115286-hope-the-devs-are-listening-a-suggestion-thread

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Hello, as a player from the betta i recently decided to stop playing. 
And this is not because i dont like the game, its just because you do not have anithing to do in it.
Sure i was in the only PVE server that had 3 guilds doying GA, i raided it ... But what about the rest.
 
So currently the mass players that are still here are elitist, that are not such a quite friendly fellows, raiding for 5 hours a day isnt what i would like from a mmo, and unless carebine doesnt want only 200 active players on a server they need to change a lot.
 
Here is my suggestion list after 3 months of playing and experiancing all things.
 
1) Make the game accesible for the masses. This means implementing HardMode raids and Normal ones.
While hardmode will retain the same number 20/40 normal would be 10/20.
This will promote smaller guilds and players to come back and try resurecting their guilds in a attempt to make it work.
 
2) starting pvp now is fustrating, you get placed in 1800 rated teams all the time. 
 
3) attunment process account bound. Account, not faction.
 
4) pvp and pve transfers / faction change option.
 
5) make more content that is accesible for masses. Meaning dungeons, smaller raids.
 
Sure now all people that post are the ones that remain and farming ga or doying ds, but those are such a small number that no one can now denny the game is slowly dying.
 
Please take into consideration these changes as they are well thought and i am sure people would join back if you give them something to do beside joining hard core guilds for 5 hour raids.
 
Let them have their world but also implement a way for the mases to play this game with normal mode raids.	
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By the way just to put things into perspective :
I have a character DS attuned and imwas raiding DS. Also applied to the best EU guild and got accepted.
When my wife told me,mare you sure you want to play 5 hours a day ? 
You go at work for 8 hours, are you sure you want to invest 5 hours dailymfor a game, instead of doying another certification or something that really matters ? 
 
And yes as i thoght of it, i really dont want to spend 5 hours a day just to see elder content.
I want to play 2 max 3 hours as all of 90% of player base that would keep you alive with subscriptions.	
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Shouldn't you be posting about your decision to the guild you applied to? hint hint... It's rude to just vanish.
 
Also, where is this elitist unfriendly fellows coming from? None of us have ever met you other than reading your application, you never logged on the game or teamspeak ever since, so why are you judging people you never met? xD
 
Goodluck in real life anyway, i'll let the guild know on your behalf.	
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The game itself is not necessarily the problem.  It's the "caliber" of players today.
 
This game and others ( ... SWTOR, Terra, gw2, etc. (think new games) ), are not clicking with the "current player base".
 
I still posit that this is because "todays gamers" are not the same as those that have been playing MMORPGs since their inception.
 
They are not patient and are of the "cult of immediate gratification" or so it seems to me. <_<	
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Now since the grammar and the form of your post's entirety are quite hasty and leads to conclusions you might not want it to, let me tell you a couple of things;
 
First, Raiding Datascape with being unable to kill the first boss  is a complete different thing, the ammount of thrill, fun, excitement and "frustration" progressing we ( and others who have gone further ) have had are unpararelled with anything in any other game. If out of inabillity to progress you were unable to feel that, well im sincerely sorry.
 
Second, being accepted as a trial in the best EU guild differs from being accepted as a member or a raider.
 
Finally, best of luck with whatever your wife wants you to do with your own life, i guess you had the conversation after deciding to apply; so be kind and let the guild know you changed your mind ( that implies make a forum post or talk with someone online, perhaps some of the "not so good people blabla" you are referring to, oh you wait you never even had a talk with any of them.	
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Currently i was writting this from a tablet, thus the hasty grammar and mistakes due to lack of auto correct. Since i did not came back to my pc i couldnt write to your guild.
 
Secondly, you were not the elitist people that i was refering to since i havent got the chance to talk to you. That would be just outride rude of me, so please try to understand that by no means you were the people i was refering to. 
The rude people, were fellows from other guilds that during raid time, shouted, yelled and talked very baddly about others when i mistake was made. Even remembered a guild post of a lady that left quote " im not in my teens animore so being shouted by a grown man is not my ideea of having fun" 
That beeing said my deepest apology to eugenic if my post was misleading, you were in no way refered in this post except the best guild in eu, nothing else.
 
Back to the thread, suggestions are based of my time with the game, and i am 100% sure that most people that left felt the same, and the ones that are left now cannot keep a company afloat since they are to few.
 
The game need player base that has something to do in elder game without spending huge amounts of time or trying to get 40 people online each night in a single guild.	
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			The content is here. I have a casual guild. Normally when you log in the natural question is "what should we do today?". And then there's plenty of choice:sometimes we run adventures, sometimes we run dungeons, sometimes we kill world bosses, sometimes we do Blighthaven and Malgrave dailies. Essentially I can do here the exact same things that I can do in Guild Wars 2. Yet this game so called doesn't appeal to casuals while the other one does. The only difference is - one has 40 man raids, the other one doesn't. Should I complain that an MMO has more content, even if I'm not the one running it?	
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So my point exactly, giving players the option of 10/20 man raid scaled down from what they are now will get more people on board.
The content is there, needs just tweaks to make it more available for others also.
 
Like other people said:
"The game was a blast to play with probably the best pvp I've played (bugs and all) but I don't feel the MMO aspect of it anymore. I work nights and the time I am able to play (mornings) has turned into an almost solo feel to it. Stuck it out as long as I could and I really hope the megaservers work for the population. If so then maybe myself and others will return but as of right now I feel this game is really not for those players who are unable log in during peak hours."
 
They need to make the game more friendly for players that dont want to stay 5-7 hours a day just to see content.	
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So my point exactly, giving players the option of 10/20 man raid scaled down from what they are now will get more people on board.
 
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Trying to gather 20/40 people at once is a hassle.
 
Many guild died because of this, many more will make compromises and merge with other guilds (some fit nice, some fail miserable).
Smaller guild may thrive with 10 man raids since it easier to organize and do something in the game. Time spent is at everyone leisure per raid.
 
I personally know most guild that quit and left the game due to lack of people to progress or do raids at all.
 
I am pretty sure you are aware of this situation also as  a player that still is in the game.	
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Trying to gather 20/40 people at once is a hassle.
 
Many guild died because of this, many more will make compromises and merge with other guilds (some fit nice, some fail miserable).
Smaller guild may thrive with 10 man raids since it easier to organize and do something in the game. Time spent is at everyone leisure per raid.
 
I personally know most guild that quit and left the game due to lack of people to progress or do raids at all.
 
I am pretty sure you are aware of this situation also as  a player that still is in the game.
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MMO doesn't have to be 40 man raids for casual players. Massive for casual can be 10 man raids that actual happens.
 
My question to you would be, since your defending quite hard:
Have you done GA ? If so have you done it via circles ? Were you successful ?
Have you done DS ? If so have you done it via circles ? Were you successful ?
 
Because i know of personal account where GA raid had 4 new people in it and failed all the time and elitist people immediately complained and ended up with flame thread on forum.	
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MMO doesn't have to be 40 man raids for casual players. Massive for casual can be 10 man raids that actual happens.
 
My question to you would be, since your defending quite hard:
Have you done GA ? If so have you done it via circles ? Were you successful ?
Have you done DS ? If so have you done it via circles ? Were you successful ?
 
Because i know of personal account where GA raid had 4 new people in it and failed all the time and elitist people immediately complained and ended up with flame thread on forum.
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The game itself is not necessarily the problem.  It's the "caliber" of players today.
 
This game and others ( ... SWTOR, Terra, gw2, etc. (think new games) ), are not clicking with the "current player base".
 
I still posit that this is because "todays gamers" are not the same as those that have been playing MMORPGs since their inception.
 
They are not patient and are of the "cult of immediate gratification" or so it seems to me. <_<
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I don't really think the issue is that they never played past mmo's when they were deemed "hardcore" I just don't think they have played NES games where there were no extra lives and every time you died or shut the system off you had to start the WHOLE game over. People used to like to be challenged when playing games because it made them THINK. Fast-forward 20 years and now people play games because the DON'T want to think. The games haven't changed much in difficulty it's the player base that has changed, along with the rest of the world. Most of us aren't 7 or 8 years old anymore, we have real life responsibilities that are demanding.
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			There is nothing wrong with having content that only the truly dedicated can do. There's no reason to copy said content into easier versions for the "everyman" to do. I haven't even done a dungeon and only a handful of adventures, and I am quite happy with this game and allllll the things I have to do still. If the time comes that I can actually sit down for a solid couple of hours at a time regularly, I will gladly try for more group content. But for now, I am enjoying leveling, crafting, and helping my guild when I can.	
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The game itself is not necessarily the problem.  It's the "caliber" of players today.
 
This game and others ( ... SWTOR, Terra, gw2, etc. (think new games) ), are not clicking with the "current player base".
 
I still posit that this is because "todays gamers" are not the same as those that have been playing MMORPGs since their inception.
 
They are not patient and are of the "cult of immediate gratification" or so it seems to me. <_<
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My suggestions?
 
Make it so that a good number of minibosses in a raid are accessible without killing a boss.  Like on Act 1 of Genetic Archives, all 4 should be accessible without killing a boss.  This gives casual raiders something to do.  Same goes for Datascape, but I think they said they are doing that?
 
Make outdoor raid bosses actually require 20+ people regardless of level.  Also, make them drop good loot that is wanted as an incentive to do them.  Also, boss kill quests that can be repeated on a certain timer or something to that effect.
 
Add the daily quests that they said they are working on for dungeons, adventures, pvp and so on.
 
Add Fishing!
 
Add a 40 man raid boss a la Onyxia that is not as difficult as System Daemons.
 
Nerf trash health in Genetic Archives, except for Rhinos, double that health and make it so they drop a ton of gold for each person.  Incentive to do it but not necessary if you don't want to waste the time.
 
Give rewards for completing a zone.  Give rewards for getting certain amount of achievement points.  Have leaderboards for things like, Most Money Earned this Week, Most Deaths, Most Mobs killed, Most Dungeons completed....so on and so forth.	
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The highlight of my time in WoW was raiding original Naxxramus: my guild was the only one on our side that had downed C'thun, and on lliterallythe last night before Burning Crusade dropped, we killed Thaddius and cleared two (out of 4) wings of Naxx. I remember when Thaddius went down hearing the cheers through vent. It was amazing, it was exhilarating, it was.... ten years ago.
 
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And yet here is the new generation of MMOers that want that experience. From all MMOs I remember something. Something hard that made us work for it as a community. In Guild Wars 2 that would be the first time my server downed 80 man bosses, on here it would be the first time we downed stormtalon in vet on silver after literally weeks of trying. If you don't have time or wish for raids, then that's your choice. But why to nerf or take away content from those that do?
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Well, the problem there is that the post I was replying to implied that this "new generation of MMOers" doesn't exist. 
 
Heck, even back in vanilla WoW, there is a stat that only something like 1-2% of the player base ever killed a single boss in Naxx. The problem with building a game around the "hardcore" is, as we are now discovering, no matter the generation, that group has never been very big. We're talking about a few tens of thousands out of millions of subscribers.
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I don't exactly think that the game is built around hardcore to begin with. It literally has just as much content as Guild Wars 2. The only difference is that there's hardcore content on top of it here and there isn't over there.
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			you dont have to  be raiding 5 hours a day to see elder game, those are guilds that are pushing progression to get world firsts and what not. there is a such thing as progressing at a much lower rate because you spend less time in there maybe instead of apping to a much more hardcore guild join a guild that is not in ds yet but wants to get there just need to get 40 people up for it	
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As a Mr. Nobody I'd like to weigh in on this topic a little, particularly in reference to the silliness quoted above.  The market isn’t short on attention span, or stupid, or any other slanderous terms the fanbois care to fling; they’re just very aware that their time is worth more than wasting 100s of hours on a E-Job they have to pay in order to work at.
 
 
 
 
Hate on WoW but the simple fact is they're not the MMO juggernaut just because of how polished their content is, but how they scaled it to cover a very broad net of players.  They realized that catering to the 1% is a great way to fail as a business.  Simple business 102: if you cater to a small select audience then in order to show the profit that every business must have, you have to charge accordingly.  Meaning "Hardcore Raiders" having "their own game" and everyone else should just leave for "that other game" should be paying around $5k a month in subscription fees if not more.  WS's population is a very loud ringing bell that says  mega-servers are a step, but a lot more attention has to be paid to the broader market, simple fact is “casuals” are the people who pay the bills.  The Market has already given a definitive rebuttle to claims that the game is fine and doesn't need to do more than a couple of minor tweaks, simple fact is unless real changes are made to embrace a broader market the plug will get pulled.
 
 
That said: I think WS has a great deal of potential, just not as its designed right now.  Nor am I saying it should be exactly like WoW, which is for my tastes now too casual.  If the Devs and Suits put their heads together and study their competitors without ego getting in the way, they got a foundation to make a game that can truly rival WoW and thrive.  Personally I'd love to see that happen, but as things are now I will let my sub run out and see what the Devs commit to before I decide to further support them with my $$ and more importantly my time.  Below is a article that has some astute points, maybe Carbine will give it some consideration.
 
 
 
 /http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/10/02/the-think-tank-how-to-save-wildstar-if-wildstar-needs-saving/
 	
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Interesting conversation.
 
I am a firm believer that games should provide unique content for all sizes of groups and guilds.  Wildstar does a fairly decent job with that - there are 5 person adventures and dungeons (both normal and veteran), 20 person raids, and then 40 person raids.
 
Could it be better?  Sure.  I'd love to see some 10-person raids, and I'd love it if we could decouple group size from progression (so for example, not putting DS behind GA in terms of progression).  I'd love to see more dungeons, more adventures, and more raids in general, at all group sizes.  But that doesn't mean that the current game has a real problem - just room for more fun things to be added is all.
 
On the topic of elitism and players, I'll just say this:
 
I think most of the problems that we have, as players, are ones we cause for ourselves.  We get hung up on top end content but don't want to put the time in to get good at the stuff along the way.  If I had a dollar for every person who waited until 50 to even try group content, I'd be rich.  We run up against bugs or balance issues or find something that we don't like and then talk ourselves out of having fun in the game.  We whine and complain about RNG, about difficulty, about all sorts of things, and rather than being patient and giving the developers time to figure out what to do and adjust, we demand that they fix it immediately and then quit before they even have the chance to.  We refuse to group with people who aren't geared well, and we bail on groups whenever anything goes wrong, and then we complain how we can never find anyone to group with.
 
I'm not saying that everyone does these things (I know many who don't), but in general, this kind of stuff happens far too often.
 
None of those are problems with the game.  They're problems with our expectations as players.  Maybe we're jaded by years of other MMOs.  Maybe we're just spoiled by how easy other games are.  Maybe we've forgotten the days when we used to spend years to get to max level and where success in a dungeon or a raid was a measure of skill and teamwork, rather than just gear.  Maybe we're all just so beaten down by life and our jobs and families now that we don't want to be challenged, and don't want to think, like my friend Vic says above.  I don't know.  But these things aren't the fault of Wildstar or its development team.
 
Something to think about, isn't it?	
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1) Make the game accesible for the masses. This means implementing HardMode raids and Normal ones.While hardmode will retain the same number 20/40 normal would be 10/20.This will promote smaller guilds and players to come back and try resurecting their guilds in a attempt to make it work.
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The game itself is not necessarily the problem.  It's the "caliber" of players today.
 
This game and others ( ... SWTOR, Terra, gw2, etc. (think new games) ), are not clicking with the "current player base".
 
I still posit that this is because "todays gamers" are not the same as those that have been playing MMORPGs since their inception.
 
They are not patient and are of the "cult of immediate gratification" or so it seems to me. <_<
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			zomg, I knew it was the world's fault. I swear, it can't do ANYTHING right.  ;)	
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Interesting conversation.
 
I am a firm believer that games should provide unique content for all sizes of groups and guilds.  Wildstar does a fairly decent job with that - there are 5 person adventures and dungeons (both normal and veteran), 20 person raids, and then 40 person raids.
 
Could it be better?  Sure.  I'd love to see some 10-person raids, and I'd love it if we could decouple group size from progression (so for example, not putting DS behind GA in terms of progression).  I'd love to see more dungeons, more adventures, and more raids in general, at all group sizes.  But that doesn't mean that the current game has a real problem - just room for more fun things to be added is all.
 
On the topic of elitism and players, I'll just say this:
 
I think most of the problems that we have, as players, are ones we cause for ourselves.  We get hung up on top end content but don't want to put the time in to get good at the stuff along the way.  If I had a dollar for every person who waited until 50 to even try group content, I'd be rich.  We run up against bugs or balance issues or find something that we don't like and then talk ourselves out of having fun in the game.  We whine and complain about RNG, about difficulty, about all sorts of things, and rather than being patient and giving the developers time to figure out what to do and adjust, we demand that they fix it immediately and then quit before they even have the chance to.  We refuse to group with people who aren't geared well, and we bail on groups whenever anything goes wrong, and then we complain how we can never find anyone to group with.
 
I'm not saying that everyone does these things (I know many who don't), but in general, this kind of stuff happens far too often.
 
None of those are problems with the game.  They're problems with our expectations as players.  Maybe we're jaded by years of other MMOs.  Maybe we're just spoiled by how easy other games are.  Maybe we've forgotten the days when we used to spend years to get to max level and where success in a dungeon or a raid was a measure of skill and teamwork, rather than just gear.  Maybe we're all just so beaten down by life and our jobs and families now that we don't want to be challenged, and don't want to think, like my friend Vic says above.  I don't know.  But these things aren't the fault of Wildstar or its development team.
 
Something to think about, isn't it?
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Honestly, I think the biggest problem is that people see raiding as the end of the game, see they don't have time to raid, and stamp their feet at the "hardcore" crowd.
 
And, to be fair, nobody makes anyone raid, it's not necessary to do, you don't have to have it done next week...
 
I mean, I'm not a raider, but it's hard to call myself a casual with a straight face.  I meet the forum definition, but I'm on for hours every day, hanging out on these forums during the day, et al.  Considering a lot of raiders are logging in for raids and logging out, it doesn't sound like raiding is that hardcore.  It's also certainly not the definite endgame.
 
Raiding is for people who want to play the game in big groups.  Their gear they get has bigger numbers to reflect what they do.  But we don't have to raid; we never did.  We made it this way.  We, as players, are the ones saying, "You're catering to the hardcore because you have raids that take a lot of people."  Which, yeah, they do require more people; they're raids.  Since launch, by drop 3-4, we will have two new leveling zones and a new PVP BG.  Our next raid is supposedly coming in January along with a training dungeon.  We're getting veteran shiphands on the board and single player dungeons.  That's not mentioning the housing and other random stuff we're getting.
 
The game still has only the two raids it started out with.  And only the raiders can definitively say that nobody is really done with the content yet.  Raiding is such a small facet of the game that I'm not sure why people both convince themselves they can't do it at the same time they get angry at Carbine because they think they should be doing it.
 
I suck at PVP, I don't have any time I allocate to it and I'm not particularly in the mood much to do it.  I'm not going to get mad at Carbine because they put up leaderboards for RBGs, dropped a BG, and I'll not likely see the inside of a Warplot.  That's not content I want to do.  It's there if I want to put in the time and do it, but I don't.  Similarly, I've not seen the inside of Datascape.  Maybe someday far down the road, but I'm not a raider.  I don't see raiding as this pinnacle I want to reach because everything else is just ancillary to the raiding.
 
I think Carbine did right by fixing gearing (which was a complaint shared by pretty much anyone doing content), but I can't help thinking that the problem is that part of the player population is jealous that they don't have time to put in that time and energy they think they need to devote to raiding (and I question that), therefore nobody deserves that challenge.  Maybe someday, I'll jump into a group and do some raiding.  Until then, it's really just not that important.  It's just one part of the game; it doesn't need to be fetishized.
 
 
 
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Raiding is for people who want to play the game in big groups.  Their gear they get has bigger numbers to reflect what they do.  But we don't have to raid; we never did.  We made it this way.  We, as players, are the ones saying, "You're catering to the hardcore because you have raids that take a lot of people."  
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Simply having raids does not mean that a game caters to the hardcore, so this is a straw-man argument. This game caters to the hardcore because this game MARKETS itself as hardcore and has set itself up so that there is no endgame progression that doesn't lead you through either rated BGs with a deliberately oppressive set point of wins vs. losses required to advance or through raids with a deliberately oppressive set of gating requirements.
 
The players didn't choose those things and it's absurd for you to lay that one at the feet of the players. There's some things that are the fault of unrealistic expectations on the part of the players, and some things that are the fault of a saturated market for MMORPGs. But some things are the fault of the game's developers and publishers, and this issue is unambiguously one of them. You don't help your own credibility by claiming otherwise.
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A couple of things:
<snip>
 
Lets face it. 20 man raids require at least 30 people. You are going to have people that burn out, need a break, have to work, get married, like sex and showers, eating, social life, etc. Hardcore does not equate to peeing in a mountain dew bottle, and living for the next raid. Sometimes, though, it feels like it. And all it really takes is one raider to start the domino effect that causes a guild implosion.
 
10 mans were probably the best idea. Early on, 10 man's were not easy. They weren't insanely difficult, but everyone has to perform in a 10 man. Nobody can be carried in progression. It was far more manageable to get 15 people in a guild with any degree of regularity. And for those seriously motivated people, they had the 20 mans.
 
Why Carbine chose the 20-40 man route still has me scratching my head. Because frankly, its a huge step back. It requires a huge player base to draw raiders from, especially when you consider the turn over. So yeah, I will never understand how going back to 20-40 is hardcore. Its kind of counter productive and..... dumb.
 
 
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Yes, gathering a group for 10 or less than 20 player raid content  is actually easier. I will agree with that. However, I agree with several points of Vic's post because that has been my basic experience in WS and other games the guild is in as well. The problem is that Wildstar is fairly new so the problem is exacerbated. And that problem really does have a lot to do with the mindset of the players to an extent, and very little to do with the difficulty of the game content.  Looking at our guilds roster for WS, we've attuned, and set in motion to attune, enough players to make a 40 man just in our guild alone. So why do we hover between 16-18 players at best on raid nights. Literally all those excess players, never show up for raid. They get attuned, and then disappear and never log on again. I'm pretty sure that's a story every guild in this game and others have heard time and time again, but WS is new, so the effect is far harsher.
 
Now in a game like WoW you could just continuously pull from a ledger of players to replace this problem, no-shows etc, which is present in games like WoW too. Again, that problem is generally the player saying things like: "yeah I want to raid", "yeah I can raid at these times", "Oh I'm available", "yes I want to raid progressively", "yes I want to raid hardcore", etc. The fact is the saying is very different from doing, and this general comment from most players that do this is frankly untrue. Nothing is super easy the first time it's attempted. Everything takes time to learn and time to master, and once it's done, it becomes easy. There was a time when adventures were that hump, then they became easy, and there was a time when dungeons were that hump and they became easy. The same will happen with raids. The problem is, as it has been, and as it always will be in MMOs, is that there is always that group of players that don't want to "cut teeth" on mechanics, they want to join or be a part of a group that has already done that process, and if they can't have that well, they won't play the game. I say the problem is exacerbated on WS because its new in two ways; one the limited player base, so covering for no-shows is problematic and two because it is new there is no "Fatboss" or "IcyVeins" etc for every single fight currently live.
 
All of this creates a rotating door effect. Players on the current roster get frustrated at the no-shows to the point they either quit the game or the guild is forced to merge. Ultimately the take home message is this: If you agree to be on a team, and to show up and participate on said team either in game or irl, and decide to quit being a team player without warning, you create a vacancy that needs to be filled. This also creates a burden on the group as a whole and does them a great disservice, and ultimately makes another hurdle they have to compensate for. Unfortunately, a lot of players think and react this way, thinking that only they personally behave like this, creating a domino effect resulting in one of the aforementioned outcomes. The odd side to this is that said same player will turn around and complain they cannot find a guild/raid group, or that they can't find a group that raids when they want, when it in fact was a group of similar like minded players that caused the options for guilds to diminish hardcore or not.
 
But again, no one is forcing anyone to raid. There are only two raids in the game, and both are largely still in progression for many. So you have some options either end game raiding is not for you, or find a group of players you can consistently go with if you want to see the content, until they release more content that is accessible to all.	
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Even if what you're saying is true, if they marketed the game as hardcore, then casual players (if such a thing exists) have even less ground to stand on.  If you were expecting hardcore content, and you got it, and decided that you didn't want it, why would you be in the game?  So I'm not entirely sure how "this game markets itself as hardcore" and then subsequently supposedly catering to them is some kind of indictment of Carbine and not the players.
 
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Hi Folks,
 
Lets try to get back on topic please. The OP is about suggestions, this thread shouldn't be insulting one another and should keep constructive and polite. 
 
Thanks.
- Team WildStar 	
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We will see if the devs are listening through updates.
 
We will see if the devs are listening or not if the game goes F2P or not.
 
I am cautious on this front considering the path that the game has taken:
 
Gang busters first month, followed by lots of people leaving, then server mergers then .... well the next step in other games has been nickel and diming version of F2P.
 
I hope that, WS does not go this this final step.
 
I like the subscription model more than any other F2P model.	
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OK then.
 
In the spirit of polite, constructive, and completely on-topic discourse:
 
I agree with the OP's suggestion that the game is too hardcore, particularly surrounding the endgame.
I disagree with the subsequent claims, started only a few posts after the OP, that the real problem is the players.	
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			I disagree. Today's players seem to want to be coddled.	
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I like the subscription model more than any other F2P model.
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Understood.
 
Thank you for your view. :)	
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			You're very welcome. Thanks very much for your own non-insulting, polite, constructive, and on-topic contributions to this thread.  :)	
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Yes, there is such a thing as casual players. They're the ones who aren't here. This isn't about whether they have a leg to stand on. I got involved here because you and others started blaming the players for the fact that the game was marketed explicitly to a target audience too small to support the game.
 
As a side note, I really think the term "white knight" is the wrong one for the kind of player who blindly supports the game's management so fervently and so inappropriately that they draw in critics who otherwise would be content to just stay quiet and let the game try to fix itself. I think the term "aggro magnet" would be more appropriate. 
 
Protip: the difference between a tank and an aggro magnet is that a tank draws aggro and then holds it. An aggro magnet points a shiny neon sign at the things a tank would try to deflect aggro away from. For example:
 
tank: I like turtles! Woo! Turtles! *runs around like an idiot*
aggro magnet: the game is perfect and if you think otherwise, you are a LOSER. *points a big neon sign at the game that reads "direct criticism here"*
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Stuff about casual/hardcore, number of players, challenge and difficulty, etc.
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I think we get hung up on numbers too much.  In EverQuest I routinely led 6-group raids (36 people) with nothing but a /shout channel and a piece of scratch paper.  The game had no raid interface AT ALL in those days, and yet we still managed to pull together both pickup raids and guild raids to take down dragons or do the Planes.  Later when the game did get a raid interface, raids were scaling all the way up to 72 people.  I'll admit, 72 people was a little bit silly, but there were guilds (and alliances) that did it, regularly.  I once took 130 players into battle against an amped up raid boss mob during a special server event (it was messy - I was responsible for over 400 character deaths that day and spent the entire night afterwards doing corpse retrieval and rezzes with a team of clerics so everyone could get the majority of their experience back).
 
In EVE Online I regularly coordinated fleet actions involving several hundred players.  I wasn't an FC in one of the bigger alliances but in some cases battles in EVE involve thousands of players to a side.
 
A lot of people like to compare Wildstar to WoW because WoW is what they know, but honestly - 40 people is not that big.  All that's required to pull off a raid of any size is dedication, professionalism, and organization on the part of the players involved.  It's about attitude more than anything else.  If you want to do 40-person content as a guild, you need people who are patient enough to wait for the guild to really be able to do it.  You need people who are doing it for the right reasons - because they want to take on a big challenge with their friends - and not because they just want the loot or something.  You need people who are willing to fail before they succeed, and willing to walk before they can run, and who aren't going to bail on the game because they hit a bug or haven't seen a patch for something they care about yet.  If you have the right people, you can do anything.
 
I know a lot of guilds have lost members, but I also know guilds that haven't.  The ones that haven't lost members are the ones that went into this game expecting to see pitfalls and imperfections, and made sure that their members treated things realistically.
 
I'll leave you with something I wrote in another very similar thread a while back:
 
Being "hardcore" isn't about beating a timer. It's not about downing something first. It's not about keeping score. If you're focused on that, you're doing it wrong.
 
It's about turning the playing of the game into an art form. It's about being able to work as a team, even when everyone's not at the top of their game. It's about being able to think on your feet and adapt so that when that healer is in the wrong place at the wrong time, it doesn't wipe you. It's about being able to get back up and give it another try even when you've wiped 20 times, and still be laughing about it. And most importantly, it's about recognizing that YOU influence the game experience of everyone else around you. YOU can choose whether that influence is a positive one, that inspires folks to keep playing and be better at the game, or a negative one, that causes them to leave.
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Don't get me wrong - I think there's a place for 10 and 20 person content.  My personal sweet spot for a raid is the 20-person size, fun-wise.  But I also believe that we shouldn't be intimidated by the 40 person content either.
 
I also don't buy that players aren't capable of doing big groups anymore.  I think the problem is not capabilities, but expectations.  Today's fantasy MMO players in general seem to be unwilling to put effort in or to be very organized to achieve their goals.  There's a big cult of instant gratification going on as well.
 
It doesn't have to be this way though.  In any group there are natural leaders who influence the mindset of everyone around them.  Games and guilds are no different.  All it takes to change player behavior is for those people to step up and say publicly: "Sure this is hard, but it's worth the effort"	
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Don't get me wrong - I think there's a place for 10 and 20 person content.  My personal sweet spot for a raid is the 20-person size, fun-wise.  But I also believe that we shouldn't be intimidated by the 40 person content either.
 
I also don't buy that players aren't capable of doing big groups anymore.  I think the problem is not capabilities, but expectations.  Today's fantasy MMO players in general seem to be unwilling to put effort in or to be very organized to achieve their goals.  There's a big cult of instant gratification going on as well.
 
It doesn't have to be this way though.  In any group there are natural leaders who influence the mindset of everyone around them.  Games and guilds are no different.  All it takes to change player behavior is for those people to step up and say publicly: "Sure this is hard, but it's worth the effort"
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While I completely understand that, player expectations are what hurts them in the long haul.  A lot of people expected that 40 man raiding would be awesome for them.  A lot of people found out they didn't actually want to do it.  But with the attunement changes hopefully increasing the raiding pool, who knows?
 
I'm all for 40 man raids, but then I don't really raid.  I'm not sure where the point of no return is that running a 40 man is beyond most Wildstar players' ability, but the point where people are even willing to put in the time and effort to try is much lower.  I suppose we'll see how the population expands, or doesn't, post drop.
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There's a law, or a rule, or a hypothesis out there in sociology that says that the maximum size of a social group is around 150 people.  Larger than that and you just end up getting multiple groups that are loosely linked together.  I can't remember the name of it at the moment, but in my experience it's not too far off the mark.
 
As a general rule of thumb for MMOs and guilds, in order be able to consistently make numbers for a raid, you need three times that many active players on your roster.  This helps handle the inevitable situations where someone can't be online or just isn't interested or whatever.  You can make do with a smaller roster if you are very strict about attendance and participation, but doing that also requires focusing your guild very closely on a single part of the game (raiding) and can lead to drama and other forms of damage to the social community of the guild as a whole.  People stop being friends and instead log on just for the raids, if you're not careful.  That's why I tend to stick to the 3x rule.  In 15 years of leading guilds and raids in a bunch of different MMOs, that's been the best ratio for having a happy guild in the long term in my experience.
 
That means in order to make a 20-person raid work, consistently, I need 60 active players on the roster.  Note that I said players, not alts.  Again this is based on the presumption that not everyone is able to log in every time we're doing a raid, and without forcing the issue by requiring guild members to attend raids in order to remain guild members.
 
To make a 40 person raid work, I would need 120 active players on the roster.  As guild sizes go, that's getting fairly close to the upper limit for a social group - entropy becomes an issue at that size, and it's hard to keep people together and prevent drama and issues that might cause the guild to splinter.
 
It is possible to effectively run a guild with over 100 active players and keep everyone happy and feeling like they're part of a good community, but it is not easy.  A single charismatic leader cannot do it alone - there needs to be a good officer team who are leaders in their own right, and everyone has to be fully bought into the vision and strategy for the guild.  It also tends to burn out officers because it requires a high degree of organization - more than most people are willing to accept as part of their liesure time.
 
I find that most guilds who try to do the big raids fail because they try too hard.  They set an aggressive raiding schedule that burns people out, or they try to do the raids before they really have the infrastructure built up in their guild to support it.  Cancel your raid nights 5 times in a row because you don't have enough healers and people will become demoralized and give up.  Make everyone reliant on the leader to do everything and then when that leader can't log in for a day or two, people get frustrated because nothing is happening.  Give an officer position to someone who's not really ready for it or doesn't have the right mindset, and you wind up with either frustration because the officer is ineffective, of a schism because of a conflict between the officer and the leader.  There are lots of ways to go wrong.
 
Our strategy in the Daggers is to focus on 20-person raiding and then look to team up with other guilds for the 40-person stuff when we're ready.  That way we are less likely to run into the pitfalls of having to maintain a very large guild, but our members still get to experience the 40-person content.  It also means that our officers (like me) don't have to make the guild their second job.  Our outlook may change when we get there, but that's what we're doing.
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I don't know who first brought it up out here, but someone suggested a sort of "ridealong" spot for raiders.  I kind of redirected the topic to being able to maintain an active "bench" that is locked to the raid but can get gear from it if everyone directs it their way.  That way, you can still develop your bench.  I'm not sure how the specifics would work, but something like that might make it easier to maintain an active drop-in raid bunch so that if someone can't make it or if someone has to leave, you have some number of people that can be swapped in, space for an extra tank, healer, and a few DPS.
 
Maybe they don't get all the benefits of raiding, but they get enough that if your tank ragequits, you can swap in someone who's been riding shotgun, essentially.  I wonder if that would be worth it or if it would just be exploited by raid tourists.  It's worth discussing.
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