them less to do and they didn't realize it for a while. This also gave benched players less to do and that leads to them quitting the guild and going to 10 man raid guilds. This was the dawn of the death of 25 man guilds where the effort was not worth the reward in most players eyes.

There where so many interesting social dynamics that led to the way WoW is today and how Wildstar can use to same dynamic to hit the sweet spot but not go so far down the road of LFR.

[Katchii]

Flex raiding is one of the best things that could have happened to WoW, and could do wonders for any MMO out there that has a raiding scene, Wildstar included.

Having the flexibility on how many players can be in a raid doesn't take away from the skill required in Wildstar to dodge and work around the mechanics unlike in WoW where adding a few more DPS or healers could potentially trivialize an encounter and allow you to ignore some mechanics. In Wildstar everyone would still have to perform well due to how the mechanics work, it would possibly just go a little faster or slower with fewer or less people, but all of those people would still have to be skilled.

[Pejo]

Flex difficulty is nice, but it is quite difficult to balance punishing encounters around (as we've seen Blizzard moving to a flat 20 for Mythic). It would be a really cool thing to see Wildstar do with its raids that aren't the highest level of current difficulty (flex in GA, 20 in DS), but I still think a flat format between all the raids would be best. However, as I've noted before, they have to give customers a taste of raiding. Their newest raid that is coming int he future should be without attunement and an entry level raid. Since the Augmentors works similar to Obsidian Sanctum, they can do a lot with this to encourage more to get into raiding.

[Deleted]

Just suggested 10 man raids to the subreddit as a tier starter raid for casual players. The response shows how many people don't want that karazhan experience in Wildstar as i describe it.

Reddit Post

Put yourself into the shoes of the game designer instead of as a player.

Forget anything else, especially the almost irrelevant casual-vs-hardcore neverending debate, 10-man raiding is a whole new tier of content - indeed even more, it is a new type of tier. This means:

1. New gameplay content from existing content. Though this step may be grossly underestimated by players, this may even be the least difficult part of the process by a magnitude.
2. Complete reshuffle of endgame itemization to include the new tier. This has proven to be a monstrous, almost game breaking task for Wildstar to date, and you just introduced a huge brand new factor!
3. Reassessment of class: abilities and their upgrade scheduling via upgrades and unlocks against the brand new tier
4. Reassessment of roles: balance, i.e. tanks, healers, dps counts, responsibilities against the brand new tier.
5. Changing game systems to enable access to the new tier. Recall that 20-man and 40-man have separate locations in the game assets where you enter the instances. This new tier is also closer to 5-man, a matchmaking group. Does that mean raiding at this tier can or should be in the matchmaker too?
6. Changing game infrastructure to include 10-man groups and instances.
7. Changing the future of all existing unreleased content developments and all future content plans to insert the brand new tier type.

Finally, keep in mind, devolving from 40-man to 20-man raiding groups could very easily have been planned in from the start because the framework for the fallback are already existing tiers and tier type throughout the game.

In addition, Carbine developers in the past have shown great interest in overhauling the raid lockout system. So, there may be already be serious development plans towards even further significantly reducing roster issues, maybe even to be introduced at the same time as the 40-man to 20-man transition. So, the introduction of a new type of tier would be to satisfy a very different objective entirely.

This is why Carbine have clearly said NO.

[Edge-]

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...wo.html/page/1

So apparently they're just realizing that dungeon/raid tokens to ensure that folks who have bad RNG get gear is a good thing...clown shoes everywhere.

But better rewards for mentoring is nice, yay for that!

- - - Updated - - -

Finally, keep in mind, devolving from 40-man to 20-man raiding groups could very easily have been planned in from the start because the framework for the fallback are already existing tiers and tier type throughout the game.

I'd hardly say that's a devolution. It's a different type of raiding, and one that seems to be far more attractive and successful for players/games, but there's no indication that it's moving backwards. If anything, it's actually moving forward, as raiding changed over time from the 54 in EQ1, to the 40 man in WoW, to eventually 20 and then 10/25 man in WoW, 8/16 man in FFXIV and SWTOR respectively (SWTOR does both, though) etc.

And given how they've been blindsided by everything else so far, I can't even consider a situation where they planned a move from 40 man to 20 man raiding as their largest raid size.

[Deleted]

I'd hardly say that's a devolution. It's a different type of raiding, and one that seems to be far more attractive and successful for players/games, but there's no indication that it's moving backwards. If anything, it's actually moving forward, as raiding changed over time from the 54 in EQ1, to the 40 man in WoW, to eventually 20 and then 10/25 man in WoW, 8/16 man in FFXIV and SWTOR respectively (SWTOR does both, though) etc.

And given how they've been blindsided by everything else so far, I can't even consider a situation where they planned a move from 40 man to 20 man raiding as their largest raid size.

Devolving in the sense of transfer to a strictly lower type not change in objective quality (from better to worse).

Also, whether they forsaw the plan does not change the fact that almost everything to do with that plan is in the existing game compared to creating a new tier type.

[Edge-]

Devolving in the sense of transfer to a strictly lower type not change in objective quality (from better to worse).

I'm not sure how it's a lower type though, outside of the fact that there are fewer players.

Also, whether they forsaw the plan does not change the fact that almost everything to do with that plan is in the existing game compared to creating a new tier type.

It may be that I haven't finished my coffee yet but...I have no idea what this means -_-

[Deleted]

I'm not sure how it's a lower type though, outside of the fact that there are fewer players.

Exactly that.

It may be that I haven't finished my coffee yet but...I have no idea what this means -_-

Then I cannot help you. I've already explained it.

[Acidbaron]

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...wo.html/page/1

So apparently they're just realizing that dungeon/raid tokens to ensure that folks who have bad RNG get gear is a good thing...clown shoes everywhere.

But better rewards for mentoring is nice, yay for that!

- - - Updated - - -



I'd hardly say that's a devolution. It's a different type of raiding, and one that seems to be far more attractive and successful for players/games, but there's no indication that it's moving backwards. If anything, it's actually moving forward, as raiding changed over time from the 54 in EQ1, to the 40 man in WoW, to eventually 20 and then 10/25 man in WoW, 8/16 man in FFXIV and SWTOR respectively (SWTOR does both, though) etc.

And given how they've been blindsided by everything else so far, I can't even consider a situation where they planned a move from 40 man to 20 man raiding as their largest raid size.

Raid tokens was something mentioned early september source and was part of the big overhaul that probably start to resurface now.

And as mentioned before 40 mans were a test, something they wouldn't give up easily but never something they would never give up, this was even mentioned by the "old management"

I know they don't have a good reputation regarding getting things done not even to those in game, but no reason to give credit where it isn't due

[geekx]

I'm not sure how it's a lower type though, outside of the fact that there are fewer players.



It may be that I haven't finished my coffee yet but...I have no idea what this means -_-

It means it would cost less in time and money to just use existing code and developed content rather then starting something new.

[Edge-]

Exactly that.

That's not a devolution, that's just a reduction in size.

Then I cannot help you. I've already explained it.

Fair enough. Hopefully the coffee will kick in and my brain will start working so I can l2 reading comprehension.

Raid tokens was something mentioned early september source and was part of the big overhaul that probably start to resurface now.

Ah, that's still kinda clown shoes, though. I mean, we've had second generation raiding-centric MMO's use some form of badge/points system to supplement player gear acquisition in case of bad RNG for many years now. It blows my mind that a MMO specifically targeted at raiders would not have such a system in at launch.

Unless maybe it wasn't "HARDCORE" enough : P

And as mentioned before 40 mans were a test, something they wouldn't give up easily but never something they would never give up, this was even mentioned by the "old management"

I've seen them say that after the fact, but IIRC all of their pre-launch talk about 40 mans was very confident in its success and didn't indicate any kind of experiment. (just did a quick google search and while the Experiment Whatever raid boss clogged up results, I couldn't find anything pre-launch about 40 man being an experiment)

But even if it was an experiment, I'd have hoped that they'd have had plans to quickly scale things down to 20 should it not pan out. A backup plan, of sorts. And by the time the scaling back happens, it will be around 9 months after launch, which quite a bit of time : /

[geekx]

That's not a devolution, that's just a reduction in size.



Fair enough. Hopefully the coffee will kick in and my brain will start working so I can l2 reading comprehension.



Ah, that's still kinda clown shoes, though. I mean, we've had second generation raiding-centric MMO's use some form of badge/points system to supplement player gear acquisition in case of bad RNG for many years now. It blows my mind that a MMO specifically targeted at raiders would not have such a system in at launch.

Unless maybe it wasn't "HARDCORE" enough : P



I've seen them say that after the fact, but IIRC all of their pre-launch talk about 40 mans was very confident in its success and didn't indicate any kind of experiment. (just did a quick google search and while the Experiment Whatever raid boss clogged up results, I couldn't find anything pre-launch about 40 man being an experiment)

But even if it was an experiment, I'd have hoped that they'd have had plans to quickly scale things down to 20 should it not pan out. A backup plan, of sorts. And by the time the scaling back happens, it will be around 9 months after launch, which quite a bit of time : /

The 40 man being an experiment was just an occasional side note in interviews with Gaffney every now and then during con season. You might have to dig deep to find the quotes but it was said at one point or another.