128348-another-returning-player-reviews-june-2015

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I loved, hated, and reviewed Wildstar quite a bit back when it launched, and having recently returned (like a fair number of others, it seems) I feel it's due for another review.  As for my background--I've raided, RP'd, dungeon'd, PuG'd, premade'd, hard mode'd, story/normal mode'd, and quested my way through Everquest, WoW, SWTOR, City of Heroes, and a host of lesser games.  Other than PvP, I consider myself pretty experienced.
 
For the purposes of this, I've been playing both an old level 50 Cassian Esper who's got dungeon blues/purples as well as levelled a brand new Aurin Spellslinger.  For solo I'm in DPS spec (the only realistic way to play...) and for grouping I generally Healed.  Both are on Entity.
 
Thoughts:
 
- First and foremost, the leveling process feels a lot smoother.  There is way less of a grind and the quests go through quickly.  It takes way less kills or glowies to complete a quest and I never felt like I had to do the same thing over and over again.  Challenges look like they were relaxed time-wise, so I can actually smell the roses, complete my quests along the way, take a pee break, and not get annoyed if there's a second player grabbing my items. However...
 
- ...The exception seems to be Malgrave onward.  Then the grind kicks up again.  Each kill rewards a piddly amount and once I hit the Grimvault I was often having to wait for respawns to occur so I could finish the quests.  Flight paths and Transmat hubs are few and far between.  Challenges also return to the classic 'stop everything and do this now' time requirements.  Boo.
 
- Similarly, Southern Grimvault, Western Grimvault, The Defile, and Blighthaven are all strung together and all have you fighting the Strain.  Combined with the grindyness of these zones it really becomes tedious. Once I hit level 50 part way through Western Grimvault I really struggled to be motivated to continue.  I don't know if I'll ever get back to finishing those zones.
 
- In the lower zones I found I gained XP faster than the zone progression could keep up.  I had to skip the last fourth of Galeras and the last quest hub of Whitevale (Eldan area where you're helping out the Caretaker).  After that the XP vs zone prog seemed about right.
 
- While leveling I ran a normal mode STL and KV without issues.  Difficulty seemed good but then I think everyone has learned the fights or left the game by now.  While healing Story Mode I found the damage to be very manageable.  Rewards still seem pretty weak insofar as gear goes.  Sure you might get a good item or two, but from a time vs progress perspective it isn't there.  The hour or two spent would have been 'better' spent (speaking purely from a min-max perspective) levelling normally.  Also, because the rewards are level specific if you don't find a group at level 20-21 then you there's no need to run them.
 
That said, both were fun.  But who plays MMO's just for fun, amirite ;-)?
 
- The Protostar Academy is excellent.  The training is good and the difficulty looks to be spot on.  Haven't seen any issues with it.  Same issue with rewards being level specific, though--If you don't run it at level 10-11, then you've missed out on it fro ma min-max perspective.  It isn't like WoW or SWTOR where you can level entirely on group content if you want.
 
- As a Healer/DPS I was in the Hycrest queue for about an hour before it popped.  Had no issues running it but then I've done it a million billion times in the past.  I feel adventures really suffer from a problem where, in order to complete it, you have to have already done it before and already know the various tricks and methods used to deal with things.  They are very rough for people just starting out, and this problem is exasberated by...
 
- ...one of my biggest original complaints, is that Wildstar has a weird love affair with timers.  Everything has a 'rush rush rush go go go never stop moving' attitude.  There is so much pretty stuff to look at and nice lore to read while questing, yet the game tries to stop you from stopping and smelling the roses.  I can hear Pappy whispering in one ear: 'check out all these datapads and you'll see a whole lot of backstory if you read between the lines'.  Meanwhile, the ghost of Stephen Frost is screaming in my other ear: 'STOPPIT.  STOP BEING A *cupcake*! YOU HAVE TWO CHALLENGES TICKING DOWN, CUPCAKE.  HURRY HURRY HURRY!!'
 
Many times I'll enter a new questing area to kill some mobs, click some glowies, and use my T power on some targets, only for 'Challenge Started!' to pop up.  Now I have a quick decision: continue going through at my own pace and ignore the timer, or drop everything I'm doing and do only the challenge; then come back afterwards to redo the actual quest content.  This even pops up during 'race' challenges.  Am I to go from point A to point B as fast as I can, ignoring all my quest stuff in order to complete the challenge... then go back to point A to do my quests, and then back to point B since that's where the quests will lead me to?
 
I feel challenges work best when they do not conflict with quests.
 
- This even extends to Adventures as many of them are non-stop action.  Because you need to know what's going on in these prior to running them and everything is timed (either with a literal timer or the Adventure's mechanics), there's no time to explain to new players.  Instead you'll either muddle through if enough people know what's going on, or simply fail.  Before running Malgrave Trail, for example, you better have the right add-ons installed and the knowledge of how to deal with each counter-intuitive event.
 
For new players, Adventures can be tougher than dungeons for this reason.
 
- Haven't run them yet, but speaking purely from hearsay it sounds like Bay of Betrayal and Veteran Malgrave Trail are very tough and very frustrating.  Once I run them I'll report back, but for now the public perspective seems to be very poor for them.
 
- I got zero queue pops for normal mode Adventures after Hycrest as a Healer/DPS.  It looks like they are not run.
 
- The Contract system is superb for a number of reasons.  First, it rewards you for doing just a wee bit of stuff if you haven't time for an often lengthy dungeon.  Also, and very importantly, it corals all the players into a single location to run public events.  Nobody runs Scorchwing... unless it's the Contract, in which case it will!  It's a gentle nudge to get all the players on the same page of hitting up Scorchwing today.  Or StarCom, or the Grove, or whatever content needs 20+ people and would otherwise never get run.  Very good design.
 
- Similar to above, I see there's now instant transports to the far-away zones like Blighthaven or The Defile.  Sad that this was required but I think a good design choice, as otherwise they simply wouldn't be run.
 
- Housing was fantastic before and is fantastic now.  The Music + ground options are great, as are the new building block decor items.  Keep those up!  People are building wonderful things with the tools you've given them.  Seriously, your marketing department should be bragging more about this.
 
- The RP community seems strong (at least on the Exile side).  Good!
 
- The Veteran Shiphands are all excellent.  Good stuff adding those in.  Similarly, Fragment Zero is fun (though I found I had to Google + remember the Black Box locations).
 
- Making Attunement retro-active for Dungeons and World Bosses was a vital change.  Now I see groups forming all the time for WB's and the like.  Very good to see.
 
- On a similar note, the Scientist's Summon Group ability is such a game-changer.  The difference between "/1 LFM for World bosses" and "/1 LFM for World bosses, have summons available" is like night and day.  It makes logistics so much easier.  This isn't a complaint about Summon Group being overpowered--quite the contrary.  It should be *more* available and work across continents.  Maybe give Explorers a 'Summon Just One Dude' ability on a shorter cool down to replace the underwhelming Safe Fall?  It'd kill two vulcarrions with one stone.
 
- One major type of content that Wildstar is still missing is casual raiding.  I know, those are dirty words, but there really is no option for grabbing 10-20 guildies and running casual content.  I miss the SWTOR's Story Mode Operations or WoW's Normal Mode raids (back in WotLK/Cata... didn't play through MoP or WoD so can't comment).  In those games, a guild can have a casual raid night where you can carry friends if need be while still gaining semi-valuable Commendations, and a prog squad for the more #hardcore.
 
More than anything else, Wildstar's inability to fulfill this need of mine is probably the biggest draw back towards something like SWTOR for me.
 
- Communication between the Devs and Players is great.  The Dev Digest is always full of stuff and harkens back to my City of Heroes days.  I may not always agree with what's said but I always appreciate the dialog.  Jolly good.
 
Overall: Wildstar is much improved, having removed much of its leveling grind, adding Contracts to herd players in a single direction, and generally made logistics easier.  Casual raiding is probably the only spot where Wildstar fails to stack up against WoW and SWTOR (having deliberately avoided it), but for the most part Wildstar is a solid game with some unique ideas.  
 
I will likely keep playing, not as my primary game but as my secondary.  I generally refrain from paying for two MMO's at a time (the other being SWTOR), but CREDD is fairly cheap so I'm continuing with that.
 
- The Don Dude	
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			You're just the latest in a long trend so don't think I'm picking specifically on you, but posts like this may be great to help you organize your thoughts, but they're not a good source of info for the dev team (which is presumably your point in writing it).When the information is broken out into specific posts and put in the specific topic areas of the forum, it is MUCH easier for the right dev on the right team to find it. Additionally, separate posts mean you can organize your thoughts in more detail and propose solutions, which are really more important than a new laundry list of issues.It's all a question of whether you want to be heard by the people making the changes.PS- I'm fairly certain if you shut off Challenge tracking in the new quest tracker, they don't auto start. You still see an indicator of how many are nearby if you want to do them but they don't intrude.	
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A lot of what you experienced is what many of us who returned have noticed when we began our own "replay" journeys. Glad you noticed a lot of the positives... the developers have put a lot of work into improving their product since launch. I actually just ignore a lot of challenges unless it has a reward that I specifically want to get, like a pet. It was very liberating back in the day when CHALLENGE BEGINS!!!!! popped up and I was just like "nope" and X-ed out of it and continued along with my life.
 
As to your issue with raiding, it sounds more like it's a time thing than a difficulty thing. Do you think breaking raids into wings (sort of like what WoW does) would help with the short time issues? For instance, you've rarely got enough time in the week to clear an entire raid, but maybe you could clear it over the course of several weeks if it was broken into wings that unlocked as you completed them? Just a thought.
			
				
	Edited June 22, 2015 by BusterCasey
	
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One major type of content that Wildstar is still missing is casual raiding.  
 
- The Don Dude
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I agree with most of the points, except two.
Challenges and "Casual raids".
 
For challenges I directly disagree, the way that I get to do something else with the same content, and those things actually being a challenge, is something I really love. Since most challenges aren't related to killing a number of mobs, they can be re-done regardless of level.
If you could get rewards that were less level specific, or maybe also had an impact on high levels, I could see myself going back through the areas finding challenges. Maybe a contract for completing 10/20 unique gold challenges, or the rewards being reward caches scaling with level, or exp/EG points as if completing a small quest at the level of the player.
I do however understand and agree that the auto-activating challenges are disrupting, maybe having a pop-up saying "new challenge discovered" instead of "challenge started" would work a lot better.
 
As for "Casual raids", I agree that there is a need for group content that doesn't strictly require 20 people to be completed. I want to underline that I personally want raids to be the hardcore raids they are (with gear scaling making them easier over time ofc), with the "casual raids" being something completely different (new content), so that we avoid having a copy of WoW where you can just free-ride through the content using the LFR tool.
I like my raids hardcore, and having the multiple difficulty levels waters down the feeling when you successfully kill a boss, regardless of the difficulty when you kill it.	
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I'm going to be a kill-joy and say that smiley is probably hidding a dismissive "Oh, these casuals...they are so funny with their requests!" 
 
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As for "Casual raids", I agree that there is a need for group content that doesn't strictly require 20 people to be completed. I want to underline that I personally want raids to be the hardcore raids they are (with gear scaling making them easier over time ofc), with the "casual raids" being something completely different (new content), so that we avoid having a copy of WoW where you can just free-ride through the content using the LFR tool.
I like my raids hardcore, and having the multiple difficulty levels waters down the feeling when you successfully kill a boss, regardless of the difficulty when you kill it.
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I'm going to be a kill-joy and say that smiley is probably hidding a dismissive "Oh, these casuals...they are so funny with their requests!" 
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			I want new raids for casual players and I want EZ modes of the Hardcore raids and hey, while we're asking, can I get some of the Top End Raid Gear from a vendor, please? Pretty tired of having to actually DO STUFF for gear. That's too old school.	
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I agree with most of the points, except two.
Challenges and "Casual raids".
 
For challenges I directly disagree, the way that I get to do something else with the same content, and those things actually being a challenge, is something I really love. Since most challenges aren't related to killing a number of mobs, they can be re-done regardless of level.
If you could get rewards that were less level specific, or maybe also had an impact on high levels, I could see myself going back through the areas finding challenges. Maybe a contract for completing 10/20 unique gold challenges, or the rewards being reward caches scaling with level, or exp/EG points as if completing a small quest at the level of the player.
I do however understand and agree that the auto-activating challenges are disrupting, maybe having a pop-up saying "new challenge discovered" instead of "challenge started" would work a lot better.
 
As for "Casual raids", I agree that there is a need for group content that doesn't strictly require 20 people to be completed. I want to underline that I personally want raids to be the hardcore raids they are (with gear scaling making them easier over time ofc), with the "casual raids" being something completely different (new content), so that we avoid having a copy of WoW where you can just free-ride through the content using the LFR tool.
I like my raids hardcore, and having the multiple difficulty levels waters down the feeling when you successfully kill a boss, regardless of the difficulty when you kill it.
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You bring up a good point about Challenges and having the prompt might be the way to go for it.
 
Regarding casual raiding and all that, I'm ok with whatever they're called or even if they're entirely new content (though that does seem like it'd require even more Dev work).  Just that I enjoy raiding in SWTOR (and used to in WoW) and find Wildstar doesn't scratch that itch.
 
Perhaps a solution is that if there's another new tier of raids, the old content (GA, DS) gets more casual simply by nature taking its course and everyone's gear getting better?
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Overall: Wildstar is much improved, having removed much of its leveling grind, adding Contracts to herd players in a single direction, and generally made logistics easier.  Casual raiding is probably the only spot where Wildstar fails to stack up against WoW and SWTOR (having deliberately avoided it), but for the most part Wildstar is a solid game with some unique ideas.  
 
I will likely keep playing, not as my primary game but as my secondary.  I generally refrain from paying for two MMO's at a time (the other being SWTOR), but CREDD is fairly cheap so I'm continuing with that.
 
- The Don Dude
 
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LOL @ no casual raiding content.
 
GA bro.  Such a casual atmosphere, even Tahlie can get in on it.	
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			Doesn't GA on weekends now qualify as casual raiding? At least in terms of few complaints about wipes, no progression pressure and getting some friend run through without the help of your guild?	
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As far as "casual raiding"  (easy mode roll face on keyboard raids), it's a bad thing, it's not something I'd want the MMO I play to succeed in. It's almost like me saying I want hardcore shiphands/adventures that require raiding gear. It makes no sense. 
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After the forum posts from TT asking players thoughts on LFR, I'm 100% certain it will be a thing. It will be a great addition for casual players if it doe not hinder the development of proper raids, that will just result in replacing a raider with a F2P player! Wildstar needs more players not substitutes.  	
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EQ2 had 2-group raids and I never, ever enjoyed them. They always felt bland, boring and too easy to bother with more than a couple of times or to run as a PUR.
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- ...one of my biggest original complaints, is that Wildstar has a weird love affair with timers.  Everything has a 'rush rush rush go go go never stop moving' attitude.  There is so much pretty stuff to look at and nice lore to read while questing, yet the game tries to stop you from stopping and smelling the roses.  I can hear Pappy whispering in one ear: 'check out all these datapads and you'll see a whole lot of backstory if you read between the lines'.  Meanwhile, the ghost of Stephen Frost is screaming in my other ear: 'STOPPIT.  STOP BEING A *cupcake*! YOU HAVE TWO CHALLENGES TICKING DOWN, CUPCAKE.  HURRY HURRY HURRY!!'
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Regarding casual raids: How exactly do you define them? Easier? Shorter? Because I would go with the latter. Looking at Veteran Dungeons and Veteran Adventures, even they weren't that easy at the beginning (and are still not that easy nowadays with the right gear), so I somewhat doubt that "casual raids" would become easy, but simply shorter, with less trash and traveltime between bosses and for only 10 people. 
 
I would like to see something like OMNICore-1 as a raid, lengthwise. That roughly an hour and it could house 3-4 bosses and trash inbetween, but less puzzles and story compared to the solo dungeon. During progress it would take more time of course, but compared to the other raids it would be smaller and could be done in 45-60 minutes.
			
				
	Edited June 23, 2015 by Marston	
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Many times I'll enter a new questing area to kill some mobs, click some glowies, and use my T power on some targets, only for 'Challenge Started!' to pop up.  Now I have a quick decision: continue going through at my own pace and ignore the timer, or drop everything I'm doing and do only the challenge; then come back afterwards to redo the actual quest content.  This even pops up during 'race' challenges.  Am I to go from point A to point B as fast as I can, ignoring all my quest stuff in order to complete the challenge... then go back to point A to do my quests, and then back to point B since that's where the quests will lead me to?
 
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Regardless of your opinion on casual raiding or otherwise here are some facts (they might be slightly dated as I'm back from launch as well)....
 
The game has 6 adventures (not all of which appear to be veteran for max level).
The game has 5 dungeons (all of which have veterans).
 
So in total you can argue 11 dungeons.
 
So supposing your a "casual" player - normally casual implies time commitments not necessarily lack of skill. What do you do when you clear all of the dungeons? How do you continue to "progress"? 
 
Not going to lie but going 1-50 and clearing all dungeons can easily be accomplished in a month. Two tops.
 
If your relying on "hardcore" carrying this game you will end up in the state your in now of barely enough to fill 1 server.
 
Personally I think LFR was a disaster for WoW and really what the game needed was a decent LFG tool like oQueue to fill pug raids. Not even Flex/Normal difficulty. "PuG" raids need to be possible more so than "casual" raids. However for it to be puggable it needs to be reasonable in difficulty. I was a mythic raider and even veteran dungeons at launch were challenging (doable but tough) and I heard raiding was even more unforgiving.
 
Just my 2 cents. If end-game is impossible unless your hardcore then everyone else will quit stifling your community.
 
P.S. Here is some throwback: http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Instances_by_level  (21 dungeons). Granted not all were replayable at cap ... but still that's compared to Wildstars 11. Just food for thought. 	
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			I don't care about the lvl of raid difficulty. The only thing i care is to be ONE difficulty mode per Raid. I hate multi modes in the same Raid instance and i think it makes raiding repetitive and boooring as HELL. If you want a more casual raiding, then leave the latest raid with the current difficulty lvl and give a boost buff when entering the older ones. That's the maximum i can accept. Don't stick to the retarded WoW raid system or at least stick to a TBC like one (single difficulty mode-many raids) and not as it is today.	
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What do you do when you clear all of the dungeons? How do you continue to "progress"?
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Rather they don't spend time on creating one fight with 2 different difficulties.  Just create another raid.  Make it short and not as hard as GA (hahaha).  Or have it so you can queue up for "bosses" in GA, don't lower the difficult.  Or if you do lower the difficulty dont drop as much loot and not gear tokens unless you get the challenge.  Not DS.  Always keep the top tier raid not queable.  And can't queue for Ohmna.
 
When it gets to DS, just do the first 5 bosses, and not pairs/avatus.  	
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Going on two days and no communication from Crabine about the new casual raids we were promised?
 
Unacceptable. We demand better communication!	
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Or have it so you can queue up for "bosses" in GA, don't lower the difficult.
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The idea of a new raid to be the 'new hotness' while the casuals start moving into GA seems like a good compromise to me.  The tough part would be that new raids ain't always easy or cheap to produce.
 
I'd love to see a pie chart that outlines what parts of a raid take the most time and money to produce.  The Normal / Hard Mode philosophy is good since it can re-use art, sound effects, and maybe a few boss mechanics.  But if those are just a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the work then maybe it isn't worth it.
 
The comments that GA are actually pretty accessible brings up a good point.  Perhaps a lot of #hardcore fear is perception over substance?	
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Perhaps a lot of #hardcore fear is perception over substance?
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The Normal / Hard Mode philosophy is good since it can re-use art, sound effects, and maybe a few boss mechanics.  But if those are just a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the work then maybe it isn't worth it.
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Also, with 3 minibosses and 2 bosses available the moment you zone in, there are plenty of targets to attempt to have success vs.
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			Guilds run new players/pug runs through GA in like 2 hours, the "#hardcore" crap died off about 6-7 months ago around the time of DS20 and increased rune slots, only people using it anymore are returning players because that's the impression they got with a very limited understanding of the game in their first month.One good example of my early days, I was called the worst healer by tanks runing into pure support power stats/deflect, they died in nearly 2 shots in veteran dungeons. Currently I'm one of the #1 healers in DS now, I can tell you now I had somewhat of a working understanding of what to wear/rune but tanks dying in 2-3 shots and dps doing below 2-3k dps really made things seem hardcore when they weren't.
			
				
	Edited June 23, 2015 by Naix	
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Guilds run new players/pug runs through GA in like 2 hours
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Some do- but casual players aren't experiencing the second floor without being carried. And most will not be invited to the kinds of pugs that clear it in two hours. And a two hour clear doesn't even do the zone a little bit of justice.
 
I agree GA isn't #hardcore. But in it's current form, it's not a raid for casuals either.
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I soundly disagree. I don't feel my guild carries me, I contribute at all levels, even in DS. I raid once a week. My guild raids three times a week, with no required attendance. Anyone who casually wants to raid is welcome to pick which days work for them (even if it's different every week) and show up to raid, so long as they're putting in an effort to keep themselves properly geared and runed to the best of their ability.
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1st floor GA, easily puggable (although, a bad player with a bomb can destroy X-89, even Kuralek if he dies if he's egged.  Just need a better lfg tool or something.  But you have to also think, is there a population to setup this?  At the moment, no I do not think so.  When f2p comes and possibly getting a bigger population, yes I can see it being done.  2nd floor, idk.    I don't see 20 people who have ever been there with dungeon gear downing convergence.  That can easily happen if you get LFG pugs.  A little more coordination is required. Not really Phagemaw, but council and convergence there is.   
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I soundly disagree. I don't feel my guild carries me, I contribute at all levels, even in DS. I raid once a week. My guild raids three times a week, with no required attendance. Anyone who casually wants to raid is welcome to pick which days work for them (even if it's different every week) and show up to raid, so long as they're putting in an effort to keep themselves properly geared and runed to the best of their ability.
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			If GA is now as accessible as folks are indicating (having just returned I can only speak of the outside perception) then that pretty much satisfies my concern on the topic.	
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			Ufa Ufa in the house....sorry sorry xDOk so il just throw my two cents in here.I've been playing since about a week after launch, I did the whole grind back then, Level>Attune>Raid. Difference was i did it how it was suppose to be done. I sat my ass in adventures for a long time just getting decent gear then i went into dungeons. I pugged STL,KV,SC over 200 times each before i got done with them. I was pretty damn good at my class and geared enough to go into GA but the guild i was in still got smashed. I'm talking genetic monstrosity progression for 2 weeks.Then i see all these fresh 50s talk about how the game is easy. SO you pugged a dungeon? Was i or any other raid geared player in there? Yes? Then you got carried. You cleared GA? The group you cleared with have any raiders who clear it weekly? Yes? Shit bruh you got carried.People who think that GA is a casual raid are *cupcake*ing morons. Oh you one faze Phage'Maw? must be hard with 130k raid dps. Do we need a casual raid HELL YES would i do it as a DS raider do it? YUP. As long as content is enjoyable then it should be in the game. Is GA fun for those who cant get into a carry group/guild or don't have the time to do a full raid week to clear it? No No No.An LFR Boss kill lock out would be amazing/Really bad at the same time. It all comes down to how the community uses it. I for one would like to see something along the lines of LFR tested in Wildstar, If it works GREAT if i sucks then we look for the next idea to test. Simples
			
				
	Edited June 23, 2015 by Boloz	
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I don't see 20 people who have ever been there with dungeon gear downing convergence.  That can easily happen if you get LFG pugs.  A little more coordination is required. Not really Phagemaw, but council and convergence there is.
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			Ufa, your right, it's being carried but GA is way way easier than those that did it in the beginning.  Power Creep is huge.  I see pugs with dungeon gear/contract gear/boe's easily doing x89.  Hell, my first kill of x89 was a pug of like 4 guilds.  And this was back when crafted gear was #1 bis and before the change to medal dungeons.  And once you get that x89 kill, than that gear you can buy from vendor is another big step and can see kuralek going down.  I think all pugs will have someone that has done the bosses before, at least 1st floor.	
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Ufa, your right, it's being carried but GA is way way easier than those that did it in the beginning.  Power Creep is huge.  I see pugs with dungeon gear/contract gear/boe's easily doing x89.
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This is true- GA has been nerfed by power creep (and I'm sure this is intentional). As late as Juanary of this year we spent hours and hours working on X-89 as a guild and felt amazing when we got him down. Heck, we spent the whole first night on minis and the second on x-89. Now we can build a raid of alts with a ton of new players at be fairly certain we'll get x-89 down.
 
It's a little embarrassing to tell people we spent so long working on x-89 the first time, so it's refreshing to hear it was a struggle for others back in the day :)
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Any group that knows the fight can kill x89. you can have every dps have 2k ap and still do it.
 
That by no means makes it casual. It's farm content for progressed players even if said player is on an alt the mechanics don't change
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			5 fresh players will have a hard time even getting to stormtalon. Throwing one geared player in helps but you cant do much if other people can't do mechanics.This is what Wildstar as a whole revolves around. Every fight in this game at it's core is easy. I haven't seen a fight that just blows my mind. Although in saying this the basic mechanics for each fight need to be learned to beat the boss. This goes for all dungeons and all raids.Any one person can wipe a raid either it be by small/big bomb, Doing something dumb with eggs and as basic as not interrupting. All of these things can be done regardless of gear, it comes down to knowledge and ability to preform based on said knowledge.Fresh player don't have said knowledge nor the gear to bypass certain aspects of a fight, This makes GA a lot harder then people seem to give it credit for. For example Box in a box. On easy mode it is extremely easy but people wipe over and over until they obtain the basic knowledge of the fight. GA how ever has some instant failure features and some stuff that may as well be instant failure. It doesn't matter if you read a guide or watch a video. A new player will sit and try to watch everything thats going on and miss some of the stuff that their role needs to look out for.Does this make it hard? No not at all but does it makes it easy content? My opinion us no. I think it still requires a level of ability that a lot of casual player due to time restraints never got around to learn therefor making the challenge of GA it self harder then the rest of us realize.	
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Does this make it hard? No not at all but does it makes it easy content? My opinion us no. I think it still requires a level of ability that a lot of casual player due to time restraints never got around to learn therefor making the challenge of GA it self harder then the rest of us realize.
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			Not going to throw water on a returning player, but much of that post absolutely misses the mark.	
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=)
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I am for sure somewhat biased, but yes--it is. At launch, it was definitely hard--but that's also because people's gear was hot garbage and none of us knew the best way(s) to DPS and play our classes. At this point, players have grown significantly in class power, knowledge of the game, and gear power. GA is pretty accessible now for any groups willing to put in a bit of effort.
 
Also, with 3 minibosses and 2 bosses available the moment you zone in, there are plenty of targets to attempt to have success vs.
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That said, both were fun.  But who plays MMO's just for fun, amirite ;-)?
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Hmm... possible spoiler here?
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I want new raids for casual players and I want EZ modes of the Hardcore raids and hey, while we're asking, can I get some of the Top End Raid Gear from a vendor, please? Pretty tired of having to actually DO STUFF for gear. That's too old school.
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We just need to mimic OpenRaid as well...
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Does this make it hard? No not at all but does it makes it easy content? My opinion us no. I think it still requires a level of ability that a lot of casual player due to time restraints never got around to learn therefor making the challenge of GA it self harder then the rest of us realize.
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Slyjeff, the lockout per boss is a good idea, and you hit the nail on the head about being saved to an instance that just did the miniboss.  Also, the population and finding the amount of players.  I did see on a stream last night (twitch) that there was a pug GA.  And they got to 2nd floor.  And had about 40 people watching it and asking questions about the raid, so pugs are happening I just don't know how many were new players.  But even my guild has gotten some applications on people coming over from WoW and not realizing how awesome raiding is in this game.  
I can see why a casual would want to get into raiding and how it can be hard to get it done without some guidance from the community.  Openraid is a community thing, not a Carbine thing.  And if you have joe schmo who really doesn't know what is going on and not alot of stuff out there to direct where to go, than well, it won't happen for him.  Even though this community is great, but still can be difficult to find information.  The game needs a true group finder.  Not an addon to download or a queue system.  If I have a LFG in there for a week and put up a date on it for when to show up for a GA run, than I think some would show.  Be good to have in the game.  Also get some of the old content down such as 5man quests in the zones that require it like blighthaven.  And spamming a channel isn't fun because you can look away and miss the spam or not even be in that channel.  
 
The big question on casual raiding is how much time does a "casual' player want to put in for raiding.  Get on, raid for 30 minutes and log?  Just clearing trash to x89, haha who does that mister Spellslinger Scientist (cause stalker scientist do not exist), takes 30 minutes.  Especially if doing mini's.  I think casual raider and I think 1 hour log time and spending that finding a group to go.  Maybe my conception of a casual is not what I think it is but I don't know and not alot of casual players comment on these threads.  Imo, if you play 1-2 hours a day on this game, that is not casual, thats 14 hours a week.  I know a few raiders that only play 12 hours a week and they just log for raids, thats it.
 
And the new augmenters is not for pugs unless you have GA gear.  And even than.  The difficulty is Ohmna level if my understanding is correct.
 
(psst, casual raider, the Rhino has candy in it so pull it, people just scared)
			
				
	Edited June 24, 2015 by Orrestes	
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(psst, casual raider, the Rhino has candy in it so pull it, people just scared)
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I don't know what OpenRaid was, but I already have a website that allows for people to schedule and sign up for raids. It also allows people to organize the raids once they are in (assign groups and such). We use it in my guild and when we do Alt/Pug raids, however, it's not QUITE ready for the public yet (that is, right now only I have the power to create new raids). But I'm working toward getting it there for public use, if people will be interested. Here's an example (yes, I know the styling is definitely not cool- I'm not good at styling, but I hope to get some help in that area to choose colors that look less like a business app :) )
 
http://www.raidschedule.com/#/raids/lastchance
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			Interesting but Kindof gross with the content and it being WoW.  Is there a wildstar equivalent?	
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Take a look at open raid. It will give you an idea of what people have come to expect out of this kind of thing so you know what you will need to build up to:
https://openraid.eu/main/home
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Interesting but Kindof gross with the content and it being WoW.  Is there a wildstar equivalent?
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			well and good, but be nice to have something ingame for this.	
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well and good, but be nice to have something ingame for this.
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Actually done right, Slyjeff's web tool could be a MAJOR boost to the long term viability of Wildstar... as with the smaller population it will be some time until we can have more raiding guilds out there than there are people interested in raiding.
 
And if people all go get the Group Finder addon... all casual / PUGing needs outside of scheduled raids... would be taken care of.
- Should such an addon be integrated into Carbine's official addons? I don't know... having it be one you have to go get at least means there is a barrier of "player who is actually serious"... but also means that a LOT of the people who it is perfect for never see it...
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I created an addon in game before drop 5 for finding other players in lfg, but the group finder add on superceeded mine and I let it drop in favor of his.
 
The raid scheduler is going to have to remain external because of the nature of what it does, but I will be (hopefully) adding in some things to make it integrate with the game a bit.
 
In my experience, having the group setup (especially Kuralak) setup on our assignment pages is huge. Having people download KuralakHelper and then telling them "On the two egg phase, you are interrupting yellow" is something that people can understand, especially when you see a picture of it. When we find strats that work and can quickly assemble them for people to understand their jobs, that helps coordinate.So my goal is to have that functionality available to PUG groups as well as established guilds. My thought is to create an addon that can export a list of names that can then be uploaded to the site so you can quickly fill out any assignment sheet you've created (and if you've looked at it, you might notice that it filters the lists for you so you only assign an Engineer to OV duty on kuralak, and only tanks can be marked to tank, etc). So this way, even a pug created in game can use the web page and get a lot of benefit from it.
 
However, the flip side of the coin is that it's easy to have a place for people to sign up and plan what they want to do ahead of time, with a few days or hours notice. We use it to manage both our guild signups and to make alt/pug raids available to outsiders. This can be beefed up so that people can create random pugs or even open up guild runs to find more people.Or maybe even guild recruitment. As in, if people are listing their raid times and progress in a searchable site, that can be helpful for people to connect and find the guild/people that match what they are doing.Anyway, I guess this is a complete derailment, so I apologize OP. At some point when this is closer to prime time, I'll start a thread and I can get some feedback from the community about what would be needed in a tool like this to make it useful.	
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			I know a couple guilds setup pug runs for recruiment (think i've mentioned this somewhere, idk if was this forum) and having something to set this up is a good thing.  Hats off to you Slyjeff for setting this up.	
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=)
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			Personally, I think challenges are a major pain in the ass. Just so annoying. I would like them so much more if they weren't automatic.	
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