122804-stop-wasting-effort-on-new-content-that-does-not-allow-progression

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== Content ==
			
The name of the game is progression
Summary:
There are only two content areas in Wildstar, because there are only two way to progress your character.  Either you PVP or your Raid, there is truly no other content in the game.  Stop wasting effort on new content that does not allow progression.
    Add the ability to progress a character without raiding
    Add content with shorter play time requirements in a single sitting
    Add the ability to progress a character with challenging solo content
    Add the ability to progress a character with challenging solo crafting, and crafting quest/missions
    Equalize PVP and make it skill based not gear based
 
I love getting lost in the fantasy world of MMO’s.  I am not a role-player but still love the life aspect of the genre.  The economy, crafting, travel and exploration all make for a great game. The best part is being able to see the progression in my character; I can work through the story lines run dungeons, craft and other things to make my character better at what I do.  This is the main reason people like MMO’s.  I want my character to be a BAD ASS! I want to get the gear and ability to stomp anything I see.  I want to get to a point that my character is able to kill things that generally a single person was not intended to kill.  But unfortunately I like many others do not have time to slip away from real life for 10 hours a day.  My schedule does not allow me be at my computer 4 nights a week for 5 – 8 hours on a regular basis.  I can’t stay up all night playing a game because I have to work the next day.  If I spend the time to achieve greatness in Wildstar I fail at life.  And if I put in the effort to succeed at life I fail at Wildstar.  I would desperately like to see some life balance.  There is no reason I shouldn’t be able to have my cupcake and eat it as well.  After all what’s the point of cupcakes if you can’t enjoy eating them. 
                I see all the cool kids in Wildstar with the best and coolest looking gear, that enables them to go out in the world and stomp things and I want to be a cool kid to.  But because I have responsibility in real life I am unable to progress my character in Wildstar.  I have done the adventures, I have done the dungeons. That was sometimes difficult for me because they can take quite a long time.  I have done the quest lines and world story.  I have even had the opportunity to kill a few world bosses, not many have you because finding a group that just happens to be engaging one when I have happen to have a few minutes to play is difficult at best.  But none of this has allowed me to even get close to being a cool kid with cool gear.  The addition of the Shiphand missions was the most awesome thing! I was so excited I almost wet myself.  They were so much fun as I was leveling up.  They were short, solo play or small groups.  I didn’t have to wait 2 hours for a queue to pop.  But to my dismay I find that I can do Shiphand missions until the cows come home and still not be a cool kid.  The gear that drops is caped below what you would get in an adventure.  So Wildstar added some nice solo content! Yeah!  Shame it’s only for new level 50s.  I have done all the Shiphand they were fun but I don’t get to progress so why should I keep going.  I have done all the adventures, the rare epic drops are a cool aspect, but even they don’t stack up to dungeon gear.  I did all the dungeons, again a few rare epic drops but for the most part the rare gear is as good if not better and again it still doesn’t get me close to being a cool kid.  I have maxed out my crafting and have all the best crafted gear, that did take some time, and it was fun harvesting materials and turning them into usable gear.  Crafting hundreds of an item until you got just the right combination of rune slots, incumbents, stats, and specials you want.  But this didn’t make me a cool kid either.  With all this being done I come to the conclusion that unless I can successfully raid I can’t be a cool kid.  Because I am unwilling to give up my wife, my job, and my life to do this the inevitable conclusion is to cancel my subscription.  Why play a progression based game if you can’t progress.   I feel as if I am stalemated. 
The last bastion of hope to progress my character. PVP.  I like PVP its fun and Wildstar version of it has some interesting dynamics.  There are defiantly some cool kid’s gear you can get from PVP.  But there is a catch.  New PVPers at level 50 pretty much get killed in a few hits.  That is unless you are already a cool kid and have all the sweet raid gear.  So I get to be fodder until I get acquire some decent gear.  Ok I can do that.  I now have a complete set of rare quality PVP gear, but wait I am still fodder! I still can’t hold my own against other players.  Some might say its skill, but all the skill in the world won’t help you when you’re standing toe to toe with a geared up warrior who you can’t stun, damage or run from, or a geared up stalker that kills you in two hits before you become un-trapped.  The balance in PVP is incredibly uneven and without the epic gear your still fodder.  Time to get some epic gear because I am sick of being fodder!  But wait how do you get epic gear? Warplots! They look like fun, but it’s basically a raid for PVPers, and I still don’t have that kind of time.  How about arenas, I love 2v2 arenas, but how do you get a team of fodder geared people to compete with epic’ed out cool kids?  No rating for fodder and cool kids don’t want to team up with someone in fodder gear and lose their rating.  One of the big pitches for PVP in the Wildstar marketing campaign was based on player skill.  But again I say skill will not help you in an uneven match.  Oh and by the time I sit through 10min to 2 hours of waiting for a queue to drop I jump in a group and get stomped.  If the game was based on player skill then upon entering a PVP instance all players would have the same stats and be even.  Then and only then can it truly be based on skill.  Regardless of skill, time is still the factor.  People who PVP all the time and can group with people who PVP all the time get the gear and become the cool kids and brag about their skill because they have the gear to demolish people using fodder gear.  I killed that guy in 3 hit! I am awesome.  Not much skill in that.
I was always told that unless you have a solution don’t bring up a problem.  Here are some solutions I have thought about. 
Naked PVP: every one that enters into PVP battle, warplots, arenas, battlegrounds, or even world PVP has the equivalent stats.  No one is better than another based on having better gear.  This would allow for a skill based comparison and not a gear based comparison.  With common stats the customization of PVP attributes will be centered in tier ability’s, and amp point builds and yes everyone should have the same amount in PVP.  You can customize your character to be more defensive or more offensive but still have equal gear ability as everyone else.  If I feel like I am fodder, I can increase my defensiveness at the cost of offensive but still be within a marginal range of every other player.  But because progression is the name of the game, there has to be some type of reward for being more skilled.  This brings us back to cool kids gear, but why not just normal old world gear. I get to be a cool kid because my skill in PVP is better than most and when I do jump out of PVP to do something else I can be a just as cool of a kid as raiders.  Also PVP titles and cool kid costumes that allow people to show off what they have earned. 
Shiphand: Why should solo content not give equivalent gear to raids?  Is there less challenge are they easier?  The same things that make raids challenging can be incorporated into solo content with the obvious exception of time putting the raid together.  You should be able to progress in gear and status in small groups and solo and still have the challenge and cool kid rewards without the unrealistic time sink involved in raiding. 
Crafting: love the crafting system but at the end of the journey I still don’t get the reward of being a cool kid.  To get the best crafted gear I have to first be a raider.  If I am a raider the reward for spending the time to craft is somewhat pointless because I already have an outlet to get cool kid gear.  Again there can be challenge in obtaining crafting materials for the best crafted gear without having to raid or do large group content. And the people that are better at scavenging materials and crafting can be cool kids as well.
 
Conclusion, stop wasting effort on new content that does not allow progression.  If the only content you’re going to have in the game is raids and PVP but those are only available to a small number of people that have the time to play hours and hours per day the game is going to see less and less people playing.  Stop the declining population give people short sessions with progression.	
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The name of the game is progression
Summary:
There are only two content areas in Wildstar, because there are only two way to progress your character.  Either you PVP or your Raid, there is truly no other content in the game.  Stop wasting effort on new content that does not allow progression.
    Add the ability to progress a character without raiding
    Add content with shorter play time requirements in a single sitting
    Add the ability to progress a character with challenging solo content
    Add the ability to progress a character with challenging solo crafting, and crafting quest/missions
    Equalize PVP and make it skill based not gear based
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yasfan great reply thank you,I have read up on the upcoming PVP changes and I am very optimistic about them.  
 
the solo content is still a little disheartening and unfortunately the Shiphands although fun and exciting did little in my hopes to progress.
 
as a crafter I agree that you have to limit the BOE crafting gear to keep the game away from P2W, (no one likes P2W) but that should not hinder the ability to add epic crafting quest lines that end with BOP items of raid quality.  savaging for BOP crafting materials out side of raids and things of that nature.  there are a lot of possibilities in this area and it is something that people can start and if they get some wife and or life agro walk away and return to pick it up again.
 
the non progression aspects of the game are by far the best over every other game, and this is one reason I did not mention them.  I think they have done a fantastic job in that area to include not only the housing but the lore and other areas.
 
thanks again for the reply, I think we as a community are all in high hopes for the game and the fact that I personally feel that the devs are listening and do care about the community and try to make the game better in a timely manner keeps me, checking back in from time to time.  I understand that they can not fix everything to make every one happy immediately.  I just hope they can break away from the Raiding or nothing concept to something that will draw a little wider audience.  and who knows maybe by drawing a wider audience even the raiding aspect of the game might pick up some.	
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So a couple of points
 
1) Vet Shiphands were never intended to give raid level gear as rewards because the difficulty of the content wasn't designed to be at that level. They were designed for folks who haven't done adventures, so if you have completed your dungeons then you will likely find them trivial. With that being said, I find them super fun, they give great rewards for gold and renown, and are fun for the whole family. Great way to unwind.
 
2) While I think they are trying to develop more difficult content for solo players and better ways to scaled a mob up, I doubt that truly solo content will ever drop "raid" level gear. I know it seems odd, but it is incredibly difficult to make solo content that is hard because it is much more difficult to include complex mechanics. Stuff like  having multiple people use IA breakers, the eggs on kuralak, splitting the group into 2 for ohmna, and even stuff from dungeons like the hammer on skash or the ondo mechanics are all not possible if you have only one person. The things that you could do are put complex telegraphs down that require dodging for being 1 shot, and putting lots of IA on them so that you have to carry lots of interrupts, and then including difficult to achieve dps to down the mob. I am not sure what Timetravel could do with that, he is a magician, but I doubt they would consider a solo instance difficult enough to drop raid level gear.
 
The reason that raids drop higher gear is because they are difficult, they require group coordination, timing and dedication, as well as individual dedication to gearing yourself up and commiting to the mechanics. What you are asking for (I think) is 1 to 5 or maybe 10 man raids that can drop the highest gear in the game for commitments of maybe 30 minutes to an hour. And while they may raise the level of gear that can be acquired from solo content, if your goal to be one of the "cool kids" with the best gear in the game, I think that you may find you are waiting a long time for that to happen without raiding.	
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Have you checked the glory vendors for the gear you can now purchase after doing the dungeons?
 
If we're not doing raid lvl content, we don't need/deserve raid lvl gear.  From the stuff I've cobbled together over the months, mostly crafted, a world drop or two, rep gear, and runing my stuff out(admittedly not the best it could be rune wise :P), I have more than enough power from my gear to do the content I'm doing.  And I haven't stepped foot in a dungeon yet.  	
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Have you checked the glory vendors for the gear you can now purchase after doing the dungeons?
 
If we're not doing raid lvl content, we don't need/deserve raid lvl gear. From the stuff I've cobbled together over the months, mostly crafted, a world drop or two, rep gear, and runing my stuff out(admittedly not the best it could be rune wise :P), I have more than enough power from my gear to do the content I'm doing. And I haven't stepped foot in a dungeon yet.
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After you have done all that and got about the best gear you can, then what? I am in the same place you are, and i am gear caped. cant really get any better.  do I stop playing with the idea that I have maxed my potential?
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i love that you brought up this topic Jix and i hope yours and my opinions arnt just out right disregarded. this game needs to change and we are the catalyst to its revival!
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After you have done all that and got about the best gear you can, then what? I am in the same place you are, and i am gear caped. cant really get any better.  do I stop playing with the idea that I have maxed my potential?
 
So you think we don't need/deserve raid level gear? if you successfully complete challenging content you do need/deserve raid level gear. The root of the problem is there needs to be other challenging content besides Raiding.
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After you have done all that and got about the best gear you can, then what? I am in the same place you are, and i am gear caped. cant really get any better.  do I stop playing with the idea that I have maxed my potential?
 
So you think we don't need/deserve raid level gear? if you successfully complete challenging content you do need/deserve raid level gear. The root of the problem is there needs to be other challenging content besides Raiding.
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To a certain degree, if maxed your potential means have the absolute best gear for the content that you run. As of right now, you won't get any higher level iGear than if you are entirely in vet SSM and protogames purples. The gear gained at the top of one level of progressions is designed to take you into the next level. So the dungeon gear you are in is designed to be what you need to successfully complete a raid. As of right now, you won't get get better gear until the next time they release a 5 man dungeon.
 
THis doesn't mean you can't enjoy the game (I find dungeons and housing to be incredibly entertaining). But in terms of gear progression, you won't get better gear until you raid in the current state of the game.
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1) Vet Shiphands should have been intended to be challenging and give the best gear in the game.
 
2) if they don't give me better gear than what i have why would i bother with them in the long run?
 
So the bases of what your saying is that the only challenging content the game can have is raiding and only raiders get to be the cool kids.  but unfortunately the hardcore raiders wont have any raids or new content if the rest of us get sick of it and stop paying.  carbine and add content only because we pay them to do it, and if no one pays them they go out of business.  widening the audience of the game and giving people something challenging other than raiding should never be out of the question. 
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You are correct in the current state of the game.  what I am talking about is changing away from the current state of the game to allow for multiple avenues of progression to the highest level of gear all equally challenging but allowing for diversity in play style and the amount of time one must commit in a single sitting.  just because I can only play for 30min at a time does not mean i do not want or deserve to be entertained by challenging content and the possibility of reaching the highest of gear levels and the coolest looking. skill should equal reward not time per sitting and the ability to have other people carry you through.
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Well, "maxing my potential" isn't the only thing I play the game for.  I do the shiphands because they're fun.  I'm working on finishing my dye collection(one color to go :D ).  I like to play around with costumes.  Others go nuts on their housing plots. I play alts.  I farm mats for making my own Runic Fluxes, and I do challenges to get the bags that have a chance to drop Runic Modules, so I can upgrade my gear or help my husband upgrade his since I have more time to play than he does.  I hunt down rares.  I work on the achievements that can be soloed.  I do dailies for the EG quest and to max out my weekly EGs.  One of these days I'll step back into doing my attunement on my main(even though I don't plan to raid right now, who knows what I may decide in the future).  I'm patiently waiting for the PvP changes that are on the PTR right now to go live.
 
No, I don't need/deserve raid level gear because I am currently not doing anything that is raid level.  I have the gear that fits my chosen play-style.  I have the rewards(to me) that have fit the content I have been doing.  And hopefully the PvP reward/gear will fit that effort when I start PvP'ing again(which is why I stopped, because I felt the rewards weren't worth the headache)
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I love how every time people bring up this topic they just casually justify it with their "just make solo content as hard as raids" claim and then leave it at that.
 
Why don't you actually step back for a second and explain how you're going to make solo content that's as hard as raiding? Because really, I'm actually interested in how people would think you can accomplish this.	
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If you can master something in 30 mins, then I don't think it is that difficult. So in that sense, the ability to commit more time to finish something and work on it is an indicator to how difficult it is. And while you might be able to carry 1-2 people in a raid if you are on farm, new raids can't afford anyone to carry. Everyone has to pull their weight on every fight.
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All of these things are good! Carbine has done a fantastic job with things of this nature.  if you don't want to progress there is quite of bit of content for you to enjoy.  I am not arguing that fact at all and I am very happy about it.  but what if you do want to progress?
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(( personal opinion here )) 
 
 
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 all i am asking for is a away to work towards top end gear with out raiding.
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I love how every time people bring up this topic they just casually justify it with their "just make solo content as hard as raids" claim and then leave it at that.
 
Why don't you actually step back for a second and explain how you're going to make solo content that's as hard as raiding? Because really, I'm actually interested in how people would think you can accomplish this.
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No MMO should ever allow you to fully progress solo. It's a mutliplayer game, the pinnacle of which being large, multiplayer bosses. If you want the best gear in the game, but don't want to play with other people to get it, then you're flat-out playing the wrong genre. I wholly disagree with the OP and especially the extra insanity spewed by CK. (everyone would finish gearing in a day and then what?) You want the gear that all the "cool kids" have? Go play with them! I'd like to see the devs not waste another ounce of energy on horrid solo content (hi omnicore) and focus more on additional dungeons/raids; where it should be.
 
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(( personal opinion here )) 
 
 
 
I personally don't believe in this. If you're not doing top end content, you don't need top end gear. Whether you solo, pvp, do dungeons, or do raids, each sphere has a 'max' progression to it, and you earn gear that's relevant for that sphere. If you can't do xyz thing (like raiding) because of xyz reason, that is on you, and not the game and you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not going to be decked out in raid gear because guess what, you don't raid (and thus you don't need raid gear). 
 
Doing solo content 30 minutes a day for 6 months is never going to be on par with the time / effort / etc it takes to organize and plan a raid. The monsters you defeat and coordination you require is never going to be the same as what you need when you're more than one person trying to coordinate things. It's also a way of promoting group play, guilds, events, etc. 
 
Lets say the game rewarded raid-versions of gear for solo gameplay. What's the point to raiding when you can just wait and do it alone. It's a poor reward system.
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some of the same concepts that make raiding challenging can be applied to solo content.  the movement of your toon, the timing of stuns, there are hole genres of games based on challenging solo content that could be applied to an MMO. there are other MMO's that have challenging solo content.  there was a time in MMO's where people though that world bosses where the most challenging content and nothing could be as challenging as that.  at one point packman was the most challenging video game you could play. I would like to think we progressed past the packman era, and like that MMO's can progress past the "Raids are the only challenging style of content" era.
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At last, we agree on something! :P
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(( personal opinion here )) 
 
 
 
I personally don't believe in this. If you're not doing top end content, you don't need top end gear. Whether you solo, pvp, do dungeons, or do raids, each sphere has a 'max' progression to it, and you earn gear that's relevant for that sphere. If you can't do xyz thing (like raiding) because of xyz reason, that is on you, and not the game and you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not going to be decked out in raid gear because guess what, you don't raid (and thus you don't need raid gear). 
 
Doing solo content 30 minutes a day for 6 months is never going to be on par with the time / effort / etc it takes to organize and plan a raid. The monsters you defeat and coordination you require is never going to be the same as what you need when you're more than one person trying to coordinate things. It's also a way of promoting group play, guilds, events, etc. 
 
Lets say the game rewarded raid-versions of gear for solo gameplay. What's the point to raiding when you can just wait and do it alone. It's a poor reward system. 
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If you play a game to progress but can only progress through one avenue raiding then the game is only catering to a small number of players that have the time and will do play in a very specific way and sooner than later the number of people that are willing and able to do that will decline until you have to consolidate down to one server 
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No MMO should ever allow you to fully progress solo. It's a mutliplayer game, the pinnacle of which being large, multiplayer bosses. If you want the best gear in the game, but don't want to play with other people to get it, then you're flat-out playing the wrong genre. I wholly disagree with the OP and especially the extra insanity spewed by CK. (everyone would finish gearing in a day and then what?) You want the gear that all the "cool kids" have? Go play with them! I'd like to see the devs not waste another ounce of energy on horrid solo content (hi omnicore) and focus more on additional dungeons/raids; where it should be.
 
 
At last, we agree on something! :P
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			I think the problem is believing that raid gear is the absolute best gear for all aspects of the game and discounting what you get from non-raid content.  Yes, the raid gear is powerful *cupcake*, but look at what they need it for, what they do to get to it.  If you're not doing that degree, that intense, of gaming, why do you need raid gear to progress and reach max potential?	
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But that's completely not true.
 
WoW "end game" is raiding, and sure it has declined over time but it's still going stronger than most games out there. In fact lots of games out there have some form of raiding, and raiding rewards the "best" gear you can get in the game.. Group rewards almost always outweigh solo rewards in every MMO out there for a reason. 
 
If you think raiding is all there is to do to "progress" in WildStar then you need to start looking at what else there is to do (there's lots of stuff). 
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but this does not mean that all i want to do is raid.
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I just want to express my amusement that it took me till the age of 37 to become a "cool kid" on the internet :P
 
I have a job, a husband, and 3 kids, yet I manage to find time to play and to organize and run a guild and raids for my motley crew. It doesn't require 10 hours/day. It doesn't require no life. It doesn't even require being a kid! Crazy! xD
 
As for progressing through world content, even on my alt (who was, until recently, in crafted and quest gear), I had no trouble in any world quest, event, or even dungeons. You don't need raid gear to blow up dailies or even up through dungeon stuff. I've always thought, even when I didn't raid (because I was scared and thought raiders would all be jerks and it would take waaay too much time), that it makes sense to have different paths and levels of progression. Just because you can't get the same exact rewards from all playstyles doesn't mean you aren't progressing for your playstyle.	
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Maybe your right, maybe there is an aspect of Wildstar that will allow me to get the best gear and be on the same level as raider and i just dont know it.  please point me in that direction!
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1. Vet Shiphands are great exactly as they are.
2. Raiders are not "cool".
3. Creating solo content that requires the level of skill and dedication that raiding does is not trivial, and it's not apparent (to me) there is a large demand for it.
4. If that content just came into existence today, you would spend the next sixth months working on it, alone, without any help for over 40 hours a week. Are you really prepared for this?
5. You can't he same rewards for less work/skill.
6. You can get pretty great gear right now without stepping foot in a raid. Certainly enough to farm at the speed a DS geared raider does (but this gear does require vet dungeons)	
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Maybe your right, maybe there is an aspect of Wildstar that will allow me to get the best gear and be on the same level as raider and i just dont know it.  please point me in that direction!
to yoru point that "end game" is raiding; why does it have to be?
stronger than ever? actually other genres are increasing in popularity and MMOs are constantly struggling.  wow held the penitential of popularity for MMOs and no other has reached that. I am just suggesting that a broader scope of progression might invite plays from other genres back to MMOs and strengthen the genre as a hole.
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why are all you guys hating on Jix? he pays for the game just as much of any as you do, therefore he should have the same cool kid gear.
 
if you pay for something you should get what you pay for. also even though he doesnt need the cool kid gear to beat some of the content doesnt mean he shouldnt look like a cool kid or have it at all. is that too much to ask? to pay for a service and get what you paid for?
 
also mmos might have the word multiplayer in it but everyone knows that 90% of the players only play solo. therefore there should be way more solo content. i for one think that there should be no gear progression at all. everyone is the same class (warrior) and has the same stats and all the separates us is skill. only thing that should take time to get is cool looking cosmetics. well either time or money, cause some of us non-cool people have lives.
 
make solo content give everything in this game and make it do-able in around 10-15min i have a life you know!
 
side-note: its super easy to make challengeing solo content just make the mobs scalable then in the exit menu add a difficulty bar that slides from normal to master difficulty. then if you want to go higher you can have like a torment difficulty thing and that could scale higher with another slidy bar. if you increase the difficulty it would increase the encounters like health and damage and what have you, but you also have a higher drop rate for stuff and the stuff can be end game gear! you could play solo or in a group. super simple.
 
this is a million dollar idea and i for one know i would play something like this over wildstars current system! just an idea i thought of, what do you think Jix?	
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why are all you guys hating on Jix? he pays for the game just as much of any as you do, therefore he should have the same cool kid gear.
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			yeah and the endgame for solo content at this moment is the costume of omnicore, soon we will see more onmicore style things and there will be his solo endgame, the thing that i dont see its why he need a tool thats is solely for high end raiding pve purposes, and that is adquired by doing high end pve content when he wont be doing or plan doing high end pve content in the short term. i repeat its like wanting a truck when you dont move more than 5 blocks away from your house	
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why are all you guys hating on Jix? he pays for the game just as much of any as you do, therefore he should have the same cool kid gear.
 
if you pay for something you should get what you pay for. also even though he doesnt need the cool kid gear to beat some of the content doesnt mean he shouldnt look like a cool kid or have it at all. is that too much to ask? to pay for a service and get what you paid for?
 
also mmos might have the word multiplayer in it but everyone knows that 90% of the players only play solo. therefore there should be way more solo content. i for one think that there should be no gear progression at all. everyone is the same class (warrior) and has the same stats and all the separates us is skill. only thing that should take time to get is cool looking cosmetics. well either time or money, cause some of us non-cool people have lives.
 
make solo content give everything in this game and make it do-able in around 10-15min i have a life you know!
 
side-note: its super easy to make challengeing solo content just make the mobs scalable then in the exit menu add a difficulty bar that slides from normal to master difficulty. then if you want to go higher you can have like a torment difficulty thing and that could scale higher with another slidy bar. if you increase the difficulty it would increase the encounters like health and damage and what have you, but you also have a higher drop rate for stuff and the stuff can be end game gear! you could play solo or in a group. super simple.
 
this is a million dollar idea and i for one know i would play something like this over wildstars current system! just an idea i thought of, what do you think Jix?
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I'm honestly not sure if I should be taking you seriously or not, don't know if you are being sincere or sarcastic, is my own personal penchant for sarcasm coloring my view of your posts?  That being said, I know that if you are being sarcastic, I am setting myself up for a major D'OH!!!  *facepalm* moment, but since I'm aware that might be the case, onward!!
 
No one is "hating on" the OP.  I've seen no one call him names, or tell him to leave and play another game, or anything like that.
 
I pay to play the game.  You get gear by playing.  I'm getting what I pay for.
 
There is plenty of solo content.  I can understand wanting some more challenge, that makes sense, I sometimes seek out challenging mobs to fight.  But I don't think solo challenge and the gear it rewards should ever be on par with raid gear.  As others have said, why make raids then?  I get what you're saying about skill vs. gear, and that a game should be about skill and not gear, but that's not the case with this game so we have to work with what we got.  As to "everyone should be a warrior", no.  Variety is the spice of life.  Some(I dare say all) of the cool people have lives too, they manage to get to "cool" despite that.
 
 :huh:
 
In a single player game, that's quite easy and possible(God mode in a lot of single player games).  But in an MMO, what happens if some poorly geared, or noob, stumbles upon me duking it out with some God-mode mob that he's used to being a peon mob?  How would a God-mode mob affect the game and server in general?  Seems there's a lot of room for catastrophe there.
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yeah and the endgame for solo content at this moment is the costume of omnicore, soon we will see more onmicore style things and there will be his solo endgame, the thing that i dont see its why he need a tool thats is solely for high end raiding pve purposes, and that is adquired by doing high end pve content when he wont be doing or plan doing high end pve content in the short term. i repeat its like wanting a truck when you dont move more than 5 blocks away from your house
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I haven't looked in awhile, but here is a question for raiders.
 
The materials/schematics to craft gear that require raid drops. Are they BoE or BoP?
 
If they're BoE then I feel that is the furthest it should go for allowing people to get "raid" tier gear. Maybe it is just me, but I see crafting as a form of progression as well(when itemized right) that is flexible and allows for anyone to do it. I doin't expect something like "The claw of Avatus"(made up) to be craftable without being present in the content, but I see no reason that something that might be 50% or 70% as effective as that tier of gear can't be made by a crafter who doesn't raid. In a sense it also fuels more economic growth as well and makes crafters feel a bit more significant if they can become the "go to smithy" for X/Y/Z spec and such...
 
I feel like from what I'm seeing and have been able to do, Carbine has provided solo players with more things to do outside of raiding and I'm sure they'll continue to do so as well(I hope, but I'm not a timelord).
 
However I feel strongly that crafting can be the middle ground between raiders and non-raiders if the concern is purely on gear progression. That is however my own personal taste.
 
 
The only other option I can think of is that when/if content ever becomes so outdated and resources are available for it that it be scaled to a small group/solo instance for people to run through as like a "flash back" type of play.	
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yeah and the endgame for solo content at this moment is the costume of omnicore, soon we will see more onmicore style things and there will be his solo endgame, the thing that i dont see its why he need a tool thats is solely for high end raiding pve purposes, and that is adquired by doing high end pve content when he wont be doing or plan doing high end pve content in the short term. i repeat its like wanting a truck when you dont move more than 5 blocks away from your house
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I think the problem is believing that raid gear is the absolute best gear for all aspects of the game and discounting what you get from non-raid content.  Yes, the raid gear is powerful *cupcake*, but look at what they need it for, what they do to get to it.  If you're not doing that degree, that intense, of gaming, why do you need raid gear to progress and reach max potential?
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why does raid gear have to look cool at all? there is no need for it, its a want, and solo players, people with limited time have the same wants.  why does raid gear have to be more powerful.  raids would be much more challenging if you gear sucked.
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cause if thats the way the content wont be repeteable at all, the devs need the people to farm bosses in order to get loot in order to make stronger their dps/tank /healing, if all the fights didnt reward anything but could be done in aawfull gear the content wont last 2 weeks, people do it once then leave the game and thats bad for the population, like in GW2 i did the endgame content once and i was like "well i think thats all".
 
i think a good solution will be that solo content drop gear like itm lvl 50 but when you are inside instanced solo content it will grow up its itm lvl, that would be fair for solo players and let raiding content players no need to farm solo instances just to get better gear easily.	
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i dont know but yor statement its like "i want a truck, i dont even know why cause i work and shop 2 blocks away from my house so dont move much, but i want a truck", the thing here is you dont need a truck and you can progress in some other way, like the people getting their full omnicore set, thats progression for them even i they had like 4 months farming that place they feel like there is a sense of progression with their costume.
 
So think, why would you need oranges that you cant accomplish with purples or blues. getting back to the analogy the truck is for people who go all the way throught the country carrying a lot of stuff but in your case you only need a bike, unless you are thinking in carry a lot of stuff throught the country soon, but if that was the case you will get your oranges when you raid not before it.
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Nobody in this thread has said anything hateful, why does offering counter points constitute hate? If the argument is so weak it can't withstand debate then don't make it. 
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Why do you feel that you NEED raid gear?.....
And we are just saying that if you give the same rewards that raiders currently get for doing solo content, then you will kill any form of casual raiding, and you will hurt all raiding in the end.
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He is absolutely kidding, his post is dripping with sarcasm and hyperbole. Both of them. He is also a geared SS healer raiding in the DS.
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to say that raiders should have all the good gear be it stats or looks, and every one else should only get rags is a little bit elitist
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i repeat my earlier propose "i think a good solution will be that solo content drop gear like itm lvl 50 but when you are inside instanced solo content it will grow up its itm lvl, that would be fair for solo players and let raiding content players no need to farm solo instances just to get better gear easily."
 
why would you think about gear that is kinda like blue in stats but with a especial effect (lone wolf: if you are inside Omnicore, (insert here new solo endgame dungeon) or (insert another solo dungeon) your higher stats increases x%).
 
that way you can feel progression, and raider folks wont need the urge to run solo content in order to progress in large group content.	
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 :D
 
....
 
But then I also realize people want to have something that shows how hard they've worked.
 
As to why raid gear has to be more powerful, why do YOU want more powerful gear?  Would you raid if you could never get yourself powerful enough to make it challenging as opposed to being rofl-stomped for hours?
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would you do solo content if you could never get yourself powerful enough to make it challenging as opposed to being rofl-stomped for hours?  
why does raiding have to be the only challenge, why does raid have to be the only way to progress and get nice gear.
all i am asking for is options, I don't understand why options are so controversial.  
 
if raid gear worked like pvp gear as in it was only good for raiding and no other aspect to the game would you still raid?
 
why not have PVP gear, Raid gear, and solo gear all equally powerful and cool at the top levels? with progression in each aspect that is challenging in different ways?
or is this more of a conversation of every one else has to be fodder in order for raiders to think of them self as better than others?
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would you do solo content if you could never get yourself powerful enough to make it challenging as opposed to being rofl-stomped for hours?  
why does raiding have to be the only challenge, why does raid have to be the only way to progress and get nice gear.
all i am asking for is options, I don't understand why options are so controversial.  
 
if raid gear worked like pvp gear as in it was only good for raiding and no other aspect to the game would you still raid?
 
why not have PVP gear, Raid gear, and solo gear all equally powerful and cool at the top levels? with progression in each aspect that is challenging in different ways?
or is this more of a conversation of every one else has to be fodder in order for raiders to think of them self as better than others?
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(( personal opinion here )) 
 
 
 
I personally don't believe in this. If you're not doing top end content, you don't need top end gear. 
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I just don't understand the concept of "I deserve raid level gear without ever having participated in a raid", this is what are society has become, everybody gets a trophy. It's created a generation of self entitled brats, if you want something go earn it, you don't deserve anything you haven't worked for. The cool kids wearing the cool gear worked their humps off for it, they deserve it, period of story.
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			I just don't understand the concept of "I deserve raid level gear without ever having participated in a raid", this is what are society has become, everybody gets a trophy. It's created a generation of self entitled brats, if you want something go earn it, you don't deserve anything you haven't worked for. The cool kids wearing the cool gear worked their humps off for it, they deserve it, period of story.	
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What solo content is rofl-stomping?  I know there's challenging, and I would also like a bit more challenge, but we don't have anything that rofl-stomps us like raiders do.  If we did, I'd agree that we need gear to match the content we are doing.
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I think the problem is less the power of the gear and more the fact that gear outside raids looks bland by comparison. You don't really feel like you progress when your omnicore set looks like basically lv40-50 blues still, and your weapon looks bland too. 
 
MMO's, to their own detriment, are overincentivizing raids, and it's coming to bite them in the ass because honestly a committed schedule of 3-4 nights a week of repeating the same content/instance for 3-4+ hours is something a lot if not most people that aren't going to want to do(although there are ways to alleviate the time, like getting rid of all the trash which is solely meant to slow down progress).
 
The problem with raiding is the time contract. If a friend or family member invites you to participate on an activity that coincides with raid time, what are you gonna do? "Sorry, I raid at those times." Is not an answer most people will be satisfied by, and if you do not wish to miss out on quality time with family and friends, then you alienate the raid group that relies on you. It's the fact that you are locked into that schedule with no flexibility since there's no positive way to spin an absence in the raid. You already have other time commitments isolating you from family and friends -- your work hours -- so many people are bothered by the idea of having another activity that restricts how they can spend their time.
 
This is not a diss on Wildstar either, World of Warcraft has it too where you either raid or you do rated PvP, because all the other activities don't reward you with much of worth let alone aesthetic progression.
 
It's also an issue of time flexibility and VARIETY of content. I'm a firm believer in a content roulette that varies daily with rewards incentivizing switching things up.
 
But this is a legitimate point to watch out for as to why people are getting tired of MMO's and the genre won't do as well as it once did.	
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EXACTLY what i am saying where is it! where is the challenging solo content and the gear to match!
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I just don't understand the concept of "I deserve raid level gear without ever having participated in a raid", this is what are society has become, everybody gets a trophy. It's created a generation of self entitled brats, if you want something go earn it, you don't deserve anything you haven't worked for. The cool kids wearing the cool gear worked their humps off for it, they deserve it, period of story.
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And that point got lost in your insistence that you deserve raid quality gear.  And even if/when they make solo content that is more challenging then what we already have, it still isn't going to be raid level/quality.
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do you think that pvpers should not have cool gear? equivalently powerful for what they do as raiders get?
why not challenging solo content that has the same level of challenge and same level of reward?
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and why not?
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The argument is not that raiding has to be the only challenge, it is that it is impossible to create a challenge as hard as raiding for solo content. Solo raid would also not really encourage the "massively multiplayer" part of the game. 
 
Please, develop a solo raid that includes bosses, trash and minibosses with as many different and fun mechanics as those in the Genetic Archives, and that would require between 6-12 hours dedication to it for months in order to progress to the end of the content, and I will be happy to agree that you need raid gear. But to do that, Carbine would have to drop EVERYTHING else, and then it would take anouth 6-12 months before it would even be out. 
 
You can progress to the end of solo content and get the best gear for solo content. Just like you can progress to the end of the the 5 man group content (vet dungeons) and get the best gear for that content which in many ways does trivialize even that level of the content (someone in full SSM and protostar purples is pretty damn close to the start of raid gearing). But what you are asking for, the solo content which provides the same rewards as raids, is just not going to happen. Not unless they develop something which would take 4 months for you to progress through solo, and by the sound of it, you don't have 9 hours a week for 4 months to dedicate to the game. If you did, then you would probably be raiding.
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I think the problem is less the power of the gear and more the fact that gear outside raids looks bland by comparison. You don't really feel like you progress when your omnicore set looks like basically lv40-50 blues still, and your weapon looks bland too. 
 
MMO's, to their own detriment, are overincentivizing raids, and it's coming to bite them in the ass because honestly a committed schedule of 3-4 nights a week of repeating the same content/instance for 3-4+ hours is something a lot if not most people that aren't going to want to do(although there are ways to alleviate the time, like getting rid of all the trash which is solely meant to slow down progress).
 
The problem with raiding is the time contract. If a friend or family member invites you to participate on an activity that coincides with raid time, what are you gonna do? "Sorry, I raid at those times." Is not an answer most people will be satisfied by, and if you do not wish to miss out on quality time with family and friends, then you alienate the raid group that relies on you. It's the fact that you are locked into that schedule with no flexibility since there's no positive way to spin an absence in the raid. You already have other time commitments isolating you from family and friends -- your work hours -- so many people are bothered by the idea of having another activity that restricts how they can spend their time.
 
This is not a diss on Wildstar either, World of Warcraft has it too where you either raid or you do rated PvP, because all the other activities don't reward you with much of worth let alone aesthetic progression.
 
It's also an issue of time flexibility and VARIETY of content. I'm a firm believer in a content roulette that varies daily with rewards incentivizing switching things up.
 
But this is a legitimate point to watch out for as to why people are getting tired of MMO's and the genre won't do as well as it once did.
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Different mechanics.  And could make raiding and other group content obsolete.  Why raid/group when you can solo?  Why even play an MMO then?  
 
Different time investment and effort too.  Part of the difficulty of raiding is the time, it's an endurance event too, and you've already stated you don't want to put that much time out.  You have to coordinate your efforts to 19 other people, that's a bit tougher than watching out for only yourself.  Yes, the gear should match the content, but not all the content is equal. 
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the content should be equal as well as the gear, but time and endurance should not be the test or reason for the reward.
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i can imagine a solo content, that involves some of the same mechanics as a raid.  you have to dodge the main boss and kill the adds.  you have to stay out of the AOE's.  you have to traverse difficult terrain. I can imagine a series of these that are progresivly harder and hard. I would that this type of solo content would have progressively better gear.
 
if raiding and raiders are so frail that having solo content would kill raids then what does that say about the raid system.  people only do it because there is nothing else to do?  why hasnt PVP with its top level gear not destroyed raiding?
 
I am not speaking of a replacement for raiding, I to was once a high end raider.  I did the wow heroic raids and i loved every bit of it.  but unfortunately my life will not support such activities right now, and i desperately miss the action and excitement.  so why not action packed solo content that is full of excitement where I to as a solo player can get some nice gear, and still live and love the other aspects of the MMO genre such has housing, questing, crafting, and socializing.
 
add diversity to include more play styles, and attract a larger and wide group of people.	
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 why hasnt PVP with its top level gear not destroyed raiding?
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i can imagine a solo content, that involves some of the same mechanics as a raid.  you have to dodge the main boss and kill the adds.  you have to stay out of the AOE's.  you have to traverse difficult terrain. I can imagine a series of these that are progresivly harder and hard. I would that this type of solo content would have progressively better gear.
 
if raiding and raiders are so frail that having solo content would kill raids then what does that say about the raid system.  people only do it because there is nothing else to do?  why hasnt PVP with its top level gear not destroyed raiding?
 
I am not speaking of a replacement for raiding, I to was once a high end raider.  I did the wow heroic raids and i loved every bit of it.  but unfortunately my life will not support such activities right now, and i desperately miss the action and excitement.  so why not action packed solo content that is full of excitement where I to as a solo player can get some nice gear, and still live and love the other aspects of the MMO genre such has housing, questing, crafting, and socializing.
 
add diversity to include more play styles, and attract a larger and wide group of people.
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nothing is impossible in this digital land, we are only limited by imagination.
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Then don't. You don't need raid gear in order to do anything else the game offers. 
 
Shiphands, veteran dungeons, pvp, crafting, working on achievements (minus the raid ones), leveling a path, housing, playing the economy. There are tons of other non-raid methods of progression. If you don't want to raid, and don't need raid gear, why would you measure your 'progress' by its gear? 
 
(sorry if this seems argumentative, I just don't understand the concept of wanting raid gear when there's zero reason to need it if you're not raiding). 
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Because it worked the other way round. When wildstar released, the BiS weapon for GA was the 1800 pvp weapons. Cue people wintrading/boosting their way to 1800 to get the weapons. It destroyed rated pvp but allowed raiding guilds to progress. If the wintrading and boosting hadn't have happened both pve and pvp would have been a nice balance in gear, except the raiders would cry the best weapons were from pvp so they were forced to play it.
 
 
Then, you know how these games work. Now that you cannot do this anymore, why do you still expect to reap the same rewards for less effort? Even a solo instance with challenging content would still put you back a fair chunk of time to complete in one sitting. I would imagine you wouldn't be able to do this as well. 
 
It's not a case of the game not rewarding you for playing, but it's obvious. The more time you invest, the more people you play with = the better gear you get. You do not want to raid, so you don't really need the gear... However doing solo content should be rewarding as in the ability to buy vanity gear, mounts, customisation and the such.... which the raiders also have access to if they do the solo content outside of their raiding. I disagree that because you play solo you should get the same rewards as someone who makes time to play with 19 other people. 
 
There is so much content in this game for solo players (that already does not require raid level gear) especially to cater to the people who do not have time to commit to a raid schedule. You don't need the raid gear, and you should understand that you cannot have everything handed to you on a silver platter. Look at WoW, they started giving out epics for nothing using the garrison and all people have done is complain. This is not a fate that should be shared with this game. 
 
And it isn't about exclusivity too. I don't raid. I would like to raid and I'm going to try to so I can get the sexy raiding gear. I've accepted I cannot acquire raid level gear without raiding and I'm happy with the gear/progression I have and can get. Dungeon level gear is fair, so is the pvp gear (which I put time into to get) and it's perfect for what I want to do. I don't expect to gear raid level gear unless I do the raids. 
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That's fine, and I don't see anything wrong with adding more hard solo content.  But I'm not going to fool myself into believing that my harder solo content puts me on par with harder raid content.
 
Who ever said anything about ego when we said it could kill raiding?  They aren't doing it because "there's nothing else to do", they are doing it because that's the type of content they want to do, but on the same token if they can get the same exact rewards for less effort they just might not see the point of working/playing harder.  That's human nature, and yea the Devs and what not have to take that into account when they make their content.  Don't believe me?  Go to a work place where people are paid the same regardless of how hard they are working, the people that are usually hard workers will eventually give up, and then you will have crappy work/products being put out there because the hard workers don't see their efforts being rewarded properly.
 
So ask for more challenging content, no problem with that.  But it's the "I deserve raid gear!!!" mentality that's ruining your point.
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This is not accurate.  The studio is limited in many, many ways.  Time and manpower, money, the people who control said money, deadlines, ect.  No MMORPG, no game in general is ever complete upon release, nor is it complete within the first year, or two years or sometimes even longer.  WoW has been going strong for ten years, and it is not complete.  If you want a game that has absolutely everything, you are talking years and years of development, and by the time you think you have everything, your game is obsolete, or someone has developed something new and shiny, and now you need to add it in.
 
Wildstar had its basic premise and story, and chose to push the difficult, group based content for launch, which is the heart of MMORPGs.  There is plenty of solo content for a brand new game.  The entire leveling process can be done solo.  Then, if you want a new solo experience, chose another class.  If you want to make it more difficult, do content above your current level, or gear level.  Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly want more, and more difficult endgame solo content.  But it takes time and resources.
 
Let's continue to look at the game from the developer's point of view.  They take great pride in their work and want people to see their art and experience their challenging content.  If solo content rewarded gear on par with current end game raid gear, you would have gobs of people blowing through the last of the available group content, find it mindless and boring, and be left with nothing.  The devs need the time raid content provides to push out new content.  A difficult solo instance would certainly fill a gap and be a welcome addition, but it can not upset the natural progression of the content.   A small raid instance, ten man for example, would also fill a gap, but again, these things take time and resources, especially if they were not part of the origional long term plan.
 
I feel your pain, being unable to commit to a raid schedule.  The most fun I have ever had in an MMO, has been endgame raiding with my friends.  This game has more potential than most everything else on the market, but it is going to take time to reach realization.  Patience does not come easy these days, and unfortunatley, Wildstar learned that the hard way, as have quite a few other MMO's who's playerbases erroded rapidly after launch and specifically after the free to play period.
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and again, not less effort, challenging and rewarding solo content.
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