126690-why-are-the-sub-numbers-so-low

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So I hear rumors that WildStar is NCSoft's least producing game. Out of Carbine Studios, a development group with a lot of potential from what I have seen so far with their FIRST game, why is this game failing to bring in the money?
 
I'm mostly just curious. I currently have nothing bad to say about the game thus far, but keep in mind I've only recently begun playing. Essentially all I've done is tampered around with classes and races for the last week, and having a lot of fun doing so. Even at low levels, WildStar provides the player with enriching content that sets it apart from other MMOs I've played (including NCSoft's native Korean MMO, Aion).
 
The combat system keeps me highly entertained. I love the action feel. It's what has really drawn both me and my significant other into it. Not only is if fun, it's seamless (again, not something another NCSoft MMO Aion was able to achieve). It has good flow and isn't clunky.
 
But it's been out for a year, and I heard that it flopped quite badly at launch and sub numbers were not very high. Things have since been "fixed" and is so far appealing to a new player like myself in 2015, but why do I also hear that the subscription numbers are also quite low? Competing games (WoW has a newish expansion)? Players no longer willing to play subscription based MMOs, only F2P? Or just bad gameplay that I have yet to see?
 
What can we predict about the future of this MMO? Personally I would like it to stick around, but am not sure I should devote my time if finding other players at end game is going to be difficult.	
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			The game has changed a lot over the past year to accommodate a lot of unforeseen issues that forced heavy elitism on the game driving players away in a mass exodus. (One example: the hard attunement for raiding required getting Silver in dungeons back then. A lot of "pros" would get those Silvers and proceed to try and get Gold in queue. Whenever they got a new player trying to attune and wiped it led to an insta-disband, 'cause Gold or Go Home. "Those were dark times Harry, dark times. Didn't know who to trust.") A lot of these players are now bad-mouthing the game due to this sour experience. Granted this was just one example and there are still many issues with the game, but, unlike half a year ago Wildstar can now be considered an actual game. At this point it's pretty much just a bad reputation. It would need to take something BIG to get people to try the game again (hence the predicted F2P). If people flood in at once, the low level queues will start popping and the game will start to live again. 	
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There were a lot of glaring issues for Wildstar at launch.
Carbine has, since then, fixed them and made the game quite the experience.
However a lot of people still feel jaded from launch and refuse to give Wildstar a second chance.	
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			Because i didnt sub ever and i still play:D	
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			Well PvP at the beginning of the game was pretty poor and took forever for them to fix it, so a lot of PvPers are long gone and not looking back. Not a lot of casual content at end game in the first half year. Stuff like that drove people away.	
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			Basically - WildStar deserves to have many more subs than it has now.	
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			There were several issues with the game at first which drove players away. Some of them don't know/want to accept that these issues have since been fixed.	
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So, of course I can only really comment on my own reason(s) for having left and not others... Essentially, myself and my guild all up and left around August or so for Final Fantasy XIV. The reason for this was because they kept promising drops each month and after waiting two or three months and seeing not a whole lot, we were getting discouraged by what we perceived as a lack of commitment to the game. For me, it wasn't really about the bugs or anything, it was mainly just because they weren't being as communicative as I felt they should have been.
 
From my understanding, the lack of communication is still big in these here parts... but I'm willing, now, to look past that and enjoy the game for what it is. The game offers things that many others don't and that's enough to bring me back. I like a good challenge, I love RP and housing, and this game has all three in spades.
 
I'd say, do yourself a favor and don't listen to the naysayers. A lot of people, myself and several of my old guildies included, are returning. I'm seeing lowbies everywhere and because of this, I have high hopes that if the game does indeed go Free-to-Play or Buy-to-Play, if they do a good job of selling that, advertising it, etc. then we'll see this game prosper.
 
Good news on the Carbine front is that they are hiring. That is a great sign!	
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			I would say poor advertizing is a large factor. People don't want to give it a second chance because they have mostly forgotten about it, and what they do hear about it is usually negative (even if it's from people who themselves have barely played it since launch). If Carbine advertized it more I think it would renew a lot of interest.	
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The game is heavily focused around difficult 20 person raid content that has a lot of barriers to entry. The content is kind of difficult so a good chuck of the initial population just couldn't get through attunement and left. Guilds had problems staying alive... Most guild/raid leaders quit because this game demanded too much and it just wasn't fun anymore. This kind of led to rampant guilds disbanding and merging to stay alive. Some stuck around and did the raids but they were really hard and a ton of groups got stuck in GA wiping on Kuralak endlessly until they quit. Those that could do GA faced rough times in Datascape... Back then Datascape was a 40 person raid and this drove a ton of people away. Even the top raiding guilds had horrible issues retaining players and managing that many. A lot of other raiders just quit because it stopped being fun, progression raiding for 6+ months can take a toll on you. Most players who didn't raid end up quitting because there just wasn't enough other content to do to justify a sub. PvP at launch suffered from having top gear given to people with high ratings so win trading and selling carries was super rampant. It sort of destroyed any semblance of a competitive environment. Since launch there is still massive balance problems, both between classes and even with gear. Right now a lot of raid gear is BiS PvP stuff, which is just silly. Also, there doesn't seem to be much hope at the moment as devs are pretty quiet about a lot of things and we've seen the population cut in half every quarter since launch. 
 
So yeah. Some people still like the game and will be eager to tell you why, but there is a reason the game is doing so poorly right now. All those people left for valid reasons so it's worth taking some time to consider if this is a game you're really going to want to invest a lot of time in. 	
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at launch the game was full of bugs and bots
the dungeons were/are far too difficult for the average PUG
gold medal or GTFO meant lots of groups disbanding and lots of frustration from people who just wanted to play a damn game and relax
WIldstar is a very punishing game when you make mistakes, also relatively unrewarding even when you don't
attunement kicked people in the face
the game required far too large a time investment
There was RNG nested in RNG nested in RNG. it wasn't fun (still isn't though its improved)
Carbine is percieved, some would say rightly so, as having given the middle finger to the large mass of casual players before the game even launched. those people are all too happy watching the game crash and burn to want to give it another chance.
HARDCORE 
 
those are just a few quick points, some of those are no longer true. Carbine has done a lot in the last year to back away from HARDCORE but in MMO's second chances are hard to come by.	
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So I hear rumors that WildStar is NCSoft's least producing game. Out of Carbine Studios, a development group with a lot of potential from what I have seen so far with their FIRST game, why is this game failing to bring in the money?
 
I'm mostly just curious. I currently have nothing bad to say about the game thus far, but keep in mind I've only recently begun playing. Essentially all I've done is tampered around with classes and races for the last week, and having a lot of fun doing so. Even at low levels, WildStar provides the player with enriching content that sets it apart from other MMOs I've played (including NCSoft's native Korean MMO, Aion).
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Right now a lot of raid gear is BiS PvP stuff, which is just silly.
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 Simply put its like a first date with someone new
... If you blow it  you most likely won't get a second chance...
 
When a game creates more frustration than fun than the kick the game to the curve meters start going off. This was a big oversight from carbine they felt confident in the beginning that the winds would blow in the favor of their sails.. unfortunately its been nothing but a storm for them. Sure the game has come a long way since launch.. but there is still more that needs to be done. For instant ive completely quit housing until they fix something as simple as a copy and paste since my builds are heavily dependent on it.. so my log in times are at a bare minimal at the moment until the issue is resolved.. Am i being critical about it.. I sure am.. I wouldn't rent nor drive a car that had only 3 wheels operational when 4 are needed and i see games in the same light.
 
Will wildstar gain the playerbase it was hoping for..  its gonna take some serious buisness magic to make that happen. Which im sure is coming.. but again carbine is still going to have to continue to push for ingame changes to make the game appeal to a new potential player base if that fails well the storm will continue.	
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Personally I think there is still little to do at 50 IF you are used to "those other mmo's". meaning..you could always find something to do, but is it realy fun?
 
From other mmo's I'm used to the following end game content:
 
Relatively casual raiding, both as pug LFG and guild normal difficulty raiding...and you can do both..both ways give gear or something else
Entertaining pvp..from wow you have 10+ BG's and some other pvp types too...and from gw2 you had the www that can keep you occupied for mnts without feeling burned out.
 
So..for casual in wildstar there is the following:
 
Vet dung, ship, adventures
dailies
pvp
Problem is...dailies suck in all games. I dont do dailies..never had...but i never needed too either. You do dailies a few times IF there is something you want..but NEVER as a daily shore..thats just not fun..feels like going to the toilet...you kinda have to but I wold rather not waste time on it...other thing you have to do is eating..but most of us like to eat:) Eating could be comparred to casual pvp...its generally fun:)
 
Vet shiphands was suppose to target the casuals or ppl that play alone! well... TELL YOU WHAT! Playing ALONE does not mean you want to play a single player thing with no ppl around. I play alone most of the time in mmo's, but the moment I dont see other players around me...I feel depressed and like a basement dweller without life...And yes you can have more ppl with you for shiphands...BUT..its waste of time. the combat is so easy its borderline suicide booring and you get nothing usefull from it.
 
Vet adventures IS also booring..to caos...I have been in a few and I was totally lost in what to do or what have you...I ran around like a chicken following the other ppl that kinda knew more...but like shiphands...kinda booring and *cupcake* poor easy..BUT..fail on ONE little thing that nobody knew about..BAM...no gold run.
 
Vet dungeons. Kick ass fun content. challenging and fun together with pugs or friends. They could make those one-shot mechanics go away but other than that its real fun...but..5 vet dungeons? Its just too little...
 
Pvp...2 BG's since launch...its just so little. Yes Carbine have almost stated that they dont prioritize it one bit...and I understand them..cause it would need shitloads of work. pvp in WS has the most potential OF ANY games I have seen, but its the worst implementation I have seen since i played my first PC game back in 1989.
 
Whats stopping Casual from raiding: A stupid unalligned attunement, that scares the shit out of ppl. Who would like to run vet adventures and getting gold? Not anyone I know..! 
 
casual want more.. we want more pvp options...we want more Vet dungons..we want to raid casually..we want to get rid of the attunment...WE DONT WANT more stupid dailies..star com basin is so booring and buggy that its more fun to clean my office desk using my tounge....
 
We want more stuff to do WITH OTHER PPL!!!! And we want it to be easy to group up. I dont want to make lifelong friends or even close friends in-game just to do some fun content. I love random ppl and I love to play along side them. Dont make me feel like I have to join a club of " cudling, warm warm feelings and smooth talking" just to do gaming content with other ppl.	
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More dungeons would certainly be nice (purely from my selfish perspective, I want more dungeons and more raids. Everything else is a bonus). I'm not sure comparison to WoW is fair, given the timescales, and the way Carbine split instanced content into tiers - Adventures/Dungeons - explicitly to try and encourage a wider range of PvE levels.
 
If Adventures are chaotic and confusing, talk to your party. Talk to people about them. Work them out. Only Malgrave is RNG (shouldn't be) to some extent.
 
Shiphands scale, also. They're still easy, but they do scale.
 
As for attunement, it's a lot easier than it used to be, and to be quite frank (and I am not a 'hardcore rulez' player), if you cannot get a gold in Vet Adventures, you are not going to beat GA without that content being significantly nerfed. That then leads to the question of raiding tiers, a la WoW. It might well help a lot, to be honest.	
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Quit easy, the game itself was great from the beginning for people with good movement and guildmates that also had movement. The rest were *cupcake*ed, the coudent even finish the dungeons, so a big part broke away right away. ( The dungeons were never hard, just movement)
 
The game is still about movement movement movement and did i mention movement?
 
In Datascape as long as you have good movement and a simple understanding of your class you can kill the bosses.
 
People like to run Brainafk throw content and that was never possible in Wildstar, i really like that. ( Ok with DS Gear you can run ever Dungeon Brainafk )	
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Quit easy, the game itself was great from the beginning for people with good movement and guildmates that also had movement. The rest were *cupcake*ed, the coudent even finish the dungeons, so a big part broke away right away. ( The dungeons were never hard, just movement)
 
The game is still about movement movement movement and did i mention movement?
 
In Datascape as long as you have good movement and a simple understanding of your class you can kill the bosses.
 
People like to run Brainafk throw content and that was never possible in Wildstar, i really like that. ( Ok with DS Gear you can run ever Dungeon Brainafk )
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			True. The tank can't run it brain afk, but as a healer I can if the tank is DS geared haha. Or jump into DPS gear to skip mechanics.	
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No, you cannot run "every dungeon brainafk" with DS gear.
Play it wrong and you're still dead.
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Many former players came to the conclusion that the game does not justify a monthly paywall. In addition it has some nasty issues for casuals and hardcore casuals. In some ways like nods stealing the game is very unsocial. Instead of a strong horizontal progression it has a strong vertical progression. This drive many players away. It is still too raid-centered. Progression takes mainly place via this route. Ther are not many (if any) roads to the best equipment beside raids.There is no scaling which results in a mostly empty game.  When you finish a zone it is finished. There are no incentives to come back beside boring challenges. No big open world world bosses or event chains waiting for you.  The world feels dead and static. PvP is gear-centered instead of skill-centered.
 
I have the impression that the game missed many recent trends and is trying now to catch up. But the monthly paywall is hindering a lot.	
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It's hard to say. There's a lot of speculation and everyone comes at it from a very biased perspective.
 
My biased perspective is that the people I've seen get into PvE really love it now, and they stick around. People left early on because the effort/reward balance was off, and I suspect they just don't want to try to invest again. But the PvE players I've seen join the game now just love it and become attached very quickly.
 
But I suspect a huge issue has to do with PvP, which is still in a very poor place for whatever reason.
 
One thing I wonder is if telegraphs, while amazing for PvE, are not ultimately unhealthy for PvP. They are great for PvE because they allow the designers to make more challenging fights in terms of execution, which means a lot more activity can be demanded of players. I'm not sure that translates into PvP as well. In PvP it seems you don't get to make the fights harder (because you aren't designing the fights), but now everyone is looking at the ground rather than other players to see what moves are being performed. That makes the combat less immersive and interesting. Is this it? I don't know- I don't PvP so I'm way out on a limb.
 
I'm NOT a PvP expert by an means, but I have heard PvPers who've tried this game leave because they don't enjoy the telegraph system. That's not a complaint I've heard of PvErs who have left the game.	
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More dungeons would certainly be nice (purely from my selfish perspective, I want more dungeons and more raids. Everything else is a bonus). I'm not sure comparison to WoW is fair, given the timescales, and the way Carbine split instanced content into tiers - Adventures/Dungeons - explicitly to try and encourage a wider range of PvE levels.
 
If Adventures are chaotic and confusing, talk to your party. Talk to people about them. Work them out. Only Malgrave is RNG (shouldn't be) to some extent.
 
Shiphands scale, also. They're still easy, but they do scale.
 
As for attunement, it's a lot easier than it used to be, and to be quite frank (and I am not a 'hardcore rulez' player), if you cannot get a gold in Vet Adventures, you are not going to beat GA without that content being significantly nerfed. That then leads to the question of raiding tiers, a la WoW. It might well help a lot, to be honest.
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It's hard to say. There's a lot of speculation and everyone comes at it from a very biased perspective.
 
My biased perspective is that the people I've seen get into PvE really love it now, and they stick around. People left early on because the effort/reward balance was off, and I suspect they just don't want to try to invest again. But the PvE players I've seen join the game now just love it and become attached very quickly.
 
But I suspect a huge issue has to do with PvP, which is still in a very poor place for whatever reason.
 
One thing I wonder is if telegraphs, while amazing for PvE, are not ultimately unhealthy for PvP. They are great for PvE because they allow the designers to make more challenging fights in terms of execution, which means a lot more activity can be demanded of players. I'm not sure that translates into PvP as well. In PvP it seems you don't get to make the fights harder (because you aren't designing the fights), but now everyone is looking at the ground rather than other players to see what moves are being performed. That makes the combat less immersive and interesting. Is this it? I don't know- I don't PvP so I'm way out on a limb.
 
I'm NOT a PvP expert by an means, but I have heard PvPers who've tried this game leave because they don't enjoy the telegraph system. That's not a complaint I've heard of PvErs who have left the game.
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It has nothing to do with subs or endgame or content or things to do.
 
It had everything to do with pushing an unfinished product out the door. Bug ridden would be a kind way to put the launch. NCSoft pushed Carbine to release early.
Requires that you pay attention. You can't watch TV, talk on the phone and do other things while playing (like you can in WoW.) That turned the masses of brain dead zombies off.
Required that you make friends, a lot of them. The WoW days of 5 man randoms steamrolling content were not possible here. You needed to know what you were doing and the little guilds of RL friends couldn't cut it. Pugs were too hard when you had to pay attention.
 
I could go on and on, but the 2 major factors were the bugs at launch and the fact you needed to pay attention. The second one more then the first is why, because it's still true to this day.	
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There are numerous open world bosses and events, even in lower zones (these could do with more incentivisation - contracts picking out a more diverse range of world bosses would help - e.g. kill 2 on Isigrol, or Olyssia, etc, perhaps), but otherwise you have a point, to a certain extent. Progression is still raid-orientated, and hopefully PvP catches up on this. Some steps have already been taken. (Aside: outside of that, what other progression could one have? RP/lore stuff is pretty well catered for, especially via housing).
 
Node stealing? Can't say I've ever found that to be a big problem.	
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Maybe it's because I came to wilstar after playing ESO from launch that I didn't notice a single bug with the game. My only problem was the not so good optimization. I had to buy a new video card. I saw maybe a handful of bots, then credd came out and I didn't see any after that.
 
I played for the first couple months then stopped. Came back on and off until this latest drop and have been playing non-stop since. There are people doing all sorts of stuff now. If you get into a sociable guild and join the LFG chat channels, you can get groups for just about anything. I never really did any attunement stuff until recently but found a group of people from twitter that run people through stuff every Thursday. We did a like 4 or 5 world bosses then I had to go, but they kept going. Contracts have people doing more stuff I think. 	
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Coas in adventures is only one problem..the BIGGEST problem is...nobody wants to run them, and If they do....it would be ONLY because you lick their ass all day...and that does not taste good! But it should be intuitive....I should not have to talk to others about those things. We can talk IF we wipe on hard bosses etc..not about caos. Adventures is just *cupcake* poor content making imo. 
 
And it matters little if they scale. It is still a cakewalk. Its like Carbine telling casuals..here kitty kitty here is a little snack for you( thinking: your braindead little dog brain you...)
 
And I dont care IF I ever beat GA....I want a piece of it...deny me to raid and i will walk up and down that carbine piece of ass;)
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People not running Adventures (largely) is a problem, aye. As for not having to talk? From a design point of view, I disagree with you, but if that's your stance, fine. But does it actually cost you anything to talk to people? You say you want a somewhat social experience, and then you don't want to communicate with your party members, to actually achieve your goals? None of the adventures, other than the dreaded Malgrave, require much communication or luck to do well on.
 
You have fair criticisms of Carbine's approach to raiding/attunement, as certain blocks are denying you that. But at the same time, I gotta say, it sounds like you're denying yourself the opportunity also.
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			That's all fine, whatever you like. But it's still not costing you anything to actually engage. You are only denying yourself opportunities, and demanding the game bends around you rather than you bending slightly just seems a bit weird.	
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That's all fine, whatever you like. But it's still not costing you anything to actually engage. You are only denying yourself opportunities, and demanding the game bends around you rather than you bending slightly just seems a bit weird.
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Yes maybe it does....but I feel like I realy like to make a stand here:) but thank you for your concerns:)
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What about those of us whose entire reason for playing this genre of game is because it requires group coordination?
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The game launched as an incomplete, poorly developed mess. Whether by listening too much to elitist beta testers or arrogant and hypocritical management, the game at launch was overly tedious, not rewarding, and devoid of content beyond #hardcore raiding. This was a game led by a producer who openly stated they had data showing 60% of MMO players are solo (casual/queue users/collectors/etc), 20% pvpers, 20% raiders. Then they delivered a game that only targeted the 20% raiders and left 80% of their intended audience in the cold. Add to the fact that sub only models (CREDD is still a sub, don't go in this circle again) are dead unless you are WoW or have a supreme niche like Eve or FFXIV has in Japan.
 
Now, all of that 'real talk' negativity aside, the way Wildstar has been developed and fixed since Gaffney, Frost, and all the other bad seeds hit the road is astounding. It delivers on every intention and every level like this is an alternate reality where they did everything right. Sure, it still is the most buggy MMO I've ever played, but it's also insanely rewarding and accessible while still being challenging. I honestly can't say too much negative about the game aside from the glaring issue you've raised with this post: no one is playing.
 
I'm not sure what's going on behind the scenes and if this F2P rumor is true (we can only dream), but they have not done any marketing beyond the box discounts which is really for us to give them more money. This game needs more players and thus a huge advertising push like air. People still treat this like the laughing stock of the industry because of initial response and continuing financials and it really, really doesn't correlate to the state of the game.
 
All you can do is get your friends to play with you and hope that F2P/Steam/Whatever is coming. Unfortunately 'if you build it, they will come' doesn't apply to MMOs.	
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			Content is made more and more accessible with each patch. Attunement is no longer a onerous and absurdly difficult hurdle. GA was puggable as early as drop 3. With the release of additional tiers of raiding other content will become accessible as well. This is the way WoW handled content accessibility in BC and most of WotLK, when the game was at its prime. 	
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Then they delivered a game that only targeted the 20% raiders and left 80% of their intended audience in the cold.
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why?
 
1- game is very linear and doesn't favour replayability (i suppose you could roll the other faction for a different experience until level 20)
2- combat system and gameplay require a good PC to be more fun. and i'd dare say an mmo mouse too but that is beside the point.
3- pvp was broken beyond belief and is still quite bad (3v3 is decent now, daggerstone too, but walakiti/halls/warplots are zerg fests, badly designed and gets boring fast unless you like to blob). add to that the required "grind" and or "abuses" to be efficient (which is not as bad as it originally was).
4- not much endgame unless you invest heavily and diligently into raiding. otherwise what do you have? 5 dungeons with no good rewards ?
5- old school powercreep is rampant. making all world boss and world events totally irrelevant and also making coming back to lower level zone as dull as it can be. it also totally kills the content's replayability)
6- adventures.. omg.. they are bad (maybe 1 or 2 are decent). what else to say ? nobody even plays the "new" one. thats telling you how much people are stuck into a linear treadmill without no reason to actually "play the game".
7-game design is most of the time failed: star comm basin.. who even thought that would be fun? and don't get me started on the last boss fight... they might as well just put a regular mob and enlarge it 500% and call it a boss.
8- there are many other reasons. but basically, wildstar had a LOT of bad design decision that are being corrected slowly but then they put in some even worst ones in sometimes. add to that the PC requirement, the style of gameplay etc... and you have what you have. the public answered.	
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Straw man argument. As a general statement, casuals have asked for there to be easier versions of the content that don't exclude them, rather than removal of existing versions that the hardcore enjoy. And as a general statement, the hardcore response has been "no".
 
The problem is not and has never been that the hardcore couldn't have what they want if casuals get what they want. The problem is that what the casuals want, the hardcores do not want them to be allowed to have.
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No- they delivered a game with plenty of content for both, but there were issues with how a lot of it was balanced.
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why?
 
4- not much endgame unless you invest heavily and diligently into raiding. otherwise what do you have? 5 dungeons with no good rewards ?
 
6- adventures.. omg.. they are bad (maybe 1 or 2 are decent). what else to say ? nobody even plays the "new" one. thats telling you how much people are stuck into a linear treadmill without no reason to actually "play the game".
 
7-game design is most of the time failed: star comm basin.. who even thought that would be fun? and don't get me started on the last boss fight... they might as well just put a regular mob and enlarge it 500% and call it a boss.
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As others have noted, the hardcore were the intended recipients of the good things in this game. Only the content created for them was also buggy. And fight mechanics were being changed as guilds were progressing through the fights, leading some guilds to give up on the game because it seemed to still be in beta, only with a sub fee. Other guilds left because the roster boss proved too hard to overcome; attunement was fine once and to help a few people through to fill out your team but guilds hated having to continually run new members through the content. As a result they were mostly cannibalizing each other, leading to smaller guilds evaporating as those members who had gotten attuned left for other raid teams.
 
CS released the number of guilds that were raiding after a few months and it was something like 7 in datascape worldwide (not necessarily progressing, just in the raids). As for the raids in GA it wasn't very impressive. I believe it was about a thousand people worldwide actually doing the content, which isn't going to support any company that isn't making jets or luxury cars.	
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This, for me. There is a lot of content in Wildstar for a new player, most of which is not 'hardcore'. The issue is with weighting, and with the endgoals being progression for 'casual' and 'hardcore' alike - the progression tiers of content do not work well for some 'casuals', but do for others (I raid once, twice a week, don't want any more than that).
 
Some people are happy with not raiding, some people want to do nothing but raid, and in the middle are those who want to sporadically raid: the trick here is to appeal to those who put in the time, those who can't, and still somehow appeal (because the game has to, sadly) to those who won't put in the time, and expect to be able to raid. I'd rather these people went away, as it stinks of a bad, lazy attitude, but the game can't afford to annoy too many people, no matter who they are.
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You can't keep both. You can't appeal to people who don't want to do any work and people who want to have a challenge, not without going back and completely making the content anew. And whats more, I don't really want to appeal to those who don't want to put in any time or have a challenge.
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This, for me. There is a lot of content in Wildstar for a new player, most of which is not 'hardcore'. The issue is with weighting, and with the endgoals being progression for 'casual' and 'hardcore' alike - the progression tiers of content do not work well for some 'casuals', but do for others (I raid once, twice a week, don't want any more than that).
 
Some people are happy with not raiding, some people want to do nothing but raid, and in the middle are those who want to sporadically raid: the trick here is to appeal to those who put in the time, those who can't, and still somehow appeal (because the game has to, sadly) to those who won't put in the time, and expect to be able to raid. I'd rather these people went away, as it stinks of a bad, lazy attitude, but the game can't afford to annoy too many people, no matter who they are.
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what does a "non-raider" can do ? once he boringly grinded all his amps and ability points?
-pvp
-housing
 
hes not going to repeat one of those lame adventure!
maybe he will repeat dungeons (once a week?) or some vet shiphands or stuff for contracts nowadays...
for a SUB PRICE ?
 
the game is too linear. and unless you are into Raiding or "heavily invested in PVP or Housing" (which is rare) then you just quit.
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4 - the dungeons give rewards in line with end-game progression, and reaching that point. You cannot have dungeons giving better/equal rewards to raids, you have them providing BiS pre-raid gear. What else are they supposed to do?
 
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{| class="blockquote"
To be fair, I'm not sure I'd say the 'casuals' have expressed this wish particularly well. I often see calls for telegraphs, interrupts et al to be removed, rather than modified to fit into tiered content.
 
I'm all for ranges of content for each player type/level, and that includes the various levels of 'hardcore'. Of course, there are some nutters who want no changes as a matter of mis-guided pride or whatever, but there are as many, if not more, 'casuals' posting about wanting fundamentally altered game mechanics.
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What should it be doing?!
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We've discussed the EZ mode GA before. I'm not a fan. I do think they could make it more accessible by allowing people with a more casual schedule to break it into chunks and not get "locked" to an instance. Would also be nice if Kuralak was placed after Phagemaw and Prototypes.
 
Having done some GA pugs recently, it's entirely dooable to get X-89 down with a group of casualish players who work hard and listen. The problem is now they are locked to an instance and have the huge blocker of Kuralak barring them from getting to the rest of the zone. I'd rather see this broken up and made available to casual players than an easier version of the raid.	
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The issue I have is this: I get that people want a more varied end-game: PvE, PvP, RP/lore et al. First and last seem pretty well catered for, or at least are improving. My understanding of the middle path is that it needs more spice.
 
Beyond that, what is actually supposed to be done? I might be jaundiced in my view: I played GW2 to cap and then gave up: I simply ran out of desire to play the same world bosses (that I had been doing from, literally, day 1) and whilst the Living Story was cool and all, it wasn't enough. Wildstar could do more of that, and I'd really like it to, but I don't see where else it can go in terms of range of endgame - am I being very dull? What it needs to do to an extent is open up each path (well, PvE really) to more players.
 
Re: GW2's strengths.
 
Level scaling would be good in W*, as long as zones are still useful for capped players. Powercreep  could be normalised (to some extent) by level scaling: rallying should really nerf raid-geared 50s more, it'd be more fun that way (and could be incentivised more). Open-world PvP is certainly lacking, but that's still part of the PvP sphere, which needs a general kick in the ass anyway.
 
My main problem with this approach is the following. Vet dungeons having their own gear (they do in W*)? Fine, that's terrific. All that says to me is that the endgame stops one step short of where I want it to be: raiding. You stop the linear issue by cutting the top off the pyramid, so in the interest of removing a linear progression, you give up what I find most compelling in a game, and for all of GW2's great beauty, wonderful areas (I love the puzzles), good combat and fantastic design, it's just not compelling for me because it's gone too far the other way. Find me a solution to that problem and I'll buy your game! This doesn't so much solve the problem as simply shove the problem elsewhere.	
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Nope. The game now delivers this content. There was eff all to do before:
 
- copy pasta daily zones for little to no rewards
- dungeons
- raids
- housing
--- End goal was gear, no meaningful progression in other areas
 
That was it. Here's what it looks like now:
 
- actual new daily areas
- multiple zone events
- veteran shiphands
- contracts: which by nature of design, have made even grinding for 15 minutes content
- plus all the stuff you had before
---End goal is all the things. Rewards are layered and woven through all of these content modes. You now can set goals for gear, dyes, mounts, pets, AMPs (multiple sources, not just EG), etc.
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{| class="blockquote"
We've discussed the EZ mode GA before. I'm not a fan. I do think they could make it more accessible by allowing people with a more casual schedule to break it into chunks and not get "locked" to an instance. Would also be nice if Kuralak was placed after Phagemaw and Prototypes.
 
Having done some GA pugs recently, it's entirely dooable to get X-89 down with a group of casualish players who work hard and listen. The problem is now they are locked to an instance and have the huge blocker of Kuralak barring them from getting to the rest of the zone. I'd rather see this broken up and made available to casual players than an easier version of the raid.
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No- they delivered a game with plenty of content for both, but there were issues with how a lot of it was balanced
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{| class="blockquote"
The issue I have is this: I get that people want a more varied end-game: PvE, PvP, RP/lore et al. First and last seem pretty well catered for, or at least are improving. My understanding of the middle path is that it needs more spice.
 
Beyond that, what is actually supposed to be done? I might be jaundiced in my view: I played GW2 to cap and then gave up: I simply ran out of desire to play the same world bosses (that I had been doing from, literally, day 1) and whilst the Living Story was cool and all, it wasn't enough. Wildstar could do more of that, and I'd really like it to, but I don't see where else it can go in terms of range of endgame - am I being very dull? What it needs to do to an extent is open up each path (well, PvE really) to more players.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I would love to see something like this. If skipping bosses is an issue (jumping ahead and beating boss B before boss A), then the instances could open up once you beat the one before it. Maybe one or two raid bosses per instance with the final boss as its own instance. I think this would go a huge way towards addressing time as a determining factor in advancement.
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{| class="blockquote"
Having done some GA pugs recently, it's entirely dooable to get X-89 down with a group of casualish players who work hard and listen.
----
			
More boss-in-boxes would help too.
 
Perhaps an entry-level boss-in-box, pre-GA?
 
(Hyphen-attack!)	
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{| class="blockquote"
More boss-in-boxes would help too.
 
Perhaps an entry-level boss-in-box, pre-GA?
 
(Hyphen-attack!)
----
			Although tbf, for non-raiders, Vet SSM is pretty much a mini pre-raid raid!	
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{| class="blockquote"
This would be great. 
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{| class="blockquote"
Erm, in your first list you forgot leveling, adventures, veteran adventures, and shiphands. Unless you are assuming the casual experience in this game begins at 50.
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{| class="blockquote"
We don't need more Boss in a box content. We need new real raid content.  Raiding GA and DS for over a year is appalling.  We need more dungeons and a whole new tier = to DS.  The game has committed since the beginning to offering hardcore content but there has been a dry spell.   Augmentors 20 is cool sure but it just feels like a band-aid approach to delivering more stuff to do.
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{| class="blockquote"
The issue I have is this: I get that people want a more varied end-game: PvE, PvP, RP/lore et al. First and last seem pretty well catered for, or at least are improving. My understanding of the middle path is that it needs more spice.
 
Beyond that, what is actually supposed to be done? I might be jaundiced in my view: I played GW2 to cap and then gave up: I simply ran out of desire to play the same world bosses (that I had been doing from, literally, day 1) and whilst the Living Story was cool and all, it wasn't enough. Wildstar could do more of that, and I'd really like it to, but I don't see where else it can go in terms of range of endgame - am I being very dull? What it needs to do to an extent is open up each path (well, PvE really) to more players.
 
Re: GW2's strengths.
 
Level scaling would be good in W*, as long as zones are still useful for capped players. Powercreep  could be normalised (to some extent) by level scaling: rallying should really nerf raid-geared 50s more, it'd be more fun that way (and could be incentivised more). Open-world PvP is certainly lacking, but that's still part of the PvP sphere, which needs a general kick in the ass anyway.
 
My main problem with this approach is the following. Vet dungeons having their own gear (they do in W*)? Fine, that's terrific. All that says to me is that the endgame stops one step short of where I want it to be: raiding. You stop the linear issue by cutting the top off the pyramid, so in the interest of removing a linear progression, you give up what I find most compelling in a game, and for all of GW2's great beauty, wonderful areas (I love the puzzles), good combat and fantastic design, it's just not compelling for me because it's gone too far the other way. Find me a solution to that problem and I'll buy your game! This doesn't so much solve the problem as simply shove the problem elsewhere.
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There area lot of contributors to the outcome we have now from Wildstars early life and some resonating effects:
 
That nasty DDOS during the first week or so of Wildstar. While it effected many games, Wildstar was the only one that was really starting up and sadly Carbine did get blamed for it by some people.
VERY buggy adventures, especially malgrave and tempest refuge. This is why you see a lot of people do cookie cutter runs even when they have options like in crimelords because the adventures would bug out if you tried anything else. I still remember doing malgrave during that time and once I got gold I never did it again...
The Gold or bust in adventures that lingered quite a bit and pissed off people before and after it was changed.
Very bad itemization(You were better off with relying on crafted gear than in some cases even raiding gear)
Rampant bots in PvE and PvP
PvP win-traded to death
An attunement that while doable, was rather unpleasant to quite a few. One of the significant aspects being the silver requirement of dungeons
race/class combo restrictions
The "#hardcore" joke that went a bit too far...
Not giving players the Shade's eve event for halloween
Removal of the more informative Wildstar stream followed by implementation of Zero to Fifty(which tilted quite a few heads)
A bunch of other things I could list, but I think we get the point by now...
Now a lot of those things have been or are being addressed. However needless to say they have had their effect on people and unfortunately some of those effects resonate till this day. 
You still have people who think this game is #hardcore 
You still get people who afraid to step into dungeons because they've heard how hard they are(when asked they seemed to get this impression from people who did attunement during silver age)
You still have people who think bots run all over the place like a rat infestation still... (I love rats, but wild at infestations are bad)
People still feel that the rewards aren't worth the risks/effort(some cases they'd still be right, but it's leaps better than what it was)
 
In the end I feel like Carbine has made Wildstar a MUCH better game and if the state we are in now is what was released we'd be all like "Weeeeee". I'm convinced that as things are it is a lot of bad first impressions still lingering, resonating effects from old decisions/designs, and some people not willing to even bother asking and accepting that their issue is no longer present.
 
On the individual scale I think the player base does it's damn hardest to inform other potential AND former players about the changes. However the biggest issue is that Carbine and or NCsoft does not do so nearly as much. A very common complaint I see in-game and on the forums is that there is little to no advertisement for Wildstar and players can only do so much.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Leveling is not 'content' and it should go without saying, yeah? Unless you're trying to say leveling alts and doing no endgame should justify a sub. To which I do this:  :rolleyes: Sure, we like it, but leveling is a means to an end whether we love it to bits or hate it...it doesn't matter.
 
Adventures are dungeons. Let's not sugarcoat. They also weren't very rewarding. Shiphands were similarly not rewarding b/c they were worth no xp while leveling, took too long, and had no relevance to endgame.
 
To your last point, yes...endgame begins at 50. That's what vertical, linear progression MMOs are about. That's where the gear is, the currency, the full access to content, and everything else. That's the inherent design of 'endgame'. Please don't patronize me with a semantic argument.
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I was actually surprised that the new raid was placed where it was. It would have been a good place to created a pre-GA raid and would have helped my guild out a lot. Would have given us something to do with people who get benched for the main raids or can't make our normal raids.
 
I would like to see a pre-Ga boss in a box, but that's just me.	
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{| class="blockquote"
 
Removal of the more informative Wildstar stream followed by implementation of Zero to Fifty(which tilted quite a few heads) 
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{| class="blockquote"
Leveling is not 'content' and it should go without saying, yeah? Unless you're trying to say leveling alts and doing no endgame should justify a sub. To which I do this:  :rolleyes: Sure, we like it, but leveling is a means to an end whether we love it to bits or hate it...it doesn't matter.
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{| class="blockquote"
 
So the people who have spent their entire time in game leveling are not playing the game?
 
I'm not patronizing. If you believe the game beings at 50 and you are not considering the HUGE MASS of leveling content available as "content", you are already a step more "hardcore" than some people who play this game.
 
Leveling content is DEFINITELY content. I cannot understand why you think it wouldn't be.
 
Adventures and dungeons are different. Adventures are definitely targeted at a more casual audience and their existence signals an interest from Carbine in not catering to only "hardcore" players. That they weren't successful in this targeting is a different issue than their intentions (which is what I'm talking about).
----
			
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It's facetious and borderline deceitful to claim otherwise.
----
			
Ask around and see how many people identify as "altaholics". A HUGE chunk of the casual playerbase just enjoy leveling characters in MMOs.
 
I do agree with your suggestions re: improving the leveling process, though. On top that they desperately need more leveling paths. >_<	
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Leveling is not 'content' and it should go without saying, yeah?
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
 
So, have I not been playing the game in your vaunted estimation?
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{| class="blockquote"
Ask around and see how many people identify as "altaholics". A HUGE chunk of the casual playerbase just enjoy leveling characters in MMOs.
 
I do agree with your suggestions re: improving the leveling process, though. On top that they desperately need more leveling paths. >_<
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Step back from the offense ledge, read all the clarification. Not sure how people keep putting the same words in my mouth, as I never said this. This thread is about "Why are the sub numbers so low". I specifically talk to the lack of endgame content, which is the major focus of the entire MMO market and the primary reason why people do not continue to play.
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{| class="blockquote"
You could not possibly be more wrong, and since you've based your assumption on this falsehood, we can safely discount everything else you have to say.
 
I have been playing this game for two years now. I have never set foot in a raid. I have never set foot in an adventure. I have never grouped to do a shiphand. I *did* set foot in one dungeon back in like ... beta 3, I think.
 
I level. I craft. I do some periodic PVP and RP when the mood strikes. I do dailies and contracts ... but mostly what I do, is level concept characters.
 
So, have I not been playing the game in your vaunted estimation? 
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{| class="blockquote"
Oh, I'm not offended, since you didn't attack me personally.  ;)  And I quoted you, so yeah, you said that. 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
considering wildstar story line is (after level 20) always the same without any option at all... my guess is that you are part of a minority of people that can endure this torture.
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Clarification - leveling is not content that should be used to justify continued subscriptions or lack of additional endgame content.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Yup, because I remember the quests as Dominion in Whitevale where you discover and solve the mystery of the ICI brainwashing using the Free-bots as pawns against the Exiles. That was a good Dominion questli....oh wait...you don't actually play the game.
 
Nevermind.
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{| class="blockquote"
Allright, maybe a little differences here and there if you play on both factions (sadly why would you unless you want a different guild/different friends etc).
but if you play thru the same faction... its 99% the same.
 
oh, right.
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{| class="blockquote"
You can't keep both. You can't appeal to people who don't want to do any work and people who want to have a challenge, not without going back and completely making the content anew. And whats more, I don't really want to appeal to those who don't want to put in any time or have a challenge.
 
 
1 - On this I can agree. Not a lot of alternate leveling once they removed vet shiphands and with low pvp and pve groups not an option. Long live shiphand leveling!
2 - I get by with a decent PC, but you have to make some sacrificed and get good at dealing with lag
3- I have found battlegrounds this patch pretty exciting. Tone down medics and engi tanks and we would have a great time
4 - There is lots of content, And there are groups that raid 1-2 nights a week casually that are getting to ohmna/getting ohmna down. Hardly a heavy and diligent investment
5 - First WBs were too good, now they maybe aren't good enough. Honestly you could just put fun pets on each one and then people would do the WBs as soon as they came up. Problem solved.
6 - Adv are pretty easy except malgrave. Change gold to 25+ and you have a solid adventure if a bit long. Increase renown rewards so that they are far and away the best way to get renown and you have a unique mechanism to get a different resource
7 - Haven't done SCB can't comment
8 - And yet you still sub?
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 I know Ill be chastised for this but if carbine wants this game to be successful.. their going to have to straight up kill attunements. Its not profitable to bottlneck new players from the raids. Carbine has tried to candy coat it but im going to call it like i see it.. its a waste of time and money given that this is one of the culprits to the mass exodus. Their also going to have to address the difficulty in this game which while many of us happen to like it.. were also the minority of players that still believe in this game. So im speaking from a buisness standpoint. Bug fixes need to be sped up as well.. its pointless to have paying customers wait for weeks or months for that matter to fix some of the new issues that have sprouted up. If this game does indeed change buisness models the influx of players will be just as unforgiving as the mass of players who didn't tolerate the state of the game at the time of its release.
 
 Players can live in a dream state of fanboyism but if they really give a crap about the game they'll understand that if they want to be able to play it a few years from now.. changes "Have" to be made.. this game is pulling the numbers that COH was when NCsoft pulled the plug on the game. You can debate all you want about it until your blue in the face but its not going to change the reality that this game is a diamond in the rough.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Took the words right out of my mouth. We're playing a game here, not waiting for our allowances. GO PLAY! Why keep, not only yourself, but everyone around you miserable with incessant complaints of, "they won't give me stuff," rather than playing the game to get the stuff.
 
My brother joined a soccer team when he was younger. He never went to practice and only showed up at games to sit on the bench and eat the team snacks. At the end of the season, they gave him a trophy. That's what this feels like, the lazy sitting around waiting to be handed progression rather than actually trying to experience it. The problem is, they've been given so many trophies for nothing in the past that they actually feel entitled to it... for no reason other than, "I'm here."
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{| class="blockquote"
Took the words right out of my mouth. We're playing a game here, not waiting for our allowances. GO PLAY! Why keep, not only yourself, but everyone around you miserable with incessant complaints of, "they won't give me stuff," rather than playing the game to get the stuff.
 
My brother joined a soccer team when he was younger. He never went to practice and only showed up at games to sit on the bench and eat the team snacks. At the end of the season, they gave him a trophy. That's what this feels like, the lazy sitting around waiting to be handed progression rather than actually trying to experience it. The problem is, they've been given so many trophies for nothing in the past that they actually feel entitled to it... for no reason other than, "I'm here."
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{| class="blockquote"
 Players can live in a dream state of fanboyism but if they really give a crap about the game they'll understand that if they want to be able to play it a few years from now.. changes "Have" to be made.. this game is pulling the numbers that COH was when NCsoft pulled the plug on the game. You can debate all you want about it until your blue in the face but its not going to change the reality that this game is a diamond in the rough.
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			I don't get the kill the attunment crew.  I understand having it account bound, but getting rid of it seems silly. Definitely now that it is insanely easier than it was before. The most difficult part might be the world bosses, and that's pretty easy if you're on the lfg channel. 	
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{| class="blockquote"
If the game turns into a casual handout of progression then I feel zero desire to stay for the next few years. It's not saving the game, it's giving it some painkillers before it finally croaks. It is a diamond in the rough and you wanna turn it into another rock.
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{| class="blockquote"
I wasn't talking about end game content. You are the one focused on endgame. I'm looking at the game as a whole, and it's clear a LOT of development effort went into making content for casual players as well as hardcore. Execution on both their hardcore AND casual content missed the mark, and they've worked to address the concerns of both.
 
In terms of development focus, leveling content definitely counts (I'm sure it consumed a TON of their effort), and it's certainly casual. That was my point, it still stands, and you can't dismiss it (and accuse me of being deceitful) by arguing a different point (what endgame should be like).
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It seems we're both talking past each other, which is ok I guess...I just hope you understand that to adequately discuss why people don't continue paying for an MMO is to primarily analyze end game content as that's what we've come to understand is both the intention of this form of game design and the majority focus of the player base. We can look at every MMO, not just Wildstar to understand this.
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I don't get the kill the attunment crew.  I understand having it account bound, but getting rid of it seems silly. Definitely now that it is insanely easier than it was before. The most difficult part might be the world bosses, and that's pretty easy if you're on the lfg channel. 
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Regarding attunment, I actually don't care. I don't think it's a problem for people who want to raid (my guild got a large number of people attuned in the last week and it wasn't painful), but I'm not sure it adds much to the game in terms of "fun".
 
If removing attunment means that raids eventually get nerfed, though, that would be the death of the game for me.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Regarding attunment, I actually don't care. I don't think it's a problem for people who want to raid (my guild got a large number of people attuned in the last week and it wasn't painful), but I'm not sure it adds much to the game in terms of "fun".
 
If removing attunment means that raids eventually get nerfed, though, that would be the death of the game for me.
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{| class="blockquote"
Personally I happen to agree with you but like I said its not about what I want either... If the game is still losing money on new players quiting the game during this process than its failing period. It makes no sense from a buisness stand point to retain and defend it if its part of the reason why carbine isn't financially sound. While many players do happen to stay some don't its in carbine's best interest to keep player interest and motivations..
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{| class="blockquote"
Plus I thought most of the people left due to itemization, pvp, optimization and bugs. 
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{| class="blockquote"
Gear creep will  eventually nerf the raids as it is. Which is one of the reasons why carbine made it easier to aquire the gear while keeping word that they wont nerf the raids.
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			Only the hint of doing something extremly booring for like 4-5 hours? (vet adventures) keeps me from getting attuned...and its not only the time to DO the stuff...its all the ass licking I have to do to even get a group together to make gold...that stops me..I have limited time to play and i dont want to waste it on stuff i hate. And the sick feeling of "be in debth" to ppl in my guild ...not good... Raiding is these days everybodies territory imo! Let me at it!	
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{| class="blockquote"
Totally cool, and I find your thoughts interesting and compelling; likely our conversations crossed at inopportune points.
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maybe i'll be able to get a Bay of Betrayal pop eventually.
you know, that new content we got last month?
couldn't try it yet. no queues popping and guildies are like; "why run it?".	
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I don't mind the attunement, but it should be reflective of the state of the game.
Adventures should be retroactive like worldbosses and dungeons(i heard they're doing it, but still worth mentioning that this should be done)
Adventures should include bay of betrayal as part of the options
Dungeons should include Protogames 
When they aded scorchwing and beefed him up he became part of attunement option and they should do the same for adventure and dungeon.
 
As for BoB not popping, I'm not sure if this hapend to anyone else, but me and some others jsut really didn't know where the entrance was and I only JUST got the quest for it after completing a stormtalon run for some reason.	
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{| class="blockquote"
I don't mind the attunement, but it should be reflective of the state of the game.
Adventures should be retroactive like worldbosses and dungeons(i heard they're doing it, but still worth mentioning that this should be done)
Adventures should include bay of betrayal as part of the options
Dungeons should include Protogames 
When they aded scorchwing and beefed him up he became part of attunement option and they should do the same for adventure and dungeon.
 
As for BoB not popping, I'm not sure if this hapend to anyone else, but me and some others jsut really didn't know where the entrance was and I only JUST got the quest for it after completing a stormtalon run for some reason.
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{| class="blockquote"
Yes! Althought I don't see adding Protogames benefiting many people, it'd still be consistent. Well, maybe people would do it instead of SSM, I don't know. By far the biggest hurdle in getting people attuned is finding people to do Malgrave Trail :P
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{| class="blockquote"
I don't get the kill the attunment crew.  I understand having it account bound, but getting rid of it seems silly. Definitely now that it is insanely easier than it was before. The most difficult part might be the world bosses, and that's pretty easy if you're on the lfg channel. 
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I recently came back due to wanting to use the free trial, so i will give input as to why i quit in the first place.
 
RNG
  - Everything in the game was tied to RNG, from crafting to gear drops. The fact gear with horrible slots could drop from a boss was ridiculous. 
  - Crafting was a headache, look at cooking or try to make a variation of medishot. 
  - Bosses had an asinine amount of RNG, the fire boss lady in Sword maiden could go from creating the gap on one end to a gap on the other, which for classes like the engineer was impossible to survive. 
  - Having valuable amps being tied to RNG world drops. 
 
Gating
  - Needing 150 elder stones but having the weekly cap be below that was asinine. It literally meant you could never start the attunement quest the same week as when you reached 50. That along with needing to grind rep was obvious artificial gating. 
  - None of the steps of the quest counting retroactively, specially the world bosses was kind of a pain.
 
Economy/Crafting
  - There was little use for crafting materials, when you make more of a profit from vendoring gathered mats than from selling them in the AH from low demand, there is something fundamentally wrong with the crafting economy as a whole. 
 
No thorough testing at all
  - When doing Silver StormTalon requires you wall climb in order to be able to beat the timer, there is a problem. 
  - Having a raid boss where engineers have to redo their entire spec due to shrapnel and explosive rounds causing a wipe due to their aoe damage makes no sense. 
  - Every patch early on would fix one thing but create game breaking bugs for atleast one class at the same time.
  - Malgrave trail was incredibly buggy and super boring.
 
Every single challenging "event" being tied to a timer, there are many more ways of making things challenging outside of timers. You could argue dungeons was fine, but every single challenge in the world was tied to a timer. 
 
Devs pushing back fixes and tying them to the next drop and then the next drop along with a myriad of bugs and other problems simply killed many people's faith, not so much in the game but rather in how things were being addressed. 
 
It took me three weeks from release to get fully attuned, but by the time i was done, i was so burned out in running Sword Maiden, time and time again that i never wanted to visit the place again. 
 
By the end, from pretty much one week to another after a patch breaking spellslingers i think my entire guild quit. We went from doing well in GA to everyone quitting basically overnight. People just gave up, I even logged in a few days ago with my free trial and noticed everyone but like 2 people had logged in since then. Nearly everyone has been inactive for the same amount of time. 
 
Now, i have no idea how many of these are still issues, and as far as i know maybe all have been addressed. But i just dont really see people that left giving the game another try, seeing how i was mostly in it for the social aspect and everyone in my guild quit, i dont have a reason to return. 	
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I think there are 3 reasons people complain about having to do attunement: 
 
1) Malgrave Trail
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Adventures need something to keep them relevant after 50. (as replayable content).
Maybe some chances at special rewards depending on the path you take ?
Maybe as someone said they should become the #1 source of Reknown income ?
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Adventures were some of the most awesome instanced group content ever in an MMO. But a usual, players optimized the fun right out of the equation instead of playing as designed.
 
 
 
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But that's precisely what Adventures were designed to be... repayable with many choices to make along the way! You cannot incent specific choices with specific rewards as that works in direct opposition to the goal and would invite players to only pick specific paths (not that they don't now anyway.)
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But that's precisely what Adventures were designed to be... repayable with many choices to make along the way! You cannot incent specific choices with specific rewards as that works in direct opposition to the goal and would invite players to only pick specific paths (not that they don't now anyway.)
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we told Carbine in beta that would happen. You can't fault the players for not playing as designed when the design is so flawed for group progression orientated content. of course players were going to optimize it when it is part of the content they have to get past to be able to raid and it is time consuming.
Adventures should have been more like veteran shiphands IMHO, including scaling from 1 - 5 people
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Yes..the adventures should have been left out of the attunement.
 
Multiple choice pve content like adventures has it ever in any game been a success? 
 
Imo PVE content mostly have to have good reward to make it fun in the long run. Cause you are only beating a computer...and we all know once you beat it...you will beat it thil the end of time...NOT SO for PVP...In pvp you can often leave the reward out..because there is much reward in beating the opposite side....OR..much reward in putting up a good fight EVEN IF you loose. 	
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Adventures were some of the most awesome instanced group content ever in an MMO. But a usual, players optimized the fun right out of the equation instead of playing as designed.
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This issue has been discussed dozens of times since the game launched. People don't have unlimited time to run their guild mates through content instead of raiding. It's a non issue for you, naturally, but it caused plenty of guilds to wipe on the roster boss. Of course, you know all of this already because you participated in the conversations people had about it months ago.
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I don't think this is the main problem. After all, if you can't raid, your guild mates can't raid either... it's in their best interest to make sure you can come with them. With the right leadership instilling a team-first mentality, this happens naturally.
 
The real problem, I think, is that people try to do all of this stuff before they've committed in a real way to a team.
 
I always try to coach... it's not "I WANT TO RAID, TIME TO FIND A TEAM SO THEY CAN TAKE ME!"
 
It should be "I WANT TO FIND A TEAM SO I CAN HELP THEM RAID!"
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What if your guild does not NEED any more raiders? But its still a friendly group of ppl so you dont want to leave..what then? BEG them to run you through content that is worthless for them?
 
And..it is a guild....not a proffesional payed team of players...
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What if your guild does not NEED any more raiders? But its still a friendly group of ppl so you dont want to leave..what then? BEG them to run you through content that is worthless for them?
 
And..it is a guild....not a proffesional payed team of players...
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And that is exactly what is wrong with so many guilds and communities these days.
They are only looking out for individual needs and focus on one single aspect.
Come to late to the game? You're left behind stranded. 
 
Call me old fashioned, but a guild is a place where you play together.
You help your guild members achieve things, and if someone asks for help to clear a dungeon, get an achievement, pet, item WHATEVER, you as guild member will help them get that.
Even if that means running that one Adventure or Dungeon for the 1000th time.
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Once again no need to instigate arguments guys. 
 
- Team WildStar 	
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{| class="blockquote"
Adventures were some of the most awesome instanced group content ever in an MMO. But a usual, players optimized the fun right out of the equation instead of playing as designed.
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What if your guild does not NEED any more raiders? But its still a friendly group of ppl so you dont want to leave..what then? BEG them to run you through content that is worthless for them?
 
And..it is a guild....not a proffesional payed team of players...
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Nah, the fun wasn't optimized out. WotW is *still* great fun. Seige and CL are OK, but MT is just plain not fun after running it maybe three times.
 
It's a boring clickfest with a lot of uninteresting fights.
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I really liked CL too for the atmosphere and concept. But I've probably run it 50 times or so now, so that stuff only goes so far.
 
WotW is somehow quite repeatable for me, and I haven't gotten bored of it yet.	
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			I really think Malgrave Trail is some cruel joke of sadistic devs. We ask for it to be made a bit shorter, more tolerable and involve less running halfway across the maps to keep supplies from running out, but they continue to make it more tedious and annoying. Last I checked, there are still a bunch of instawipe bugs too. Mounts alone would make that instance 100% better than it is now. 	
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I really think Malgrave Trail is some cruel joke of sadistic devs. We ask for it to be made a bit shorter, more tolerable and involve less running halfway across the maps to keep supplies from running out, but they continue to make it more tedious and annoying. Last I checked, there are still a bunch of instawipe bugs too. Mounts alone would make that instance 100% better than it is now. 
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Nah, it's just a failed homage to a classic game.
 
IMO, the way to fix it would be to make the fights more interesting/dangerous, making resource gathering primarily accomplished through combat, and allow you to do tasks to take on more caravan members, so the punishment for having someone die after 45 minutes of playing isn't failure to get gold, but rather you have to go grab more caravan members.
 
Short of a big overhaul like that, remove it from the game, or at least any incentive to run it.
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