117634-as-a-new-player-i-really-love-this-game-but-there-are-issues-that-should-be-looked-at

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First off I have to say one thing: this is probably the best MMO I've ever played in 5 years. And it's not because it's new and shiny, it's because the core mechanics and most of the content is awesome. As a new player really enjoying your game I think it's fair game to give you my thoughts about stuff that may need to be looked at though. It's going to cover several areas of feedback and I don't want to make 5-6 individual threads so forgive me in advance.
 
About levelling:
It's quite fast, and most of it is okay but some areas should be looked at. Since it's short, few people will farm the same area at the same time, but the mob density is at time insanes (I'm still remembering clugg's farm as the most horrible experience i've had so far). I do remember the name by now. Yes it was that bad. Since MMOs are a niche genre levelling zones shouldn't be cluttered by mobs. It gives players bad habits and it makes levelling not teaching you what you need to know. In veteran content you have room to move backwards, roll, run around, in most of the levelling content I was so scared to pull an extra group of npcs which could kill my character I stayed as static as I could, taking damage, standing in red... Yep there was no way to move around. Sometimes respawn times are so poorly implemented that the group I killed 30s ago was respawning right in my back. I know you want your players to kill mobs, but "kill" tasks should take care of that.
 
Some stuff doesn't really seem polished, there are many QoL issues i've had during levelling. I'm not sure i'll list them all, but the npcs calling me when I was fighting something else caused more deathes than extra pulls mistakes. I mean come on I'M FIGHTING you dumb npc. Can't you wait 10s after I'm out of combat to give me a quest? Since I loved the story (and that's the first time I cared about text in a MMO as a gamer...) that was quite a bad situation.
 
Lore was really interesting and I enjoyed the variety of npcs and telegraphs. Some zones are really outstanding.
 
Now as a fresh 50 what do i see... Yep, it's hard to find people to play with. Content has been designed to host tens of millions of subscribers it seems. 80 people pvp content? Seriously? Free access to raids 24/7? Seriously? 40 people raids? I hope it's the last 40 people instance you make. MMOs are a niche genre. Usually game studios acknowledge it and make smaller scaled instanced content.
 
So let's start with raids and why 24/7 free access creates a toxic environment IMO. I know it's going to draw a lot of hate because some people really enjoy clearing content as fast as they can to get onto the next MMO with a new raid but free raid access 24/7 means that guilds with good players are going to be focused on that aspect of the game only. I'm french and right now when I take a look at the guilds advertisements all I see is "we want experienced players", "we want skilled players who can raid at least for 4h 3 times a week"... Or casual "family" guilds accepting anyone, they have no rules but no good players either. I'm a gamer. And I'm good. But like anyone else I need time to learn. If you don't force skilled players to teach to the new ones how the game works they're not going to find new mates to clear the content they want to clear. And newbs aren't going to be welcome anywhere, except in casual guilds which are merely parking slots for characters with a new chat tab.
 
Don't get me wrong. I like the concept of raids and I love challenges, but like any good stuff it should be in limited supplies. Back when I was playing my first MMO, I was very lucky with my first guild. I played with these guys for two years. We had "raiding fridays". Once a week. These days were special and most of us tried to attend the event. We were all excited about what we were going to do on friday. The game wasn't limiting access to raids but they were really no reasons to do them except for the fun of doing some larger scale stuff beyond the 5 guys content. Rewards were non existent, but it was a guild event to keep players committed. I'm not saying to strip all rewards from raids, that would be silly, but why no timers? I don't know how exactly it could work, I'm not a game designer but players could have a key they could buy from a vendor once a week and it would give them access to a raid for let's say, 12h or so. On non raiding days, what could they do? pvp. Reputations. Training newbies. I know it's very cool to have a completely free access to the donut box 24h a day and 7 days a week but IMO it's not healthy. So is a freely accessibie raid. Experienced players won't do it willingly, so maybe you should add some incentives to run 5 players content while restricting raid access in an elegant manner. Raids are a tool and just that to keep guilds together and having a goal or something to achieve. It should be treated as such, not as regular 'free donut box' content.
 
Now about queue time for some veteran dungeons. There are some dungeon people don't play at all. Ever. Except stormtalon, I have yet to have a dungeon queue popping. If I didn't get invited to a lowbie skullcano run I'd still don't know what it is. And that's sad. So, devs, why no items set? I know it's causing a lot of issues in most MMOs because it makes one best in slot set and the rest gets ignored but at least it ensures people queue for specific content and play it until the RNG gods gives them the piece of loot they want. I don't think unique housing items are going to be a strong enough incentive to replay dungeons, but dead queues are probably a bigger issue than RNG and set balance problems. Set bonuses don't have to be huge, they just need to exist anyway. Also, yeah, keep some RNG. Throw stones, burn me with fire, but having working queues and content played should be the top priority right now because otherwise the game will look dead and drive new players like me away. QoL and a handful of fustrated guys who didn't get piece X of set Y after 50 runs of Z is less important than the game looking well populated and alive.
 
On a slightly different topic, I don't like 5 people quests. I'm okay with some stuff requiring several players but quest lines should be solo-able. There is some 5 people stuff in blighthaven I haven't been able to do because there's no one doing them. On a side note, this is by far the worst zone in game. Everything feels unfinished (the quest line has no clear ending or cool conclusion), there's no clear connexion between areas and tasks (wtf is that, a single player story suddenly hitting a 5 people content wall?), dailies are poorly designed to say the least, people cheat to complete the tree event... The only working thing is the world boss. Anything else is cearly unpolished and doesn't meet the most basic MMO design standards. I know it sounds harsh but the devs have done some amazing stuff in other zones so I'm assuming that somehow the devs weren't given enough time to polish it or something along those lines. So, please, don't add more 5 people quests lines. MMOs are a niche genre. Not everything can be huge.
 
Thanks for reading my (long) post. I hope it helps.	
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			I feel the need to tell you that you don't need to be answering your cell phone while "driving" or fighting in this case (the quest doesn't disappear if you ignore it), and the 24/7 raid thing makes no sense at all, but nice feedback.	
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You hit a lot of points but I'm going to focus on the raid one. There are a lot of us who believe that raids should be more open ended. Having lockouts really encourages that type of  "experience only" play and when you've already gone through the progression of a boss and need to fill a spot that's a situation you don't want to go through again. 
 
The main reason why raids are setup in 3-4 hour time blocks at the moment is that's usually how long it takes to clear half of them for a majority of raiding guilds. Once you start raiding, you begin to realize how much planning is involved. Getting 20 people together isn't the hard part, but having each one of them know their job in an individual fight is difficult if you're constantly rotating people. It's also tiresome to be a player who can progress through the boss and watching people die within the first 30 seconds. As you said you were a good player, I'm sure you can sympathize with this.
 
Finally, I'm hoping there's a guild out there for you. Not all guilds raid 4 hour blocks. Some raid 3 and others have multiple raid groups with different times. Also, many raid groups will rotate people out for different nights, so it's very possible to get in one night and not raid during the others.
 
Also, I get the feeling you have a misconception about raids. It's not 24/7 free access. Once you kill something you're locked into it and you can't join someone elses raid. You're stuck to that raid instance until the reset on Tuesday. In addition to this, the raids themselves can take anywhere from 7-10 hours to clear for MOST guilds (the fastest I've seen was a little over 4 hours). So restricting raiding to one day is absurd. These raids are no where near comparable to WoW raids.	
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			Im level 22 and so far ive seen....only a few people in the zones. My best was that I saw 2 people beside myself in one zone on my dom. Going to really have to up my game if I want any blue gear from bounties, and I am not that good.	
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Actually you can clear GA in less than 3h, but yeah any restriction to the raid accessibility would be just insane given how much time it takes to clear raid not to mention week lock.
 
For the dugns "usability", they r kinda addressing issue with drop3, but as brilliant it is to make ppl wanna go to farm dungs, it's stupid at same time. Making item to extend no. of slot, that will mostly be farmed on dungs is brilliant, but making it to drop from each boss instead of making it daily quest for each dung is just stupid.... You will just end up in constant farm of SC 1-st boss and once in a while full clear just to make something different (not to mention that you have admitted yourself that players will always look for fastest way to achive some goal and exploit it as much as possible). Well exact same thing would happen, if it would be only last boss drop (KV/STL farm all day long). The problem is nobody is doing SSM anymore, cuz it's long... With daily achievement system it could be addressed by making quest giving more items. Not to mention that with unlimited farm system some players will have all slots unlocked within a month and once again it will be raid or close game for them. With limited system 1 quest/dung/day you can precisely set no. of items to make it possible to unlock whole set each expansion with new loots (maybe with some reserve), as for time about 2h/day for all dungs is good enough to keep ppl occupied and dung runs in this game are rather not boring.
 
Queues will not be shorter ever - simply most players go with premade friends/guild PT and that is more than understandable. Only way to make it easier is to find suitable guild.
 
For not finding players in low/mid lvl zones and questing - this is not an alt game, cuz there is no reason to have an alt. You have 6 classes with pretty much same abilities, there is nothing super unique in any. All have some buffs (maybe different, but still doing same thing - making DPS/HPS higher), all have two roles (so even less incentives to make alt). The only reason some1 would make an alt is that he/she doesn't like current character for some reasons. You can not also expect for the game that is already 5M online to have that many new players without super huge expansion and huge advertisement campaign.	
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			if you do crafting for your gear as you lvl the gear is way better than from the wanted boards gear and you can pic and choose your stats that you want.	
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Excellent write up OP.
 
I think other games make re-running dungeons and finding groups for them much easier. FFXIV: ARR for example gives you mid level pre-raiding currency earned for using their "daily roulette" system where you queue for low level and/or hard mode dungeons to earn currency you will then use to buy the pre-raiding gear. This makes dungeons, even low level dungeons, pop pretty quick especially if you are a healer or tank.
 
Maybe someday Wildstar will adopt a better system like that one, or the queues will remain dead for any kind of PUG's like they are now.	
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Now about queue time for some veteran dungeons. There are some dungeon people don't play at all. Ever.
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			Set up the instance finder to pick a randomn one form the set you want to do (dungeon, adventure), and then give a bonus for completeing it.  The bonus is just for completing it and not timed based.  It can be some extra material, money, maybe something like a boom box.  If the dungeon isn't a randomn selection people wont be queueing for any but the easiest instances.	
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I'm french and right now when I take a look at the guilds advertisements all I see is "we want experienced players", "we want skilled players who can raid at least for 4h 3 times a week"... Or casual "family" guilds accepting anyone, they have no rules but no good players either.
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Or casual "family" guilds accepting anyone, they have no rules but no good players either.
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In regard to guilds, the ones advertising and that you see asking for experienced players are those who are really keen to progress...it's the nature of trying to progress, they need to get as many players in as they can that are at that skill level.
 
I ran a guild in that other game along with a load of other mates from other games etc and we tried to raid when it suited everyone.  we managed to raid the 40 man content and done it when everyone was available so we'd have an extended raid on Sunday as people were bored/hungover so could log on earlier etc.
 
We do have a guild running at the moment but it's got the grand sum of me and my bro in it because we haven't started to recruit or had the time to get things in order that we feel we need to but it will very much be a social place and also somewhere to play the games content (both PvE and PvP) but there are plenty around that you can find that aren't hardcore and not willing to take new players on.
 
Pretty much what Nil says above, don't dismiss the casual guilds as having poor players...MMO's in general:
 
Time Playing > Skill	
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Ignore the calls from the NPC's if you are busy, click on them when you are ready.  If the call icon flashing in your face has disappeared by then, "call them back" from the Datachron:
 
 
If you have missed calls, there will be a little red button(added in with Paint, I didn't have any pending calls to screenshot :P), click it and the calls you missed will pop up in the Datachron screen.
 
Don't be a *cupcake* about guilds, whether they are advertising for experienced players or are family guilds.  When you see guild spam, send a tell to who ever, no matter what they are advertising, and ask if they will help inexperienced players or know of anyone that will.  Or you yourself can advertise that you are looking for a guild to help end-game stuff.
 
When it comes to mob density in lower levels, I find it's a great tool for teaching situational awareness.  Don't get in the habit of only rolling backward out of telegraphs.  Keep your camera pulled back far enough to see how close mobs are behind and to the sides of you.  You only learn bad habits(in a game :P) if you aren't trying to learn to do something differently.	
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Queues will not be shorter ever - simply most players go with premade friends/guild PT and that is more than understandable. Only way to make it easier is to find suitable guild.
 
 
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I'm french and right now when I take a look at the guilds advertisements all I see is "we want experienced players", "we want skilled players who can raid at least for 4h 3 times a week"... Or casual "family" guilds accepting anyone, they have no rules but no good players either. 
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			I know this sounds ridiculous, but I have done the first two dungeons in PUGs, and... gasp... everyone knew what they were doing. True, it's not often everyone knows what to do, but it happens. Even in PUGs.	
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Yea I stopped reading here. Welcome to Wildstar and all, but your comment there is completely untrue.I'm the guild leader of a casual progressive, community-built guild. And I'm gonna tell you right now that we have plenty of good players, some of them are even at hardcore standards.
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I feel the need to tell you that you don't need to be answering your cell phone while "driving" or fighting in this case (the quest doesn't disappear if you ignore it), and the 24/7 raid thing makes no sense at all, but nice feedback.
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Saying casual "family" guilds haven't got any skilled players in it is just funny.
 
My guild is a casual guild but our main RBG team was known for farming the two highest rated exile teams repeatedly (thanks for the free rating btw :D going from 600rating>1500+ was awesome) for about 3 months until they stopped queuing.
 
At lot of us are ex hardcore pvp/raiders and the better players are there to help the less skilled players. Casual just is a tag we use to say that anyone is welcome, to learn, to play and the most important thing, to have fun.
 
Some good feedback in between the more opinion driven suggestions, though.	
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Free access to raids 24/7? Seriously? 40 people raids? I hope it's the last 40 people instance you make.
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After Drop 3 releases, we will be going into further detail about changes coming (in later patches) that should help this specific issue including Daily Dungeons, Random Queue rewards, Veteran Dungeon reitemization plan, and the new Glory currency.
 
The short version is: We originally rewarded all Veteran Dungeons and Adventures equally. But they certainly don't have equal difficulty levels (Veteran Skullcano) or completion times (Veteran Swordmaiden). And we are working on adjusting to compensate for those differences and other itemization holes in that content tier.
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After Drop 3 releases, we will be going into further detail about changes coming (in later patches) that should help this specific issue including Daily Dungeons, Random Queue rewards, Veteran Dungeon reitemization plan, and the new Glory currency.
 
The short version is: We originally rewarded all Veteran Dungeons and Adventures equally. But they certainly don't have equal difficulty levels (Veteran Skullcano) or completion times (Veteran Swordmaiden). And we are working on adjusting to compensate for those differences and other itemization holes in that content tier.
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snip
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I know that Carbine, like all developers out there, would've liked to have had a bit more time to polish the game before it went live.  But, I really whish they had a couple more dungeons and adventures to choose from.  Also I think it would've been a good idea to have all raids playable with 10/20/40 character groups.  I'm pretty sure the smaller guilds would've been able to hold on some time longer if they could've done 10 man raids if they couldn't get the 20 people they needed to log on that night.
 
Also if the raids had that same difficulty with different modes (10, 20 and 40 players ) you can keep the loot the same and guilds would'nt have to grow or shrink each time a new raid came out depending on size.	
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In regard to guilds, the ones advertising and that you see asking for experienced players are those who are really keen to progress...it's the nature of trying to progress, they need to get as many players in as they can that are at that skill level.
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Yes precisely, and without any kind of artificial (and elegant) lockout such guilds will never be accepting new players, even if they enjoy such environments with a strong focus on progression. No lockout means that there's no way to catch up as a new player (in terms of playing skills and progression). That's just segregating the playerbase even more. Given the niche nature of MMOs I don't think it's a good thing, but that's just my opinion. Of course people who plan to kill the final datascape boss as soon as they can will disagree, that's fair game, but segregating too much a playerbase is never a good idea, especially if you're not that MMO with millions of subs.
 
 
I didn't mean to insult people who call themselves casuals even if they aren't casuals. Casuals rarely post on game forums (that's a nerds thing :P), they log in once or maybe twice a week, don't give a damn about improving their characters and skills, and just want a guild chat to say hello. I know there are many people calling themselves casuals even if they play 20h a week, i've actually seen that many times, I don't know why, maybe because saying you're a MMO player make the vast majority of people look at you with some disdain or disgust.
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If Vet Swordmaiden is ever in the queue for a daily, I'm coming down to Carbine to personally whip some arse.
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Yea Carbine, only open the raid zones Mon-Fri from 9a-5p! >_>
 
To me, casual = no set schedule. Doesn't matter if they play 20hrs this week. They might log in at different timed each day. Maybe next week they only have time for 5hrs of gaming on weekends. Or perhaps half of that 20 hours is spent on housing/RP or farming challenges. (lol hi Frozen :P)
 
Sounds to me you want to leap-frog to major league before you even finish bronze dungeons. No, it's unlikely you'll get an invite to those 5/9 DS guilds next week. What's wrong with learning dungeons together as a group? What's wrong with joining guilds that are closer to your level of progression? Oh right, those 3/6 GA guilds aren't good enough for your level of leet skills!
 
Just curious.... why limit yourself to just French guilds?	
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Yall need to increase your amount of Dungeons if you are going to have a Daily Dungeon.  If Vet Swordmaiden is ever in the queue for a daily, I'm coming down to Carbine to personally whip some arse.
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