117037-do-you-think-this-game-might-actually-die-page-6

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There are guilds that can't do the raid content also, but I understand your point. I think they should just toss it out there, and that way the door for that discussion gets shut. They can come to the forums and scream about how they can't beat the solo boss for the good gear, but that would not be a design problem as long as it was possible.
 
As for the classes, you would really just need instances that were class specific. A lot of work , I know, but feasible I think. I don't really want to change the game though. what it is,  is what it is. Was mostly just thinking out loud, and trying to stress how important it is for the community to be a little more cohesive.
 
when I was playing eq2, my guild used to do one set of raids a week, where we split out core raiders up into two groups and invited solo players to come with us to experience the raid dungeons they would have normally never got to see. We were so far along in our progression, that bringing 12 untried, under geared, and unknowledgeable people into a t-1 raid was a piece of cake for us, and it was fun to listen to them on vent, and how excited they were to be facing down mobs they had never been able to see before. For some of those people, that was the highlight of their week, and when a good drop happened and we told them to roll on it, it was like kids at Christmas.
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			Like I said, don't have an agenda here. The game is what it is. I am more than willing to accept the game as is, as long as it keeps me engaged.	
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I'm not saying get rid of solo stuff. But stop forcing people into solo situations; allow up to parties of 2 in there, and maybe scale up the mobs a bit to make up for it.
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"All" they'd need to do is implement the expedition scaling system in other instances that they want to allow small groups or solo players to complete and then have the scaling adjust the loot tables accordingly. Suddenly you have instances (story and otherwise) that appeal to a wider audience.
 
^ quotes because I'm sure it sounds a lot easier than it actually is.
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"All" they'd need to do is implement the expedition scaling system in other instances that they want to allow small groups or solo players to complete and then have the scaling adjust the loot tables accordingly. Suddenly you have instances (story and otherwise) that appeal to a wider audience.
 
^ quotes because I'm sure it sounds a lot easier than it actually is.
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Regardless the amount of work it requires, scalable content is going to be the "thing" in MMO's.  I'm not saying drop everything and do it NOAW!  but it should be a priority research task.
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Even if it's scalable, there's no way to make a solo instance actually difficult without tailoring it to the player's class.  Could be easier with a group of 2 if you assume either a tank dps, tank healer, or dps healer composition.
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I'm not sure that's true. Maybe it is.
 
But for example, is there any class that can't solo Rotter? Is there any class that it is trivially easy to solo Rotter? I haven't played all the classes, so I don't know, but I have to create a special build to do it on my slinger by balancing heals and DPS. I assume with my warrior I'd have to split between tank and dps as well.
 
Not that Rotter is a particularly interesting fight, mind you.
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On thing for the "make dungeons easier" crowd. Last night my fiance finally got some healing gear together for her level 50 slinger. So what I suggested was that we queue for STL 20 and let her practice her skills there before doing any adventures (she healed and I tanked- gogo instaqueue!). We ran through it and she (and I) had a blast. Was it challenging? No- but it was fun and easy. Shes' excited to do it again soon.
 
To the casuals- why are these not the dungeons you are looking for? Is it because the rewards are meaningless? Is there something that Carbine could do to make these more enticing for level 50 casual players? Is that something the Carbine would even want to do?
 
Just musing here . . .	
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I solo Rotter as esper DPS and engineer DPS.  I wouldn't call it trivially easy, but it's not supremely difficult.  Neither character has end-game gear, mixture of crafted, adventure and occasionally dungeon gears.  The main thing is to know your class.  Carry 3 stun levels and be prepared to use them.  Use your innate wisely.
 
I find it actually harder on the engineer.  The esper has self heals in Bolster and Projected Spirit that are quite useful for DPS and maneuvering and she usually finishes the fight at near max health.  The engineer has no self heals, so I have to rely on the shorter interrupt cooldowns, and Bruiser Bot creating moments of breathing room of no damage.  Helps to have the PVP healing gadget too.
 
No tanking gear (save perhaps for the gadget).
 
I can solo the Queen on both too, though this one is more variable.  Depends on the location, and she's got a root that's pretty nasty and the burrowing attack is pretty nasty.  The potential for adds in either augmentor bots or smaller spiders is a lot higher (depending on location).  Doesn't take tanking gear, just good timing and interrupting and bursting.	
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I solo Rotter as esper DPS and engineer DPS.  I wouldn't call it trivially easy, but it's not supremely difficult.  Neither character has end-game gear, mixture of crafted, adventure and occasionally dungeon gears.  The main thing is to know your class.  Carry 3 stun levels and be prepared to use them.  Use your innate wisely.
 
I find it actually harder on the engineer.  The esper has self heals in Bolster and Projected Spirit that are quite useful for DPS and maneuvering and she usually finishes the fight at near max health.  The engineer has no self heals, so I have to rely on the shorter interrupt cooldowns, and Bruiser Bot creating moments of breathing room of no damage.  Helps to have the PVP healing gadget too.
 
No tanking gear (save perhaps for the gadget).
 
I can solo the Queen on both too, though this one is more variable.  Depends on the location, and she's got a root that's pretty nasty and the burrowing attack is pretty nasty.  The potential for adds in either augmentor bots or smaller spiders is a lot higher (depending on location).  Doesn't take tanking gear, just good timing and interrupting and bursting.
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I expect it's possible to kill him on every class, but clearly he's not worth raid gear as a reward either.
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@Gungan,
 
I am afraid you are correct to a point. White damage is the thing that makes scaling and difficulty very hard to implement. Every single mob in this game is basically a dps check because of white damage. As you scale up, there will be a point where heals become mandatory. Hybrid builds would need to be figured out by the player, and the instance would have to be tuned very very carefully.
 
how I would do it would be like this.
 
There are literally hundreds of areas in the game that can be used. Shiphands, zone caves, adventures etc...toss them in a data base where they get chosen randomly when the player enters the zone. There are quite a few single player bosses in the game, tune them to make them more difficult, and toss them in a data base, separated by theme.
 
1. Instance gets randomly generated
2. Theme gets randomly generated and the zone gets populated.
3. 12 hr lockout.
4. 1 chance per 12 hours. Death teleports you back outside, and you are locked out for 12 hours. This would prevent farming.
5. boss drops designed for progression are bop.
 
the difficulty comes, not so much from the mobs and bosses, but from the fact that you can not make a mistake, and the sheer number of instances, and mob population types makes memorization a long process. This way solo players face some of the same challenges that raiders do, only they face the additional challenge of not being able to do multiple pulls in order to figure out strats.
 
Hardcore...literally. Failure on death.
 
this is very simplified, but gives a general idea of how it could be implemented. Gearing up this way would be a long process that takes a lot of effort, and the gear that drops only has to be good enough for the solo instances, so there is still a reason to progress to raiding, if that is your ultimate goal.
 
Impossible to implement? no...Difficult, absolutely....feasible...probably not, but it's fun to think about such things, even if you have no idea how difficult it would be to produce.
 
The game will ultimately fail or succeed depending on how engaging it is to the target player bases (There needs to be more than just raiders, because the game can not survive on raiding population alone, but at the same time absolutely needs to make sure the raiders always have a challenge to overcome)	
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@Gungan,
 
I am afraid you are correct to a point. White damage is the thing that makes scaling and difficulty very hard to implement. Every single mob in this game is basically a dps check because of white damage. As you scale up, there will be a point where heals become mandatory. Hybrid builds would need to be figured out by the player, and the instance would have to be tuned very very carefully.
 
how I would do it would be like this.
 
There are literally hundreds of areas in the game that can be used. Shiphands, zone caves, adventures etc...toss them in a data base where they get chosen randomly when the player enters the zone. There are quite a few single player bosses in the game, tune them to make them more difficult, and toss them in a data base, separated by theme.
 
1. Instance gets randomly generated
2. Theme gets randomly generated and the zone gets populated.
3. 12 hr lockout.
4. 1 chance per 12 hours. Death teleports you back outside, and you are locked out for 12 hours. This would prevent farming.
5. boss drops designed for progression are bop.
 
the difficulty comes, not so much from the mobs and bosses, but from the fact that you can not make a mistake, and the sheer number of instances, and mob population types makes memorization a long process. This way solo players face some of the same challenges that raiders do, only they face the additional challenge of not being able to do multiple pulls in order to figure out strats.
 
Hardcore...literally. Failure on death.
 
this is very simplified, but gives a general idea of how it could be implemented. Gearing up this way would be a long process that takes a lot of effort, and the gear that drops only has to be good enough for the solo instances, so there is still a reason to progress to raiding, if that is your ultimate goal.
 
Impossible to implement? no...Difficult, absolutely....feasible...probably not, but it's fun to think about such things, even if you have no idea how difficult it would be to produce.
 
The game will ultimately fail or succeed depending on how engaging it is to the target player bases (There needs to be more than just raiders, because the game can not survive on raiding population alone, but at the same time absolutely needs to make sure the raiders always have a challenge to overcome)
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Did you mean the Empress?  For my part the Empress is at least 100% easier to kill as DPS Stalker than Rotter is, and I usually end that fight well above 50% HP.  Everything is laughably easy in tank spec though unless you're trying for 5+ primes solo.
 
Stalkers don't even have the space to put 3 interrupts on their bars most of the time, which is why Rotter is so much more of a pain in the butt.
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Yes, the queen, sorry.  The quest (Exile side) is Queen for a Day but the mob is the Spider Empress.  
 
I can't imagine doing this stuff in engineer tank spec.  I'm sure it could be done, just take forever (relatively speaking.)  Biggest thing I've found with the Empress/Queen is the burrow attack MUST be interrupted or dodged (and it's fast so the latter is pretty tricky.).  That one HURTS if it connects.  The long range webshoot has a snare but can be easily avoided.
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Oh sure- that's not my point. My point was that you have an encounter that is challenging across most classes (OK, stalkers can almost solo 5 man instances), so it's possible to design challenging content that is not specific to each class. I would expect raid worthy gear encounters to require:
 
-Special hybrid spec
-Require multiple pulls and bosses
-Have multiple phases for bosses
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I found if you continuously circle strafe her, if she succeeds at stunning you, the stun will place you outside her burrow red zone, making it a non issue.  It is very easy to dodge out of if you're not stunned though.
 
It doesn't take that much longer in tank spec, and if it is taking a while, other DPS always show up to help you anyways.
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You could implement different kinds of challenges though, because raid challenges would never really fit in a solo instance. Solo instances , they way I would do them,  would not be so much about the fights, as they would be about survival.
 
 just for instance - rooms that are traps. enter a room, door behind you slams shut. 100 mobs behind slowly raising doors on each side of the room. a puzzle to figure out before the doors reach their apex and the mobs come rushing out.
 
Anyhow, just some fun thoughts. Probably not even compatible with this game or the devs game direction. If many players feel that the solo experience is ok as it is, then the game will do ok as a raiding game. I have no idea why so many people have left the game, after it got such good reviews, solo content may not even be one of the reasons. All I know is I am on a mega server , and it's like a ghost town in the leveling zones. that tells me not a whole lot of new folks are coming in, and the core of the players are at 50 and probably quite happy there.	
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The other thing that would be required of raid-worthy gear for a solo instance would be that the individual mechanics would have to be more challenging than the equivalent raid fights.
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			For the record, I would LOVE a solo instance that was as challening as the current 5 man dungeons. I'm always a little disappointed with the solo instances now because they just aren't that challenging. I realize they aren't designed for me and I'm OK with that, but if I could have my cake and eat it too, I'd like to play my slinger through some fun, solo, multi-phase fights.	
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I was around open beta and you would be surprised at how similar this line of discussion is to many topics back then. It always turns into an x vs. y argument when it doesn't have to.
 
For the game to survive, there can not be a separation between solo or casual vs. group or raid, pvp vs. pve.  This must evolve into one community that bolsters each other and not into a squabbling match as to who deserves what and when. Unfortunately for Wildstar (and many other, if not all games) it has always been the latter.
 
I see a lot of arguments about how adding solo content, or non raid progression is asking for something that the game is not, when The devs have already stated this is not the case. Seems most folks play the game for the sake of progression, and so it is logical to provide ALL your player base with paths that lead to constant progression. So that leads us to the second layer of the argument...
 
The "my play style deserves better and bigger rewards than your play style" argument.
 
I don't know how many times I have seen raiders, in this game and in most others vehemently oppose the acquisition of raid level gear outside of the raid environment. Their main argument seems to be that why should someone who solo's be able to get gear on par with mine, when soloing is so easy, and takes no thought or commitment. Why should I spend 40 hours in a raid to analyze, strategize, and then flawlessly execute in order to down a raid boss, and some yahoo can just earn 10,000 boogie boogie coins and get relatively the same thing. 
 
 
Im leveling a character guys, and I am not seeing other people, and this should be a serious concern to everyone.
 
~snip~
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Here's an Idea; make solo content mechanics / telegraph based rather than DPS based... why does everything have to be tank and spank?
 
In the Touhou bullet hell games, you beat a boss by either taking their health to zero, OR by surviving their spell cards (aka telegraph patterns) for a set amount of time. Give us something like that and solo players could have a fun challenge that any class could do. And this could be played with for different instances; e.g. you have to solve a dynamic puzzle around a construct to power it up; once you do it goes haywire and it's self destruct sequence starts, and it spams some crazy telegraphs; you can either destroy it outright or after 3 minutes it's self destruct sequence completes.
 
This type of set up can be made as difficult as needed, where you have to dodge teles while fighting trash / solve puzzles while moving through full room telegraphs, etc...	
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Will take an awful lot longer to develop.  You need to basically factor in things like the make up of the 2 going in...for example, if you have 2 classes and 1 can't tank you may not be able to do it, if you have 2 classes 1 tank 1 dps you may not be able to complete it likewise 2 DPS may not be able to complete it.
 
It's not as simple as if there's 1 person mob has 5k hit points and hits for 2.5k if there's 2 it does double.
 
You may as well start tuning instances and the rewards based of the item level average of the players going in.  So you enter the instance in your gear and ability set and it will tune how hard the mobs hit and how much HP they have based on your iLevel of gear and then give you higher level rewards in return but that's a complete nightmare!!!
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Oh sure- that's not my point. My point was that you have an encounter that is challenging across most classes (OK, stalkers can almost solo 5 man instances), so it's possible to design challenging content that is not specific to each class. I would expect raid worthy gear encounters to require:
 
-Special hybrid spec
-Require multiple pulls and bosses
-Have multiple phases for bosses
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They have already been planning this "solo instance" for a while Panther, it was and is intended as part of the Defile content, so they're not adding anything new here, it's content that there was already time allotted for.
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			what is this thread even about anymore?	
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The bolded is your problem, and why trinity based games with rigid classes do not commit time to difficult solo content.  Stalker tanks already can solo 5-man mobs, so how do you balance the content around that?  Each class solos 2-3+ mobs in a slightly different way and different mobs and abilities are more or less difficult, so how do you create and balance encounters for that?  Solo progression should be in the game, but with the current set-up of Wildstar solo encounters designed to be difficult (e.g. not trying to solo 2-3+ mobs) are not worth the effort. 
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We really don't have to limit ourselves to fights though. Like I stated earlier, a solo dungeon can be more about survival, and less about boss fights. The end doesn't even have to be a boss, it can be a chest. Getting through the dungeon, like a good old fashioned d&d dungeon crawl can be where the difficulty lies. If you make puzzles , and normal mobs in difficult combinations, that must be allotted for then you can raise the bar of difficulty without having to create some scaled down version of a raid boss.
 
A solo dungeon can require you to change sets of gear/loadouts to survive different configurations, for instance. It can force a player to think in order to advance to the next room. Now magnify this with randomness. When you enter an instance , you have no idea what room you start with, nor what rooms are to follow. Add enough rooms to the data base and you have quite a long while before a player is able to memorize the strats for all the rooms, which is really just another incarnation of learning the raid mechanics of a boss fight.
 
Implement a one death rule, and you have a dungeon that requires perfect execution, on top of knowledge, in order to finish and get the best prize.
 
dungeons do not have to be one dimensional.  	
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But for example, is there any class that can't solo Rotter? Is there any class that it is trivially easy to solo Rotter? 
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Will take an awful lot longer to develop.  You need to basically factor in things like the make up of the 2 going in...for example, if you have 2 classes and 1 can't tank you may not be able to do it, if you have 2 classes 1 tank 1 dps you may not be able to complete it likewise 2 DPS may not be able to complete it.
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They are nerfing Stalker's self-heal, right?
 
Regarding how you balance different classes working differently, I have faith they can do it. But the cheap way would be to make there be 6 different bosses, each one designed tuned to be natural for one class and not-as-great-a-fit for the others and then put all the bosses in one instance.
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It is not economical to create 6 different and difficult encounters, compared to just making easier content that can be completed by any class, but still provides rewards and progression (which is really what most players want).
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			Doesn't seem very economical to stay as is :lol:	
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Now, allow me to translate sarcasm into Star Trek:
 
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. Or the one percent.
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what is this thread even about anymore?
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			No thread is necessary.	
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			You start an "I'm outa here" thread and think there's no cause for concern. Comedy gold.	
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			But hey, at least there's a cancellation questionnaire now.	
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This thread has run it's course, as such I'm going to lock it. Thank you for your feedback. 
 
- Team WildStar 	
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