115782-changes-that-many-people-have-talked-with-me-about-page-2

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Funny, because it took a little over 2 hours for my friends and I to clear STL our first time, but we left saying, "That felt awesome! I wanna do it again!"
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Or, in fairness, me. I thought the instances were a blast... but oddly all the people I used to do them with are now gone...
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Funny, because it took a little over 2 hours for my friends and I to clear STL our first time, but we left saying, "That felt awesome! I wanna do it again!"
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Simply put, there are not enough people like you to make this game profitable.
 
Or, in fairness, me. I thought the instances were a blast... but oddly all the people I used to do them with are now gone...
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Given all the other stuff you folks have to fix, the limited time you have to fix it in, and the neverending crunch schedule that's grinding down your teams, I cannot for the life of me -- speaking as a game designer -- understand why creating entirely new content that will then have to be tested, debugged, tuned, and integrated is a better solution than adjusting the content you have already created.  Clone the dungeons, keep a set at the current difficulty level, and nerf the snot out of the clones.  You'd get not one new dungeon but four and you'd reuse all your assets.  It's faster than creating new material, more cost-effective, and will act as a bridge for people to move into the current level of difficulty for those same dungeons and then on to Veteran dungeons in good time.  
 
I'll definitely be participating in the post-mortems on Wildstar that are sure to be coming (by 2015 at this rate....) to find out what the reasoning behind this was.  Because it's incomprehensible to me. 
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They are doing that, Its called Vet Shiphands, and its coming either drop 4 or 5.
 
Also, i love the difficulty of the Dungeons, i wouldnt want them to change. However i do wish adventures had turned out a bit more differently, because there difficulty level is perfect. They are just not repayable enough and become obsolete too fast.
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and that's why the population has taken a nosedive -- well, one of several reasons, of course, but definitely a real reason.  
 
 
<snip>
 
 
If you care about this game and it's long-term survival, you need to learn to listen and not just keep chirping "Works great for me! No idea what your problem is!"  That's not helpful to anyone. 
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			I have certainly not enjoyed the very few dungeons I ran with strangers, and my brother stopped running them because he wasn't getting any worthwhile reward from them. This then extended to veteran dungeons, in his case, along with his guild kicking him out of the groups because he wasn't "experienced nor geared enough". And that's where the problem lies, I believe. On one hand, most people don't feel they are being rewarded properly for the hassle. At the same time, their difficulty means players become vitriolic elitists who will not accept anything but the best runs from strangers. The result is content that most of the time doesn't work with strangers at all, and sometimes doesn't even work with your own circle of acquitances.	
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I have certainly not enjoyed the very few dungeons I ran with strangers, and my brother stopped running them because he wasn't getting any worthwhile reward from them. This then extended to veteran dungeons, in his case, along with his guild kicking him out of the groups because he wasn't "experienced nor geared enough". And that's where the problem lies, I believe. On one hand, most people don't feel they are being rewarded properly for the hassle. At the same time, their difficulty means players become vitriolic elitists who will not accept anything but the best runs from strangers. The result is content that most of the time doesn't work with strangers at all, and sometimes doesn't even work with your own circle of acquitances.
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Also, i love the difficulty of the Dungeons, i wouldnt want them to change.
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I think the area that should get attention here is that the rewards are out of whack with the difficulty. Boost the rewards; keep the challenge.
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So leave them in. Just add an easy version for those who want it, with suitable rewards for easier content.
 
 
 
Again: Leave the current difficulty in.  Players who like that can have that. Just add easier versions for those who don't want that.  People who get good at the baby versions and get bored can then come up and join you in your version instead of just quitting the game, right?
 
What's the downside of adding an easier version to go with the normal and veteran versions?
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Probably nothing, but i dont think its what people are asking for. They are asking for more casual content, for shorter play sessions and easier to access raiding content and large group content. Easier dungeons would not actually cater to this. But maybe its on their books for a later date.
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			Just to throw it out there for the tutorial dungeons, unless they are so low level that gear doesn't matter, I would recommend auto-setting everyone's stats to something acceptable to the tutorial dungeon, so that when someone wants to role something not dps related but only has gear for dps (cause you know, lowbies don't really roll around with a lot of inventory space to carry an extra set around) they can easily do so without being the bane of the party.	
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I just do not believe that "the dungeons are too hard" played a significant role in the decline in WildStar's population; there are far more much bigger problems that spurred countless forum discussions and dev talks.
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
			
				
	Edited October 14, 2014 by Timetravel	
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			Good to hear, Timetravel. ^^ I think y'all are approaching this in exactly the right way and am really looking forward to further expansions of small-group and solo content for even greater variety.	
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Yup, we did. After 2.5 hours of exhausting, unfun, frustrating play. We did not leave Kel Vorath going "Man that'll be great when they get the bugs out!" We left going, "Well, what a perfect crap whipped topping to a crap sundae of an experience."  The bug wouldn't even have been more than a momentary disappointment if it had come at the end of an exciting, fun dungeon run.  None of us were new to MMOs, it was very shortly after launch, we expected to deal with bugs as the price of seeing the content while it was still fresh and unexplored. That was not the issue. The issue was that the experience was baffling and frustrating and made us all feel horrible. I particularly remember that we got no sense of achievement after downing the first two bosses because we had no idea how we'd done it.  We just threw ourselves at the bosses, trying everything we could think of, until they eventually went down, and we didn't know what we'd done that worked.  I remember the discussion on Ventrilo after Grond -- "Was it the ticks? We had to interrupt the ticks?" "I don't think you can interrupt the ticks, it was the Bellow...." "No, it was the 1.5 second cast ability after the bellow." "Are you sure? Interrupting a 1.5 second cast seems just about impossible -- was it even on the cast bar? What was the name of the ability?" "No idea, I just remember reading somewhere that that's the one you have to interrupt..." How were we supposed to repeat the victories? How were we supposed to teach newcomers to the Guild how to get through them?
 
See, I imagine this process of trial-and-error is common to regular raiders and they are game for it, and probably have the software tools on hand to help them figure out what they should be doing. We didn't have any of that, and we didn't want any of that in a 5-man. Yes, the dungeons play like mini-raids. NO THAT IS NOT A GOOD THING.  At all.    
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or TERA should nerf BAMs so every class can solo them equally well. 
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*cringes* Off-topic, but... they did. ;.; It was a sad day and met with much anger.
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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The words "did any dungeon" does not discriminate between completed and failed, and therefore implies either.
 
 
 
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It's not that every game should court the same audience: it is, however, incumbent on a game to court a sufficient audience. 
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Just let the damned devs make the game they wanted to make.
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Hardly anyone wants to play it.
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See my previous post.
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Which one?
 
If it's "prove the game is in trouble!"....forget it, dude. If you're that far down the rabbit hole, you just have fun down there, you're not coming back up and I'm certainly not going to chase you.
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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I'm glad that your metrics support what I and my guildies/friends in the game have often said - the dungeons (and raids that I've seen thus far) are amazing and fun! I've told almost everyone I know to just make it to 15 and run Hycrest..and 20 to run STL and KV...and you'll be hooked. Nearly all of them found that to be true. And the ones that left generally left for other reasons (like not liking the class they picked, or feeling like the gearing and itemization made it not worth it to keep running stuff once we knew it). I look forward to the changes you are making to improve QOL and player experience, and I look forward to whatever you throw at us next.
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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This a joke, right? You can't possibly be seriously saying that the problem is the audience, rather then the game, can you?
 
Can you?
 
Let's be quite clear: Wildstar is intentionally harder, at all levels, then some other competing MMOs. This is by design and intent. In other games, WoW for example, the harder content is sequestered off from general content, and certainly from leveling content. In Wildstar it is not: prime mobs are scattered among normal mobs, and even the earliest instances are comparable in difficulty to some other game's raids. 
 
The natural consequence of this is that Wildstar has a more selective appeal: you contend that "people learn and will get better and as the game progresses", but... they didn't, they just left. 
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I'd love to have a clarification on what qualifies as "players who did a dungeon." Does that mean "players who attempted and failed to clear dungeons stuck around" or "players who attempted and succeeded in clearing dungeons stuck around"? This is a crucial distinction.  How many players who never successfully cleared a dungeon are still playing the game?  Can you divulge this information? 
 
I have a hunch that players who attempted and failed to clear a dungeon most definitely did not stick around, and that there were a lot of them, based on anecdotal reports from all over the gamesphere.  I'd be fine with being proven wrong on this with real data.
 
I also don't see what you're talking about by "trivializing" the content. What's wrong with easy content as long as more difficult content is also available?  This is what I mean by the devs encouraging a lot of the elitist nonsense that's gotten them so much blowback and resulted in so much "HA HAH WILDSTAR IS DYING SUCK ON IT!" talk throughout the gamesphere.  Making dungeons that average players can get through to go alongside your tougher ones is...somehow beneath you guys? Or what? It's fine to focus on pleasing the hardcores if you can make a living off their approval, but that does not look like what is happening here, so a shift in focus really does seem to be called for.  
 
Because seriously, video games are inherently trivial. They are entertainments. They don't feed starving children or build bridges or provide housing for poor people or stop the spread of malaria. They're for fun.  Improving your video game skill gets you absolutely nothing in terms of real-life advantages, which is why hardly anyone wants to spend time skilling up at video-game playing. It's like skilling up at advanced basketweaving. Sure you can make a few nice baskets and maybe sell a few on Etsy, but otherwise what good is it?  Improving your skill at playing video games just doesn't get you anything tangible, so why would any developer expect that to be an attractive feature of a game meant for the masses?
 
"We'll help you become a better video game player if you spend enough time on our game!"
 
"Sorry, I don't care if I become a better video game player. It's not one of my goals in life to get a server world first, because that's not actually a worthwhile thing for me to spend my limited time on this Earth achieving. I'm just here to kick back a bit and relax. What have you got for me?"  
 
"No trivial content. We want you to get serious about your video gaming!"
 
"Not interested. Bye!" 
 
The really questionable thing that's always been floating over Wildstar's head (and is now raining crap down on it in the form of jubilation among the game's foes) is -- what's so wrong with trivial video game content anyway? It's not a crime for a game to have trivial content. It's just good business sense. 
 
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. :(" -- Ghostcrawler
 
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/340939865858396162
 
That's from over a year ago. Things haven't changed on that front in the MMO world and they aren't going to change.  If Wildstar wants to live, Wildstar needs to be the thing that changes.
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With no way to avoid being killed?  Please direct me to the situation you're speaking about where players are being one-shot by a mechanic that is impossible to avoid.
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...then suffer the logistics of getting 20 players together ...
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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A really good feedback post
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oh, so getting 20 people together has unfathomable logistic now? putting together 40 mans is not near as hard as people like to make it out to be, the only reason you dont see more of it is the over all player population is not ready for it, give it a few months. it will come, my self and my guild(just started our SECOND ga group this evening) are all looking forewar to what wildstar will bring us and are loving it, just started doing phagetech prototypes and after about 2 hours of wiping, ppl frustrated, only just recently getting the boss through the entire first rotation a person pipes up with "can i just say this is fun as hell" and 19 other people verbally agreed. 
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snip
 
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
 
 
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Slave Master Drokk! OMG that guy wipes groups like you wouldn't believe, same with the Fire Lady in SSM (forget her name). Groups spend hours beating their heads against those bosses.
 
For Drokk, those probes that chase people are a real pain to kill and a real stress for the healer. On the other hand, the tank becomes a second class dps as there's nothing for them to do. When the healer or tank gets chosen all 3 times (or better yet, just the healer), dps can focus down the probes much more easily. The group also really needs to stack snares and roots for that fight. Maybe giving the probes less hp, make them move less quickly or something like that. In addition, the "supression wave" the Drokk initiates is super fast, only like a 1 second window which really takes practice to hit and strongly favours ranged classes with 3 interrupts. Don't get me wrong, our guild can down him and in fact just did it 1st try the other day, but we all still have nightmares about that fight.
 
The fire-lady in SSM: honestly it's all about the last phase since we use the "wall" exploit for the first fire phase to avoid the walls of flame and heal up. There's a lot of RNG with the safe gaps in the walls sometimes being at opposite ends of the map. Also some classes (like engineer) have no gap closer or way to speed up their slow asses to move from one gap to the next. Most of the time we bang our heads against the boss until the RNG gods smile upon us and the last phase's RNG works in our favour.
 
Now as for the final boss of SC (Modechai Redmoon) we never really done that fight as we just used the exploit (which you're fixing next patch). So I can't offer any feedback about that one.
 
However, I do note that SC and especially SSM are way too long. STL and KV are just right with 3 bosses. SC and SSM should give more rewards for getting to the end since they're longer.
 
TLDR: STL is perfect, straightforward fights and only 3 bosses. KV's 2nd boss (Drokk) is super mechanic heavy and a tough one to pug. SC and SSM are too long to successfully (and consistently) pug. Our guild will happily run STL but avoid the rest as the risk/reward isn't there.
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and that's exactly why dungeons shouldn't be downgraded. There are so many people using the "exploits" just to make it through content because they can't do the mechanics correctly. By now people should have learned how to do the dungeons without using current bugs to succeed. It's not rocket science when it comes to Drokk's IA or where to stand and what to do during probe phase. I am not a huge fan of people saying "if you can't beat the dungeons you shouldn't raid" but after having read that statement I start to think that maybe there's some truth in it....
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So what? 
 
You and your friends obviously liked what Wildstar had to offer, and that's why you're still playing. But for Wildstar's survival the isssue isn't why folks like you have stayed -- it's why so many other people have left. In order for Wildstar to stabilize its population and recover, it needs to please the people who do not currently like it.  This is why I even bother to offer feedback. If it were just me and my guildies who tried it and didn't like it, no one would notice or care. But our experience with the game was far more common than your experience, and that's why the population has taken a nosedive -- well, one of several reasons, of course, but definitely a real reason.  
 
If Wildstar's current players actually want the game to survive, they need to exercise some empathy and some perspective-taking skills and make an effort to understand why the people who left did so.  Saying "Well I like it just fine the way it is! The problem must be you, not the game!" is great for you, but utterly useless in terms of figuring out exactly why so many other players were so unsatisfied with the game experience.  
 
If you care about this game and its long-term survival, you need to learn to listen and not just keep chirping "Works great for me! No idea what your problem is!"  That's not helpful to anyone. 
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Slave Master Drokk! OMG that guy wipes groups like you wouldn't believe, same with the Fire Lady in SSM (forget her name). Groups spend hours beating their heads against those bosses.
 
For Drokk, those probes that chase people are a real pain to kill and a real stress for the healer. On the other hand, the tank becomes a second class dps as there's nothing for them to do. When the healer or tank gets chosen all 3 times (or better yet, just the healer), dps can focus down the probes much more easily. The group also really needs to stack snares and roots for that fight. Maybe giving the probes less hp, make them move less quickly or something like that. In addition, the "supression wave" the Drokk initiates is super fast, only like a 1 second window which really takes practice to hit and strongly favours ranged classes with 3 interrupts. Don't get me wrong, our guild can down him and in fact just did it 1st try the other day, but we all still have nightmares about that fight.
 
The fire-lady in SSM: honestly it's all about the last phase since we use the "wall" exploit for the first fire phase to avoid the walls of flame and heal up. There's a lot of RNG with the safe gaps in the walls sometimes being at opposite ends of the map. Also some classes (like engineer) have no gap closer or way to speed up their slow asses to move from one gap to the next. Most of the time we bang our heads against the boss until the RNG gods smile upon us and the last phase's RNG works in our favour.
 
Now as for the final boss of SC (Modechai Redmoon) we never really done that fight as we just used the exploit (which you're fixing next patch). So I can't offer any feedback about that one.
 
However, I do note that SC and especially SSM are way too long. STL and KV are just right with 3 bosses. SC and SSM should give more rewards for getting to the end since they're longer.
 
TLDR: STL is perfect, straightforward fights and only 3 bosses. KV's 2nd boss (Drokk) is super mechanic heavy and a tough one to pug. SC and SSM are too long to successfully (and consistently) pug. Our guild will happily run STL but avoid the rest as the risk/reward isn't there.
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Never said it was super hard...but its also not super easy to do. This is where raid size should stay at.
 
WoW, Rift, Aion, SWTOR, etc already did the homework for Carbine and this is a big part for why many of us, including myself, are frustrated with Carbine not having learned anything from those before it. Carbine is literally making every single mistake those mmo's have suffered through and are coming to the same conclusion those mmos have....albeit kind of slowly. 
 
If caveman A witnesses caveman B getting hurt by putting his hands on a flame....then caveman A should learn not to put his hand on a flame. 
 
Now I'm not saying they can't try anything new. The sky is the limit...but do it within the limits of lessons learned in the past. Making the same mistake with a different paint job is still a mistake. 
 
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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pretty much every boss in Guild Wars 2 can be beaten by stacking to completely avoid the mechanics. It also has a very deeply ingrained meta that's very very unforgiving to new players. "Oh you want to clear this? Sorry, but you're not a warrior", "we want only 1 elementalist and 4 warriors here", "we need 1 guardian and 4 warriors". Response from Arenanet? They don't care. 
I don't think that anyone should be learning about how dungeons should be done from ArenaNet. 
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I have no idea why we comparing wildstar with gw2 again and please don't answer with NCSOFT because I am getting tired of that lol.
 
A company is not responsible and shouldn't be for player setups. If a group want to run with 6 warriors and 0 healers or 5 dps, no tank and 1 hybrid healer, than that's the groups decision. But that has nothing to do with the company behind the gaming concept nor is that relevant when it comes to "training" areas a company decides of implementing due to  whatever reason. Am I the only one that still doesn't understand how we drifted that far away from the point of the discussion?
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Well the original point of the other player was
"Copy other companies because they made certain dungeons easy"
My response was
"That other company doesn't care that their dungeons are exploited, they don't care about the toxic meta in the game and there's no reason to copy them" 
And it is kind of relevant when all classes are supposed to be good at DPS, but you couldn't even clear content with 5 condition necros as only 1 of them could actually do damage, as conditions get capped, meaning that a new players can feel repulsed for playing the wrong class. 
 
 
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the point would be - the current wildstar players could leave if they dropped the games main appeal, which is the difficulty. And there's no guarantee that it would attract players to replace them having in mind how many casual MMOs with either very easy content (World of Warcraft leveling, dungeons, etc), or very casual content (Guild Wars 2, there's nothing in it that you absolutely have to do. If you want to stay in greens on level 80 it won't change much).
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the point would be - the current wildstar players could leave if they dropped the games main appeal, which is the difficulty. And there's no guarantee that it would attract players to replace them having in mind how many casual MMOs with either very easy content (World of Warcraft leveling, dungeons, etc), or very casual content (Guild Wars 2, there's nothing in it that you absolutely have to do. If you want to stay in greens on level 80 it won't change much).
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I said "If there is no way to avoid being killed how is that even fair?"
 
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But what if there are easy, medium, and hard difficulty dungeons?
 
Right now, all WS dungeons tend to lean towards the harder difficulty side. 
 
Difficulty of admission must be easy so that players have something to do while they are striving for the harder content. 
 
Let players feel like there is a clear line of progression. Adventures->Dungeons->Raids is no good. 
 
Progression should look like this:
 
For group play - Dungeons and adventures on a parallel line. Both should have easy, medium, and hard maps.
 
Raids - Easy, Medium, and hard. 10 and 20 man raids. Carbine can throw a curb ball here and make a really hard 10 man raid. 
 
For solo - Shiphands and vet shiphands. GW2 literally showed us solo "dungeons" can be very challenging and exciting. Besides GW2 players soloing every dungeon, which can be soloed, in the game....everyone who beat Liadri in Queens Gauntlet will tell you that it was probably their most exciting fight ever. I was cupcake ecstatic when i beat her on my 50th or so try. It felt a lot better than beating a dungeon with other people because I know I beat her and it was all me and no one else. 
 
What I am arguing for, is to broaden the appeal of WS to a wider audience. I don't want the difficulty to go away. There should definitely be difficult content in the game....but there needs to be easier content too. TimeTravel does not share this feeling unfortunately but I'm hoping he does. 
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 what you are describing is in wow, people come to wildstar because they dont want to play wow, and why play different wow when there is the better known real wow?
 
i think something you are forgetting is people in mmos love to be a special snowflake, that mentality is in the most hardcore players minds as much as it is in the most casuals players mind. being able to say you dedicated the time and effort to learn and overcome a challenge is a way for people to be set apart from others.
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what you are describing is in wow, people come to wildstar because they dont want to play wow, and why play different wow when there is the better known real wow?
 
i think something you are forgetting is people in mmos love to be a special snowflake, that mentality is in the most hardcore players minds as much as it is in the most casuals players mind. being able to say you dedicated the time and effort to learn and overcome a challenge is a way for people to be set apart from others.
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The "i have no reason to do regular dungeons because they don't give me gear. Experiencing excellent content, beating the level, and learning is worthless to me” mentality makes me want to scream in people's faces. Make it so players cannot enter veteran versions until they have bronzed the regular ones, something. Maybe have lore books strewn throughout the dungeons that explain what to look out for from trash and bosses to ease new players - it wouldn't make them easier, but it would make them less frustrating, particularly with language barriers.
 
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Carbine is limiting themselves to vet shiphands -> vet adventures -> vet dungeons -> raids. I'm saying that's no good. If this is their progression path, then that means they will never design a vet adventure to be as challenging as a vet dungeon...which is a shame. Its a stupid limitation they have put onto themselves.
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But if you think the game is in sustainable shape right now and will maintain that shape, then everything is fine, no changes need to be made, and you can just stop reading this thread full of Chicken Littles and not worry about it. If the game is currently working, no serious changes will be made, so there's nothing to be concerned about.  
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Man I thought we'd tenderized the dead equivar yesterday, but y'all have made a complete mess of the joint since.
 
Interesting to read the sturm and drang that has passed overnight.  As noted I tend to lean on the side of "the dungeons are the content that are done right" in Wildstar.  I have quibbles in other areas, but I'm almost always up for dungeon shenanigans.
 
I didn't catch who brought up GW2's dungeons as an example but from vast experience, they are almost uniformly horrible.  I applaud Arenanet for attempting to do something interesting with the tank/heal/dps trinity (in their case, eliminating it), but the fact that a dodge is perfect immunity and they put in so many map exploits makes the exploration paths basically deeply uninteresting.  If you want to bang your brains out for running them at speed for money, more power to you.  I don't personally think that's a good way to go.  There are many things GW2 has done right (skinning, dying, customization, world events, maybe pvp though I"m not enough of a fan to comment on it in depth) but dungeons really never impressed me in the least.  So making that an argument puts you on pretty weak flooring and you should watch your step.
 
Regular mode dungeons should be tuned for the level of the character, coming up with mostly quest gear, maybe a crafted piece, and with that level of abilities.  Thus interrupts are maybe at a premium at level 20, but they shouldn't be at the Skullcano level (30-35?).  I think that would be a reasonable adjustment.
 
Veteran mode dungeons are in a pretty good place.  Drokk can be frustrating, sure.  It's definitely a fight that gets easier with high dps and good communication, but at this point a character has all the tools to get it done, and all classes are on pretty firm footing.  While a tank is not great on dps during the Little Red Riding Hood phase (this is basically the old Opera Event on steroids) why are they not taking roots and snares and stuns along?  They do have some use there.
 
I think the only fight in veteran dungeonland that could use another considered pass for looking at worst case effect of randomness would be Rayna in SSM and that's merely because engineers do not have movement abilities.  If you are not cheesing the fight with the lip exploit (and I'm sure they WILL fix it, so I'd advise learning to do it properly sooner rather than later) and you get full side to side gap swings, your engineer is dead.  To be fair maybe most classes would be dead, but I"ve seen some amazing warrior stuff with bum rush and leap that defied imagination.  But if that mechanic were tweaked in a subtle fashion while keeping the essence of it, it wouldn't break my heart (it wouldn't take much either, maybe just one of the following: adjust wall damage/elemental type/etc such that an engineer innate could tank one wall (doesn't do much for DPS engineers though an argument could also be made that this might make stance dance of interest) that was badly placed, slightly slower sweep speed, less random gap placement so wild swings are unlikely or impossible).
 
So, difficulty I think is fine.  Anyone claiming the fallacy of the commons (so many people have said X to me) is easily countered with the opposite.  So many people have said to me that they love dungeons.  So, whatever.  Dead horse and all that.
 
I think the problem is more subtle than just mere difficulty or length.  The entire reward structure should be, and is being looked at.  Mentoring/Rallying down should probably not reward kit, but if renown were more desireable, then perhaps increasing that reward would incentivize folks to help new folks in dungeon experience.  Vet itemization is huge and is being dealt with (perhaps far more slowly than we'd like but that's the way the development cookie crumbles).  Naturally every tweak has knock on effects.  And there will always be an "easiest one to run for capping EG' or something like that, and I think that's okay in small amounts.  I don't think GW2's entire focus on gold/hour at end-game is particularly healthy (and is why I don't play it anymore, despite all the things they do right).  
 
It's a tricky proposition.  I don't think WoW has it entirely right either.  Hopefully Carbine's crew can work fast on hammering down the big nails and then move on to refining things and making them even better.	
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Yes. The hardcores might leave. And if the game is in a state where it is making an acceptable, if unimpressive, profit, and NCSoft is satisfied with the current player subscription base, and they are convinced there won't be any further losses, then obviously they should stick with what they have.
 
But if the game is currently not performing to NCSoft's satisfaction and is in danger, the devs will have no choice but to change things up and hope they can pull in (or pull back) more casuals than the hardcores they lose. Because otherwise it's just consigning the game to a not-so-slow death via insufficient profitability.  There's no guarantee at all that making changes would save the game, but not making them guarantees death. So what other choice is there?
 
Besides, it seems pretty clear that once the game goes B2P/F2P, many of the hardcores are going to ragequit anyway, or so they keep saying in all the threads about possible business model transitions.  So, that being the case, "keeping the hardcores happy" becomes completely moot.  Most of them will be gone.
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Difficulty in veteran dungeons is not what I would consider difficult. The reason it is deemed difficult is because people are not doing it correctly. I do not think things need to be made easier as much as people need to learn what a lot of their utility abilities do. Most veteran dungeon bosses can be made a lot easier with coordinated use of stuns and other utility abilities for survival. Such as using CC breaks. The reason a lot of people don't complete dungeons as they are leveling up is the rewards are not always there (though carbine did some addressing of that) and people just seem to try to zerg through them with no regard to stunning.
 
Basically what I am saying is that the difficult does not need to be toned down, instead the learning needs to be toned up. Which hopefully this new level 10 dungeon they are adding as a "training" dungeon will go a long way to help.	
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Based upon our metrics, players who did any dungeon were significantly more likely to stick around.	We like how challenging the dungeons are, and would like to retain that challenge--without creating versions that trivialize it. Which is why we are working to create enough content to fill those challenge-gaps y'all have mentioned. Adventures and Shiphands (eventually Vet versions) and housing expeditions are there to help give folks content at all of those difficulty levels.	As has been mentioned, the rewards--especially for leveling dungeons--do not match the challenge they represent, so we are specifically looking to address that.
If there are any specific mechanics or creatures that you feel are too difficult or have poor messaging, please let us know and we'll look at those specific aspects of the instances.
 
Thanks for all of the continued feedback, though, please continue to do so =)
 
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			I don't think you need to be rushed through level 20 dungeons at all. I did it on level (well on level as in low to mid/upper 20s) with my similarly leveled friends. They do teach people skills and anyone asking how does anyone "learn" IA/stun rotations in level 20 norm dungeons must never have faced Breezebinder in STL. If you don't interrupt his add cast it's almost certainly a wipe. It was for that reason that in some runs he was far harder than Invoker/Athreos/Stormtalon because to that point people think the only time they need to stun (if ever) is when they see a big, long telegraphed cast. Well, that gather ability has no tele box. Just a cast bar an animation and him saying something. I'll admit to that point I was in the "Arcane shot + Gate when I see a huge tele" camp. That fight taught me to look for the cast bar and what it says more than anything else.I also liked that it was a challenge. I guess my question is whether ppl mean you need help is whether they mean to bronze or to silver/gold. I never did better than bronze in any normal dungeon but that's because there were always 2 PUGs so maybe on that front it could be tweaked.	
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It's a tricky proposition.  I don't think WoW has it entirely right either.  Hopefully Carbine's crew can work fast on hammering down the big nails and then move on to refining things and making them even better.
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Oh, I missed TTs post. Those of you telling him that Carbine needs to nerf dungeons after what he's said are not understanding.
 
Their data shows that dungeons are the best indicator they have of player retention. It means that dungeons are the best feature in this game in terms of bringing in money for them. You don't mess with that by making them easier. You do more to give people the tools to do them better, which is what they are doing.
 
And what he's saying squares with my own experiences. I started playing with my brother in law and a friend of ours. I remember a week after release at my nephew's birthday party when he was telling me about Stormtalon, which I was too low to experience. With a gleam in his eye he talked about wiping on Bladewind for two hours, saying it was like fighting a raid boss. They finally got him down and disbanded, but all were hungry for more. When I hit 20 we went in and completed the dungeon in three hours. It was epic and felt great. It was like being able to experience end game stuff at level 20! I was hooked.
 
All three of us said we were not going to raid. Too busy. Too casual. But here we all are now, still playing the game, and we've downed X-89 twice. Did it take us longer than the hardcore folks? Yeah, but we've been playing at our own pace and having so much fun.Funny thing is, when I hit Stormtalon on my next level 20, I couldn't remember why it was so hard. Most of my groups were successful. Three hours? Never- finished most of my runs (pugs) in under an hour, sometimes getting silver. So we as a community are learning.
 
And I'll always remember one of my alt Pugs when a new player said after Bladewind went down: "Man, my heart is thumping through my chest!". This is a player that was hooked, no doubt. I haven't played another MMO that gives that kind of experience at level 20.
 
If you want easier content, do adventures. If you want easier dungeons, do the normal versions.
 
And FWIW, when I hit 50 on my warrior and figured out my tanking spec, the first thing I did was hit Stormtalon normal to get a feel for tanking with my new abilities. They can still be fun even at 50, though I'll admit the veterans are even more so once you have the gear.	
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3) I definitely get the points about the interrupt mechanics and disarms being tough on new players in STL especially, and so it wouldn't bother me much if the level on STL was upped to 25 - although I think KV should remain level 20.
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That means it's not casual players leaving, it's people who are literally doing nothing in endgame PVE.  The entire premise of the idea that "people are leaving because the content is too hard" is complete and absolute rubbish if there's a much higher chance the player will leave without ever even trying it.  That means people aren't leaving because of gear (they've never even rolled on or seen dungeon loot) it's not because they're dying (they've never even seen a trash mob to die against, much less a boss) and it's not because of their bad experience in a dungeon PUG (because they've never stepped into one to even fail at getting a medal).
 
So, essentially, if your argument is that dungeons or even endgame dungeon experience is why people leave, you either didn't really grasp that point or you think Timetravel is blatantly lying.  Me?  I obviously think that's not the case.  It seems pretty obvious that dungeons aren't even an ancillary cause and making them easier would do absolutely nothing if our sole goal is to increase the playerbase.  People who don't do dungeons don't fill your queue times.  People who don't do dungeons aren't going to fix the faction or skill position imbalance.  It makes it seem like all those people leaving because there's no "casual content" are leaving specifically because they ran out of solo content and split.  No wonder we'll have had two solo drops and a new solo dungeon by the time we get some of our dungeon changes; dungeons aren't even the problem.
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If we want to get real value out of it, we need to step back and think about it from every angle (and by 'we' I really mean Carbine.)
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It seems like they are, though.  Offering quests and adding a tutorial dungeon should help with the accessibility of dungeons without making them any less fun.
 
As many of us have learned, the normal dungeons get significantly easier as you get comfortable with them, group combat, and the mechanics.
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For the record I don't believe that the difficulty of Normal dungeons is responsible for most people leaving at all. However, you're interpreting neutral data from a point of bias. It's important to overcome this and try to assess data from all possible angles.
 
For instance, difficult dungeons may have caused a small but otherwise active number of gamers to quit; this in turn lengthened pug queue times to the point where new players coming after them were never able to get into the instanced content (which, as I stated in my earlier posts, was the case for the friends I brought into the game if not for the fact that I was able to convince a player who had basically already quit to come back and do a few dungeons.) This difficulty in even being able to access the content may have then compounded factors and caused many more players to quit.
 
Why would a small group of players impact the experience of the larger population, you might ask? Well, instances are always bottlenecked on tanks first and healers second, and a player who's never experienced group content is very unlikely to be running around gaining experience as a tank or a healer solo in the open world. So losing a small section of players that just happened to be the ones experienced at and interested in playing tanks and healers could have a very large domino effect and block an exponentially large amount of DPS players from accessing the content.
 
This isn't necessarily the case, but the scant amount of data provided to us by Timetravel's post supports the idea just as much as it does your assumption. If we want to get real value out of it, we need to step back and think about it from every angle (and by 'we' I really mean Carbine.)
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Timetravel. I noticed there rewards for Expeditions have been upgraded which is great news, However im still not convinced people even know about them or have easy ways to access and enjoy them.
 
For example (and im sure its been fixed by now), when i did a expedition solo, i found it WAY WAY TO HARD. As if it was not scaling properly.
Also, as a housing buff, i dont want them on ly plot coz they spoil the look, that is my choice, but it sucks i have no easy way to access them as a result.
Are you possibly looking into improving Expeditions Accessibility?
 
And as an interesting thought, what about using them in events for housing. It would be awesome if a vet version spawned randomly as an event on peoples houses, encouraging them to get a group together to go do them for cool rewards. I know you played around with pvp events in housing in the past, it would be great to see this stuff possibly come back, particularly with guild neighborhoods in the works.
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Totally valid feedback. I'll pass this along to that team. I have two on my housing plot and really enjoyed them both, but they are perhaps a bit too hidden from players.
Which expedition and which parts of it were so difficult? What was hard about it?
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Their data shows that dungeons are the best indicator they have of player retention.
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Of that I have no doubt; otherwise I wouldn't have spent an hour last night typing up that huge feedback post for them!
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See, the thing is...they aren't retaining players.  Their retention rates are far more dismal than typical even for a post-launch MMO.  The problem with this forum is that despite complaints about "negtativity", it's really an echo chamber. People who are here are people who still have active accounts because no one else is allowed to be here.  This here is the bubble.  Of course the people here like things the way they are -- otherwise they wouldn't be here, right? A few folks come here to write "Dear Wildstar" letters about why they are leaving and those posts are quickly locked and shuffled off the front page, and that's all the talk there is about why they left.  
 
*Snip*
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