146369-reloaded-but-still-firing-duds

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Disclaimer: Yes, it's one of those threads.  B)
 
See if this resonates with you at all:
 
To me, personally, Wildstar is like eating this absurdly delicious plate of food (I usually picture a perfectly grilled, medium rare burger) and finding a stray curly hair in it. The food is delicious and man, how you wish you could eat it, but that hair just spoils the whole thing and kinda makes you regret having had any.
 
And here it comes... I decided to let my sub lapse once again and spend less time in the game, and I'm really bummed about it. Exact same reasons as last time about a year ago really:
a myriad lingering bugs (some from beta!)
misguided design decisions (we all make mistakes, but we gotta learn from them)
poor server stability
steady population decline (not as bad this time)
very slow dev response to issues raised by the community (CRB isn't alone in this)
gross class imbalance
bots bots bots and more bots
glaring oversights when pushing patches live
absolutely zero altoholic love
etc.
So you know where I'm coming from, I main a Medic heals (I know... sorry if I let you die but it is rough for us right now) and have half a dozen other toons between 20-50. I don't raid (don't have time to maintain a decent raiding schedule), but PvP quite a bit and do the rest of the stuff in the game. I roll alts, lots of them. I've played most MMOs you can think of, I know things break and they're always work in progress. I make games for a living and teach game design and art. No, I'm not saying this to sound better than anyone, it's just context. I'm coming at it from a player/designer/academic standpoint, for better or for worse.
 
Much much to love with W* Reloaded (my shift key is so happy), but it's like nothing's fundamentally changed really. I keep finding stray hairs in my damn burger...
 
Maybe you feel differently and can offer a suggestion or two. Am I missing something? If you love the game in all its awkward glory, I'm stoked for you and I want to be right there too. Do you think things will get sorted out more or less? Yes, I'm definitely overthinking it, because it's my job to do so (I have to teach and write about these things after all).
 
How are you all out there feeling about this? Not like we can do anything about it, but a forum is a place to share and discuss stuff, so there.  ^_^	
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I can't compare my perspective to yours, because I'm not an old or returning player, per se-- I played for a few days back in the original Closed Beta (not the F2P closed beta, but the one before the game launched, period) and I never subscribed. Not because I thought the game was bad, but just because, back then, I couldn't really justify a monthly expenditure for an MMO when I'm normally not an MMO person.
 
When the game went F2P, though, I said "hey, I'll try it out for real this time-- and if I like what I see, I'll drop some money on it."
 
So, what are my experiences as a new player?
 
My first experiences involved lag (the lag that inspired, like, five threads on the first page of General Discussion that all complained about it, lasting 20 seconds), and getting stuck in a loading screen, in Thayd, twice, and basically being told not to teleport to Thayd until they fixed it. Those don't sound like the sort of experience you want to see when you enter a game for the first time, are they? But I wasn't turned off from the experience yet. The game has an amazing art style and an amazing free-to-play model. I've seen the word "cash grab" thrown in the forum a few times, and I honestly can't understand it, given how much more generous WildStar's business model is than most games I've played (and definitely more generous than any MMORPG I've played, as a genre standard.)
 
You'd still think I'd be turned off by the lag and the Loading Screen issue, though-- but as a new player, the first thing I saw when I came to the forums was the staff being vocal and saying "we're working on it, we're doing server maintenance every day this week, we know the lag hurts." And I see they have a Developer Tracker up there, and it makes it easy for me to see just how vocal the staff is being, so I figure, okay, I can be a patient guy. After all, their Support staff was very quick to help me with my Loading Screen problem when I reported it, so I'm thinking, "well, these people look like they have their heads on their shoulders."
 
Now, I've seen a lot of older players talk about issues that Carbine hasn't fixed since launch. I started assuming that meant Carbine might actually be slow to fix problems, or worse, that they made empty promises and wouldn't actually fix the issues that were plaguing me.
 
But fastforward a week or two later, and the lag has been mitigated to occasional rare hiccups (at least for me), as opposed to the 20 seconds of waiting I'd often get while questing when I first joined. Not only that, but the fix that they said they were actively working on for the Infinite Loading Screen bug? That was also pushed through, and I no longer have that issue. Granted, it was a pretty hefty issue, but my point is that the issues I've had with the game- when I joined- have been worked on. I can't speak for older players, who have had to sit through months of issues not getting fixed, from what I understand-- but as a new player, coming in shortly after Reloaded launched, I see them addressing the big issues that were plaguing the game for me. The real game-breaking stuff. And because they fixed those problems, as someone coming in fresh, they've earned some of my trust and I believe that they will retroactively address older problems that have been on the backburner, and can be attended to with their new F2P revenue. They just needed time to tackle the kind of things that actively kept people from playing the game.
 
Again, that's just my experiences with the staff, and how those experiences have affected how I feel about the game and it's developers, and where I think the game is going. I'm sure your complaints are still entirely legitimate, they just aren't related to the experience I've had so far.	
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I can't compare my perspective to yours, because I'm not an old or returning player, per se-- I played for a few days back in the original Closed Beta (not the F2P closed beta, but the one before the game launched, period) and I never subscribed. Not because I thought the game was bad, but just because, back then, I couldn't really justify a monthly expenditure for an MMO when I'm normally not an MMO person.
 
When the game went F2P, though, I said "hey, I'll try it out for real this time-- and if I like what I see, I'll drop some money on it."
 
So, what are my experiences as a new player?
 
My first experiences involved lag (the lag that inspired, like, five threads on the first page of General Discussion that all complained about it, lasting 20 seconds), and getting stuck in a loading screen, in Thayd, twice, and basically being told not to teleport to Thayd until they fixed it. Those don't sound like the sort of experience you want to see when you enter a game for the first time, are they? But I wasn't turned off from the experience yet. The game has an amazing art style and an amazing free-to-play model. I've seen the word "cash grab" thrown in the forum a few times, and I honestly can't understand it, given how much more generous WildStar's business model is than most games I've played (and definitely more generous than any MMORPG I've played, as a genre standard.)
 
You'd still think I'd be turned off by the lag and the Loading Screen issue, though-- but as a new player, the first thing I saw when I came to the forums was the staff being vocal and saying "we're working on it, we're doing server maintenance every day this week, we know the lag hurts." And I see they have a Developer Tracker up there, and it makes it easy for me to see just how vocal the staff is being, so I figure, okay, I can be a patient guy. After all, their Support staff was very quick to help me with my Loading Screen problem when I reported it, so I'm thinking, "well, these people look like they have their heads on their shoulders."
 
Now, I've seen a lot of older players talk about issues that Carbine hasn't fixed since launch. I started assuming that meant Carbine might actually be slow to fix problems, or worse, that they made empty promises and wouldn't actually fix the issues that were plaguing me.
 
But fastforward a week or two later, and the lag has been mitigated to occasional rare hiccups (at least for me), as opposed to the 20 seconds of waiting I'd often get while questing when I first joined. Not only that, but the fix that they said they were actively working on for the Infinite Loading Screen bug? That was also pushed through, and I no longer have that issue. Granted, it was a pretty hefty issue, but my point is that the issues I've had with the game- when I joined- have been worked on. I can't speak for older players, who have had to sit through months of issues not getting fixed, from what I understand-- but as a new player, coming in shortly after Reloaded launched, I see them addressing the big issues that were plaguing the game for me. The real game-breaking stuff. And because they fixed those problems, as someone coming in fresh, they've earned some of my trust and I believe that they will retroactively address older problems that have been on the backburner, and can be attended to with their new F2P revenue. They just needed time to tackle the kind of things that actively kept people from playing the game.
 
Again, that's just my experiences with the staff, and how those experiences have affected how I feel about the game and it's developers, and where I think the game is going. I'm sure your complaints are still entirely legitimate, they just aren't related to the experience I've had so far.
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			Where is this talk of decline coming from again? You mention server stability as an issue but if things were in decline all the server stability issues would be gone because that's where they stem from. The servers were completely fine pre-F2P drop and only experienced issues under higher loads.Grossly imbalanced classes? You can go to wildstarlogs and check the class statistics, they're not grossly imbalanced.Bugs from beta? I honestly don't even remember any bugs from beta that persisted and I've played since beta, of course new bugs show up and bugs will reinvent themselves and reappear sometimes when code changes. Either way, bugs are acceptable to a degree and I've far from reached the amount that'd actually annoy me personally.I know PvP had them but the original bots were eliminated practically the month they showed up, I have only seen a few when I leveled up a bit while PvPing as well. It's far from enough to ruin someone's experience, in fact, it sadly probably makes low level PvP pop more often than it would currently.Zero alt love, why, because you're still not handed a complete account inventory of mounts/amps/ability points/dyes? It takes 13hours of gameplay to get an alt to level 50 and there's a huge number of repeatable options now to complete amps/ability points now. There are keys for raids, a much simpler attunement process, and so on. I think dyes should be account based since costumes but they're not taking away reasons to do content  for amps/ability points which is important.Carbine is far from great on how they're handling everything but you disqualified yourself in my opinion the moment you commented on class balance, it means you're seeing things as you want to, to me.
			
				
	Edited November 6, 2015 by Naix	
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Of course you haven't felt any of this, therefore it all seems sensible and okay to you.
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Yes, that's why I said this.
 
 
As an aside, though: did you actually call it a cash grab when they gave players more Housing plot size for free? I understand if the change affected a build, but even with that in mind, it seems like an awfully silly thing to complain about and call a "cash grab". Maybe if people had been complaining about the size of plots and if Carbine had put the plot size increase behind a paywall, but..
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For me the pros are still VASTLY outweighing the cons, but I'm also slightly more casual, and don't have a set raid scheduled and haven't seen inside datascape - most of my stuff is 1 or 2 night pugs when I happen to get time.
 
I'm with the absolute hate of runing, dye costs, and needing service tokens to make the whole thing easier.  Omnibits help soften the blow a bit, but there have been a few times I've gotten a few because getting 4 life slots on DPS gear wasn't going to work out. Either eat my plat and HOPE it goes to a nice element, or just token it and get the perfect combo.
 
The dye costs make me want to throw up honestly.  I love just switching things up from dat to day and tryign fun new combos on the same set - but I guess that's too much.
 
Also would love a reworked of the CE/AH UI to not be god awful to use for buyers or sellers.  I might be able to swallow those rune and dye costs more easily if it wasn't so awful to sell stuff.
 
Would like to see alts somehow get a rep boost if your main is max rep with a faction - or maybe slightly reduced costs on amp and ability points.  That's only very minor for me though, and I still sorta enjoy the "powering up after 50" thing.
 
Need a much clearer path of progression for new 50s - having people walk in in ilvl 47 gear in vets is just... awful.  But I don't blame them, since the game doesn't tell them anything different.
 
I would love bugs and such to be fixed, but they haven't impacted me very much in my play - but again, I've only casually hit up GA pre and post F2P so there could be some issues in DS i don't know about.
 
And as said above - optimization.  My computer can hardly put WS above 30 frames anywhere, and i'm normally at 20-26 in raids.  Doable, but I've seen how pretty the game CAN be.  Guess that's what I get for buying AMD
 
Even with all this though I'm more than happy to keep playing and supporting the game.  Gameplay is still fun and smooth, vets are always exciting, and even with costs, i still love all the costume and housing customization this game has.
			
				
	Edited November 6, 2015 by Xiun	
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Where is this talk of decline coming from again? You mention server stability as an issue but if things were in decline all the server stability issues would be gone because that's where they stem from. The servers were completely fine pre-F2P drop and only experienced issues under higher loads.
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The game has never been optimized since day 1 of the original launch. It's always ran like poop. Having more people on / around only exacerbates this issue.
 
While it's true in some areas, you can run a perfectly fine 60-80 FPS by yourself, there are still a lot of areas that have severe fps drops (more than a few in the major cities, defile, winter, etc) and let's not even talk about world boss fights that are basically slideshows lol.
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[...]
 
Carbine is far from great on how they're handling everything but you disqualified yourself in my opinion the moment you commented on class balance, it means you're seeing things as you want to, to me.
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[...]
 
Again, that's just my experiences with the staff, and how those experiences have affected how I feel about the game and it's developers, and where I think the game is going. I'm sure your complaints are still entirely legitimate, they just aren't related to the experience I've had so far.
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I joined when it went free to play and I've been enjoying the game on the whole, though there's some issues I keep seeing brought up that Carbine really should address.
 
Being a more casual gamer, and especially an altoholic, I'm surprised how many things aren't account-bound. Costumes are which is awesome, but Dyes, Pets and Mounts -really- need to be, otherwise I only really bother collecting them on my main because why bother going out of your way on alts? Everything on the store should be Account Bound as well, who's gonna shell out on an overpriced mount if only one of their seven characters can use it?
 
The cost of applying dye to your gear really needs to go down because I simply haven't bothered -at all- to use the dyes I've been getting because if I decide I don't like it or I want to change it it's a lot to change back.
 
When reaching max level, there really needs to be more guidance on what you should do to gear up and stuff. As it stands at the moment, you reach 50 and there's Vet Expeditions, Adventures, Dungeons, Raids, Daily Quests, Contracts, Blighthaven, The Defile, few of which the game actually teaches you about or directs you to, and there's no info about what order you should do them in, which causes the huge problem of people doing Vet Dungeons in low level gear.	
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I won't comment on most issues being discussed here. I'll only say that I think a lot of them stem from a perception of how people want things to be rather than an objective viewpoint. But some issues are also legitimate, such as game optimization.
 
 
 
The only topic I will speak on directly is the lag spikes, because as far as I can tell they've been completely eliminated. I haven't experienced a single lag spike for nearly a week, and I play on Entity-1.
			
				
	Edited November 6, 2015 by Elite Seraph	
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The only topic I will speak on directly is the lag spikes, because as far as I can tell they've been completely eliminated. I have experienced a single lag spike for nearly a week, and I play on Entity-1.
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Disclaimer: Yes, it's one of those threads.  B)
 
See if this resonates with you at all:
 
To me, personally, Wildstar is like eating this absurdly delicious plate of food (I usually picture a perfectly grilled, medium rare burger) and finding a stray curly hair in it. The food is delicious and man, how you wish you could eat it, but that hair just spoils the whole thing and kinda makes you regret having had any.
 
 
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As A medic healer since the begining, What bugs haven't been addressed sine Beta? I don't doubt there might be some, but there aren't any that have been bad enough to even register in my memory as bugs (which could just be because of the things I do ingame versus what others might be doing). The only bug that's been around since Beta that I can think of is the invisible taxi bug in Nar Shadda... oh, wait, I'm thinking of a Bioware game ;)
 
I fundamentally dislike these threads because they tend to burden an otherwise great game with unreasonable expectations as if the game exists solely in a vacuum and isn't comparable to it's contemporaries. SWTOR dropped a major ex-pac / revamp a week or so ago. Completely changed gearing made pretty much all old gear obsolete (remind you of anything here?). They've also got more bugs than an ant farm, I finally finished the Heroic starfortresses last night, and one of the folks I was running SF Nar'Shadda with got massively hit with bugs all through the flashpoint. Game breaking bugs that we only got through because I happened to be running my Sorc and could extricate him past the broken mechanics. Then after completing it none of us got credit for the completion......
 
Also, since the KotFE drop Lag has been a serious issue there even on my humble little Jedi Covenant server, even though they actually had an emergency expansion of server capacity.
 
Bugs suck, but W* doesn't have appreciably more or worse bugs than it's contemporaries. This is only the case when you slap on rose colored glasses for the other games you are trying to compare with. Rift? Buggy as all get up, but not game breakingly so. FFXIV? Don't even get me started on my poor Lala WHM and the the Howling Eye bugs a couple months ago... (seriously, cupcake you broken Garuda).
 
As TheResult mentioned, Carbine did work their rears off taking care of the major issues, and odds are they'll fix the rest in due time.
 
Wanna complain about dyes? Complain about having to repurchase dyes at every use in SWTOR for 30,000 - 10 million creds per one time use, and then complain you are stuck with prepackaged primary and secondary colors and can't mix and match on the only 2 dye channels they have....
 
Wanna complain about mounts? cupcake my fat chocobo...... cupcake all the good mounts In XIV 
 
What I'm saying is, W* isn't perfect, and it never will be. Just like literally EVERY MMO is not perfect, and never will be. We will always find something to complain about if we wan't to complain; but that's a terrible way to live life. I prefer to focus on the good and fun aspects of games rather than let minor issues get me down, but YMMV.
 
Edit: While I can appreciate the "cash grab" sentiment, Carbine has what must be the most generous cash shop system I've yet seen. Granted I'm directly comparing W* to SWTOR, where you can't run content with out either being a sub or buying the unlocks repeatedly from the cartel market for real money / in game for a high credit price from other players. Heck can't even make over 300k credits with out being a sub....
			
				
	Edited November 6, 2015 by Nazryn	
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It's about managing expectations.  W* is a down-on-it's-luck game from a beaten down developer.  Of course there will be bugs, problems, etc, since they have been barely rubbing two pennies together for the past year.  Under the circumstances, I'd say they've done a stupendous job.
 
Consider the following:  Since release, the following problems have been solved.
-Lack of solo end-game content (Vet shiphands, Omnicore-1, contracts)
-Lack of casual friendly end-game content (vet shiphands, adventures)
-Stupid attunement process locking new players out of raiding guilds
-Many, many bugs (to be fair, many remain, but it's silky smooth compared to what it was. Anyone else remember when we had to relog just to get the LAS to update?)
-At the same time, there have also been 3-4 major content releases.
-Multiple progression paths have been added (AMP points, for example, have sources available to every playstyle.)
 
All of this from a "dying" game that's been hemorrhaging players steadily until F2P.  That's some tenacity, there.  In comparison, it took GW2 3 YEARS and a paid expansion to fix condition stacking, a critical flaw in a core gameplay mechanic that affected all areas of play.
 
Now, W* has many problems.  Most of the ones that bug me are part of the core design (themepark MMO with treadmill progression) and aren't going away.  However, Like The Chicken Says, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.  The combat mechanics are great and the fights are awesome; no other game compares.  I choose to put up with the flaws in exchange for that.  So, like I said, it's all about managing expectations.	
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Part of the problem is that the hair in the food was spotted by the waiter and pointed out to the chef long before it spoiled the appetite of any diner, but the chef decided the hair was an intended ingredient and would add to the hardcore dining experience.
 
Now the chef keeps desperately changing the recipe and offering free meals to try to entice the clientele without ever acknowledging that a big part of the problem is the hair on the ingredient list. And it's got to the point where the recipe book has had so many pages rewritten that the intent of the original dish is long lost and too many dishes go out half cooked.
 
And still the hair remains, stubbornly floating in the sauce. But not to worry because a significant number of diners have convinced themselves they can't see it or say they don't mind because "all the other restaurants in town also have stray hairs in their food". Besides the food is now free, so how can anyone possibly complain? 	
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			I do agree about the F2P model. So far it seems almost excessively generous. But I'm on an account that purchased the original game. Maybe I should mess around with a completely new account to see if there's any difference.	
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Thanks for the replies, guys. You're all right, a lot of it is managing expectations.
 
Another pro I often forget about W* is that the community can be pretty f'ing awesome.	
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The only topic I will speak on directly is the lag spikes, because as far as I can tell they've been completely eliminated. I haven't experienced a single lag spike for nearly a week, and I play on Entity-1.
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Thanks for the replies, guys. You're all right, a lot of it is managing expectations.
 
Another pro I often forget about W* is that the community can be pretty f'ing awesome.
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It's about managing expectations.  W* is a down-on-it's-luck game from a beaten down developer.  Of course there will be bugs, problems, etc, since they have been barely rubbing two pennies together for the past year.  Under the circumstances, I'd say they've done a stupendous job.
 
Consider the following:  Since release, the following problems have been solved.
-Lack of solo end-game content (Vet shiphands, Omnicore-1, contracts)
-Lack of casual friendly end-game content (vet shiphands, adventures)
-Stupid attunement process locking new players out of raiding guilds
-Many, many bugs (to be fair, many remain, but it's silky smooth compared to what it was. Anyone else remember when we had to relog just to get the LAS to update?)
-At the same time, there have also been 3-4 major content releases.
-Multiple progression paths have been added (AMP points, for example, have sources available to every playstyle.)
 
All of this from a "dying" game that's been hemorrhaging players steadily until F2P.  That's some tenacity, there.  In comparison, it took GW2 3 YEARS and a paid expansion to fix condition stacking, a critical flaw in a core gameplay mechanic that affected all areas of play.
 
Now, W* has many problems.  Most of the ones that bug me are part of the core design (themepark MMO with treadmill progression) and aren't going away.  However, Like The Chicken Says, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.  The combat mechanics are great and the fights are awesome; no other game compares.  I choose to put up with the flaws in exchange for that.  So, like I said, it's all about managing expectations.
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I was thinking the same thing. I also have a box purchased free account, and wonder what a 100% no-money-invested free account is like.
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I love the game. Would keep playing it *as is* without any major changes. I've made plenty of noise about a few things, but they don't kill the game for me.
 
I really don't understand why anyone would quit playing this game other than it just being time to move on (which happens to all games at some point).
 
But that's just me (obviously!)	
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			I'm just peeved that dye costs haven't been reduced to something reasonable.	
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			Unequip your gadget, that still fixes everything....	
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			As for lag, the spikes are gone, but their is still an issue that cause the game to freeze for a split second every 2 seconds, after being in GA for an hour.  Have to shut the game down and restart it to fix it.  Sometimes once, sometimes several times a raid...  Started around drop 5.	
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I'm just peeved that dye costs haven't been reduced to something reasonable.
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I love the game. Would keep playing it *as is* without any major changes. I've made plenty of noise about a few things, but they don't kill the game for me.
 
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Well that's just it, though.  What exactly is 'reasonable'?  There's going to be a different answer from everyone.  So far I've been able to dye up 5 costumes on my alt that I'm leveling with no outside aid. While that character doesn't have very many dyes to choose from, I've been able to make plenty of costumes I'm happy with.   But someone else who's at max level with lots of exotic dye colors and expensive gear it might not be.   
 
Also relative is how much plat a person has, and how much they can make.   And on top of ALLLL of that is the simple fact that dyes are, at the end of the day, purely cosmetic. No one is FORCING you to spend plat on them like runes(for example).  A F2P game often lives and dies(see wut I did thar?)  by it's cosmetics. 
 
So what's reasonable?   
 
This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about when I say a lot of the problems faced by Wildstar are ones of perception. 
 
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I'm just peeved that dye costs haven't been reduced to something reasonable.
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Well that's just it, though.  What exactly is 'reasonable'?  There's going to be a different answer from everyone.  So far I've been able to dye up 5 costumes on my alt that I'm leveling with no outside aid. While that character doesn't have very many dyes to choose from, I've been able to make plenty of costumes I'm happy with.   But someone else who's at max level with lots of exotic dye colors and expensive gear it might not be.   
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How "exotic" or rare a dye is no longer has that much bearing on how much it costs to use it. Even the most basic and common dyes now cost a huge amount to use at level 50. You might as well use something rare as common because the costs are in the same ballpark.
 
As for what is "reasonable", are you aware that the price of using Common and Uncommon dyes at level 50 was raised by several THOUSAND percent from pre-F2P levels? For example, the most common dyes formerly cost about 30 silver to use for a whole outfit at level 50. With the F2P patch this went up to 1plat 75g. After protests the cost was reduced to 80g. So yes they reduced it, but it's still an enormous 26566% increase on the original cost. "Reasonable"? 
 
Anyway, enjoy your dyes while levelling and get your costumes sorted before you hit 50, because I predict your evaluation of what is "reasonable" will change when you hit 50.
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You can also dye an outfit for 10 service tokens, which cost about 20 omnibits. Pack of 30 tokens costs 60 omnibits...I seem to be able to farm that many bits every two or three days- but then again, I farmed up about 5 or 6 plat last night with the help of a gold potion.
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The time taken to earn 20 Omnibits for a Signature player is likely to be in the same ballpark as earning the gold / plat equivalent needed to use dyes. Besides, it still doesn't negate the fact that the cost to use most dyes has been jacked up exponentially for level 50s since F2P.
 
Of course, you can just bypass the in-game cost / grind and buy Service Tokens for RL cash ..... now we're getting to the crux of it aren't we.
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			Based on Rune Slot rolling costs, 10 tokens are worth about 1.5-2 plat (assuming 3 random rolls to get the slot you want, RNG and all that).  I find that a good ballpark figure to decide if it's worth using tokens or gold for a change.	
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			I was pointing out that what is 'reasonable' is not some objective number that where will be perfect for everyone. Some people make plat like it grows on trees. Other people struggle. There is no one 'reasonable'  figure that will mak everyone happy.     And that was my point about a LOT of stuff that's in the F2P reboot. I don't believe for a moment that people are being objective about the changes in F2P. A lot of people are losing their minds simple because it's DIFFERENT.  	
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I was pointing out that what is 'reasonable' is not some objective number that where will be perfect for everyone. Some people make plat like it grows on trees. Other people struggle. There is no one 'reasonable'  figure that will mak everyone happy.     
 
And that was my point about a LOT of stuff that's in the F2P reboot. I don't believe for a moment that people are being objective about the changes in F2P. A lot of people are losing their minds simple because it's DIFFERENT.
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Nice try playing the freebot card, but you're wrong. I have Signature status lasting well into next year. And I don't mind grinding out currency when I consider it fair (and I fully admit my definition of fair will differ from others). What I object to is being manipulated into spending RL money for things that formerly didn't require it, particularly when I'm not actually playing for free anyway (Deluxe Edition, Signature Status etc).
 
But if this is the way ahead for F2P, even for those with Signature, well I think your "good luck with that" quip might actually apply to Carbine.
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I just did the math, and the same packet of 30 service tokens is about $1.50 (USD). They make you buy Ncoin in 5 dollar increments....but...umm...
 
You know I'm starting to see the real problem here, and I think I'll stop trying to offer my advice. (You don't want to pay even miniscule amounts of RL money for things in game, nor grind for them and pay with omnibits....I guess you just want NCsoft to give you stuff for free? Good luck with that.)
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If you've never played F2P games before, then yes this is how it's going to be- because they can't count on subs to keep going. I really don't care if you play for free or not, but somebody has to give them money somewhere, or no more game...that's just simple realism, man.
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If the average is currently 1.5-2 plat to dye an entire costume, I think it should be lowered to 1-1.4plat.
 
Why?
 
Well, I'm only level 34, so this is based entirely on what I've been told here in the forums/in game chat, but.. level 50s have told me that they make about 20 gold just farming a Vet Expedition, and it takes about 20 minutes. So the current dye system would cost them roughly 2.3-3.3 hours, non-stop, to dye an entire costume. So, okay, average player- they've got about 2 hours a day to put into the game, give or take. I know there are people who spend a lot more time than that, but I don't think using an outlier to determine the pricing system is a good idea. But if you spend your entire time slot in a day to farm money to dye a costume, and if that's your goal for the night, that it should be a reasonable goal to reach. I think you should be able to achieve that goal. You're not farming a whole new cosmetic, or the dye itself, you're just trying to apply it, right? You have the pieces already.
 
At the same time, it shouldn't be cheaper than that, because you honestly shouldn't be changing your costume's dyes every other day. One or two colors on a costume-- okay, but an entire costume? That's why you're supposed to use extra Costume Slots, isn't it? Being able to easily change an entire costume's dyes every single day at level 50 defeats the purpose of having, or needing, extra Costume Slots.
 
So yeah.. somewhere between 1 plat to 1.4 plat average seems way more reasonable.	
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At the same time, it shouldn't be cheaper than that, because you honestly shouldn't be changing your costume's dyes every other day. One or two colors on a costume-- okay, but an entire costume? That's why you're supposed to use extra Costume Slots, isn't it? Being able to easily change an entire costume's dyes every single day at level 50 defeats the purpose of having, or needing, extra Costume Slots.
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Why shouldn't anyone change costume dyes regularly? Why not? Who does it harm?
Why does having cheap dye defeat the purpose of multiple costume slots?
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Why are you asking for prices to go back to how cheap they were, instead of asking Carbine to drop dye prices entirely?
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Ideally dyes should be free to use. Any costs (or challenges) should be in the acquiring of them, not the use of them. This would allow players the maximum freedom in putting together and experimenting with outfits whilst at the same time not restricting Carbine's ability to sell plenty of costumes and new dyes via the cash shop.  I haven't suggested that here because making dyes free to use is likely to be a quantum leap for Carbine, the best we can probably hope for is some sort of compromise.
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They have to monetize parts of the game somehow. If not in cosmetic parts then somewhere else. Would you prefer they sell power directly with cash store equipment, or lock parts of the game behind pay walls?
 
Monetizing the cosmetic aspects is the best possible outcome from the players standpoint. The pool of available players isn't split between f2p and subscriber. People aren't locked out of content because they can't afford it. 
 
So if carbine feels like they need to put a little more in-game pressure on people to encourage paying for a shortcut for dye costs, then I'm OK with it. Because the alternatives are much much worse.
 
If you want to argue that subscribers should get better, or even free, use of dyes as a perk or cosmic point unlock, then I'll get behind you and push. But complaining that the price is too high when it's a purely cosmetic part of the game that costs a currency that can be farmed without restrictions? I'm sorry, that just doesn't fly IMO.
			
				
	Edited November 7, 2015 by Elite Seraph	
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So if carbine feels like they need to put a little more in-game pressure on people to encourage paying for a shortcut for dye costs, then I'm OK with it. Because the alternatives are much much worse.
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I don't think that's ideal at all. You said it yourself: the cost of dyes was a gold sink. It's a common use of in-game currency to keep the market from becoming inaccessible to newer players. Remove dye prices entirely, you remove the gold sink, the market inflates. I also stand by what I said before about Costume Slots-- those are where Carbine makes more money, not the costumes or dyes themselves. When I've asked people what they spent their first Omnibits on, or what they splurged on in the store, typical answers are Costume Slots or the Decor Limit for Housing. I genuinely believe you're wrong about people not buying Costume Slots because of dye prices. What you consider unreasonable, I believe more people consider reasonable.
 
Ideally, I'm sure a lot of people would prefer all cosmetic items to be free, but that's not happening. We know where cosmetics stand with free-to-play games. You either play a pay-to-win, or a pay-to-dressup. WildStar's business model makes even paying to dress up reasonable-- or at least, way more reasonable than most pay-to-dressup business models I've seen. You can do some work and pay some gold, or you can buy Service Tokens and Costume Slots. I still believe they should cut dye prices down 30%, and obviously you still think that would be too much, but I'm trying to show a little reason here, and I explained why I thought a 30% cut was a reasonable price to work off of.
 
 
 
Make a point without using metaphors. If I asked you "if a young artist offered his work for $5 yesterday, does he not deserve to sell it for $50 tomorrow?" .. would you feel that's fair? No, because that's a bad metaphor, and so was yours. Dyes aren't coffee, and the dyeing service isn't an artist's work. The point you skimped over-- by ignoring my "if you had to compromise, how far would you be willing to compromise" and "where do you draw the line of 'too much'" questions-- was that I was asking you why you think that price, in particular, is fair. I wanted you to think about why you were actually shooting for a complete rollback to the old prices without compromise, besides "I want to spend less."
 
Why do you think that amount of money is okay for a costume? Why do you think the amount of time a player puts in to make that kind of money is more acceptable? Is it because that's what you were used to? Is it just because it's cheaper, or do you have some sort of baseline? What's your logic behind that price being "fair" compared to the new price?
 
"That's what it used to be" is not a point of logic or a reason.
 
( As an aside, a Plat is 100 Gold, not 1000. I mean, I get that you were using hyperbole to make what I said sound more ridiculous than it actually was, but it's kind of weird since a currency that switches off from 1:100 already translates so well to the dollar. )
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If you want to argue that subscribers should get better, or even free, use of dyes as a perk or cosmic point unlock, then I'll get behind you and push. But complaining that the price is too high when it's a purely cosmetic part of the game that costs a currency that can be farmed without restrictions? I'm sorry, that just doesn't fly IMO.
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Anyway, you asked where I draw the line. For me it's whether something represents good value for the money and/or time it requires to be invested in it. And most importantly of all, does this translate into fun / enjoyment.
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Seraph edited this into their post, and I didn't see it until now, but- this is a pretty radical idea. I still think they should knock the dye price down 30%, because I think a flat 2 hours of grinding is more than enough for a full cosmetic recolor, but I know people feel subscribing is underwhelming, and that's a real step forward for giving it value. Because right now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the subscription service doesn't really offer any cosmetic rewards.
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Let's say that we're still working off of the baseline that was determined in my original post- and I assume you agree that's a decent baseline for "farming gold", as nobody's corrected me yet (but if you believe you have a better baseline, believe me, I am open to being corrected)- that you can make 20 gold off of 20 minutes in an Expedition when you're at level 50. So you believe that a "good value", a fair trade for changing every single color on a player's costume, is exactly one minute of that player's time? One minute of time, one gold, you believe is a fair gold sink, and you're not willing to compromise on that?
 
Because I would like to talk hard numbers here, instead of just "it's not fun and it used to be cheaper."
 
Honestly, I don't believe most players will/do change their costume's dyes more than once a day, if even that much, at least not at endgame. I do not believe that 1 gold a day is a very good gold sink, and I do not believe that-- the gold, or the single minute of the player's time-- is what I would call "a fair trade."
 
 
 
I don't assume that you want everything for free. I assume that your frustration stems from the fact that something used to be cheaper, and is now a higher price. In general, people don't like paying more for something that they used to get for less, and it's often that simple. I am genuinely trying to understand if your problems are more grounded than that, though. I'd like to think I've made it pretty clear that I'm new to the game, and I'm working all this information based on what I have been/am being told-- and I'm open to being corrected about any information I have wrong-- but so far, it seems like only older players are complaining about the dye prices, which leads me to wonder if the dye prices are truly unreasonable or if people who used to have it cheaper are just feeling crossed.
 
 
 
To be clear: because I was talking to you, Cern, I was asking you what your thoughts on a compromise between the old price and the new price should be, if a compromise was to be made. I don't know why you'd think I would go searching for other threads for your very specific opinion on the matter, or why you couldn't just say the words "it needs to cap out at around 25g for rare dyes at level 50 and 10g for the common ones at level 50 (for a full outfit)", like you did in that thread.
 
Is it fair to assume you still believe those numbers, or has your opinion changed since the 31st?
 
 
 
Seraph edited this into their post, and I didn't see it until now, but- this is a pretty radical idea. I still think they should knock the dye price down 30%, because I think a flat 2 hours of grinding is more than enough for a full cosmetic recolor, but I know people feel subscribing is underwhelming, and that's a real step forward for giving it value. Because right now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the subscription service doesn't really offer any cosmetic rewards.
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And perhaps you'd prefer to bypass the grind using real money. If so, are you happy paying to bypass obstacles that were artificially put in place precisely to entice you pay to bypass them? Your call.
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It's hard to be precise about how much gold any player can earn per hour.
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I have mostly played f2p/b2p games.  I dabbled in Tera a couple months before the f2p announcement and that's it for my sub based experience before Wildstar.
 
I spend a lot of money on cosmetics per month.  PSO2 has ZERO issues extracting $200 from me some months (others it's only $100) even though I am at 100mil+ most of the time (I blew 300mil last time they had a boost even to get all my characters to new heights of gear power haha).  I can make money in game, but their items are awesome and I'd rather pay them.
Tera was rather slim on costumes, it still got my money before f2p and after f2p for both sub (sub in f2p had amazing perks) and outfits and mounts... even though I had the fastest mount in game (YAY having a guild to farm with).  I wanted different looks, I paid.  I even had no issues spending money on certain materials from the cash shop if I wanted to spare myself a few hours of farming. 
DDO also got plenty of my money, sadly less for aesthetics (western mmos, dude, they just... ) and more for convenience, slots, expansions, and... potions.
And more and more and more...  even games I tried just for a month or two, I gave some money.
 
I generally do not like to NOT pay. I do, however, like to receive value for my money.  I prefer to be ENTICED over FORCED.
 
And now we come to Wildstar.  At least one month now I have been completed FREE TO PLAY.  For the first time ever, I have played an MMO for a month and not given the developer a cent.  And do not feel inclined to either!
 
I am into cosmetics.  I may even forgive character bound cosmetics if price is not outrageous AND the cosmetics are amazing.
What I won't forgive is costumes and dyes I spend real money on proceeding to cost me in game coin to use.  NO, NO, and more HELL NO.
Especially the kind of cost I saw the last few times I got curious enough to check out some new dyes.  I have not even dyed the reward costumes I got for all the money I have already invested in this game!!!!!!!!!!  I put them on, tried some dyes, said hells no... and went and spent my money trying to fix my character's gear.
 
The dye costs stop me from clicking buy.  I have 15k NCOIN thanx to Blade and Soul betas and I am refusing to spend it.  
 
If Carbine wants me to part with my money they need to consider these things:
* Sub is completely worthless to me as a long time subscriber.  I won't even think of renewing once my free months come up.  If they wait too long to fix this, I won't change my mind just cause they add something in the last couple of weeks before we all expire.  I will just be so over it by then.
* Costumes and dyes are off the table as long as it is so costly to play with them in game once I have paid real money.  If I have to count in service tokens to use these without spending my plat (which Carbine already drained with the gear changes at f2p, thanx a lot), then the outfits and dyes on the Wildstar store are TOO EXPENSIVE.  Especially since the dyes are character bound.  
* Mounts are off the table because of either boring choices or completely unreasonable price for the one interesting mount for a character bound mount.
* Get more original, out of the norm and cutesy with your outfits. I need skirts, dudes, I need skirts!!!  For crying shame.
 
Trust me when I say, I was ready to dig into my PSO2 millions for outfits and spend that $100 at the Wildstar store but you guys have made me say NOPE at every single turn.
I was going to continue being a sub (I even paid sub over game's lifetime without even logging on for a few months, okay?), I was going to support Carbine... but this sub is the best example of waste of money for me.
 
What is the correct balance?  I love math, but I don't love it that much.  You'll know you reached the balance when you see me finally buy those dyes I was eyeing and those 3 outfits with all that NCOIN I have. And maybe even get more NCoin. 
Or I can shower my Blade and Soul characters with outfits like it's Christmas.  
 
Your choice, Carbine, your choice.
			
				
	Edited November 7, 2015 by DeaHamlet	
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See if this resonates with you at all:
 
To me, personally, Wildstar is like eating this absurdly delicious plate of food (I usually picture a perfectly grilled, medium rare burger) and finding a stray curly hair in it. The food is delicious and man, how you wish you could eat it, but that hair just spoils the whole thing and kinda makes you regret having had any.
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Then again, I'm the sort of person who quietly nods and tips his hat to a company that can cleverly make a buck off of a customer base's common lack of common sense, so maybe I'm just jaded to business practices.
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Well that's just it, though.  What exactly is 'reasonable'?  There's going to be a different answer from everyone.  So far I've been able to dye up 5 costumes on my alt that I'm leveling with no outside aid. While that character doesn't have very many dyes to choose from, I've been able to make plenty of costumes I'm happy with.   But someone else who's at max level with lots of exotic dye colors and expensive gear it might not be.   
 
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I want to bring up something here. There is a lot of back and forth about how they HAVE to put pressure on the player for coerce them to spend money. That isn't true. At all. Take a peek at Path of Exile. The game is completely F2P with you getting 24(!) character slots plus full access to the game. The only content you are gated from is cosmetics. There is nothing else offered besides the occasional customizable bank tabs. Of which are easily worked around via individual character inventories given the number of available slots. 
 
That title has been hugely successful to such an extent that they went from a tiny team of friends to requiring new office space on what feels like a yearly basis. They've even got a second free expansion in the works with a slew of major content updates already under their belts! Ontop of everything else they even do multiple events & contests on a regular basis to hand out cash shop items and/or exclusive cosmetics limited to that event. 
 
F2P does not have to be synonymous with so-called "convenience" items. If anything that type of model has been tougher and tougher to sell these days. If the product can stand on it's own then there is no reason for it not to. People are more than willing to throw down over $10,000 on PoE. Many of those folks aren't even afraid to admit it. It's something they are happy to have supported. Whereas many other F2P titles I play the amount you spent is a dirty secret you never speak up about. That has to say something. 	
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Why shouldn't anyone change costume dyes regularly? Why not? Who does it harm? Does it stop your enjoyment of the game if I'm dressed in black one day and red the next?
 
Why does having cheap dye defeat the purpose of multiple costume slots? You don't have to use costume slots to create colour variations of the same outfit (although you can if you wish of course). The extra slots are also for different outfits, different combinations, different looks. There's so much gear that you can unlock as costumes the possibilities are endless. Except they aren't if the cost of applying dye is prohibitive.
 
It's such a shame that Wildstar has such a rich and varied costume system and such a wonderful range of vibrant dyes and then punishes you for actually using them and experimenting.
 
All that excessive dye prices achieves is locking players into costumes they have invested in. If the investment is too high then many players will just stick with what they have rather than express themselves and experiment. In the long run this will harm Carbine's ability to sell new costumes and dyes through the cash shop, so it's not even in their own interests to have such a system.
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What I won't forgive is costumes and dyes I spend real money on proceeding to cost me in game coin to use.  NO, NO, and more HELL NO.
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I could say something like "a person who is worried about the in-game economy because there are F2P players coming in constantly and introducing new gold every second, where the dye system is a reasonable gold sink and shouldn't be so cheap that spending money on your costume is easily dismissive", but the actual answer is "I'm not, Carbine/NCsoft are the ones telling you what you shouldn't be doing with your own characters' costumes."
 
Because your characters are part of their game, and their game is one complete structure, and one of the building blocks of that structure is that the Holo-Wardrobe allows players to keep costume pieces that they save and equip them at any time without lugging them around in an inventory. It allows players to have several different colored versions of the same clothing without having to buy duplicates of that clothing, and without farming the clothing or dyes. The trade-off to this, and the lack of gold being taken out of the economy from the usual taxes on market trades that would come with dye and armor/costume sales, is that dyeing the armor costs in-game currency.
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The holo-wardrobe is not unique. There are other MMOs with identical costume systems - heck, costume system that are actually better because 1) they don't charge you to dye your clothes and 2) you're not asked to purchase additional armor skin slots, because the game automatically unlocks every appearance that ever lands in your inventory.
 
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that something as basic as how your character's armor looks should be so damaging to a player's wallet. Dyeing did not need a 3000% increase to its cost.
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a myriad lingering bugs (some from beta!)
poor server stability
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I've stated my acceptable dye price in other threads - caps out at around 25g for a full costume.
 
Small gold sinks that players hit often will always work better than large, painful ones that drive players away.	
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Small gold sinks that players hit often will always work better than large, painful ones that drive players away.
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I just want to again chime in to remind everyone that dyes are one off purchases in SWTOR in set unchangeable color patterns and the best colors cost upwards of 5-10 million credits for a one time use dye in a set 2 channel pattern that can't be altered....
 
 
I don't disagree with the dye prices needing adjusting, but compared to other successful F2P competitors W*'s system is exceedingly generous and customisable... give them SOME credit at least?	
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Good point, Dea. A dye from the cash shop should not cost in-game currency to apply. In general, anything that you buy with cash should not continue costing you.
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I think you might be biased when you say that.
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Most developers seem to miss that part. The 'micro' of 'microtransactions'.
 
The number of people who I've heard saying "Not dying costumes anymore on my main" has been increasing slowly since the cost changes. So excuse me for me thinking the dye gold sink isn't working as well as it should for level 50 characters. Too much of an expense when you have to count every single platinum you have because you must re-tweak your runes for the 18th time.
			
				
	Edited November 7, 2015 by Ildur	
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I just want to again chime in to remind everyone that dyes are one off purchases in SWTOR in set unchangeable color patterns and the best colors cost upwards of 5-10 million credits for a one time use dye in a set 2 channel pattern that can't be altered....
 
 
I don't disagree with the dye prices needing adjusting, but compared to other successful F2P competitors W*'s system is exceedingly generous and customisable... give them SOME credit at least?
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Please don't pretend we're not giving them credit. I've repeatedly gushed about WS's wardrobe system. I also know there are games that do it better and ways WS can do better.
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Uh, no. This is the theory behind the "micro" in "microtransactions".
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