124263-mondays-ew-episode-1-shiphands

== Content ==
			
So I was bored, lying down on my bed, watching TV, then it came to me, I like conversations, so why not start a series of some sort on the forums. So I thought of this, Mondays (ew) will be a weekly topic I bring up related to the game, company, or even some outside stuff like other games, books, and movies, although they will always relate in some way to the game. So without further ado,
 
 
EPISODE 1: Shiphands!
 
So as we all know Veteran shiphands are now a thing, quick doses of content and a entry way of gearing up your character. Personally I love them, but this will talk about two major things.
1.) What is your opinion on them now that they have have passed the hype spot?
2.) What do you want Carbine to do with them in the future
         
             Me personally for number 1? I think they can still be really fun if you don't spam them, like 3-6 a day. Quick way to earn gold and can be fun, although pretty grindy and can get lame if not with a group, luckily these groups are easy to find, and even if you don't find one a few can be fun on there own.
 
Now for what Carbine should do in the future? Add a few with a strain theme or at least some more relevant Shiphand missions to the story. Also, with every drop there should be 1-2 shiphands, because I can't imagine they are difficult to make compared to other content. Also, I am not sure about this, but maybe even higher than 5 man as the cap, 8 man? 10 man shiphands anyone. Only problem is most of the content isn't designed for that number.
 
Shiphands are still an epic feature after the first few months, and as long as they keep extending on the system and add more, this can prove to be one of Wildstars coolest Casual pve features.
                             I think new pets would find there best place in Shiphands and probably contracts, as well as new mounts (except the uber amazing ultra ones, those are for raids (not a                              store, thats a hint blizz)) And possibly even toys, of course not all new pets and toys, and mounts go in Shiphands, but I feel they would be a good place as long as new shiphands come out frequently                    
 
Also, when we are bragging about Wildstar content and people say "oh yeah, what did the last patch have" and we are all like
2 new shiphands, new zone, new adventure, new pets, new toys, new contracts, QoL fixes, and some new feature. 
 
and then we all like "BRUH, what did Wow have recently!"
"Twitter and Selfies"
 
BOOM BABBYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
 
So thank you all for reading, please be sure to answer the questions instead of just focusing on my opinion, I hope this becomes semi popular on these forums so I can keep this baby rolling.
 
 No Babies were rolled in the making of this thread.
 
EDIT: Here are the next 3 episode titles.
Mondays (ew) Episode 2: Dragons a major enemy!?
Mondays (ew) Episode 3: Oh Baby PATHS!
Mondays (ew) Episode 4: The faction barrier.	
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*peeks in* Oh hey, one of my favorite subjects!
 
So let's talk shiphands and story briefly. We have an avenue of casual instances for people to hook into the main storylines with our World Story instances. Shiphand story focus tends to be on secondary story that helps fill out our understanding of the galaxy. For example, after playing the Gauntlet, you now have a better understanding of one of the Darkspur Cartel's enterprises. This line helps differentiate between major moments that move the primary story forward and timeless, replayable experiences rooted in the lore.
 
I got new shiphand ideas for miles, so we don't have a shortage of new ones we want to make. It's just a matter of juggling time and resources with other things. They're faster to develop than certain other types of instanced content, but it's still time we have to dedicate and there are only so many folks to work on 'em along with everything else on tap. :)
 
So many shiphand ideas guys you don't even know	
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1) I personally think they're in a great position now more than ever. They were wonderful to begin with, but were missing he veteran option at the time and rewards were kinda "meh". I think they fill a good spot for casual play and the difficulty is also in a nice sweet spot for something you'd want to "just do" for fun and or for a bit of reward.
 
2)I'd like to see more as, I'm sure they plan on doing more. HOWEVER my one complaint with shiphands and this goes for dungeons, adventures, and raids, is that there is little to no utilizing of paths. I'd love to see paths play more of a role in the game like malgrave trail. I think that paths in shiphands could add a bit more to replayability and with groups with multiple paths it can make the experience quite different.	
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1.
 
- Overall, veteran shiphands are good
- They give me daily quest type rewards without having to do daily quests, which I've hated for years
- There are enough of them to last a decent amount of time before burnout sets in
- They promote the sci-fi setting
- Difficulty is reasonable for high and low skill thresholds
- Rewards are quite good for gold/renown
 
2.
 
- To help avoid said burnout, add a few unique paths. Make them similar to adventures in this regard, even if you're just reusing some of the map areas to create alternate encounters
- Eventually, another tier of difficulty with better rewards. Alternately, add very difficult optional final bosses to each shiphand, with platinum medal rewards (non-progression, talking stuff like mounts, decor, costumes, dyes, crafting mats, but not gear)
- More 'out in space' themes. Have us land at an abandoned mining colony, or board an enemy ship, or make some FTL-inspired crew scenario where we actually have to run back and forth defending the ship's sectors during an attack, or pilot it through an asteroid belt, etc
- I'd like to see world decor drops added to give a bit more spice to the reward potential when doing many runs. I'd like it if shiphands had a very low chance to drop non-combat items found in group content, giving players who can't get a queue (for whatever reason) a chance to score something cool/unexpected
 
Aaaand my 'omg why bother it won't happen' suggestion...
 
Competitive shiphands! Basically, if you select this option, you and one other player run the same shiphand simultaneously (different instances). Whoever finishes first gets a prize. Beware of class imbalance. :D
 
If this could work though, it'd put a fun, progressive spin on shiphands without having to actually alter any of the content whatsoever. You could also do shiphand leaderboards with/instead of simultaneous races. The top five players each season could win some cosmetic prizes and a title, or have their image shown in their faction's major city throughout next season (similar to that hologram FABkit in appearance).
 
 	
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*peeks in* Oh hey, one of my favorite subjects!
 
So let's talk shiphands and story briefly. We have an avenue of casual instances for people to hook into the main storylines with our World Story instances. Shiphand story focus tends to be on secondary story that helps fill out our understanding of the galaxy. For example, after playing the Gauntlet, you now have a better understanding of one of the Darkspur Cartel's enterprises. This line helps differentiate between major moments that move the primary story forward and timeless, replayable experiences rooted in the lore.
 
I got new shiphand ideas for miles, so we don't have a shortage of new ones we want to make. It's just a matter of juggling time and resources with other things. They're faster to develop than certain other types of instanced content, but it's still time we have to dedicate and there are only so many folks to work on 'em along with everything else on tap. :)
 
So many shiphand ideas guys you don't even know
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1) I personally think they're in a great position now more than ever. They were wonderful to begin with, but were missing he veteran option at the time and rewards were kinda "meh". I think they fill a good spot for casual play and the difficulty is also in a nice sweet spot for something you'd want to "just do" for fun and or for a bit of reward.
 
2)I'd like to see more as, I'm sure they plan on doing more. HOWEVER my one complaint with shiphands and this goes for dungeons, adventures, and raids, is that there is little to no utilizing of paths. I'd love to see paths play more of a role in the game like malgrave trail. I think that paths in shiphands could add a bit more to replayability and with groups with multiple paths it can make the experience quite different.
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1.
 
- Overall, veteran shiphands are good
- They give me daily quest type rewards without having to do daily quests, which I've hated for years
- There are enough of them to last a decent amount of time before burnout sets in
- They promote the sci-fi setting
- Difficulty is reasonable for high and low skill thresholds
- Rewards are quite good for gold/renown
 
2.
 
- To help avoid said burnout, add a few unique paths. Make them similar to adventures in this regard, even if you're just reusing some of the map areas to create alternate encounters
- Eventually, another tier of difficulty with better rewards. Alternately, add very difficult optional final bosses to each shiphand, with platinum medal rewards (non-progression, talking stuff like mounts, decor, costumes, dyes, crafting mats, but not gear)
- More 'out in space' themes. Have us land at an abandoned mining colony, or board an enemy ship, or make some FTL-inspired crew scenario where we actually have to run back and forth defending the ship's sectors during an attack, or pilot it through an asteroid belt, etc
- I'd like to see world decor drops added to give a bit more spice to the reward potential when doing many runs. I'd like it if shiphands had a very low chance to drop non-combat items found in group content, giving players who can't get a queue (for whatever reason) a chance to score something cool/unexpected
 
Aaaand my 'omg why bother it won't happen' suggestion...
 
Competitive shiphands! Basically, if you select this option, you and one other player run the same shiphand simultaneously (different instances). Whoever finishes first gets a prize. Beware of class imbalance. :D
 
If this could work though, it'd put a fun, progressive spin on shiphands without having to actually alter any of the content whatsoever. You could also do shiphand leaderboards with/instead of simultaneous races. The top five players each season could win some cosmetic prizes and a title, or have their image shown in their faction's major city throughout next season (similar to that hologram FABkit in appearance).
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So many shiphand ideas guys you don't even know
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Make it rain!
 
Btw, if you're the captain of shiphands, do you also pilot the expeditions? I'm curious if you plan to expand expeditions or keep mostly with shiphands, since the two are very similar but expeditions require more effort (you have to make the FAB).
 
I'm also wondering if you've ever discussed veteran expeditions. Since basic shiphands are low difficulty pre-50 challenges, you decided to make vet shiphands entry point content for 50s. I thought veteran expeditions could fill the hole left for solo players and be high difficulty for 50s. The scale would work something like this:
 
EASY
Vet shiphands
Vet adventures
Vet expeditions
Vet dungeons
HARD
 
I think vet shiphands are on par with vet adventures, so I'd love to see vet expeditions made at the vet dungeon level of difficulty.  The main distinction would be that v. dungeons are for larger groups to get gear progression, whereas v. expeditions are for smaller groups to get rare cosmetics.
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I'm not sure I'm wild about super difficult shiphands.  I have the sneaking suspicion this would start to draw in complaints similar to GW2 discussions about "Dungeon Path Speed Runs".  It usually flows from min/maxer and concern trolls and goes like this:  "I just LOVE Wildstar and Veteran Shiphands, but Shiphand X is SO LONG, and SO HARD and I feel compelled to run Shiphand Y because it's so quick and easy.  Why can't you make them all like Shiphand Y?".
 
I have other avenues for content that has challenge associated with it (raiding, PvP) so shiphands are sort of a fun break and there's very few things as maniacal giggle inducing as laying waste to four billionty spaceskeech in Fragment Zero.  I don't even mind Deep Space Exploration even if it's long.  It's just a romp and killing space fish in a Star Trek-lite environment (with a vertigo-inducing robot section though I'll admit, I think my brain is finally trained on that thing and it doesn't achieve the headaches it did for awhile.)
 
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So many shiphand ideas guys you don't even know 
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I don't even mind Deep Space Exploration even if it's long.  It's just a romp and killing space fish in a Star Trek-lite environment (with a vertigo-inducing robot section though I'll admit, I think my brain is finally trained on that thing and it doesn't achieve the headaches it did for awhile.)
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The robot just does not move normally in the axes that you'd expect which is the main thing.  If we had full pitch/yaw/roll ability I suspect we could orient it in a way that wasn't insane.
 
I don't have any issue with the flashlights though I think there's an engine limitation on the way it changes angle (i.e. it's very angular and switches fast without the usual sweep of getting to the new location) so I could see that being a little bit "off" for some visual cortexes (cortices?).	
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WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT. Paths are such a great feature overall (next topic maybe) and have a lot of potential, but after cap, I feel like they are neglected, path missions in every shiphand as well as new ones would be freaking awesome. A new path level cap would be neat to, I will save that for another monday though.
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			As for favourite shiphand, I must say that it is "Space Madness". That one is sheer brilliance. I cannot stop humming that Queen song while playing it, though... :)	
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*peeks in* Oh hey, one of my favorite subjects!
 
So let's talk shiphands and story briefly. We have an avenue of casual instances for people to hook into the main storylines with our World Story instances. Shiphand story focus tends to be on secondary story that helps fill out our understanding of the galaxy. For example, after playing the Gauntlet, you now have a better understanding of one of the Darkspur Cartel's enterprises. This line helps differentiate between major moments that move the primary story forward and timeless, replayable experiences rooted in the lore.
 
I got new shiphand ideas for miles, so we don't have a shortage of new ones we want to make. It's just a matter of juggling time and resources with other things. They're faster to develop than certain other types of instanced content, but it's still time we have to dedicate and there are only so many folks to work on 'em along with everything else on tap. :)
 
So many shiphand ideas guys you don't even know
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Can we get one shiphand, just one, that's actually slightly hard on veteran? Or another difficulty level after veteran?
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We may not lean in the direction of different shiphands having different difficulties on veteran, but harder experiences in shiphand and shiphand-like instances is definitely an ongoing discussion. Sorry I don't have anything more concrete for ya right now.
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Also, about shiphands mainly being secondary story content, I think that is perfectly fine except when we get something like a major story or a raid tier patch, like lets say the Entity raid, I think it would be fit to get a dungeon, shiphand, and Adventure to build up to that final raid. Or maybe with the Redmoon Terror raid, A shiphand where we face some of the main Redmoon forces on our own, all while you can see far away the raid instance, a dungeon would go nicely as well.
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			I love that you can solo shiphands. Plenty of times, I log into one of them to have fun even if I am alone. I enjoy that moment of solitude after a busy day at work with people around me driving me crazy. After that I am ready to go and do some dailies :). One thing I don't like about them, and this is completely personal. First time I tried the madness one, I got so dizzy with all those changes of colors, and stuff, I had to stop playing. I avoid that mission, since I can't be there without feeling sick.	
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All I have to say about shiphands is:
 
CARBINE PLS. MOAR.
AND MORE MOUNTS
AND PETS
AND OMG
OMG
MOAR SHIPHANDS	
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			 Agreed. More pets! shinny!	
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1) I have always enjoyed shiphands. The problem was that there wasn't much reason to repeat them. I'm glad that Shipands are getting interesting rewards.
 
2) I would like to see Carbine take Shiphands and make them into an alternative to raiding. Not all of us want to raid. I've done it for years and am ready for some challenging content for smaller groups. Raids are great for excersing teamwork. I think Shiphands can capitalize on the game's unique combat and LAS systems to give us some complex fights on a smaller scale. Again, in no way asking for a discontinuation of raids just want challenging content for smaller group sizes. Loot quality also should be based on the level of difficulty for the content and not group size.	
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We may not lean in the direction of different shiphands having different difficulties on veteran, but harder experiences in shiphand and shiphand-like instances is definitely an ongoing discussion. Sorry I don't have anything more concrete for ya right now.
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1) I have always enjoyed shiphands. The problem was that there wasn't much reason to repeat them. I'm glad that Shipands are getting interesting rewards.
 
2) I would like to see Carbine take Shiphands and make them into an alternative to raiding. Not all of us want to raid. I've done it for years and am ready for some challenging content for smaller groups. Raids are great for excersing teamwork. I think Shiphands can capitalize on the game's unique combat and LAS systems to give us some complex fights on a smaller scale. Again, in no way asking for a discontinuation of raids just want challenging content for smaller group sizes. Loot quality also should be based on the level of difficulty for the content and not group size.
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We may not lean in the direction of different shiphands having different difficulties on veteran, but harder experiences in shiphand and shiphand-like instances is definitely an ongoing discussion. Sorry I don't have anything more concrete for ya right now.
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2)I'd like to see more as, I'm sure they plan on doing more. HOWEVER my one complaint with shiphands and this goes for dungeons, adventures, and raids, is that there is little to no utilizing of paths. I'd love to see paths play more of a role in the game like malgrave trail. I think that paths in shiphands could add a bit more to replayability and with groups with multiple paths it can make the experience quite different.
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Goren, I don't see why having harder content for smaller groups of players would detract from having casual content. As we have seen the devs don't do everything at once. How have drops gone so far? PvP, PvE, into QoL drop with vet shiphands and slight pvp balancing?
 
My goal isn't to disenfranchise anyone but to offer alternative avenues to what exist. Frankly, harder shiphands could be seen as casual progression. I think the term casual is being used in a derogatory sense to make ideas look bad. Personally, I think raiding can be seen as casual. The only real hard part to it is getting people to actually pay attention. Mechanics in raids can't be too complicated due to having to communicate these complications. There would be far too many voices. In raiding I never feel like I made any sort of real contribution. I play as dps and I feel like I just get lost in the pack. I never feel like anything I do makes or breaks the raid aside from CC armor breaking.
 
In smaller group content you can't just build straight dps, tank, or heals. That right there makes it more interesting than raiding. It's not about memorizing a "rotation" (the term rotation in this game is laughable to me. it's not that kind of game.) Having to actually think about skills in terms of packing what you'll need is much harder than just copying a build.
 
What a tangent and probably not the best place to express myself.
 
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Oh well while I'm on a tirade.... I dislike how Spellslingers are being developed. I wrote about it in the Spellslinger forum but Spythe always has some snarky comment to make. I want to believe that Spellslingers will evolve into the class that was described prior to launch. The changes have been so drastic I just don't know if I can invest my time into it. The class is almost unrecognizable from what it was in beta. I'm still pissed that they cause players to spec magical or physical so there is no real choice in skills. You either pick the physical array or the magical. Picking a skill outside of the specialization is basically gimping yourself. Example, if you were running the RF/TS build you wouldn't want to put ignite in your LAS. You'd also potentially consider not taking Assassinate over T8 flame burst if you were focusing on magical. There is no real choice. You have to take skills that benefit from your damage specialization.
 
*cupcake* all that.	
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