132002-general-feedback

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Warning: This is a post predominantly conveying criticisms of Wildstar. If you're having fun I suggest you don't bother reading it. I'm a firm believer that negativity is contagious and have no desire to pass on my baggage. I want this game to succeed and I want you to have fun.
 
 
 
 
I don't like "I quit" posts, but unfortunately your exit survey is shallow and poorly conceived. When a player selects "other" it's typically useful to give them a text box to explain what exactly those "other" problems are. Instead I was only asked how likely I am to return...
 
Now I understand that you folks are doing a lot right now, so I'm not completely hostile to the game or devs— even though I'm sure my bitterness is oozing a bit in this post—but I've supported this game for awhile and feel the need to express criticisms which contributed to my uninstall, in the hopes that at least some of them are addressed in the future.
 
 
1. Bugginess. This game is still riddled with them even though a lot of players have just accepted it and don't notice as often. It's not as bad as it was, and not bad enough to make me leave if this were my only beef, but it's still worse than any other game I've played in recent memory. Example: Interactive decor has just died. Why? How does this happen without a major update or seemingly anything new affecting them? Also little things, like visiting someone else's plot and having to reloadui just to get back home because the return home button doesn't always work but frequently brings up the settings tab as though I was still on my plot. You know what this says to me? Laziness. Instead of creating another button for the separate function, someone decided to reuse one already on the screen. That's why we have this issue, right? And on that note, I'm a little baffled that reloadui has become a kind of catch-all fix for lots of problems in this game. Kinda weird, but also annoying when performance visibly bogs over the course of a 60 minute play session.
 
It's also kinda bad to watch the struggle to redeem the Techno-Phage decor quest. Having already said my peace in that thread I won't go on about it, but will say this: When you've failed twice, you should probably stop trying. I feel it's actually more damaging to your image when you keep releasing "fix is in the works" statements, and then fail once again to fix the problem. Just remove it, remake it, figure out a new way. At this point your image is more important than actually fixing one thing!
 
 
2. F2P RNG and convoluted systems like Cosmic Rewards and Daily Rewards.Again, I've already made posts on this subject so I won't bother elaborating. Suffice to say that I might have been able to deal with these things as personal issues that don't necessarily reflect the community's opinion, but honestly, looking to the future there is an evolving, deeper problem: I don't trust you. Which is a terrible thing to feel when playing an MMO. Because of WS's history with bugs, bad decisions, and broken/delayed promises, I have little faith in your studio's ability to backup what you say, at least when I'm dumping money into the game through subs and CREDD. Which leads to my next point.
 
 
3. Maybe stop promising? You used guild neighbourhoods as bait a year ago, said they were coming "soon", then went dead silent on the issue for 8 months. Suddenly it crops up again as a big sell point for your F2P drop, awesome! Except that you didn't follow up for awhile and then the creeping truth... it's not actually coming with that drop. We want to make sure it's great. So it'll come after. Take a hint from how Bethesda handled Fallout 4 and don't announce it until it's ready. Some companies can get away with promises like this... given the track record here, you can't. I will admit that I felt more than simple annoyance when you pushed this back again. It was one of those "fool me twice" moments, and even if I believe that you're delaying it for everyone's benefit, I'm not willing to feel like a sucker again. 
I recently read a list posted on these forums about a whole bunch of stuff you folks plan to do, like fishing. Most of the stuff sounded AWESOME... but the trust thing comes back into play. I know you're a business, I know you're doing what you can to keep players involved. I also know most of you are passionate devs. However, I suspect that most of that list won't happen at all, or maybe in a few years. There's a taint involved in your promotional releases, and while I really hope I'm just being biased, there's a suspicion in me that I'm not alone in doubting your ability to make things happen.
 
 
4. Update your auction house. The recent groaning we produced in Morning Coffee aside, this is an integral aspect of your game and it sucks. It's sucked since launch and people have been saying as much since launch. How long are you going to allow it to exist? Is it that hard to code something like this? Excuse me if I'm being too presumptuous, which is possible, but I don't think it should be so difficult to optimize something like this. It seems like a pretty rudimentary type of app to develop. Once again this goes back to your image, and how it's more important than the actual functionality of things sometimes. And I know I'm not alone here— I've heard people make comments like "how do they fail something like this?" so many times in-game. It's almost become a default affix for complaints about this game. This is not good.
 
 
5. Going forward, you can't afford to delay content anymore. You haven't added much new gameplay stuff in a while; you've developed a habit of elaborating on existing concepts to try to draw them out, like contracts and veteran shiphands. I don't blame you for this, in fact I liked the idea of contracts if everything else was going well. And I know the game has had its struggles and you lost some people. But it's still not going to help retention in the long run. I have to wonder how many veteran players are going to be willing to wait another 4+ months after this drop because it doesn't seem to add much gameplay content (I love the cosmetics and all, but I also haven't played your actual combat gameplay in many, many months). What I don't want to see is the current community of Wildstar-loving, commited players get tired of it all and leave like I am, only to have them replaced with a new F2P community (which is generally a mixed bag at best). That would alienate old hands and could prevent them from returning after breaks.
 
 
6. User-friendliness in this game is low. Probably lowest I've seen in an MMO. I can't fully elaborate on this point, and I'm sorry for that, but it's been an enduring problem for me. There's a lot going on and I don't think it's very well managed. It's passable, sometimes even a moment of "well done", but overall there's a painful amount of information and it's as likely to be opaque as it is transparent and easy to find/utilize.
 
 
7. The marketing sucks. It suuuuucks. So. Hard. If you're part of the marketing team and are reading this, I'm sorry to be a bit of a dink about it, but it's just... ungh. There could also be a good reason for why it sucks— maybe some folks at the studio are doing double-time on two jobs? So I'm not saying the people behind marketing absolutely suck, just that the end result is not good and, going with the theme of image being as important as game, seems to create a bad impression that is quite contrary to what marketing is supposed to do.
 
 
 
That sums it up. I've definitely been dealing with mixed feelings about this game for a long time, which led me to quit around January last year. Maybe the game just isn't for me, that's a possibility. But to try to offset the negative baseline of this post, here are the things which have kept me playing Wildstar for as long as I have, and may well draw me back in:
 
1. Housing. It's great. Nuff said.
 
2. Community. This may be the hardest part about uninstalling... I really like some of the players here, and particularly enjoy talking to them about the stuff I do love about WS. Last night I had a 10 minute conversation about building with an awesome player I admire, and it was great. We also had a 10 minute conversation about the foibles of this game and how annoying they can be. See what I mean?
 
3. Uniqueness. The combat and world are neat and not as generic as most, I like the races, I like the humour. I like that you tried to add a lot of features on release, stuff like paths. I liked that the devs came out the other night and PVPed with the community. If there were more combat to actually do that didn't involve a hectic raid schedule or grinding dailies, I might not be as angsty as I am right now because I'd be too busy playing. Unfortunately we got a delayed drop by 2.5 months which, while it's great to bring in new players, doesn't seem to actually offer much to non-housing, non-cosmetics people. And since I love housing so much but am about to leave right before the drop, I hope this makes a strong impression for you that there are simply too many problems that either prevent or undermine enjoyment of this game. (Not necessarily for everyone, I mean, this is just me venting after all.)
 
 
So there you have it. Maybe I'll return, but if I do, my incentive will probably be equal parts socializing with the awesome RP community, and building plots/seeing what others build. The problem there? It has more to do with them than you.
 
Forum mods, sorry to post this, it's painful and in the big picture possibly even unhelpful, because I'm not convinced it's going to lead to any significant fixes. If Carbine had a more thorough exit survey that actually made me feel like they wanted to know the specific reasons for my leaving, and not something as generic and general as "technical issues" or "other", this post wouldn't exist. Perhaps the one thing that makes me feel better about posting this is that it should die out and not be seen by the time F2P hits, as I don't want my 14 months of baggage to interfere with the enjoyment of new players.
 
 
As grumpy as I am, still going to extend thanks to Carbine for giving me the highs that I did manage to hit while playing— and they were great. I've never experienced as much satisfaction in any MMO as I've had building and interacting with other builders in this game. I believe it has also contributed to some great immersion for the RPers and the community in general... you've got some awesome people playing this game. Please do your best to keep them.
 
Final thought: If I hadn't been hit by so many annoyances in the last month (most of them detailed here), and I wasn't feeling the need to start playing with my wallet and navigate crappy F2P systems, I'd likely be sticking around. That said, I will be monitoring the game's progress when F2P hits, and will pay special attention to the game's server stability, the final form of your cash shop features, the general opinion of players as they respond to upcoming changes, and how you market the game. If these things seem good, I could see myself coming back with gusto.
 
Peace out.
 
 
 	
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Yeah the auction house thing kinda sucks
 
Went to buy some 150 primal woods, it did not allow me o_0 i had to buy one at a time
 
No biggy i shall now place a buy order for 150 say 35 silver for each. Next day logged in, my mail was filled with 1-5 items of primal wood per message -_-	
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			My favorite moment with the AH was when I was searching for specific heavy armor pieces and it said "too many items have this same name." When I manually look through the category, it is only one page and that specific piece of gear wasn't even available.  :D What is really sad is how much this has happened in more than one category (like Decor).	
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