[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Katchii]

Really, there's no justification at all for spending more than 1% of the game development budget on stuff that only 1% of the players get the benefit of. That's just dumb

I somewhat agree, but there's a lot to be said for having that carrot on a stick (ie super elite gear and content to always strive for but few ever really attain). That is really a driving force for a lot of people in why they pay a sub every month, and is difficult to put a price tag on. If you could easily attain BiS quickly, and you did that... what would your incentive be to continue playing at that point?

[zito]

I somewhat agree, but there's a lot to be said for having that carrot on a stick (ie super elite gear and content to always strive for but few ever really attain). That is really a driving force for a lot of people in why they pay a sub every month, and is difficult to put a price tag on. If you could easily attain BiS quickly, and you did that... what would your incentive be to continue playing at that point?

To.Have.Fun.

Seriously rewards are great, but it doesn't have to be a never ending power gain.

[Acidbaron]

To.Have.Fun.

Seriously rewards are great, but it doesn't have to be a never ending power gain.

What is great for you and is why you like GW2 and i find it an absolute dull mmo with nothing to work for.

Fun is subjective, your "fun" isn't mine and vice versa.

[zito]

What is great for you and is why you like GW2 and i find it an absolute dull mmo with nothing to work for.

Fun is subjective, your "fun" isn't mine and vice versa.

I really haven't played GW2 since the break, it's fun for kill time but it's not exactly what I am looking for. It's just so easy to jump in and out of that I still play. If it's fun for you to have power gains great, there are games like Diablo designed to be exactly like that, but why is power gains the driving force to pay a sub in an MMO every month? Why are power gains the driving force in MMOs? It doesn't have to be because they aren't necessarily designed to be so (like games such as diablo which are designed with that in mind) - it's just a side effect in MMOs.

Anet is probably one of the few company's who realized this early on with GW1 and further exploited this in GW2 that the power gain was a self inflicting plague.

[Shambala]

Beyond that why is that type of player good to have in a mmo? They are the dedicated crowd, the crowd that makes guides, the crowd that theory crafts and the crowd that tries out things and gives you interesting alternate views on content (such as the whole soloing raid things in WoW)

Game design isn't a democracy and focus is already heavily put on casual content in most if not all mmo's.

The dedicated crowds are the ones who bitch on forums and send death threats to developers when they change weapon specs in COD. Developers do not like the "dedicated" fans. Not one bit. And rightfully so. They like the folks who come in, play the game, pay their subs, and bring their friends on board because they're having a good time.

And it's not a democracy. It's a business. A business that depends on a large number of people consuming the product. Which means if you want a large portion of the user base to play your game...yeah, it's a democracy. Majority rule. Definitely. If you're okay with having a niche product, or if you are privately funded -- go nuts and go broke on your own dime or the dimes of your investors. But if you want a decent market share, give the people what they want.

As for the guides: Games used to make significant chunk of bank off the sale of professionally produced game guides. They lost a nice chunk of revenue when GameFaQs became a thing. You think they like that?

And honestly...theorycrafting?? 99% of MMO players have no idea what that even is, and if you told them that they needed to come up with spreadsheets and analyze them in order to get the most fun out of a video game, they would quite rightly regard you as nuts.

("I theorycraft Angry Birds!" "What does that mean?" "I run projections with expensive physics simulation software on the levels so I can kill pigs in the most efficient way possible!" "...Um. Okay...I'll just, uh, be backing away slowly without making eye contact...")

You really think theorycrafting is somehow beneficial to a game? I could make a good argument that it's detrimental as it results in everyone using the same damned cookie cutter class build and refusing to play with anyone who uses anything other than the mathematically optimized accepted "right" build.

Everything you claim is a positive that the 1% bring to MMOs is, in my opinion, actually a negative that the community would be better off without. You think people would stop playing MMOs if people stopped putting up raid videos? Raid videos had nothing to do with why MMOs came to exist and MMOs would survive fine without them.

[Gray_Matter]

That wasn't a toxic comment, unless any comment that doesn't put all players of all types in a positive light are instantly deemed toxic.
My comment was aimed at people who's reaction to instead try again when being unsuccessful blame the game, it's a mentality i despise and something you see in every mmo once something is released that takes a minimal amount of coordination and team work to complete it, cause nobody benefits from things being pushovers content wise, it was a correct comment to make in the context.

The big issue is that it's not a player problem. It's a game problem. There are all types of players, if a game doesn't cater for a player type then the game is the one with the problem, not the player. There are a lot of players who don't have the skill or ability or even patience to step up. If the game doesn't suit them as a player then that's fine but it's still a limitation with the game that they don't cater for that type of player.

Beyond that, i led and guided social groups when being #hardcore, people who show effort and are willing to improve rarely to never have to take comments from the 1% in a toxic tone (you have some special cases but those aren't the norm). I gladly helped people if they accepted it was a two way street. I have people in my bnet list that still do well on the world rankings and i've never seen them become toxic when asked something.

Perhaps your experiences are different because of the side of the fence you are on. My experiences have been very different. Perhaps it's also something that Shambala said on the previous page and that it's the tryandbe's that are the ones belittling people.

I have seen one person in WOW start a raid group for the sole purpose of helping others learn the fights and one other who was running around boosting randoms as a tank in Cata. Those are the only two instances where I can remember a top notch player helping others out of the goodness of their own heart. For the most part, the complain about scrubs and noobs and try their utmost to avoid those players.

Do you want me to explain to you how to use SimC correctly? why this ability is preferred above that one in a certain scenarios i'll gladly answer that in detail, just don't expect me to pre-chew all information and feed it to you. I would be doing people a disservice by also helping them that way in my opinion.

I have done my fair share of number crunching and simming in the past. I have also helped guild members on that side of things. A lot of people don't even know about simming.

I also found that nowadays even when telling people something or giving them advice their response in general is rather hostile.

Again, my experience has been completely the opposite.

Would you say forums like elitistjerks.com that give you infractions for asking basic comments that are easily answered by a google search to be toxic? I wouldn't.

I love elitistjerks. I have asked and answered a few questions there in the past and even got an infraction for saying thanks. It's a forum that caters for a specific audience. That's fine. Sure it's a limitation but they don't need millions of users to survive like games do.

Or perhaps i just come from an older generation of gamers that didn't read every comment they got on their playstyle as a personal insult, cause there's a lot of that going around in games lately..

ps: top players aren't toxic, it's the folk that's average at best and think they are "awesome" that are often the most verbally abusive towards others.

I am also old school. I have played games (and written a few) for over 25 years and before that Bubble Bubble in the arcade and going way back to Frak on the BBC micro. It may be that a lot of the toxic people are wanna be's. I do know a few top players that were toxic so it's not an exclusively wanna be club. That said, I also don't see many top level players coming out and defending the casual players against those comments.

[Acidbaron]

I really haven't played GW2 since the break, it's fun for kill time but it's not exactly what I am looking for. It's just so easy to jump in and out of that I still play. If it's fun for you to have power gains great, there are games like Diablo designed to be exactly like that, but why is power gains the driving force to pay a sub in an MMO every month? Why are power gains the driving force in MMOs? It doesn't have to be because they aren't necessarily designed to be so (like games such as diablo which are designed with that in mind) - it's just a side effect in MMOs.

It's the constant character "advancement" as obtaining gear is much like leveling in a persistent world that i find appealing. Diablo 3 also provides no real world or challenge in the same way mmo's do. It is very much a solo game to lobby game.

I don't think that power gain was ever a side effect as as long i can recall and this goes back to a time before WoW came out mmo's were always about advancing your character through experience and gear.

[Shambala]

What is great for you and is why you like GW2 and i find it an absolute dull mmo with nothing to work for.

Fun is subjective, your "fun" isn't mine and vice versa.

The issue is not that different people find different things fun.

With regard to Wildstar, the issue is that not enough people find your thing fun for the game to thrive.

I've said it before and I'm going to keep saying it until you hear (which I suspect will be never but hope springs eternal...) You are not just allowed to have your own tastes and support them, but actively encouraged to do so.

But when a limited number of people like what you like, you're going to have to be content with niche products. The mass market will not support you.

And whining that you somehow deserve mass market support for a niche playstyle preference because the playstyle of the filthy casual is an inferior playstyle to yours is just odious.

[Acidbaron]

The dedicated crowds are the ones who bitch on forums and send death threats to developers when they change weapon specs in COD. Developers do not like the "dedicated" fans. Not one bit. And rightfully so. They like the folks who come in, play the game, pay their subs, and bring their friends on board because they're having a good time.

No, they don't. I'm going to leave you with your twisted view on this and feel almost obliged to say.

"could you point on the dolly where the hardcore player touched you?" Cause i haven't seen that much misguided hatred on forums in a long time against a player group.

Please don't post just to insult others.

[zito]

It's the constant character "advancement" as obtaining gear is much like leveling in a persistent world that i find appealing. Diablo 3 also provides no real world or challenge in the same way mmo's do. It is very much a solo game to lobby game.

I don't think that power gain was ever a side effect as as long i can recall and this goes back to a time before WoW came out mmo's were always about advancing your character through experience and gear.

Maybe side effect was a poor choice of words but I'll stick with it. It still ended up being the default action though - you don't need a power gain for character advancements. I'll also argue you don't need leveling either but leveling is less... impact-full then the power gain after leveling. We could look at Diablos paragon system as an example, increasing movement speed, increasing gold find. These arn't power gains yet you are advancing your character development.

[VincentWolf]

I somewhat agree, but there's a lot to be said for having that carrot on a stick (ie super elite gear and content to always strive for but few ever really attain). That is really a driving force for a lot of people in why they pay a sub every month, and is difficult to put a price tag on. If you could easily attain BiS quickly, and you did that... what would your incentive be to continue playing at that point?

Ancient dying model. Wow is the last remnant of it's long-gone success. If any mmo will ever be successful again, it will not have gear grind, that very "super elite gear and content to always strive for but few ever really attain" thing. It's a relic of the past and nobody wants to, or has time to work on it, yet nobody would play a game without absolute knowledge that they can get the bis gear. My facts? All the recent mmos, and specifically, Wildstar's flops. I myself remember going into new tier of gear and wondering how much work and time it will take for me to obtain this ultimate weapon, that drops only from the very last boss, on a hardest setting. It was not fun. It was horrible. I do not wish to experience it again. Apparently most people don't want it either, or Wildstar would've been a success.

[Shambala]

You say that you know i'm not talking about that exploit yet you continue in your post acting as if i do to try to make some sort of a point. Cause that last sentence of you makes absolutely no sense knowing that.

This thread was discussing the garden bug and you stepped in and wrote:

All top end guilds in any game exploit to the point they know they can get away with it.

If you weren't referring to the garden bug, what were you talking about in that post when you referred to "any game exploit"? Because that's the only exploit that was being discussed, so once again I'm having trouble following your point.

[zealo]

No, the same concept does not apply. Ten man content in WoW was designed out of the gate for ten man in mind scaling up with a few differences.

Whereas the raiding content in most of Wildstar is clearly designed for 20-man, scaling up to 40-man in a few situations. In fact, there are far more situations in Datascape (the 40-man raid) that, were it not for soft or hard enrages, can be done, often more easily, in 20-man than 40-man. For example, an awful lot of incoming raid damage mechanics in Datascape take advantage of the difficulty of coordinating movement between 40 people, especially dangerous overlapping personal "telegraphs", rather than mechanics specifically requiring 40-man configurations.

I know that. But that's not really relevant to what i am talking about here.

I was more hinting at logistics and management outside of the raid instance with officers and guild masters, coming from someone who has actually been leading a guild there is a lot of work going into it that the average raider never really notices behind the scenes, that is a lot more manageable with 10 man raids in comparison to "20", which i put into quotation marks because any decent raid guild will need 25 to 30 players in its roster to reach a reliable level as opposed to the 12-13 in 10 mans.

If Carbine realises what is going on inside the instance isn't the only aspect to a successful raiding scene remains to be seen though.

[Katchii]

Nope, sorry, I don't buy that. It's like saying "Anyone can get into yachting! It's a sport for everyone!" when getting "into" yachting requires purchasing a very expensive yacht (or getting on a team with someone who owns said yacht.) If you set the bar for participation in something at a level of commitment that is unreachable for the majority of people, you're being exclusive, and you know it. Many, many things are priced way higher than is reasonable specifically to bring in the "Not everyone can afford our things! Only the very best class of people!" crowd. This is the same deal. Saying "All you have to do is divorce your spouse, neglect your kids, and lose your job to play all of our game!" is definitely creating an inferior subclass of player.

Your analogy is a bit off, in the sense that in this case everybody already has yachts (has the game) so the only thing missing is a team of people and the time needed to participate. Some people don't have the time because their work schedule doesn't accommodate it or their team has conflicts and you don't want to do it with a different team.

That's not exclusivity, because everyone has access, but events need to happen at certain times on specific days that some people just can't schedule around.

To.Have.Fun.

Seriously rewards are great, but it doesn't have to be a never ending power gain.

Fair enough, everyone plays for different reasons, I completely agree. I'd still wager that for people to have fun they need to be doing something they feel is productive (gaining mounts, getting BiS gear, pet battles, etc...). My point is if people are able to meet their personal goals easily and quickly and therefore have nothing left to gain by logging in and playing, it's not likely they'll continue to log in and play. Without the carrot, whatever that may be for a specific person, they'll stop or look elsewhere for a new carrot.

[Acidbaron]

The big issue is that it's not a player problem. It's a game problem. There are all types of players, if a game doesn't cater for a player type then the game is the one with the problem, not the player. There are a lot of players who don't have the skill or ability or even patience to step up. If the game doesn't suit them as a player then that's fine but it's still a limitation with the game that they don't cater for that type of player.



Perhaps your experiences are different because of the side of the fence you are on. My experiences have been very different. Perhaps it's also something that Shambala said on the previous page and that it's the tryandbe's that are the ones belittling people.

I have seen one person in WOW start a raid group for the sole purpose of helping others learn the fights and one other who was running around boosting randoms as a tank in Cata. Those are the only two instances where I can remember a top notch player helping others out of the goodness of their own heart. For the most part, the complain about scrubs and noobs and try their utmost to avoid those players.



I have done my fair share of number crunching and simming in the past. I have also helped guild members on that side of things. A lot of people don't even know about simming.



Again, my experience has been completely the opposite.



I love elitistjerks. I have asked and answered a few questions there in the past and even got an infraction for saying thanks. It's a forum that caters for a specific audience. That's fine. Sure it's a limitation but they don't need millions of users to survive like games do.



I am also old school. I have played games (and written a few) for over 25 years and before that Bubble Bubble in the arcade and going way back to Frak on the BBC micro. It may be that a lot of the toxic people are wanna be's. I do know a few top players that were toxic so it's not an exclusively wanna be club. That said, I also don't see many top level players coming out and defending the casual players against those comments.

Yes and No, there has to be content for everyone however not everything that requires some effort should instantly be seen as bad content. Casual to me means one thing only "limited in time" a good group of casual players have no reason to not be able to clear all the content the rest does if willing to put effort in it what everyone else that wants to get things done have to do.
There's however to be some sort of an ideology that everything that takes time and coordination is "bad" design, i find that to be a very wrong notion.

Mind you we all were sold that there would be 3 progression paths for 3 different type of players in wildstar and that's why i found nothing wrong with harder group content and more locked off raids cause there was suppose to be something there, it never came and that's when the snow ball started to roll down.

Look at this logically, if you are a top player there's two things you generally got, access to all content and good groups to do that content.
So a player in that part of the game won't be as easily frustrated as they already have achieved what they wanted. It's when you can't get things done that's when frustration sets in and manifests itself in toxic behavior. I am however not saying that everyone is always a reasonable and calm person all the time.

Look at WoW, how silly are the requirements people put on itemlevel regards to raids, would good players need that over the top itemlevel advantage to get something done? Nope, also so far i know they hardly pug with anyone outside of their circles. At most you'll see them in a 5 man or a PvP map and well yes PvP brings out that special type of rage in everyone at a certain point.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe side effect was a poor choice of words but I'll stick with it. It still ended up being the default action though - you don't need a power gain for character advancements. I'll also argue you don't need leveling either but leveling is less... impact-full then the power gain after leveling. We could look at Diablos paragon system as an example, increasing movement speed, increasing gold find. These arn't power gains yet you are advancing your character development.

Can be, i personally find that once the "cap" is reached in any mmo the game has ended for me. Paragon is what generally is seen as Alternative Advancement what is indirectly leveling.

Doesn't paragon also give you other extra stats? Fairly certain you can increase you base stat with it and combat stats what does make it a power gain.

[Deleted]

<snip>

Your first response to Edge is provably wrong. If you honestly think the majority of Wildstar raiders, the "1%" of Wildstar, no-lifed their way 24/7 or by whatever reasonable definition you care to use, into the endgame, including Datascape, you are sadly mistaken. Most raiders are the same as any other MMO player or gamer you know. The only difference is the amount of focussed and informed effort, as well as leveraging of social connections in game (often nothing more special than zone LFG players and Guilds), towards the specific game goals.

The rest is almost always just the backing of veteran guild management players and their guild organization resources, i.e. website and comms, who again are little different than any other MMO player in terms of committment (otherwise how do you think they can afford to obtain and maintain these resources, or even have the experience of managing other people?).

There are less than a handful of truly hardcore guilds in Wildstar, i.e. a level of committment that precludes any form of work-life balance. Even some of these endgame streamers are rarely no-lifers or "professional" gamers.

In addition, oddly enough, once you get over the basic attunement goals (most of which are solo oriented), it was far easier to become raid-ready in Wildstar than in almost any other existing MMO, until the very latest drop that nerfed crafting. There was basically ZERO gear grind.

You comparison to Harvard is completely misplaced. There is no comparison between the very many variables present in real life as well as huge social walls, restrictions, biases, and economics of earning a place in a top academic organization, compared to leveling, gearing yourself up and applying for a raiding spot in the endgame of an MMO. You are not going to find many things in life more meritocratic, other than other games...

======

As for you second point, yes, you are correct. Word of mouth from other players that enjoy the game is far more important than a subset of the "1%" streaming/utubing their game.

That said, timing of huge marketing drives may be no less important. I do not believe any other MMO publisher has put more into TV advertisment than Blizzard for World of Warcraft right from the very beginning of the game. These marketing campaigns are well-known all over the Western world and extremely successful. I posit there were just as many players pulled into the game from these trailers and ads, perhaps many more at the time, than by just word of mouth.

[Shambala]

Ancient dying model. Wow is the last remnant of it's long-gone success. If any mmo will ever be successful again, it will not have gear grind, that very "super elite gear and content to always strive for but few ever really attain" thing. It's a relic of the past and nobody wants to, or has time to work on it, yet nobody would play a game without absolute knowledge that they can get the bis gear. My facts? All the recent mmos, and specifically, Wildstar's flops. I myself remember going into new tier of gear and wondering how much work and time it will take for me to obtain this ultimate weapon, that drops only from the very last boss, on a hardest setting. It was not fun. It was horrible. I do not wish to experience it again. Apparently most people don't want it either, or Wildstar would've been a success.

Yeah, I agree. The FFXIV community is pretty grumbly about the annoyance of the Relic/Atma/Animus/Nexus/Novus grind. "What do we have to do to upgrade the weapon THIS time? Farm WHAT? ...ah screw it." Every day there are dozens of gripes in my FC chat channel about grinding FATEs and grinding books, all to have "the best" weapon. Most folks just give up on it because who needs it...they'd rather just fish.

I see the group online gaming base splitting into two communities, effectively -- one the competitors, who split off to MOBAs where they can compete, and one the socializers, who split toward the more cooperative MMORPGs to enjoy the world and goof off with friends in a lighthearted way. While there will always be some overlap, effectively there are two different groups of people who want different things. I don't think they'll ever unite in a single MMO game again, and that's probably a really good thing.

[zito]

Doesn't paragon also give you other extra stats? Fairly certain you can increase you base stat with it and combat stats what does make it a power gain.

I was taking points from the non power gain side of paragon leveling, it doesn't have to be the same but I'm just stating it can be done without the power gain. The power gain is also fairly minimal.

[Gray_Matter]

If they leave it there, yes...it makes no sense. But if they implement a 1% feature with the goal of adding things to increase participation, it's a long term and intelligent investment. Blizzard is experimenting. I thought LFR was fine, but it caused so much drama they have sorta swung the other way. Flex is phase 2 in the experiment, which I believe will still allow for the engagement levels to stay high.

It's just going to be another one of those things that Blizzard figures out and everyone else tries desperately not to copy, even though they need to do it ASAP. If Wildstar had scaling content, more than one difficulty mode, and a smattering of solo content..bam...instant success. It would not be where it is now. It may be too late to get there quickly, but hopefully the game looks similar in 2 years.

The limitation with flex is still that you can't do things in bite size chunks. I would say that WS needs to have that as well for the instant success. For the modern casual player and the way games are progressing, you can't require that people spend 3-4 hours online for something like raids. The more serious players have no problem with that, the casuals have reams of things where they can get a much quicker "fix". A flex type of situation should be something that you can pop into for an hour and continue 3 days later when you get another hour or two gap.

[Acidbaron]

Ancient dying model. Wow is the last remnant of it's long-gone success. If any mmo will ever be successful again, it will not have gear grind, that very "super elite gear and content to always strive for but few ever really attain" thing. It's a relic of the past and nobody wants to, or has time to work on it, yet nobody would play a game without absolute knowledge that they can get the bis gear. My facts? All the recent mmos, and specifically, Wildstar's flops. I myself remember going into new tier of gear and wondering how much work and time it will take for me to obtain this ultimate weapon, that drops only from the very last boss, on a hardest setting. It was not fun. It was horrible. I do not wish to experience it again. Apparently most people don't want it either, or Wildstar would've been a success.

That super elite raid gear can be obtained by raiding twice a week for a total of 7 hours.
Wildstar didn't flop due to that to even further comment on it, you don't raid in wildstar for gear it's reward system was so out of whack that several crafted items were higher on the BiS list then raid drops were especially looking at loot from the first floor.

It's fine that that is how you experienced raiding, for me raid loot was always a by product of raiding. The fun of progressing with a good group is a larger pull for me then any raid item ever was. It is important to have something to show for for your efforts to feel you got something physical out in sense of reward.

On top of that you had the story unfolding in raids.