128127-feedback-returning-player-wod-defector

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Feedback  from returning player:
 
Hey guys! I'm back from a long disappointing hiatus with WoW. Not going to lie, the game is in much better shape now than it was at launch, but still some nagging issues. I'm glad it's going f2p I hope it picks up steam. It was a good game, but some of these fixes would make it great.
 
Anywho here goes with my list:
 
1. RnG - Vet War of the Wilds Gold run still doesn't award purple. I get that in the past people would quit adventure early, but now why even bother completing it at all? Also the RNG is down-right brutal.
 
a. rng to get a purple
b. rng to get the purple you want
c. rng to get the stats you want
d. rng on number of sockets you want
e. rng on socket you want (on each socket)
 
I get that this may no longer be the optimal gearing path but most players (originals+new) are going to assuming pve gearing path is shiphand->adventure->dungeons->raids. Getting a mediocre version of the item you want feels more like punishment than the rewarding feeling when you get the one you want. Right now statistically its skewed much more heavily on punishment side. It doesn't add "replayability" just leads to burnout, frustration, and ultimately surrender.
 
2. Amp/Ability Point acquisition is still frustrating. Its way way better than elder point grind for 11 months, but still just feels wonky to be at disadvantage at level cap and have it not be gear related. Also, as better as it is now, it still really sucks for alts. Unless those gold medal (dungeon/shiphand/etc.) + rep requirements are achievement and account bound, its pretty much not even worth leveling an alt and expecting it to be competitive. This hurts the overall re-playability and longevity of the game for some players. 
 
Reasons 1+2 are the reasons I quit the game originally. Its in a better state, but again stil feels grindy. Grinds are ok the first time, but very few people will want to repeat them. Its better than at launch, but still could be improved significantly.
 
3. What is the optimal gearing path now? Its really really confusing. Like 10 different currencies that are hard to distinguish with ilvls that are hard to keep track of. You need to consolidate some of these, are they all necessary?
 
4. PvP is in a wonky place. Practice bgs don't really feel like they need to exist at all (just a queue to accidentally click and get stuck waiting indefinately on). Every vendor sells the same PvP gear with the same stats and colors but a different name, so why have so many of them? Its just confusing (conq, militant, warlord). I get that you may bring this back at some point but why now? Why not a 2 currency system like WoW? Don't knock taking good ideas from other gams, WoW has made a killing doing it for the last 10 years (compare garrisons to your housing - garrisons are a mediocre version of wildstar housing)
 
5. Shiphands are cool now but a little confusing. You can clear it solo, but the waypoint constantly said "waiting for more players". So I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do until I started clearing and realized I could solo it at level. So then I was like why does it still say "waiting for more players" even after I was half way through it? It's just unnecessarily confusing.
 
6. The ui is a little frustrating. Why is my inventory window so small? It takes up less than 50% vertical space and maybe 20% horizontal space. I get you can use addons probably to make it bigger, but why isnt it just bigger in game. If I die due to being an idiot and leaving it open in combat then that should be my own fault. Meanwhile in town I'm stuck scrolling. It feels like the inventory window is optimized for a cell phone (seriously its about the width of my galaxy s4 and literally shorter - despite my 24' monitor - sigh).
 
7. Bug - For some reason leaving tutorial area always causes client to lag to the point of having to restart the game. Its happened on 3 consecutive toons on different nights. You need to get on this as this happens super early into gameplay.
 
8. Bug - the "C" communicator button seems to sound arbitrarily sometimes and clicking it doesn't always bring up the mission. Also happens really early on.
 
Anywho those are my initial observations after about 4 days back. I will update the list as I come across more pet-peeves.
 
I hope the devs really listen this time. This was a great game with so much potential.
 
Humble-bundle + F2P really are a good opportunity to turn it around if they can do it right.
 	
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4. Don't que for pbgs, que for rbgs instead.
6. You can just stretch it.
But I do agree about amp and ability points.	
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4. Don't que for pbgs, que for rbgs instead.
6. You can just stretch it.
But I do agree about amp and ability points.
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Practice bgs don't really feel like they need to exist at all (just a queue to accidentally click and get stuck waiting indefinately on). 
 
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Feedback  from returning player:
 
Hey guys! I'm back from a long disappointing hiatus with WoW. Not going to lie, the game is in much better shape now than it was at launch, but still some nagging issues. I'm glad it's going f2p I hope it picks up steam. It was a good game, but some of these fixes would make it great.
 
Anywho here goes with my list:
 
1. RnG - Vet War of the Wilds Gold run still doesn't award purple. I get that in the past people would quit adventure early, but now why even bother completing it at all? Also the RNG is down-right brutal.
 
a. rng to get a purple
 
with this we avoided the Gold or bust mentality so this was a good one call 
 
b. rng to get the purple you want
 
have been that way since everquest, not everytime its for you
 
c. rng to get the stats you want
 
all superb gear have fixed stats so dont know what are you talking about
 
d. rng on number of sockets you want
 
you can add extra sockets, example got a superb gear with 3 sockets you can add 2 extra with an ingame item, got one with just 4 sockets you can add 1 extra
rare gear can up to 4 sockets, suberb gear to 5 sockets and legendary gear to 7 sockets
 
e. rng on socket you want (on each socket)
 
almost all sockets are good on all classes, but if you still got that logic slot on your warrior you can buy an influx to change the element of that exact socket
 
I get that this may no longer be the optimal gearing path but most players (originals+new) are going to assuming pve gearing path is shiphand->adventure->dungeons->raids. Getting a mediocre version of the item you want feels more like punishment than the rewarding feeling when you get the one you want. Right now statistically its skewed much more heavily on punishment side. It doesn't add "replayability" just leads to burnout, frustration, and ultimately surrender.
 
2. Amp/Ability Point acquisition is still frustrating. Its way way better than elder point grind for 11 months, but still just feels wonky to be at disadvantage at level cap and have it not be gear related. Also, as better as it is now, it still really sucks for alts. Unless those gold medal (dungeon/shiphand/etc.) + rep requirements are achievement and account bound, its pretty much not even worth leveling an alt and expecting it to be competitive. This hurts the overall re-playability and longevity of the game for some players. 
 
you can adquire by pvping, i got full on amps and abil ones in my alt in like a week of pvp
 
3. What is the optimal gearing path now? Its really really confusing. Like 10 different currencies that are hard to distinguish with ilvls that are hard to keep track of. You need to consolidate some of these, are they all necessary?
 
renown: do stuff ith your friends, anything and earn currency to spend in whatever you want from costumes to gear (not so powerful gear)
glory: do dungeons or raids, buys gear, mounts or toys (powerfull gear)
Elder gem: something to cap weekly, you can use it for fluffyness,  or amps and ability points or attunement key
prestige: pvp gear currency
war tokens: warplot money for warplot stuff
 
platinum: just money
 
the optimal gearing path is vet shiphands> shiphand renown gear> vet adventures=adventure renown gear> SSM regular> glory gear>vet dungeons T1=dungeon glory gear> vet dungeons t2> raid glory gear >raids 
 
 
4. PvP is in a wonky place. Practice bgs don't really feel like they need to exist at all (just a queue to accidentally click and get stuck waiting indefinately on). Every vendor sells the same PvP gear with the same stats and colors but a different name, so why have so many of them? Its just confusing (conq, militant, warlord). I get that you may bring this back at some point but why now? Why not a 2 currency system like WoW? Don't knock taking good ideas from other gams, WoW has made a killing doing it for the last 10 years (compare garrisons to your housing - garrisons are a mediocre version of wildstar housing)
 
wildstar pvp is now like: we give you the gear to all so you use your skills, we dont play pvp for gear (but for flufyness) because everyone is in the same level so skill its the matter of fact (you can min max by runes but nothing more) 
before the 1800 geared people will roflstomp on everybody and wasnt funny now we all have the gear and feels like more balanced
 
5. Shiphands are cool now but a little confusing. You can clear it solo, but the waypoint constantly said "waiting for more players". So I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do until I started clearing and realized I could solo it at level. So then I was like why does it still say "waiting for more players" even after I was half way through it? It's just unnecessarily confusing.
 
its escalable content from 1 to 5 players you can queue and do it solo or do it with friends and the place will scale depending on the number of players inside
 
6. The ui is a little frustrating. Why is my inventory window so small? It takes up less than 50% vertical space and maybe 20% horizontal space. I get you can use addons probably to make it bigger, but why isnt it just bigger in game. If I die due to being an idiot and leaving it open in combat then that should be my own fault. Meanwhile in town I'm stuck scrolling. It feels like the inventory window is optimized for a cell phone (seriously its about the width of my galaxy s4 and literally shorter - despite my 24' monitor - sigh).
 
you can make this bigger with addons, some people like me prefer it that way it looks better in aestethic terms.
 
7. Bug - For some reason leaving tutorial area always causes client to lag to the point of having to restart the game. Its happened on 3 consecutive toons on different nights. You need to get on this as this happens super early into gameplay. 
 
you should scale this issue on bug reports and give more precise data, yesterday i leveled an alt to 10 to help a friend and didnt feel that way (exile side)
 
8. Bug - the "C" communicator button seems to sound arbitrarily sometimes and clicking it doesn't always bring up the mission. Also happens really early on.
 
im with this one with you i liked the old comm, now you have to open your quest log to fulfill this
 
Anywho those are my initial observations after about 4 days back. I will update the list as I come across more pet-peeves.
 
I hope the devs really listen this time. This was a great game with so much potential.
 
Humble-bundle + F2P really are a good opportunity to turn it around if they can do it right.
 
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Welcome back!
 
I'll try to answer as many of these as I can.
 
 
1 + 3: The optimal gearing path has changed a great deal since the early days, and the logical shiphands > adventures > dungeons > raids progression doesn't necessarily happen that way anymore. The shiphands themselves don't drop much in terms of gear (aside from a decent gadget if you get one that has good stats for your class); instead, there's a vendor that sells gear for Renown that you can purchase once you have completed each veteran shiphand. That gear, plus crafted blue items, plus whatever you can pick up on the cheap from the auction house is enough to get you started in dungeons. In terms of running adventures for actual gear, that doesn't really happen anymore. Most people will do the adventures as part of their attunement process and then move on. The BIS pre-raid gear isn't locked to random drops in adventures anymore, those painful days are over. The incentives to run additional adventures these days are the pets that have a rare chance to drop there.
 
In my personal opinion, gold WotW seems far too short and easy to be dropping purples; most groups get gold easily within 10-15 minutes. But maybe I'm just an elitist jerk!
 
The "optimal" gear path these days, if there is such a thing:
> Buy the blue PvP gear set from the vendor, there are no requirements on it. The full set will be around 2-4 plat before runes.
> PvP until you get 3600 Prestige to buy the purple item level 65 weapon from the PvP vendor, it's pretty much best in slot before raids unless you get extremely lucky in vet SSM or Ultimate Protogames; even then, the raw AP/SP and special effect outweigh the bonus stats on the dungeon weapon. 
> Run the veteran shiphands, buy the Renown shiphand-unlocked gear if it's better than what you have from leveling AND/OR buy/craft a set of starter armor (Epochos/Adventus). If you can't see any on the AH, ask in your main city; lots of people are willing to craft it for you for a small fee.
> Run dungeons for both the drops AND the Glory; there's a Glory vendor that sells some really nice item level 61 gear that you can purchase if you have at least a bronze medal in all the dungeons (which is easily achieved by doing the optionals, even if you wipe a lot and take a long time).
> Do the contracts every day. You can get some nice gear from the progression tiers, and the loot bag at the top tier will contain some item level 65 gear that is (usually) better than what you would have already.
 
 
2. This is a big one. They've made it a lot easier to get your AMP/ability points by having them available for Prestige from the PvP vendors. If you enjoy PvP, this is definitely the quickest way to get them (as opposed to getting beloved reputation with a whole bunch of factions or from Elder Gems which are slow to accumulate).
 
 
4. The redundant PvP gear is a relic of the time when each new tier was gated behind arena/RBG/warplot rating. If it's purple and item level 65, it's all the same between each "named" set. As of right now, there is no rating requirement on any of it; if you have the Prestige, you can buy it. They just haven't bothered to remove the redundant items.
 
 
5. Shiphands will say "Waiting for X more player(s)" where X is the number of people in the shiphand when there's a point you have to stand in to progress to the next area. You'll see a large blue circle on the ground somewhere when that message comes up; step into it, and the message goes away and you can progress to the next area. If you're running with multiple people, everyone has to stand in that circle at the same time to move forward.
 
 
6. If I'm not mistaken, I believe you can expand the inventory window by clicking on one of the bottom corners and dragging it around until it's the size you want. This won't make the item icons any bigger though. You can try messing with the UI scale in the options, but that will affect everything else on the screen too. KuronaBags is a popular bag addon, if you feel the need to go that route.
 
 
7. Yes, this has been reported and is being investigated.
 
 
8. Same as 7, reported and being investigated. I've gotten into the habit of pressing my comm-call button a lot to make some there's nothing actually there. Definitely annoying, hopefully a fix coming soon.
 
 
Edit: Yeesh, how do I always pick the wrong one out of multiple topics to post in?
			
				
	Edited June 18, 2015 by Isonox	
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Maybe I'm dense but I still can't stretch any ui window in the game. I only ever can move it. I've tried ctrl+click, shift +click, right click, etc. Is it an addon? You shouldn't really need an addon for something so trivial. At a minimum make it more intuitive.
 
Also I get your do not queue for pbgs and use rbgs instead. New players wont know that. What is the point of pbgs anyway? If it's supposed to be for "non-rated" matches, but "rating' isn't a thing in the game atm, then disable it until you reintroduce rating as a mechanic.
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I feel like demon covered everything really well. I just wanted to respond to one point
 
8. Bug - the "C" communicator button seems to sound arbitrarily sometimes and clicking it doesn't always bring up the mission. Also happens really early on.
 
This happens if you are accepting comm quests too fast. I mean it still needs to be fixed, but if you were curious what causes it. I finally noticed when I was playing with an alt, and therefore not reading everything like I did on my main.	
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a. rng to get a purple
b. rng to get the purple you want
c. rng to get the stats you want
d. rng on number of sockets you want
e. rng on socket you want (on each socket)
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Thanks for the feedback everyone. It sounds like maybe some of my observations were unfounded.
 
Still some of your responses don't necessarily negate my points (Demonmanu).
 
2. Grinding out Amps/Ability Points via PvP is significantly better than doing it via EP at launch. It doesn't make it more "fun" though the second, third toon through though. Still just a grind. Not difficult just annoying. It was the same issue SWTOR had with the holocrons. Fun the first time, super irritating any subsequent time.
 
4. I'm not disagreeing with the loot system to a point. I'm glad its more skill than gear based. Still 1 currency makes it difficult to motivate anyone to do anything other than the "easiest" way to earn it.
 
Also, given that there is no season at the moment PBGs and RBGs are just "confusing" (i.e. there are 2 queues you can join but only 1 is ever played). If we are "between seasons" at the moment and rating doesn't matter, then disable RBGs until the next season begins and RBGs do matter. A new player will just end up sitting in the wrong queue and wondering why it never pops.	
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Regarding Amp and Ability points, there are a lot of people who don't like the current system. I file this under the "something they tried by it didn't work" category, but I think it would be difficult (not impossible) to change at this point. Just because it would be weird to hit 50 and then all the suddenly you get this enormous power boost. 
 
I imagine we might see it changed in the future, but probably not soon.
 
FWIW, I actually really like the amp and ability points at cap, because I like that you can still improve your character by other means than gear. But there are only a handful of other people I know who agree with me on that one :D	
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			I agree 100% about the amp/ability point grind. In my opinion the best way to handle it would be to make it an account wide unlock. You do the grind once and then you're done. As it stands, the grind isn't terrible, once. But when you start looking at alts the time adds up quickly. I think the best thing you can say about the current amp/ability system is that it encourages people to buy CREDD and help CS keep the lights on.	
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			For amp/ability points, I really just want a master unlock for alts. Once is good enough.	
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