115707-casual-feedback

== Content ==
			
Hello, I'm a filthy casual and what follows are my 2 cents;
 
 
Positive:
The best combat in any MMO to date IMO
I love the Art Style
The music is top notch
The story is just the right combination of silly and serious
Not so positive:
This game was billed as "open world" it is not; Teleport to Malgrave, Teleport to Farside, Teleport to Blighthaven, Teleport to Whitevale. If you have to teleport to a zone, it's not open world.
in 2014 you released a game with only one leveling path, each faction should have at least 3 different zones to chose from per level range. Even if you love the combat like I do, doing the same quests for each alt is mind numbing.
Instead of putting time/death constraints on Bronze, Silver & Gold medals for Dungeons/Adventures, I think it would have been a better plan to make different difficulty settings for them I.E Easy, Normal, Hard and reward them with appropriate blue gear.
Wish List:
Random Daily/Dungeon/Adventure/Ship hand missions per day/week.
Multiple questing paths
Difficulty settings on Dungeons/Adventures
Raids that scale to current group size 
Add more way's to get gear, token system of some sort for a "pre raid" set.
I've played this game since late Beta, I'm now down to just logging in a few times a week to gather materials to sell for Credd. 
I think the "hardcore" tag was out of best intentions, but I feel it has hurt the game. At one time I was "hardcore" but now I'm at the age where 2 hours a day is impossible.
 
Personal Shame:
I tried a dungeon at level 20 and died for an hour and never got past the 1st boss, it was fun, but I've never queued for another dungeon and I probably never will. I'm sure I'm not alone, I'm not asking to nerf content, just add more of it that the casual crowd can perform.
 
 	
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>have to teleport to a zone
 
...what? What game are you playing?
Is it even possible to teleport to different zones without actually stepping foot in them and setting your marker on one of the teleporters? Last I checked it isn't. Well besides something like Farside. Perhaps to get to the other continent as well, not sure about that. But besides those two instances you can walk to anywhere.	
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Hello, I'm a filthy casual and what follows are my 2 cents;
 
 
Positive:
The best combat in any MMO to date IMO
I love the Art Style
The music is top notch
The story is just the right combination of silly and serious
Not so positive:This game was billed as "open world" it is not; Teleport to Malgrave, Teleport to Farside, Teleport to Blighthaven, Teleport to Whitevale. If you have to teleport to a zone, it's not open world.
in 2014 you released a game with only one leveling path, each faction should have at least 3 different zones to chose from per level range. Even if you love the combat like I do, doing the same quests for each alt is mind numbing.
Instead of putting time/death constraints on Bronze, Silver & Gold medals for Dungeons/Adventures, I think it would have been a better plan to make different difficulty settings for them I.E Easy, Normal, Hard and reward them with appropriate blue gear.
Wish List:Random Daily/Dungeon/Adventure/Ship hand missions per day/week.
Multiple questing paths
Difficulty settings on Dungeons/Adventures
Raids that scale to current group size
Add more way's to get gear, token system of some sort for a "pre raid" set.
I've played this game since late Beta, I'm now down to just logging in a few times a week to gather materials to sell for Credd. I think the "hardcore" tag was out of best intentions, but I feel it has hurt the game. At one time I was "hardcore" but now I'm at the age where 2 hours a day is impossible.
 
Personal Shame:
I tried a dungeon at level 20 and died for an hour and never got past the 1st boss, it was fun, but I've never queued for another dungeon and I probably never will. I'm sure I'm not alone, I'm not asking to nerf content, just add more of it that the casual crowd can perform.
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This game was billed as "open world" it is not; Teleport to Malgrave, Teleport to Farside, Teleport to Blighthaven, Teleport to Whitevale. If you have to teleport to a zone, it's not open world.
in 2014 you released a game with only one leveling path, each faction should have at least 3 different zones to chose from per level range. Even if you love the combat like I do, doing the same quests for each alt is mind numbing.
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			Good feedback imo.	
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Each continent has to be traveled to, just like in WoW. Because all the zones in each continent haven't been added yet, yes it can seem less open world than it is, but the 3 contiguous areas are each quite large.
 
I'll ask in all honesty, what games release with multiple leveling paths? Most of the recent MMOs worth a damn I can think of didn't have them at launch.
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Hello, I'm a filthy casual and what follows are my 2 cents;
 
 
Positive:
The best combat in any MMO to date IMO
I love the Art Style
The music is top notch
The story is just the right combination of silly and serious
Not so positive:
This game was billed as "open world" it is not; Teleport to Malgrave, Teleport to Farside, Teleport to Blighthaven, Teleport to Whitevale. If you have to teleport to a zone, it's not open world.
in 2014 you released a game with only one leveling path, each faction should have at least 3 different zones to chose from per level range. Even if you love the combat like I do, doing the same quests for each alt is mind numbing.
Instead of putting time/death constraints on Bronze, Silver & Gold medals for Dungeons/Adventures, I think it would have been a better plan to make different difficulty settings for them I.E Easy, Normal, Hard and reward them with appropriate blue gear.
Wish List:
Random Daily/Dungeon/Adventure/Ship hand missions per day/week.
Multiple questing paths
Difficulty settings on Dungeons/Adventures
Raids that scale to current group size 
Add more way's to get gear, token system of some sort for a "pre raid" set.
I've played this game since late Beta, I'm now down to just logging in a few times a week to gather materials to sell for Credd. 
I think the "hardcore" tag was out of best intentions, but I feel it has hurt the game. At one time I was "hardcore" but now I'm at the age where 2 hours a day is impossible.
 
Personal Shame:
I tried a dungeon at level 20 and died for an hour and never got past the 1st boss, it was fun, but I've never queued for another dungeon and I probably never will. I'm sure I'm not alone, I'm not asking to nerf content, just add more of it that the casual crowd can perform.
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I really like the idea of changing the Bronze,Silver, Gold to selectable difficulty settings.  There's been quite a few occasions where I get mixed into groups with people who have an entirely different intention when they run the dungeon than when I do.  Sometimes it's downright frustrating when I'm trying to get that Gold performance rating and a few people are just there to mess around, or are still just learning the fights, and we end up pulling a Bronze out of the run.  
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm all about teaching, but if I've only got an hour or 2 to play that night, I don't want to spend the whole time not getting what I'm trying to achieve.
 
I think having the ability to queue up for specific difficulties would help me to end up with a group of more like-minded individuals while giving the less experienced players a place to learn and practice, so that when they finally do end up running those Gold level dungeons, they're more or less on par with the rest of us in the group.
 
I think overall, it would make for smoother runs for everyone... and less frustration.	
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			Here to correct one thing: the only zones you have to teleport to are Malgrave, Wilderrun and Farside. All other zones are accessible by running. You can get to grimvault and Blighthaven while running from Malgrave, you can get into Whitevale by exiting Thayd, etc :)Multiple questing zones/ paths, I would love that! I would really like if Carbine, instead of making more level 50 zones made more zones for alternative leveling. For the classes that I love, I can level alts as it is, but a bit more variety would be greatly appreciated :)EDIT: and about this part: "I tried a dungeon at level 20 and died for an hour and never got past the 1st boss" don't get ashamed or discouraged. Get a good guild. Part of the high in this game is to slowly but surely learn and beat content and best done while surrounded by friends and good hearted people. And if you want something easier, skip dungeons and start from adventures. They're meant to be like dungeons but easier ;)	
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Here to correct one thing: the only zones you have to teleport to are Malgrave, Wilderrun and Farside. All other zones are accessible by running. You can get to grimvault and Blighthaven while running from Malgrave, you can get into Whitevale by exiting Thayd, etc :)
 
Multiple questing zones/ paths, I would love that! I would really like if Carbine, instead of making more level 50 zones made more zones for alternative leveling. For the classes that I love, I can level alts as it is, but a bit more variety would be greatly appreciated :)
 
EDIT: and about this part: "I tried a dungeon at level 20 and died for an hour and never got past the 1st boss" don't get ashamed or discouraged. Get a good guild. Part of the high in this game is to slowly but surely learn and beat content and best done while surrounded by friends and good hearted people. 
 
And if you want something easier, skip dungeons and start from adventures. They're meant to be like dungeons but easier ;)
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I'd like to see 10 man raids and normal and veteran raids as well.  All raids having a 10/20/40 man version is doable I think.  Just think of how many more people might still be here if they didn't hit that recruiting wall that some guilds experienced.  
 
I see no reason to spend this much time and millions of dollars developing a game that caters to the hard core so much.  if you design around the idea that you want the top 2% to 5% playing your game, empty zones are the result.
 
Give the hardcore the hardcore things to do, but let the less, dedicated or skilled or the casuals or whatever you want to call them, see the story unfold for them as well.	
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snip*
This game was billed as "open world" it is not; Teleport to Malgrave, Teleport to Farside, Teleport to Blighthaven, Teleport to Whitevale. If you have to teleport to a zone, it's not open world.
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Yes while it is true that most games do not launch with multiple leveling paths they at least try to change up the quests, all the quests in the starting zones are the same except for faction.
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Not at all true. Yes, the first two starting zones they made (Crimson Isle and Northern Wilds) are very similar. However Everstar Grove and Levian Bay are both different from those two, and different from each other. You can't look at zones in a vacuum, there's a very definite difference based on when they were made and how familiar the content teams were with their tools and what they had available.
 
In any case, I'm not sure how insisting that zones players are in for less than an hour should be different and interesting helps the game. A far better use of their time would be creating better flow and cohesion in places like Galeras and Auroria.
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the quest and challenges are exactly the same, with different skins
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>have to teleport to a zone
 
...what? What game are you playing?
Is it even possible to teleport to different zones without actually stepping foot in them and setting your marker on one of the teleporters? Last I checked it isn't. Well besides something like Farside. Perhaps to get to the other continent as well, not sure about that. But besides those two instances you can walk to anywhere.
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Not so positive:
This game was billed as "open world" it is not; Teleport to Malgrave, Teleport to Farside, Teleport to Blighthaven, Teleport to Whitevale. If you have to teleport to a zone, it's not open world.
in 2014 you released a game with only one leveling path, each faction should have at least 3 different zones to chose from per level range. Even if you love the combat like I do, doing the same quests for each alt is mind numbing.
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Personal Shame:
I tried a dungeon at level 20 and died for an hour and never got past the 1st boss, it was fun, but I've never queued for another dungeon and I probably never will. I'm sure I'm not alone, I'm not asking to nerf content, just add more of it that the casual crowd can perform.
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I really like the idea of changing the Bronze,Silver, Gold to selectable difficulty settings.  There's been quite a few occasions where I get mixed into groups with people who have an entirely different intention when they run the dungeon than when I do.  Sometimes it's downright frustrating when I'm trying to get that Gold performance rating and a few people are just there to mess around, or are still just learning the fights, and we end up pulling a Bronze out of the run.  
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm all about teaching, but if I've only got an hour or 2 to play that night, I don't want to spend the whole time not getting what I'm trying to achieve.
 
I think having the ability to queue up for specific difficulties would help me to end up with a group of more like-minded individuals while giving the less experienced players a place to learn and practice, so that when they finally do end up running those Gold level dungeons, they're more or less on par with the rest of us in the group.
 
I think overall, it would make for smoother runs for everyone... and less frustration.
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This makes a good point.  Though medals are supposed to judge performance and I think they need to continue serving that purpose (certainly not using their current metrics), a major issue in this game has been that people get into PUGs to go for gold, but that's not the case for all players.  The dissonance is half of what caused the dissolution of PUGs for dungeons.  They caused a reputation in PUGs for people ragequitting over a death.  Unlike in a game like WoW, where that's seen as just general douchebaggery, in WS queues, there's an actual game reason to do that (you get a lot more gear for getting gold).
 
A good way, I think, to not have this issue with pugs (without just telling people to pick-up and only pick-up) would be first to divorce the gear rewards from the medal.  There should be medal rewards, monetary and currency, but it would be better if it wasn't tied to the gearing.
 
They should also probably be able to indicate whether they're trying to medal or complete in the queue process, so people know what they're joining a gold medal run.  I also think that personal initiative should be rewarded.  It would be good if the players who contribute most positively to medaling should get bonuses, therefore giving people who are exceptionally good to join a random PUG and stick with it even when it drops to bronze.  That way, the effective players are still rewarded for being teachers.
 
Just a couple spitballed ideas.
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There is a large misconception when it comes to dungeons and their difficulty.  I see a lot of people asking for scalable content so there isn't just veteran dungeons and the medal system.  I do understand people's complaints.  But there is scalable content, the normal version of these dungeons allows you to experience it by lowering your level.  The reason people do not like this . . . the rewards are not in line with end game items/level 50 things.
 
So instead of changing all the medals (which I personally like), why not just change the rewards for normal based on your actual level when entering.  So if you are 50 entering the normal version of STL you get a level 50 loot table that isn't the same as veteran difficulty.
 
It just seems like people forget that they CAN go do an easier version of the dungeons, but a lot of us forget why people do not do that, it doesn't give rewards for their actual player level.	
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There is a large misconception when it comes to dungeons and their difficulty.  I see a lot of people asking for scalable content so there isn't just veteran dungeons and the medal system.  I do understand people's complaints.  But there is scalable content, the normal version of these dungeons allows you to experience it by lowering your level.  The reason people do not like this . . . the rewards are not in line with end game items/level 50 things.
 
So instead of changing all the medals (which I personally like), why not just change the rewards for normal based on your actual level when entering.  So if you are 50 entering the normal version of STL you get a level 50 loot table that isn't the same as veteran difficulty.
 
It just seems like people forget that they CAN go do an easier version of the dungeons, but a lot of us forget why people do not do that, it doesn't give rewards for their actual player level.
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I got to thinking, and I think there's an even better route than what I was thinking earlier.  Taking what you said earlier about re-working how the performance medals are calculated.
 
So let's say they keep the Medal system, what they could do to marry it to the Difficulty selection system:
 
-Easy Difficulty-  This would be the bare bones experience, no timer, no medals, low level rewards (some gear, some decor, some other cosmetic stuff, random other things similar to what you have a chance to receive from completing a Challenge while soloing).  This would be the perfect place for players who are new to the game can come in, work on their technique, experiment with different skill sets, practice group coordination techniques, and Mentor each other (like a training plan for guilds/friends) and they can do it in a relatively stress-free and relaxed environment.  This would be a great way for people to enhance their skills in a "work at your own pace" step-up system.
 
-Normal Difficulty- Introduce the Performance Medal system, albeit in a slightly watered down fashion.  Gold, Silver, and Bronze would be calculated based on performance, but not speed.  In this system, a Tank's ability to hold Aggro, a Healer's ability to keep the team alive, and the Dps ability to wear down opponents would all be taken into account along with the total group functionality (how many times did the group successfully break through the interrupt armor to interrupt a major damage attack from mobs, and similar other performance objectives).  This would be a great way to introduce the more advanced concepts and have them actually mean something in the process.  The rewards could be more gear and progression based with some basic scaling based on the medal earned during the run (but mostly it's for providing feedback to the player on their performance).
 
-Hard Difficulty-  Now we get into the "no shit, real-deal, Wildstar is going to rip your face off and wear it like a mask as it does it's 'kooky-dance'".  This would be difficulty setting where the medal system not only takes into account a groups ability to work together and communicate, but also how quickly the group can complete the dungeon.  This is the difficulty setting where if you manage to pull a Gold out of the run, you get the best possible gear for the level of the dungeon and your name gets ranked on the Leaderboards for everyone else to gawk at ("damn, he did that fast!" and "those guys are badass!").  So, not only did you kick the ass of the hardest available content, but now you've got the pretty new gear and the bragging rights are on the board for everyone else to see - "You want this?  You like this?  Do what I did, and you can have it.  Until then, nut up, or shut up!".
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That sounds great, actually.  Complex, and it may end up fragmenting the player base, but if there's a way to keep from doing that, I'd totally back this idea.
 
One thing though; I think a good way to judge medal completion would rely on the full-clear.  The thing stumping me, if you can help, is trying to figure out a system that takes that into account.  I'd say to just take performance, enemies remaining, and time taken into account to pull the medal number, but that's very vague feedback, and I'm trying to think of a more comprehensive metric.  I think those are the basics, tanks should be judged on tanking, DPS on DPS, and healers on healing, all enemies and content (along with optional objectives) should be cleared, and maybe at the end take time into account.
 
I'll also take a page from my old treatise post I brought up and re-suggest pulling timers altogether.  Base medals on performance and content remaining.  Then, take things like timers and turn them into a sort of "challenge mode" where certain new changes are in play.  A few examples I brought up were modes where overall timers were in effect, any mob killed in combat buffs any other mobs in combat significantly which forces everyone to kill mobs as close to each other as possible, modes with the friction switched off, forcing characters to kind of fight while essentially ice skating, things like that.  It'd sure make the dungeons a LOT harder by implementing them, and then you'd have challenge content that should only ever be attempted by a skilled and coordinated premade who know exactly what they're getting into.
 
That sounds like it would be fun.
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I wouldn't worry too much about the player base fragmenting.  Fragmenting is a pretty natural occurrence for any large scale social activity, like an MMO.  Whether people like to RP, PVP, Raid, or just casually run Dungeons/Adventures, they will find some social group within the game that is populated with like-minded individuals (guilds or just people they meet while doing those activities).  I think the best way to accommodate that phenomenon is by having activities that will cater to individual desires and let the social groups form around said activities.
 
I wouldn't imagine it would be too difficult to have a metric that measures % completion of a dungeon.  The developers most likely know how many mobs are in a particular instance and I wouldn't imagine it would be too difficult to track how many of them were killed by the group during the run and then expressing that as a percentage at the end of the run.  As far as what % correlates to which Medal, well that's for someone more savvy than myself to decide :)
 
I like the idea of the challenge mode too.  It sounds like what your suggesting is, instead of timing how fast the group can get to and down the final boss, they would be instead timed on how quickly they move from fight to fight, which would be a good way to gauge how efficient the group was in the previous fight (better performances lead to less downtime/recovery time between fights).  It definitely sounds like a great way to appeal to people who like to form teams and coordinate strategies with a group of friends.  I think, what would be really cool with a system like that, would also to have a system in place where people could actually form a "formal" team, complete with a Team Name and an associated Title (kind of like the current Guild representation on the name plate) and even have ratings and gear for those teams (like the PVP rating system, but for PVE content).
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Well, that wasn't the original idea.  The original post is here, and here's the excerpt where I talked about it....
 
 
 
I think the problem is that, especially right now, fragmenting the playerbase might be a big issue.  As a specific example, what happens when everyone is trying for medals, and someone new comes along.  The queues for the non-medaling dungeon runs might be quite a bit longer, leading to the situation we have now in a lot of instances where people simply don't queue into Malgrave Trail or anything but Walatiki Temple.  It just takes too long for the queue to run.
 
Also, the metric for judging % completed in a dungeon might not be that hard, but what would be hard is judging the "quality" of the team.  For example, in my quoted example, I thought it might be good to judge by damage taken.  However, it was brought up that this might unfairly judge absorbtion tanks who take more damage than their avoidance counterparts.  DPS being judged on their DPS, that's not hard to do, I don't think.  Healers might be a little more complicated (healing done vs overhealing?  overall HP uptime?), but I have trouble still figuring out how to judge the tanks on quality considering there are so many ways to tank.
 
The idea of having a PVE challenge team, a bit like an arena team from how I interpret this, sounds like an amazing idea, though!  In fact, when someone is talking about scalable dungeons and raids, suddenly, this was a puzzle piece that slid into place.  What if all instances scaled to teams of 3 and 5 people (since everyone needs a tank, healer, and at least one DPS), and you could build a 5 man team for challenge content like an arena team.  Maybe you give all the raids 10, 20, and 40 man counterparts.  Then it's just a matter of scaling mechanics so they always need the correct amount of tanks.  A boss has no adds in 10 man mode, requires a tank swapping mechanic in 20 man mode, and has a pair of adds that have to be tanked in a death spiral at 40 (we are, of course, under no compunction to be reasonable in 40 man mode since we're talking about scaling content.
 
Or we could simply have people scaling back tanks and have people queueing for both tank and DPS, that way, 5 man teams sort of blend in, converting tanks to DPS as they go.  In fact, I'm sort of formulating an idea in crafting for "dual" stats, essentially paying extra mats or EG-bought items in to switch stats when you switch roles.  So you can build heavy armor that is built for Brutality, Finesse, and Crit Hit, and after some investment, you essentially build the piece so that when you switch to tank, Brutality swaps for Tech, Finesse swaps for Insight, and Crit Hit swaps for Grit.  That way, you don't need to have two different sets.  The only issue offhand I can see is that replacing a piece would require a lot more extra expense, so it should be taken into account with EG gains or what materials a crafter would need to build it.  That's a very loose idea, but at least then we'd have less problems with people needing to actually switch from DPS to tank as the group size rises without altering mechanics.
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Compared to some other threads I've read today, this one is a model of constructive discussion. :)
 
In general I don't like the idea of difficulty modes for dungeons, BUT I'd be willing to support the concept we're discussing here.  Except that "rip your face off hard" pretty much describes veteran modes in my experience so far :)	
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