117037-do-you-think-this-game-might-actually-die-page-4

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== Content ==
			Tuscatsi, so if I understand correctly you would like something like legendary weapons from Guild Wars 2? :PTo be honest I have no problem about that. Though I think that it should only match the best in slot gear in stats and not out stat it. It also could do with looking special and having special effects ^_^	
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Over 100k subscribers?? what have you been smoking?
There's 2 servers in EU - 1 is totally dead, and the other has maybe a 1000 active players at best. (And that's being generous) The US servers from what I've been reading are doing only slightly better than EU right now.
There's no way they have over 100k subscribers. I'll go right ahead and say carbine is lying.
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Building a game around a population raiders that if you are EXTREMELY optimistic is 10,000 people in Wildstar is not a good business sense... that is US$150,000 a month not enough to cover the overheads of a company with 160 employees in my mind.
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There's no way they have over 100k subscribers. I'll go right ahead and say carbine is lying.
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A little something about Wildstar management
 
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/138349-Carbine-Studios-Employees-Give-Negative-Reviews-to-Developer-of-Wildstar-MMO?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=news
 
Consider this while you debate Wildstar's fate.	
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I don't want WildStar to go away.
Its the first game I get to play a bunnygirl avatar and I feel quite a bit at home here.
 
Honestly the way things are going, I fear that this little niche of a world will disappear just like Prius did.
 
I don't want to lose another charcter. :/
 
I don't mean to bring up negativity but I don't want WildStar to go away. I love the story of the genesis prime and the beautiful little world nexus is.
I don't want to be caught in the strife of yet another dying realm to be forcefully logged off or the last time. It was heart breaking to see in not only Prius, but Iris, and Tales Runner.
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A little something about Wildstar management
 
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/138349-Carbine-Studios-Employees-Give-Negative-Reviews-to-Developer-of-Wildstar-MMO?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=news
 
Consider this while you debate Wildstar's fate.
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Irrelevant to the game, which is what you're here to talk about.
 
Color me shocked, negative reviews after a layoff.
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Pretty relevant to the game actually, as the employees have been writing those negative reviews well before the layoffs happens.
 
I imagine those people being laid off are pretty happy with severance and unemployment vs working with incompetent management.
 
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I did do the research. I read the comments months ago when the glass door information initially made it around.
 
Also, I doubt they're happy- at all. The last bit was thick with sarcasm.	
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Do a little research as to when some of those comments were made, now search for other game studfios.
 
Yes, I'm sure they're happy with getting laid off. Also, severance is not a guarantee.
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Being able to name an item on a critical is a really neat feature, but not being able to turn that off made leveling crafting in LotRO a PITA. Especially when you start a crafting queue of 30 weapons, go off to get some coffee and come back to find that your crafting has been held up because you critted on the second item and it's waiting for you to input a name or skip it. Then you skip the naming stage and crit a few items later, and a few items after that. and a few items after that... :P
 
I haven't played LotRO in a while, but I really hope they've made the naming option a toggle by now.
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Crafting and wardrobe in LoTRO were amazing. Being able to farm pipe weed that allowed the player to blow different smoke rings was awesome.
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Where's my PVP Progression? I can't even get to level cap through PVP as I was told I would be able to.
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yeah but that's a small flaw in a great system
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Carbine also had three Elder Game progressions in mind for WildStar - the two traditional ones (raiding and PVP) and solo/small group progression. The problem is that all of the solo/small group Elder Game content amounts to is steps on the path to raiding, rather than being rewarding on its own.
 
This is the Elder Game content solo/small group players were expecting from WildStar:
 
 
The problem for many solo/small group players isn't that "right now" it isn't that game. It's that this was what drew them in, and it's still not that game.
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You know, I was mentally working on responses to comments while at work when I your your comment here Mad, specifically the quotes from J-Tal, and something clicked in my head about the wording. I went back and re-read many of the frequently referred to comments made by developers on the subject of solo/non-raid progression with a more critical eye and I invite all of my fellow "pro solo progression crew" to do the same now. 
 
 
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/wildstar/1227411p1.html
 
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=33270
 
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/10/14/carbines-donatelli-and-moore-on-wildstars-population-and-philo/
 
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/114664-okay-carbine-no-more-of-my-money-until-you-start-speaking-about-my-issues/?p=1192444
 
 
Unfortunately, the impression I get from my more critical re-examination is not good.
 
When we stop seeing what we want to see and start seeing what's actually being said, Carbine isn't talking about solo/non-raiding CHARACTER progression: they're talking about solo/non-raiding CONTENT progression. These two are very different things. They're saying that solo and non-raiding players run out of things to do, so they plan on having progressive content available for us (with some cheevos and other cheap prizes); but they're not actually talking about character progression (ie. gear or anything else that makes your character more powerful). As far as our characters' progression are concerned, they're giving a pretty consistent message: if you're not going to raid, you get to hit your character progression cap pretty much immediately at level 50 because the best non-raid gear is only meant to be entry level raiding gear. 
 
In this light, it seems to me that I've largely been championing a dead cause.
 
Despite logic, business sense, and/or repeated precedent showing that the content model of funneling all character progression into raiding only results in creating a highly transient population out of the majority of MMORPG players, Carbine is pretty adamantly sticking to their guns on giving us the same old same old.
 
While I do love the action combat, lore and Chuas here in Wildstar, I can get less tedious questing, more polished story, better optimization, more alt friendly gameplay, and at least a semblance of some solo/non-raiding progression in a dozen different MMORPGs. And I can get this for free in many of them if I choose.
 
So... I think I'm out.
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So... I think I'm out.
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mirta, I want to continue to progress my characters, thats the appeal of MMORPGs: being able to get observable progression in a shared world experience because we tend to seldom get that in our real lives. If I can't continue to progress my character, then I'm rerunning the same content over and over for no reason. 
 
I never said I needed raid gear, I only said I wanted to be able to continue to progress my characters. In a system where character progression funnels all characters into raiding, soloers and non-raiders get their progression cut off rapidly, if not immediately, upon hitting level 50: if I can hit level 50 and immediately grab the best gear my character will ever see off the auction house, then there is no endgame for me and people like me.	
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Before giving up the ghost, I encourage you to check the Dev tracker and read up on what J-Tal's been saying in the thread where the current brouhaha started. There's some frank admission of problems and clear intent to improve. If you want to step out until they actually deliver no one could blame you, but they do seem to get it that where things stand is not where things can stay.
 
 
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			That may be. I'm willing to wait and see how it plays out (possibly because I bought a 6-month sub at launch :)). But they are entirely out of second chances after the 6 month mark as far as I'm concerned, so lets hope Drop 4 rocks like a thing that rocks very much indeed.	
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Besides itemization and dungeon rewards (which Carbine are planning to fix), I have two problems with dungeons right now.
 
1) I strongly believe that Carbine needs to have pug friendly and short dungeons. This basically counts as being "solo" content because you don't need an organized group to do well in them.
 
2) Medal system needs to be shot and thrown in a fire. Its a good idea on paper but is horrible in practice.
 
 
I'm going to talk a bit of what worked in GW2 as that was the game I played before going into WS.
 
-I never had problems getting into dungeons at any time of the day, even before they had the lfg system in place, because they were easy to pug and short in duration.
 
-Fractals were a brilliant idea. They were dungeons which increased in difficulty as you manually increased the level of it.  
 
 
So lets try to put this into perspective.
 
-Anet fired their dungeons team (pretty shortly after release) and basically released no more end game core content so that's why they failed for me.
 
-Carbine has the hardcore end game content but not the more pug friendly content....and are bleeding subscribers.
 
-I played GW2 for about a year and I could still find plenty of players to play the same old dungeons with.
 
-You can queue for a dungeon in WS and sit in queue for eternity before getting anything. This is month 4?
 
 
So.......based on those facts above....what should Carbine do? They sure as hell aren't doing the obvious. TimeTravel has stated as much.
 
Incidentally, the goliath of the MMO industry, WoW, has a mix of both pug content and organized "hardcore" content....and aren't they sitting at about 8 million subs? Compared to WS's measly 100k......
 
This is just too sad. Its like I'm reading a sad story that gets more sad as time goes on and has a tragic ending. The core gameplay is there. Combat with telegraphs is mostly fun. The art work is amazing. The dungeons are amazing. Adventures are mostly fun. What kills all of this is that there is NO content for the casual and/or soloer which is the majority of the player base. Pug-able dungeons are one of the answers to this, as seen in other games, but Carbine devs adamantly refuse to see it.
 
Sure you might say that there are pug-able dungeons right now and dungeons are being pugged at this moment. But every time a pug gets only a Bronze medal or silver....a little of their motivation to play the game goes with it....as shown in the current queues. This fact is compounded when the dungeons are too challenging and long....hence I don't really consider them entry level pug-able content. The current difficulty of dungeons is something I would consider viable for pugs when the players who pug have leveled up in skill through the easier and shorter pug able dungeons which are entirely missing in the game. To put an example to try to explain myself better is, again, GW2. There are many dungeons in GW2 from easy to hard. The hardest one was Arah....and without a shred of a doubt, that was the least ran dungeon of all of them precisely because it was challenging and long. WS dungeons are all like Arah and players have no other options.
 
Itemization and better dungeon rewards will help a lot no doubt.....but it does not solve the core issue of why WildStar has literally failed within 3 months after launch. ~100k players worldwide. Lets split that 50/50 US and EU. ~50k players and barely anyone queues for dungeons? Lets not forget that in GW2 there was barely any rewards for running dungeons. Once you obtained the dungeon set, it literally was bis, yet players still ran them like crazy. There must be another problem with WS dungeons right? 
 
Player A finally gets his piece of gear he wanted from Dungeon B. Player A won't run Dungeon B anymore because it was too challenging and long. Dungeon B just lost Player A in its queue.	
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I have read his follow up comments. Look closely at them and see what he's saying: he's talking about CONTENT progression, not CHARACTER progression.
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I can't go into a lot of detail yet, but Contracts has both (content and gear) and Eldan Forge is a pure gear progression system. Contracts are focused on providing both a repeatable end game solo content pipeline (something we're sorely missing outside of the daily quest zones) and an alternate progression path for gear upgrades (all the way up to GA equivalent loot) that will be available to non-raiders. Eldan Forge is focused on taking all the gear you don't have a use for (quest greens, blues that aren't upgrades) and giving them real value by being to able to turn them into better rewards.
 
We have a few changes coming in November's Drop that will definitely help things out in the short term - Rune system changes, Salvaging changes, etc. Then we have another slew of changes coming in the (currently scheduled for) January Drop including a complete reworking on currencies (Renown, Glory, and Elder Gems), new repeatable content (Veteran Shiphands/Protogames), a reworking of how World Loot is distributed, and reitemization of Veterans through Datascape. I'll be able to talk more about the January features after the November update goes live and we can get the post-Nov changes up on the PTR for your testing and consumption. And we've even begun work on systems coming in the (currently scheduled for) April Drop. It will be a very exciting next couple of months.
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I can't go into a lot of detail yet, but Contracts has both (content and gear) and Eldan Forge is a pure gear progression system. Contracts are focused on providing both a repeatable end game solo content pipeline (something we're sorely missing outside of the daily quest zones) and an alternate progression path for gear upgrades (all the way up to GA equivalent loot) that will be available to non-raiders. Eldan Forge is focused on taking all the gear you don't have a use for (quest greens, blues that aren't upgrades) and giving them real value by being to able to turn them into better rewards.
 
We have a few changes coming in November's Drop that will definitely help things out in the short term - Rune system changes, Salvaging changes, etc. Then we have another slew of changes coming in the (currently scheduled for) January Drop including a complete reworking on currencies (Renown, Glory, and Elder Gems), new repeatable content (Veteran Shiphands/Protogames), a reworking of how World Loot is distributed, and reitemization of Veterans through Datascape. I'll be able to talk more about the January features after the November update goes live and we can get the post-Nov changes up on the PTR for your testing and consumption. And we've even begun work on systems coming in the (currently scheduled for) April Drop. It will be a very exciting next couple of months.
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They have entry level instances- Adventures.
 
Medal system is great fun that adds replayabulity.
 
Who gets unmotivated by getting silver in a dungeon?
 
STL at least is very puggable.	
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			Glory and Prestige are synonyms. Gosh.	
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No, I do not think this game will actually die.
 
If anything, it can only get better from here on out.	
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I don't know why you're getting excited about what jtal is saying. Have you checked the ptr? He took a broken system, and further complicated it by adding more RNG and timesink. He completely disregarded player feedback.
 
So now you're somehow pleased that he's promising new systems 6 months from now?
 
Like seriously guys, can I sell you some water? It seems like you'll buy anything.	
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I don't know why you're getting excited about what jtal is saying. Have you checked the ptr? He took a broken system, and further complicated it by adding more RNG and timesink. He completely disregarded player feedback.
 
So now you're somehow pleased that he's promising new systems 6 months from now?
 
Like seriously guys, can I sell you some water? It seems like you'll buy anything.
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They have entry level instances- Adventures.
 
Medal system is great fun that adds replayabulity.
 
Who gets unmotivated by getting silver in a dungeon?
 
STL at least is very puggable.
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Remember how in WoW, you used to gear up for raids by doing dungeons until you got X piece?  Or do you remember how the dungeons were part of the story line and lore leading into the raids?
 
This is not the case with Wildstar.  In Wildstar, you do dungeon until you get X piece, which then gets an RNG roll, which directly determines the power of your piece.  
Also, the dungeons are virtually exclusive from the raids etc.  
 
To be honest the whole thing is really shit, and greatly discourages both casuals and raiders alike.	
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While this really does sound quite nice, it also sounds like the people that are most in need of content (solo players and such) are looking at a wait of, at bare minimum... January?
 
I've got to be honest here, it sounds like Wildstar will really be where it needs to be in... April.
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Remember how in WoW, you used to gear up for raids by doing dungeons until you got X piece?  Or do you remember how the dungeons were part of the story line and lore leading into the raids?
 
This is not the case with Wildstar.  In Wildstar, you do dungeon until you get X piece, which then gets an RNG roll, which directly determines the power of your piece.  
Also, the dungeons are virtually exclusive from the raids etc.  
 
To be honest the whole thing is really shit, and greatly discourages both casuals and raiders alike.
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J-Tal, thank you for your response. A dev posting in a thread at nearly 9pm on a Sunday night (and a thread where there's clearly a lot of anger and hostility all around, especially towards the developers) is definitely going above and beyond in terms of engaging the players and I'd like to say that I appreciate that.
 
But you'll have to forgive me if I'm not giggling like a schoolgirl at the vague promises.
 
Obviously you can't go into specifics about content that is at least six months off, but we were hearing this type of thing literally one year ago when the game was still more than six months from going live. You guys spent a lot of time telling us how you had an awesome endgame planned for PVPers, Raiders and Soloists alike, but we ended up with... let's just say less than satisfactory. Once you add in the mixed messages (Donatelli and Moore: "don't worry, raid gear will always be better than non-raid gear"; J-Tal: "we've got stuff coming that will give non-raiders GA equivalent gear"), and the seeming failure to fully understand/respond to player complaints (players: "get rid of RNG and attunement completely"; developers: "okay, we're giving you a 10% reduction in RNG and attunement"), I hope you'll understand why it's pretty tough to accept that anything will actually be changing. 	
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			The big issue coming from the lvl 1 to 50 content to end game is the fact that in end game, grouping is a must not optional so it will be boring if you decided to go solo. In WOT and WT at least you can do solo playing and have fun, this is a no no in wildstar.	
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J-Tal, thank you for your response. A dev posting in a thread at nearly 9pm on a Sunday night (and a thread where there's clearly a lot of anger and hostility all around, especially towards the developers) is definitely going above and beyond in terms of engaging the players and I'd like to say that I appreciate that.
 
But you'll have to forgive me if I'm not giggling like a schoolgirl at the vague promises.
 
Obviously you can't go into specifics about content that is at least six months off, but we were hearing this type of thing literally one year ago when the game was still more than six months from going live. You guys spent a lot of time telling us how you had an awesome endgame planned for PVPers, Raiders and Soloists alike, but we ended up with... let's just say less than satisfactory. Once you add in the mixed messages (Donatelli and Moore: "don't worry, raid gear will always be better than non-raid gear"; J-Tal: "we've got stuff coming that will give non-raiders GA equivalent gear"), and the seeming failure to fully understand/respond to player complaints (players: "get rid of RNG and attunement completely"; developers: "okay, we're giving you a 10% reduction in RNG and attunement"), I hope you'll understand why it's pretty tough to accept that anything will actually be changing. 
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			I am most definitely giggling like a schoolgirl at the vague promises :D	
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I can't go into a lot of detail yet, but Contracts has both (content and gear) and Eldan Forge is a pure gear progression system. Contracts are focused on providing both a repeatable end game solo content pipeline (something we're sorely missing outside of the daily quest zones) and an alternate progression path for gear upgrades (all the way up to GA equivalent loot) that will be available to non-raiders. Eldan Forge is focused on taking all the gear you don't have a use for (quest greens, blues that aren't upgrades) and giving them real value by being to able to turn them into better rewards.
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you know if they took out EVERYTHING you're asking them to take out, players like me would be very sad pandas. 
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Besides itemization and dungeon rewards (which Carbine are planning to fix), I have two problems with dungeons right now.
 
1) I strongly believe that Carbine needs to have pug friendly and short dungeons. This basically counts as being "solo" content because you don't need an organized group to do well in them.
 
2) Medal system needs to be shot and thrown in a fire. Its a good idea on paper but is horrible in practice.
 
 
I'm going to talk a bit of what worked in GW2 as that was the game I played before going into WS.
 
-I never had problems getting into dungeons at any time of the day, even before they had the lfg system in place, because they were easy to pug and short in duration.
 
-Fractals were a brilliant idea. They were dungeons which increased in difficulty as you manually increased the level of it.  
 
 
So lets try to put this into perspective.
 
-Anet fired their dungeons team (pretty shortly after release) and basically released no more end game core content so that's why they failed for me.
 
-Carbine has the hardcore end game content but not the more pug friendly content....and are bleeding subscribers.
 
-I played GW2 for about a year and I could still find plenty of players to play the same old dungeons with.
 
-You can queue for a dungeon in WS and sit in queue for eternity before getting anything. This is month 4?
 
 
So.......based on those facts above....what should Carbine do? They sure as hell aren't doing the obvious. TimeTravel has stated as much.
 
Incidentally, the goliath of the MMO industry, WoW, has a mix of both pug content and organized "hardcore" content....and aren't they sitting at about 8 million subs? Compared to WS's measly 100k......
 
This is just too sad. Its like I'm reading a sad story that gets more sad as time goes on and has a tragic ending. The core gameplay is there. Combat with telegraphs is mostly fun. The art work is amazing. The dungeons are amazing. Adventures are mostly fun. What kills all of this is that there is NO content for the casual and/or soloer which is the majority of the player base. Pug-able dungeons are one of the answers to this, as seen in other games, but Carbine devs adamantly refuse to see it.
 
Sure you might say that there are pug-able dungeons right now and dungeons are being pugged at this moment. But every time a pug gets only a Bronze medal or silver....a little of their motivation to play the game goes with it....as shown in the current queues. This fact is compounded when the dungeons are too challenging and long....hence I don't really consider them entry level pug-able content. The current difficulty of dungeons is something I would consider viable for pugs when the players who pug have leveled up in skill through the easier and shorter pug able dungeons which are entirely missing in the game. To put an example to try to explain myself better is, again, GW2. There are many dungeons in GW2 from easy to hard. The hardest one was Arah....and without a shred of a doubt, that was the least ran dungeon of all of them precisely because it was challenging and long. WS dungeons are all like Arah and players have no other options.
 
Itemization and better dungeon rewards will help a lot no doubt.....but it does not solve the core issue of why WildStar has literally failed within 3 months after launch. ~100k players worldwide. Lets split that 50/50 US and EU. ~50k players and barely anyone queues for dungeons? Lets not forget that in GW2 there was barely any rewards for running dungeons. Once you obtained the dungeon set, it literally was bis, yet players still ran them like crazy. There must be another problem with WS dungeons right? 
 
Player A finally gets his piece of gear he wanted from Dungeon B. Player A won't run Dungeon B anymore because it was too challenging and long. Dungeon B just lost Player A in its queue.
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Logic 101:1) Carbine needs money.
2) Money comes from players.
3) A (large) considerable portion of players are solo-oriented or casual-leaning players
4) Therefore discussing semantics about the definition of "Massive Multiplayer Game" is intellectual masturbation.
5) ???
6) Profit!Steve Jobs spirit is not working in Carbine. Carbine doesn't have the capacity to drive and change the market and instigate consumers into buying stuff they don't think they want. Therefore Carbine must serve the market first, even if it means including a Barbie Simulator 2014 in housing plots. One doesn't needs to be a genius to see these facts. There is a base line ($) and NCSoft decides that. If they can't reach that base line with their idealistic vision, they must change it and obey the market forces. Crying about how casuals are spoiled, Obama stole my bike or feminism destroyed western civilization won't change natural facts.
 
Discussions on whether consumers are stupid or wrong or spoiled are just moralizing non-sequiturs that negate reality.	
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I have already mentioned this to you in another discussion about the topic. I do not believe entry level "dungeons" should be considered adventures.
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RNG? Are you seriously saying that doing away with the ridiculous amount of RNG is bad thing? As far as I can tell, you're alone in that opinion, because pretty much even the biggest forum ostriches here are in agreement that the game has way too much RNG in it. And the changes in Drop 3 aren't getting rid of it: they're actually adding more in the disguise of adding in convenience features (I've never heard of a convenience feature before that is dependent on loot drops, ie. the rune slot change thingy).
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Remember how in WoW, you used to gear up for raids by doing dungeons until you got X piece?  Or do you remember how the dungeons were part of the story line and lore leading into the raids?
 
This is not the case with Wildstar.  In Wildstar, you do dungeon until you get X piece, which then gets an RNG roll, which directly determines the power of your piece.  
Also, the dungeons are virtually exclusive from the raids etc.  
 
To be honest the whole thing is really shit, and greatly discourages both casuals and raiders alike.
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The game is for sure going to die.
 
And if not a literal death, then an effective one. No new content, no patches, no progress.
 
The game was made it just turned out that not that many people want to play a game where the leveling experience is completely trivialized and the focus is completely on end-game content. Not that many people want to play a game whose environment completely fails to generate the sense that you're playing on a single "world" and that the places you see are in any way significant. They bet it all hoping that players would be interested in a game that doesn't really even start until level 50. They lost that bet.	
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You understand they are working very hard to fix this, right?
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This is nice. Really, without a doubt, but who will care within in the next 2-4 months? Just who... :D Patience has limits. In addition, what means "working hard"? How do you know? Is working 8 hours on something really "hard working"? Not in my world. All we know, they work (probably and hopefully) on every end of the game. Sounds like an upcoming re-launch.
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They bet it all hoping that players would be interested in a game that doesn't really even start until level 50. They lost that bet.
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There is only so much patience that people can have. I always said I would wait until wildstar died, but right now I feel let down by the devs and the community. 
Most importantly I haven't logged on and had FUN in about a month. I'm waiting avidly for drop 3 and the housing changes as well as the rating reset. I've done everything I can (that interests me) and invented my own fun in the game as well, but it's getting stale now :( I really hate to admit it. I have credd to last me til drop 4, but I'm very heavily considering to stop my subscription then see how it is when my credd runs out whether I resub or not.
 
I think this is the case for a lot of people.	
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There is only so much patience that people can have.
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To be clear, because it kind of looks like I'm whiteknighting this morning (maybe I am?) I understand the pain people are having. My guild hasn't raided in the last two weeks because people just stopped logging on. I too feel the dungeon queues not popping as quickly as they should/have in the past, even when queueing as a tank. I am as fearful as anyone what will happen when WoD hits.
 
But I still see a lot of potential and I'm still having fun. I also feel like the devs have demonstrated in most areas they are listening and taking action on our feedback. It's unfortunate that changes in an application this large are going to take time to do and do right, but it feels like they are course correcting at a reasonable rate- that is, the changes appear to be taking the amount of time I'd expect them to take (obviously, like everyone else, devs included, I would like the changes faster!).	
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They really did? Still, I disagree.
 
Here is the thing about potential. It is worthless. ---> until it is turned in to something that we can see/use/enjoy. Potential is nothing one can operate with. It is imaginative. For me saying somebody or something has/had pontential is a cheap excuse for failure.	
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You understand they are working very hard to fix this, right?
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Here is the thing about potential. It is worthless. ---> until it is turned in to something that we can see/use/enjoy. Potential is nothing one can operate with. It is imaginative. For me saying somebody or something has/had pontential is a cheap excuse for failure.
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So... in the meanwhile we shell out $15 a month to beta test a product?
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Sly it is just you come out as a glass is 1/5 full YAYAYAYAYAY type of guy. :)
 
Normally if the glass is 4/5 empty people are not happy.
 
The fractions used are perhaps exaggerated but I think many would agree the glass is less than half full.	
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No- if it's not good enough for you, don't play it.
 
I don't feel like I'm playing a beta product. I feel like I'm playing a great game I enjoy.
 
 
 
 
That's not true.
 
 
 
 
AND They are making changes so that the majority of of runes will be useful.
 
Right now RNG = You have to be lucky get a good number of rune slots and exactly the right ones in the right positions in order for gear to be worth it.
After Drop 3 RNG = Being lucky means gear will be slightly better, but not substantially better. And if you want to make it a little better, you can offset the RNG with a little bit of work. Most slots won't even need to be re-rolled after the drop.
 
 
 
 
Exactly- and that is what they are addressing with drop 3 and drop 4. After drop 3 you will have far less RNG on and indiviual piece of gear, and after drop 4 the loot tables will be better so you can more reliably get the gear you want. Yes, there will be some RNG, but it will not be substantially different from previous MMOs I've played.
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Sly it is just you come out as a glass is 1/5 full YAYAYAYAYAY type of guy. :)
 
Normally if the glass is 4/5 empty people are not happy.
 
The fractions used are perhaps exaggerated but I think many would agree the glass is less than half full.
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I said "What they hate is having upgrades come so infrequently that they never feel rewarded for their effort and having no idea when those drops will come."
 
You said "say that if I don't know exactly where and when my next gear upgrade is coming from, that's too much RNG".
 
As far as I can tell, we are saying the same things. If I'm misunderstanding you, I'm sorry.	
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I think there are two things here. The first is, I could play this game for a long time exactly the way it is and have a blast. So there's that.
 
The other thing is, I'm a big believer in accepting things I cannot change. If I see the devs doing the best they can, the only decision for me is whether it's good enough for me. And if it is, then I accept the good with the bad. If it's not, I move on.
 
Don't get me wrong, I don't want people to move on. I want this game to be successful and I recognize that needs other people to play. It's not an "I'm OK so the game is OK" attitude. But I see the devs doing everything they can to make it successful. It may just not be enough, and if that's the case I'll be sad, but I'll accept it.
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			And to say it further- I'm not saying "It's not an issue for me, so there's not reason to be concerned". Mostly what I'm saying is "I see the devs addressing your concerns and I'm trying to help you see that". And yes, there are things that won't be changed quick enough for some people. That DOES concern me, but there's nothing I (or the devs) can do about that, so I accept it for what it is and hope for the best.	
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Well, first off there's a lot already realized that is great with the game. If it weren't, then no one would be subbing at all. So there are already people who can see/use/enjoy the good things about his game. I'm not continuing to play for the potential, but the potential gives me hope for the future of it.
 
Not sure where you get "cheap excuse for failure" from. I like the game, and I like where it's going. I think other people will like where it's going and I hope it has enough people like me to buy the time it needs to get them to sub.
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Everyone can change something with a game they can decide to play or not... Wildstar is not your family you don't have to hang out with them or spend time with them.
 
No one is forcing anyone to play a game it is a hobby to pass the hours and hopefully remove some of the stress from the outside world...
 
If you didn't like how they cooked a certain meal at a restaurant, and couldn't do anything about it would you still go there? I wouldn't, because I have choices of where to eat and am no way to eat at that restaurant all the time.
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I'm glad you still enjoy this game so much Sly, if you could lend me some optimism I'd love to have some.
 
But even the most seasoned fans are getting tired at the moment :(
 
The whole EU server fiasco has pretty much split the community apart at the moment. I am literally backed into a corner right now, it shouldn't be like that for a game... 
 
The Devs need to sort the mess, and they need to manage the future of the game much more carefully than they are doing right now. 	
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Sly it is just you come out as a glass is 1/5 full YAYAYAYAYAY type of guy. :)
 
Normally if the glass is 4/5 empty people are not happy.
 
The fractions used are perhaps exaggerated but I think many would agree the glass is less than half full.
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Afterwards, in this "potential and hope part", I am loosing you. 
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To say it differently. Right now it's good enough for some.
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			I really wish this thread would just die already.	
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I really wish this thread would just die already.
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It bugs my head that the game is obviously(?) so great/awesome ... and still people leave this place - beside the regular player movement. They leave because of reasons. Carbine has to work that hard because the game is so awesome? :D How does this fit?
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[...] I think if they can get the effort/reward balance fixed, this game will shine and the masses will love it. In the meantime, I hope there are enough people like me to enjoy the fights and combat enough to stick with it.
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This is basically what I am afraid of and maybe others as well. The ability to keep the development alive and push fixes asap. This ability may decides about the business model as well... maybe.
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While I know that I have been a Debbie Downer, I know that everyone who has posted intelligent comments in this thread is doing so because they genuinely do love this game and want to see it succeed.
 
SlyJeff, I know you and I are having our differences of opinion in this thread, but I respect your literate and well thought out responses even if I don't agree with your assessment of the developers actions as being adequate. A word of advice though, if you don't mind my saying this, the worst thing to say/do to someone when they're pissed off is to try to "educate them": you come off as negating their concerns despite your intention being to assuage them. I appreciate that this was not your intent, but it is what it appears as to those less content with the current situation than yourself.
 
The mixed messages from the developers. The decision to try a "wave a magic wand" update, instead of a string of frequent small updates that attack a single issue. Spending far too much time talking about what an awesome endgame you're going to have, and then basically not even testing it out before launching. I am frustrated by what I see as a string of arrogant, *cupcake* poor choices, particularly the "magic wand" decision, which I think many of us in both the "hater" or  "white knight" camps would say was not a well thought out choice.	
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A word of advice though, if you don't mind my saying this, the worst thing to say/do to someone when they're pissed off is to try to "educate them": you come off as negating their concerns despite your intention being to assuage them. I appreciate that this was not your intent, but it is what it appears as to those less content with the current situation than yourself.
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Fair enough.
 
I forget the value sometimes of just being heard- instead I try to "fix".
 
Most of my perspective comes from being a software developer. It's frustrating to be working hard and making necessary changes and having people breathing down your neck making all sorts of accusations. So it's a little difficult for me not to project how I'd be feeling in their shoes. But J-Tal has clearly shown he's tough enough to handle it :)
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So I do understand the urge, but in the case here, I think that the heat Carbine's brass is taking from the gamers is kind of deserved.
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 Let me ask you this. Does WoW have a medal system? Does Rift? GW2? SWTOR?
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Will it die?  Drop 3 will be a big part of that question.  It won't save the game but it may be the triage required to keep it alive until a substantial content drop.
 
If it does die I think it will be b/c of the lack of solo (aka casual) progression.  You can't have hardcore WITHOUT carebear content.  The casuals are the foundation of any game.  They support the economy, they create the foundation of the "social status", and they provide the funds required for a game to continue growing.
 
Being "hardcore" is relative.  If you are constantly marginalizing and eroding the player base beneath you pretty soon YOU are that player.  People don't enjoy that and leave.  If they had content they could do which provided meaningful reward/benefit so they could feel a bit closer to the upper echelon it's a different story.
 
There are other reasons of course.  Bugs (which don't really bother me but bother some), terrible PVP balance, imperfect PVE balance, irritating RNG mechanics, and poor design in specific areas (cooking, itemization, raid sizes).  But IMHO it is mostly due to the lack of content outside of raid night.  The casuals don't even have raid night to look forward to either b/c of the tedious attunement process or b/c of the Roster Boss.	
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Small group content must be puggable.  It doesn't need to be trivial, but it needs to be more tolerant to mistakes.  There needs to be a mechanism to filter non-medal, medal or don't care.
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You can't have hardcore WITHOUT carebear content.  The casuals are the foundation of any game.  They support the economy, they create the foundation of the "social status", and they provide the funds required for a game to continue growing.
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I don't think medal's factor much into the group breaking or not. My experience is that groups break at about the same number of wipes as they used to in WoW. The difference is that there are *far* more group wipes in this game. Because the content is more challenging. And because of that for many of us more *fun*.
 
I have definitely experienced people's lack of patience with people still learning to be an issue. Mistakes are punished harshly by the community. And because of that, I do fear dungeons being nerfed. That would be a terrible outcome for me, because they play and feel great right now. I'm hopeful that the new turotial dungeon and better incentives to stick with it (better xp/gear) will make dungeon groups more resilient.
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I tolerate difficulty settings on dungeons in other MMOs because its par for the course, but I don't like them.  It's just a way of moving the goal posts so someone who by all accounts shouldn't be attempting to venture into a particularly difficult area, can float through because reasons, or rehashing existing content with bigger HP pools and damage numbers.
 
There are few RPGs left that actually task you with improving your stats or your skills specifically to be able to try something new (and probably fail).  I genuinely miss entering a dungeon, exploring it, not finishing it on your first try through, but getting progressively better each time. 
 
This game has a longer learning curve than most, particularly because you need to forget a lot of bad habits from older MMOs, but when you finally figure your stuff out, it is absolutely not greatly difficult compared to other stuff that's out now, except with more personal responsibility.	
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I guess this is where we'll have to agree to disagree. Though I wasn't around in beta so I don't know what happened in the past. All I can see is that from where we are now, looking forward it seems the changes they are making are in the right direction to address most of the complaints people currently have.
 
If people feel there's a need to punish the devs for what happened in the past, then it doesn't make a lot of sense to me because you can't really do anything about that. All they can do is make better decisions going forward. I'm also not the kind of person who enjoys dancing on graves (and it seems like outside the forum there are a lot of folks who would like nothing more than WS to go down in flames).
 
I guess a big point of disagreement may be over the approach to drop 3, which I absolutely think is the right approach: step back, stop going down the road of trying to deploy stuff too quickly, and do the job right. And if people think that was the wrong approach, that's probably a good point to know that we are at an impasse.
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Just seems to me that the internal builds are 3 months ahead of the live and ptr builds, which is not at all surprising.
 
 
 
{| class="blockquote"
when they could have attacked single issue problems much more rapidly and probably would have been able to maintain a much higher player retention rate. 
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The leveling is casual.
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The game is perfectly playable and enjoyable from beginning to end... the people that find problems CHOOSE to find the problems, and are ultimately the real problem.
 
There's no doubt things could be tweaked and improved here and there, but when players just decide flat-out that something the game is broken or "4/5 empty" then the problem is absolutely the player, not the game.
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For us mere mortals, levelling ain't easy.  Mob density in the 30+ zones is a problem especially when pulling more than two mobs is often fatal.  The tired refrain of "get a group" is (or was) harmful.  You gained survivability at the expense of mission progress speed.
 
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For us mere mortals, levelling ain't easy.  Mob density in the 30+ zones is a problem especially when pulling more than two mobs is often fatal.  The tired refrain of "get a group" is (or was) harmful.  You gained survivability at the expense of mission progress speed.
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I tolerate difficulty settings on dungeons in other MMOs because its par for the course, but I don't like them.  It's just a way of moving the goal posts so someone who by all accounts shouldn't be attempting to venture into a particularly difficult area, can float through because reasons, or rehashing existing content with bigger HP pools and damage numbers.
 
There are few RPGs left that actually task you with improving your stats or your skills specifically to be able to try something new (and probably fail).  I genuinely miss entering a dungeon, exploring it, not finishing it on your first try through, but getting progressively better each time. 
 
This game has a longer learning curve than most, particularly because you need to forget a lot of bad habits from older MMOs, but when you finally figure your stuff out, it is absolutely not greatly difficult compared to other stuff that's out now, except with more personal responsibility.
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I actually agree with the decision to delay the playable content but the QoL changes should have been rolled out much sooner, separate from Drop 3.
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No offense, but this made no sense at all to me.
 
If I go into a restaurant and order a steak that isn't cooked well or is loaded with gristle, I have every right to complain to the chef.  The only way I can see that the costumer is the one at fault when he orders a meal and doesn't get the service he or she expected, is when they order that steak while at a car dealership or dentist office.  Then yes, the costumer should've known better and is at fault.
 
I feel the game should've been left in development a little longer.  Even if they opened the game the same day as Blizzards WoD, I think the fine tuning and other adjustments would've left them in a better position months after launch than the state it's currently in.
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they do deserve the type of heat that their paying customers are giving them.
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What would leaving the game in development longer have done? It wouldn't have changed the attunement. I wouldn't have re-worked the RNG gear progression. In fact other than a few bugs, I can't think of a single thing that leaving it in development longer would have satisfied.
 
The game is WildStar, and WildStar is the game. Too many complainers are trying to change the game entirely. Too many people are trying to take that steak they ordered off the menu and turn it into fish.
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From what I understood, it was the reverse. The playable content was delayed to include the QoL stuff. And including the QoL into the already existing drop certainly would have been much faster than trying to work the QoL stuff into a new drop based on the current code base (as likely it was developed originally assuming post-patch) and then trying to re-work the content into the now new code base.
 
 
That is, my understanding was that their original plan looked like this
 
Currently Deployed Code->New Content->QoL
 
 
Changing the code to be
 
Currently Deployed Code->QoL->New Content
 
Would have meant re-engineering any QoL stuff that was dependent on the "New Content" and later re-engineering all the "New Content" to handle the QoL changes. Instead, they were able to keep everything they had and just move up the timeline for QoL changes.
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{| class="blockquote"
So, that means they could have released Drop 3 in September and then started rolling out rapid single issue updates. Do you see what I'm getting at? One way or the other, they should have been doing small single issue patches rapidly over the last few months instead of leaving their customers in limbo. Either way, the "magic wand" patch is bad approach because it leaves gigantic problems in the game for months on end. Like I said earlier rolling out the QoL fixes in small but rapid succession would have greatly increased customer retention because customer have a lot more tolerance for the waiting when they can see the problems are getting addressed in a timely fashion, even if it wasn't their particular issue that got patched this week.
 
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{| class="blockquote"
 
 
All I know is, delaying drop 3 like they have had to be painful to many of them, and I can't imagine they did what they did without good reason.
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Strange as this sounds, the optimist in me thinks that it's because they're tripping all over themselves trying to figure out what the hell to do because they honestly thought that the grindy design decisions of 2005 would go over really well in a game of 2014 and they have no idea how to salvage a lot of their original plans.
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{| class="blockquote"
So, that means they could have released Drop 3 in September and then started rolling out rapid single issue updates. Do you see what I'm getting at? One way or the other, they should have been doing small single issue patches rapidly over the last few months instead of leaving their customers in limbo. Either way, the "magic wand" patch is bad approach because it leaves gigantic problems in the game for months on end. Like I said earlier rolling out the QoL fixes in small but rapid succession would have greatly increased customer retention because customer have a lot more tolerance for the waiting when they can see the problems are getting addressed in a timely fashion, even if it wasn't their particular issue that got patched this week.
 
 
But overall, when I say they deserve the heat they've been getting it's because Carbine has created a precedent for themselves by over-promising and under-delivering, failing to address problems with the game in a timely manner, and then only responding when negativity has reached high levels. I don't like coming on the boards here and being a whiny little *cupcake*, but it's unfortunately the only thing that seems to get them to open their mouths and answer otherwise reasonable questions. It's not about punishing them, it's about the fact that they've created this dynamic between developer and customer and are doing very little to change it. 
 
I played DCUO for roughly the first two years and thus I was there through the boom to bust phase and its recovery, and I can tell you that it had it worse than Wildstar, TERA, TSW, or SWTOR because the game got shut down for two weeks due to the SOE/Playstation network hacks. The population was already in free fall before the shutdown, but half the players just didn't return afterwards. To say player morale was low is like saying Payton Manning is an okay football player: a gross understatement. But the developers there went on the offensive: frequent communication about what was coming down the pipe for the game; actively asking what could be improved, not waiting for complaints about what was wrong; and most importantly, they were acknowledging and fixing problems as fast as possible: it was common to see single issue QoL patches on a weekly basis. Within two months after coming back online from the shutdown player morale was probably almost as high as it was at launch, and during this time that game released two major content patches and also underwent a megaserver transition. Ultimately the game went free to play not because it was losing customers anymore but because the hack and shutdown scared off a lot of people from returning or trying out the game, and that is x-factor stuff that no developer can control.
 
I'm just saying that with good management, rapidly addressing issues, and truly open lines of communication, a recovery period doesn't have to be anywhere near as ugly as Wildstar's presently is.
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