[Megathread] Wildstar - Now F2P

[Gray_Matter]

It's not really broken, since raids were supposed to be THE hardcore content. Hardcore content is not something 80% of players should be able (or even willing) to do. Now, if only Wildstar delivered any worthwhile content except of raiding and housing...

It's broken from a financial standpoint. There is absolutely no logic in spending any meaningful finances developing content for 2.5% of your clients. While it may have been their intentions and design, it's still broken and not sustainable. My guess is that they overestimated the size of that portion of the player base. The only difference is whether the design is broken or the implementation is broken. In this case, it's the former. The 6500 players who played the content may be very happy with its implementation but the design is still flawed.

[hashtags]

It's not really broken, since raids were supposed to be THE hardcore content. Hardcore content is not something 80% of players should be able (or even willing) to do. Now, if only Wildstar delivered any worthwhile content except of raiding and housing...

& I think this is the exact reason why blizzard implemented normal 10 mans in Wrath and then LFR in cata and flex in MOP. Raids in WoW are significant events. Not only it is one of the most popular activity. It also continues the story. Blizzard didn't wanted a scenario where 95% of the player base never sees the main content.

Yeah I agree if carbine had more content outside of raids it wouldve been great. But they didn't and regardless even if they did. Designing something just so 99% of the playerbase doesnt even see if waste of time and resource. Again hate to bring WOW but I think blizzard did the right thing in WoD. 4 difficulty and each difficulty had a different look set.

[Shambala]

Yeah...there're at least two things you're talking about here, but they're both important. I never have LARPed before, but I have done theater, and it's kind of similar.

It's important to realize that today's MMO's evolved from the first, consensual roleplaying games, which were pen-and-paper games. Even back then, we disliked them, strongly. Even had a name for them, "Munchkins". [....]

Yeah, the difficulty is in making it work, not the game mechanics themselves. Oh sure, there's a ton of challenge in there--one of the very big challenges is that you have two very divisive groups, ones who approach it very much like a sport, like it is "something to win" and another who approach it as though it is "something to play". It's certainly a difficult balance, and I'm not convinced it's ever solvable.

You're right, this did happen in sit-down pen and paper RPGs too. It didn't happen in the runs I GM'ed, which were many, because I wouldn't put up with Munchkins in my runs -- I made it absolutely clear that the game was for everyone to have fun, including me, and anyone trying to make the game all about Him or Her would get booted. And I stuck to my guns. That tended to keep things focused on the group experience. But I've certainly seen Munchkin-ing in games where I was a player, and even saw one novice GM disband his game entirely because he couldn't stop the Munchkins from destroying it. (That was a D&D run where a couple Munchkins claimed they were bored and decided to just randomly kill the rest of the players because "We're neutrals so we can do that if we want!" Obviously the game didn't survive that nonsense.)

It's interesting to equate a certain type of "HARDCORE!" MMO player with Munchkins, but it seems like a good fit to me. It's comprised of folks who don't care about the group experience as a whole as long as they themselves are having a good time, and don't care what their attitude does to the dynamics of the group and to the survival of the game itself. ....Yeah, that sounds like a really good fit.

I'm interested that you say it happened in theater though. How do you "Play to Win" in theater? Refuse to participate if you aren't given a lead role or something? Too good for the chorus?

It's broken from a financial standpoint. There is absolutely no logic in spending any meaningful finances developing content for 2.5% of your clients.

I agree, but the "logic" put forth by Gaffney (and echoed by some people in this thread) is that "Where the Hardcore 1% go, the Casual 99% will follow". I quoted him saying something close to this in a post he made on the official forum before Wildstar launched. Although, to be completely fair, I think his argument was more like "If you don't please the 1%, they bitch so much it drives the casuals away from the game," which isn't quite the same thing -- it's more like he's saying "You have to spend more to keep the 1% happy because they're so hard to please and they get vicious when they're disappointed." So it's possible he meant something more like "You have to spend more to please a finicky customer and keep him from trashing you on Yelp" than "If you make the 1% happy the 99% will be happy because they decide whether a game is good or not based on whether or not the 1% like it."

But no matter how he meant it, it seems clear he vastly overestimated the influence the 1% have on the MMO player base as a whole. Yet it is fascinating that the Hardcores he thought it was so important to please are the same folks who are claiming that "Negative talk ruined Wildstar!" There seems to be a deep persistent myth among a certain group of Wildstar players that a tiny segment of the player base can have a disproportionately large effect on an MMO's success just by what they say on game forums. I don't think the evidence supports this idea at all.

I think that Wildstar's financial performance so far is a great example of what "word of mouth" on an MMO can, and cannot do, for the game's overall success. The hype around Wildstar, which was loudest among the "Hardcores", probably helped push the game's initial sales a lot higher than they would have otherwise been -- so in that sense it's useful to get the fanbois whipped into a frenzy, to get your game out the door and onto people's hard drives. Once the game is out the door, though, retention is based not on what people say on the forums, but on the player's actual experience of play in that game over time, and that opinion does not appear to be affected to any large amount by what's said in the Internet gamesphere. The choice of players to keep playing is not something that depends on what the "Elites" are saying about the game but on how much fun the player himself (or herself) is, or is not, having when they play, and whether or not their friends are also enjoying the game enough to stay and play.

This is something that's different for an MMO than for a standalone game that's B2P. For a B2P, that initial sales push out the door is by far the most important thing. But I think for an MMO, the retention numbers are more important because an MMO hopes to become a long-term thing that people will either stay with, or that they will keep returning to for new content whenever it's available. So while it's always good to get more boxes out the door at launch via the hype machine, an MMO simply can't be sustained on hype. This implies that focusing a ton of money on making the hardcores happy because they fuel the hype machine becomes a lot harder to justify in a business sense.

[Tidezen]

I'm interested that you say it happened in theater though. How do you "Play to Win" in theater? Refuse to participate if you aren't given a lead role or something? Too good for the chorus?

Heh, hopefully that doesn't happen, though theater types are often filled with big egos, or people who want to be the center of attention even if their role doesn't require it. However, I was involved in a competitive acting/speaking club throughout high school. That could get pretty intense at times.

In PnP games it's a little easier to keep munchkining/metagaming out of the equation if you as a GM or your group is explicit about what they want. The relative anonymity of MMOs makes that exponentially more difficult though, plus that fact that it's a mainstream genre now.

I don't know if it's at all economically feasible, but I would very much like if "MMO" became its own separate genre from "MMORPG", the latter being one which expected its players to treat the game world as though they were actually existing inside it, rather than a form of e-sport. I don't think both types of approaches can co-exist peacefully, even though they're both worthy endeavors.

[Deleted]

We all want to be hardcore....We all want to hero's....Most just struggle with the fact it takes effort!
Some play to beat the game, others play fantasy games for a brief escape from real life....there needs to be room for both sets of players!

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Continuing the lore series http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/st...the-nomad.html
comes with some nice desktop wallpaper

[Acidbaron]

No it's not. If I look at the WS raid progress. 324 guilds have downed at least 1 boss in 20 man raids. If we assume that no players played for more than one guild then we are looking at 6500 people killing at least 1 boss. If we take Carbines sub numbers at face value then that's 6500 people out of 250k. Hell, if we are generous and say 10k people than it's still less than 5% of the player base raiding. That is not "working". It's broken.

The format the raids are delivered in wouldn't have changed it if we use the 5 man gold runs as a baseline that people would be willing to do smaller group but challenging content. In any case again the format decreasing in size wouldn't have magically solved anything, unless paired with a nerf across the board. If we simply use silver dungeons as an example that smaller formating everything would solve it.

Their aim was to make raids not easy, they delivered on that therefor those that did the raids regardless of the target audience size were happy with the product on that front.

Their 20 man format is therefor working as it does what it's intended to do regardless if you're unhappy with not being part of that target audience.

[Airlick]

It's broken from a financial standpoint. There is absolutely no logic in spending any meaningful finances developing content for 2.5% of your clients. While it may have been their intentions and design, it's still broken and not sustainable. My guess is that they overestimated the size of that portion of the player base. The only difference is whether the design is broken or the implementation is broken. In this case, it's the former. The 6500 players who played the content may be very happy with its implementation but the design is still flawed.

You are right, obviously, I just think Carbine thought they would have so many players that they could afford to keep developing raids for the very few hardcore and aspiring hardcore players. What I still can't understand is why did they assume the more casual players will be willing to put up with a sub for housing and dailies in rehashed zones, while there free games on the market that deliver both housing and dailies AND more interesting solo content.

[shimargh]

You're right, this did happen in sit-down pen and paper RPGs too. It didn't happen in the runs I GM'ed, which were many, because I wouldn't put up with Munchkins in my runs -- I made it absolutely clear that the game was for everyone to have fun, including me, and anyone trying to make the game all about Him or Her would get booted. And I stuck to my guns. That tended to keep things focused on the group experience. But I've certainly seen Munchkin-ing in games where I was a player, and even saw one novice GM disband his game entirely because he couldn't stop the Munchkins from destroying it. (That was a D&D run where a couple Munchkins claimed they were bored and decided to just randomly kill the rest of the players because "We're neutrals so we can do that if we want!" Obviously the game didn't survive that nonsense.)

It's interesting to equate a certain type of "HARDCORE!" MMO player with Munchkins, but it seems like a good fit to me. It's comprised of folks who don't care about the group experience as a whole as long as they themselves are having a good time, and don't care what their attitude does to the dynamics of the group and to the survival of the game itself. ....Yeah, that sounds like a really good fit.

So with your words, "munchkins" could also be ppl that rushed the game to 50.
Just saying.

[Osmeric]

You are right, obviously, I just think Carbine thought they would have so many players that they could afford to keep developing raids for the very few hardcore and aspiring hardcore players. What I still can't understand is why did they assume the more casual players will be willing to put up with a sub for housing and dailies in rehashed zones, while there free games on the market that deliver both housing and dailies AND more interesting solo content.

I doubt "Carbine" as a collective believed anything. I get a strong sense that their internal processes were such that no such collective rationality could have been expected.

[Airlick]

I doubt "Carbine" as a collective believed anything. I get a strong sense that their internal processes were such that no such collective rationality could have been expected.

Companies are not democratic societies where everyone gets to get their voice heard. By "Carbine" I mean "those who called the shots", since we don't really know how many people were involved in the decision making, we only saw a few frontmen like Gaffney or Frost during interviews and various events.

[Shambala]

So with your words, "munchkins" could also be ppl that rushed the game to 50.
Just saying.

Huh? I'm sorry, I don't see how this follows? I mean, yeah, some of the folks who rushed to 50 are probably MMOnchkins (Hey, I coined a word!) since they had a "WIN!" attitude toward a game that isn't actually winnable. Some possibly aren't, but MMOnchkin is an attitude toward the game not a particular style of play. I had min-maxers in my PnP campaigns who weren't Munchkins, they just liked seeing how far they could stretch the character building system -- since we mostly played Hero System (Champions/Fantasy Hero) and GURPS, the answer to that was always "pretty darn far" since they are point-based, not rolled systems. But they were otherwise good players who didn't try to rules-lawyer every GM decision I made and got along well with the rest of the group, so they didn't qualify as "Munchkins" because they didn't try to remake the entire run to be about their needs only.

Munchkin/MMOnchkin is more about players who are obnoxiously self-focused to the point where they actually damage the game as a whole -- even, in some extreme cases, causing it to shut down. So it's a good analogy to some folks in Wildstar wanting to keep their exclusive raid content played by 400 subscribers even if it means Wildstar has to close doors completely in 18 months.

[Katchii]

The format the raids are delivered in wouldn't have changed it if we use the 5 man gold runs as a baseline that people would be willing to do smaller group but challenging content. In any case again the format decreasing in size wouldn't have magically solved anything, unless paired with a nerf across the board. If we simply use silver dungeons as an example that smaller formating everything would solve it.

Their aim was to make raids not easy, they delivered on that therefor those that did the raids regardless of the target audience size were happy with the product on that front.

Their 20 man format is therefor working as it does what it's intended to do regardless if you're unhappy with not being part of that target audience.

While the raid format may be working as intended, I don't think anyone can really argue that marketing the game to be hardcore and focusing on that particular facet of the game, development wise, when less than 5% of the playerbase is taking part in it would be an absolutely terrible idea because the players who aren't interested in or taking part in that "hardcore" scene won't stick around if that's all this game is for.... and 5% of the current playerbase cannot sustain this game if it remains subscription based.

[Acidbaron]

While the raid format may be working as intended, I don't think anyone can really argue that marketing the game to be hardcore and focusing on that particular facet of the game, development wise, when less than 5% of the playerbase is taking part in it would be an absolutely terrible idea because the players who aren't interested in or taking part in that "hardcore" scene won't stick around if that's all this game is for.... and 5% of the current playerbase cannot sustain this game if it remains subscription based.

From a design perspective it was sold to everyone that there would be more then progression in raids. What you experienced was the difference from what was mentioned on paper and in reality.

Gaffney the GD at the time stated in early pre-launch interviews that multiple paths for different people are needed as casuals are indeed the largest paying playerbase, while raids do however serve their purpose regards to giving people something to aspire to and so on, basically the same line of thought regarding blizzard and WoW.

Touching that raid part now and simply making it easier will get rid of their remaining dedicated playerbase and won't solve their subscription numbers. The problem isn't the raids the problem is the lack of daily/weekly activities for people who don't raid.

[Edge-]

From a design perspective it was sold to everyone that there would be more then progression in raids. What you experienced was the difference from what was mentioned on paper and in reality.

Gaffney the GD at the time stated in early pre-launch interviews that multiple paths for different people are needed as casuals are indeed the largest paying playerbase, while raids do however serve their purpose regards to giving people something to aspire to and so on, basically the same line of thought regarding blizzard and WoW.

Touching that raid part now and simply making it easier will get rid of their remaining dedicated playerbase and won't solve their subscription numbers. The problem isn't the raids the problem is the lack of daily/weekly activities for people who don't raid.

If they're going for a F2P/B2P relaunch positioning themselves as a "hardcore-lite" or "diet-hardcore" game, then it is a big step in the right direction for them.

[Gray_Matter]

The format the raids are delivered in wouldn't have changed it if we use the 5 man gold runs as a baseline that people would be willing to do smaller group but challenging content. In any case again the format decreasing in size wouldn't have magically solved anything, unless paired with a nerf across the board. If we simply use silver dungeons as an example that smaller formating everything would solve it.

Their aim was to make raids not easy, they delivered on that therefor those that did the raids regardless of the target audience size were happy with the product on that front.

Their 20 man format is therefor working as it does what it's intended to do regardless if you're unhappy with not being part of that target audience.

I never said it wasn't working as intended. The design is broken. I am sure its working very close to what they intended it to be during design. IMHO, they overestimated the size of the target audience (probably because the people who make noise are not an accurate reflection of the client base) and overestimated what people are prepared to do.

Its not economically viable to develop content for such a small section of your client base. Blizzard figured that out a long time ago. There is not a single fix to sort things out. Just changing to a flexible raid size will only add a small percentage of players.

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Touching that raid part now and simply making it easier will get rid of their remaining dedicated playerbase and won't solve their subscription numbers. The problem isn't the raids the problem is the lack of daily/weekly activities for people who don't raid.

There is a difference between changing the existing raids and adding new versions of those raids. The exact same content could be used with 19 AI hero players and a single person with different loot or an easier version of the raid created for more casual players. That doesn't take anything away from the more serious players. Its not "touching that raid part" but I hazard a guess that a lot of the more serious players will see it that way.

You have this idea that casual players don't want to raid so there should be lots of activities outside of raiding for them to do. That's not the case. They may want other content but there is no reason why they wouldn't want to do some raiding too. Keeping raiding exclusive to a select few is just silly.

[Deleted]

There is a difference between changing the existing raids and adding new versions of those raids. The exact same content could be used with 19 AI hero players and a single person with different loot or an easier version of the raid created for more casual players.

If I had to do anything with 19 AI's it would probably look something like this

[Tidezen]

If I had to do anything with 19 AI's it would probably look something like this

Funny, that's how I often felt about LFR. XD

[Nosdrone]

WildStar down to $20.

https://shop.wildstar-online.com/pro...itions?lang=en

I don't know of any other MMORPG that has permanently dropped the price so drastically so soon after launch. Yikes.

[RoninaThorstone]

I just looked at my spam folder and found free game time and a 50% off offer for wildstar.

Is everything okay in here?

[Deleted]

WildStar down to $20.

https://shop.wildstar-online.com/pro...itions?lang=en

I don't know of any other MMORPG that has permanently dropped the price so drastically so soon after launch. Yikes.

"50% off" = permanently?

It has already been over 6 months since the launch and WildStar is P2P game anyways.