[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[paralleluniverse]

Eh? November 04 to January 07 is 2 years and 3 months.

Hmm, yes. It seems my counting was wrong. But the point remains that Classic to TBC was the longest period without an expansion, and they had made enough content to release with 2 and a half raid tiers.

[SmokeNicotine]

It is somehow funny that NCSoft finally realized that sickening anime style won't get them far, so they decided to try a Disney-style.

But still, the system requirements are rather exorbitant for a MMORPG with no focus on visual realism. 4 GB RAM? Seriously?

If you don't have a minimum of 4GB RAM in your system by now you're doing it wrong.

[RoninaThorstone]

If you don't have a minimum of 4GB RAM in your system by now you're doing it wrong.

True. 4g RAM is like... 30 bucks. lol.

[Kelimbror]

True. 4g RAM is like... 30 bucks. lol.

And practically mandatory to even use windows and the internet at the same time these days. I would say if you don't have 8G of RAM you are probably doing it wrong. (if you're a gamer/media junkie)

[Deleted]

True. 4g RAM is like... 30 bucks. lol.

or just make up an excuse to buy a new pc for its launch.. waiting on next amd / nvidia cards though tbh

[SirRobin]

Well reading through Carbine's responses to the Patch Q&A brought up something interesting.

We intend to eventually include all habitable countries into various phases of beta, and also Australia.

We won't necessarily colocate servers in all areas though (sometimes we'll be testing latency). Our intent is not to exclude, though. Mostly we'll be removing current restrictions if nothing else.

A note: later stages of beta are about two things: Hitting new peak concurrency ratings (to see what systems break) and building hype (well, all stages are also about feedback). We weren't really trying to build hype up yet, just get enough buzz to have a well-populated beta (hype comes later). So we accidentally got 220K+ beta applicants. Woops.

So sorry for disappointments on not being in this early stage beta, we weren't trying to hook you in - doing so was "friendly fire". We only were shooting for like 20K applicants, that would have been fine for now.

When we do things later like, I don't know, buy our first ad or actually spend money on the hype machine, things will presumably get really crazy. We'll try to do well by our early adopters.

Don't let that stop anyone from going out and revving up the hype with us, though: let's send this puppy viral.

Two hundred and twenty thousand plus Beta apps? LOL

Not bad considering they only have about thirty thousand likes in facebook.

[unholytestament]

Two hundred and twenty thousand plus Beta apps? LOL

Not bad considering they only have about thirty thousand likes in facebook.

A lot of gamers don't really like social media... It tends to be where all the morons hang out.

[Deleted]

Not bad considering they only have about thirty thousand likes in facebook.

PC gamers, especially MMOers, are hardly the kind who would use Facebook as their first port of call for anything.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if this thread and Youtube alone generated much of that interest.

[Kelimbror]

A lot of gamers don't really like social media... It tends to be where all the morons hang out.

I didn't realize MMO-C was considered 'social media'. This is news to me.

Pretty interesting to know they had that many beta apps...also pretty much assures me I won't see this game until it launches. Oh well, good for them. I hope they are prepared for the crazy this game might start to snowball into. It has a lot going for it.

[Fencers]

It doesn't matter how hard the raid is?

No, actually.

Some raid environments might be designed to be difficult by gameplay challenge [mastery in design terms] or statistical barrier, some might not. Those are design choices which are not inherently flawed or intrinsic to the device of a raid in an MMO.

Once again, we have historical evidence of raids which weren't predicated on mastery or statistical advantage wholly or in part. Some raiding environments were just logistical challenges. Some were time limited, quest enabled, guild specific, faction locked, random, accessed by wealth in time or money or contested raiding environments.

Some raids were about getting from point A to B safely. In fact those were the first class of raid as far back as 1999.

All of the above are noted as being exclusionary to some form; can't afford the cost of the environment? Can not raid. No guild? Can not raid. No quest attunement? Can not raid. Et cetera, et cetera.

The intrinsic device a raid serves is to exclude one group while allowing another.

So, no. Difficulty isn't at stake in this discussion for the final time.

[paralleluniverse]

No, actually.

Some raid environments might be designed to be difficult by gameplay challenge [mastery in design terms] or statistical barrier, some might not. Those are design choices which are not inherently flawed or intrinsic to the device of a raid in an MMO.

Once again, we have historical evidence of raids which weren't predicated on mastery or statistical advantage wholly or in part. Some raiding environments were just logistical challenges. Some were time limited, quest enabled, faction locked, random or contested raiding environments.

Some raids were about getting from point A to B safely. In fact those were the first class of raid as far back as 1999.

So, no. Difficulty isn't at stake in this discussion for the final time.

You ignored the other 99% of the post explaining why those are examples of poorly designed and flawed raids. And the fact that you have to go back around 15 years to find those examples shows that we've moved beyond that flawed design.

Exclusivity isn't what makes a raid good. It isn't what makes it fun. Difficulty is. Difficulty, not exclusivity, is what gives beating raids a sense of accomplishment.

[notorious98]

I haven't gone back to read through the thread, but if there's a LFG in this game, I hope they limit it to same server. While I dislike how LFG automatically transports you to the dungeon and kills some of the open world, I understand that people are going to bitch if it's not in-game. But if they're going to implement it, at least keep it to the people you play with. Unless they're going massive single server like ESO. In which case, redact this entire statement.

[paralleluniverse]

I haven't gone back to read through the thread, but if there's a LFG in this game, I hope they limit it to same server. While I dislike how LFG automatically transports you to the dungeon and kills some of the open world, I understand that people are going to bitch if it's not in-game. But if they're going to implement it, at least keep it to the people you play with. Unless they're going massive single server like ESO. In which case, redact this entire statement.

Why choose to artificially lengthen queue times, when you could shorten them?

I think servers are quickly becoming an obsolete concept and ESO has the right idea. WoW also had the right idea with cross-realm zones, but they should have used it in the new zones. I also hear that their cross-realm system has bugs that still need to be smoothed out.

Servers are an artifact of limited computer power, which should be done away with as soon as technically feasible.

[Kelimbror]

redact this entire statement.

Going to do this for you anyways.

Same server queues are awful, half assed implementation of a great feature. Community is not predicated by non existence of an efficient group finder. It also is not forcing you to use it. I'm not even going to go in depth with these arguments. I'm assuming Carbine have studied other games and have enough insight from WoW's success to know that the dungeon aspect of the game is improved by ease of access and not limiting your play from an arbitrary decision that has no positive impact.

Ideally though, designing a group finder that could use both pools would appease both groups. I don't know the logistical nightmare this is for programming however.

[Fencers]

You ignored the other 99% of the post explaining why those are examples of poorly designed and flawed raids.

They were not flawed in any object manner.

The only flaws in video games possible are technical, such as programming bugs and so on. And contradictory rule sets.

Video games are predicated on gameplay. Gameplay is an absolute set of play rules. Contradictory rules are "flawed" in that they cancel each other other. The Catch-22 in other words.

"Flawed" in a personal context or as a matter of opinion is of no value to me or anyone else except the opinion holder.

And the fact that you have to go back around 15 years to find those examples shows that we've moved beyond that flawed design.

I actually don't! I can name a few modern MMOs post 2nd era that have such mechanics!

And they are still in active play, development and receive patches, expansions and so forth.

Exclusivity isn't what makes a raid good.

Very true. No argument otherwise from me.

However, I wasn't talking about subjective "good" raids. I was, if you go back to my initial post, talking about the inherent device & design of a raid. To which exclusion is the device.

That which is otherwise is merely a group of a lower gameplay function.

It isn't what makes it fun.

Irreverent.

Difficulty is. Difficulty, not exclusivity, is what gives beating raids a sense of accomplishment.

Subjective personal feelings. Of no value to me.

[paralleluniverse]

They were not flawed in any object manner.

The only flaws in video games possible are technical, such as programming bugs and so on. And contradictory rule sets.

Video games are predicated on gameplay. Gameplay is an absolute set of play rules. Contradictory rules are "flawed" in that they cancel each other other. The Catch-22 in other words.

"Flawed" in a personal context or as a matter of opinion is of no value to me or anyone else except the opinion holder.

I actually don't! I can name a few modern MMOs post 2nd era that have such mechanics!

And they are still in active play, development and receive patches, expansions and so forth.

Very true. No argument otherwise from me.

However, I wasn't talking about subjective "good" raids. I was, if you go back to my initial post, talking about the inherent device & design of a raid. To which exclusion is the device.

That which is otherwise is merely a group of a lower gameplay function.

Irreverent.


Subjective personal feelings. Of no value to me.

Oh great, now fun is irrelevant.

You seem to be under this impression that game designers make choices, and all choices are equal. And the only way a game can be flawed is if, for some technical reason, they don't deliver on the design choices they've made, because all these choices are equal.

But this is nonsense. Some design choices are better than other design choices. Suppose there are 2 choices, 1 is absolutely known to be fun and 1 is absolutely known to be unfun, and the two are equal in all other respects. It is not the right choice that the designer chooses the unfun option simply because he is intentionally designing an unfun game. And somehow, by your argument, this choice is unimpeachable because he intended the game to be unfun and then it is.

You need to ask yourself what is a game for, if not for fun? And there are good ways to design fun raids that make players feel accomplished and rewarded via difficult content. And then there are bad ways to make raids that artificially exclude for the sake of exclusivity. In the latter case, no accomplishment is derived if what you've beaten wasn't hard. It's not impressive. Are you beating the game? Or are you beating your weekly planner?

Of course, these examples aren't even the logical limit of the absurdity that exclusivity is all that matters for raids. Indeed, one could imagine a raid where entering required a very simple but extremely tedious task, such as mining hundreds of bitcoins or evaluating the Ackermann function, and then the boss drops dead. This is perfectly OK according to the exclusivity doctrine. But is it fun? Is the point of a MMO to beat raid bosses? Or perform very simple but computationally intensive calculations?

I've posted on this topic a while ago on the TeamLiquid forums:

The article touches on one of the most idiotic obsessions of the Diablo 3 whiners: that they prefer the game to be challenging through having convoluted, undocumented and hard to understand game systems, than for the game to be genuinely hard through having hard to beat monsters and bosses.

Ironically, or rather hypocritically, they claim on one hand that Inferno is too hard in the latter sense, but on the other hand, maintaining that the game is dumbed down because it's not hard enough in the former sense.
Last edit: 2012-07-11 23:49:38

Source: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...&currentpage=2

Not all design choices are equal.

Your argument is essentially Moral Relativism: it's not possible to judge whether something is right or wrong. As such, I think we've reached the end of this discussion.

[notorious98]

Going to do this for you anyways.

Same server queues are awful, half assed implementation of a great feature. Community is not predicated by non existence of an efficient group finder. It also is not forcing you to use it. I'm not even going to go in depth with these arguments. I'm assuming Carbine have studied other games and have enough insight from WoW's success to know that the dungeon aspect of the game is improved by ease of access and not limiting your play from an arbitrary decision that has no positive impact.

Ideally though, designing a group finder that could use both pools would appease both groups. I don't know the logistical nightmare this is for programming however.

See, here's where you and I disagree. There are most definitely positive impacts to same server queues. One huge negative to cross realm is that there is no detriment to being a complete douchebag. Back in time, when there was no such thing, you couldn't just run around and act like an asshole in dungeon groups because your realm rep would suffer. Nobody would group with you and you'd wind up having to switch servers or finding a guild willing to put up with your shit.

As for the group finder itself, the open world aspect I mentioned before is a negative. Also, the argument that nobody is forcing you to use it isn't an argument for positivity. In fact, it IS forcing you to use it because there are usually rewards involved with actually using it. Not only that, but the pool of players that are going to actually join your group is much, much smaller because other people are using the random group finder.

I could actually continue on why random group finders are actually detrimental to the social aspect of the game, but there are plenty of people who have already done that. As for WoW's "success", it's largest gains in subscribers have been during periods where there was no such thing as group finder.

---------- Post added 2013-04-16 at 11:46 AM ----------

Why choose to artificially lengthen queue times, when you could shorten them?

There's no actual evidence to prove this is true. Unless you can present some. Otherwise, you're just stating your opinion. The only reason why one server would have a longer queue time would be due to low population whereas there would be another server with a larger population and a shorter queue time. Either way, they'd balance themselves out. If you maintained healthy populations across all servers, you would see no noticeable increase in queue time for a same server LFG tool.

[Valeron]

Are they having separate servers like wow/swtor/rift has them? I thought we were starting to go away from that kind of server structure.

[Zeek Daniels]

Well reading through Carbine's responses to the Patch Q&A brought up something interesting.



Two hundred and twenty thousand plus Beta apps? LOL

Not bad considering they only have about thirty thousand likes in facebook.

considering lots of ppl sign up with more than one email (3 emails for me) 220k isnt much =p

[RoninaThorstone]

See, here's where you and I disagree. There are most definitely positive impacts to same server queues. One huge negative to cross realm is that there is no detriment to being a complete douchebag. Back in time, when there was no such thing, you couldn't just run around and act like an asshole in dungeon groups because your realm rep would suffer. Nobody would group with you and you'd wind up having to switch servers or finding a guild willing to put up with your shit.

Doesn't dota2 have a solution for this? If you act like a dick, you can get reported, and rather then getting banned, you get lower priority in the queue. So it's like, be a dick at your own risk.
I might be wrong, I am getting this second hand from my dota friends.
Either way, that would be a good way to do it. Like a LFG reputation.

OH! Idea, cross between a "report/infract" system and swtors "voting" system. If someone did a really good job, you can vote for them at the end of the instance. To collect votes, you have to vote as well. Votes would add to your "lfg reputation". However, it should only work for people who you did not queue with to prevent guilds from grinding "lfg rep" by voting for each other.

---------- Post added 2013-04-16 at 03:52 PM ----------

Are they having separate servers like wow/swtor/rift has them? I thought we were starting to go away from that kind of server structure.

Yeah... Even rift is basically removing separate server structure.