115166-carbine-you-have-an-awesome-game-but-i-have-a-few-suggestions

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This game, objectively, has an incredibly robust set of features.  Subjectively it is addictively fun.  I've had a lot of fun with the combat system and the WildStar universe is really entertaining.  My suggestions are going to be pretty easy to implement I think, because quite frankly, all the "bits-and-pieces" are all there, but they just seem like they've been assembled in the wrong order (why are the handle-bars where the peddles need to be...?).
 
1.  Give your Marketing campaign a face-lift:
-Get away from "RAIDZ RAIDZ RAIDZ!  HARDCORE! YEAH!!!!"  Imagine if Six Flags never advertised anything but the Mr. Freeze.  How many people do you think would actually go? 
 
There are so many things to do in this game, but most people have no clue that they're even there!  For example, I had no idea what a Shiphand mission was until I finally found one and did it the other day- and I had an absolute blast with it!  An adjustable small-group/solo story driven instance?  It's an incredible idea and a great way to break up the solo-leveling experience.  Things like this should be advertised more aggressively.
 
-Get rid of the "Put your Mommy Dress on, you're going to Nexus, Cupcake!" fratboy crap, it's ok inside the game, but it's a horrible advertising model. 
 
There is a perception from others that phrases like this somehow personify not only the totality of the game (which it doesn't), but also the people that play it (who are nothing like that).  I've seen so many people say they refused to play the game because of the "deuche-baggery" associated with the game.  I'd also be remiss if I didn't say that I have also noticed that minority of Elitist pricks jumping from forum to forum badmouthing every other MMO out there while singing the praises of WildStar's "cupcaking awesomeness that would kill WoW and all other MMOs"...  Obviously, you can't control the behaviors of the loud-mouths on the internet, but your advertising campaign only lent itself to the erroneous perception that your company somehow wanted/condoned this toxic fanboi behavior (I know, I know, it's not what you were going for, but that is the perception).
 
-Make use of Youtube and "Gaming Journalists".  Show those features off that aren't directly related to raiding, too.  You have so many great things in this game that are legitimately fun to do, you have things for everyone to do and enjoy, put them front and center.  Show people that WildStar is not just some "one-trick-pony" that caters only to the "hardcore" ex-vanilla-WoW crowd.
 
2.  Re-work some mechanics:
 
-I don't remember who said it, but I like the idea so much that I'm going to parrot it.  Change the Gold, Silver, Bronze system from Performance to Difficulty. 
 
I.e. make it a selectable setting when entering the dungeon similar to WoW's Normal vs. Heroic difficulty settings.  Accomplishing this could be as simple as adding the difficulty settings and instituting a non-dispellable group wide buff for each difficulty setting (e.g.: Bronze = +X% of damage dealt / - X% damage received, Silver = +Y% dealt / -Y% received, Gold = No Modifier... Platinum = -X% dealt / +X% received) and then use the Leaderboards to show how quickly groups accomplish Gold/Platinum Difficulty runs based on a timer/deaths, etc.  Along with that, include a loot table/Xp modifier to make the rewards congruent with the challenge.
 
The purpose behind this is to give players a greater sense of control regarding who they will be grouping with.  As it stands, people tend to leave the group when they realize that Gold Performance is no longer achievable, and this drastically reduces a desire to participate (as opposed to inspiring people to try and try again as a group, it sucks, but that's what people do, gotta roll with the punches there).  Now when people queue for a dungeon or invite others to join, the intentions are perfectly clear ("this is a casual run for kicks" vs. "we're looking for a challenge!")
 
-Make Shiphand missions immediately repeatable and add them to the Group Finder as they are in their current incarnation.  Shiphand missions, as I said earlier, are a great way to break up the monotony.  They're short, fairly simple, story-driven, and just a relaxed fun little diversion.  They are also absolutely perfect for people who:
 
a) only have a few friends/guildies online at the point in time, and/or;
 B) only have a short period of time to play and just want to hop in do something and hop out before they have to do something outside of the game. 
 
These days, most of your customers are the working adults that used to attune for the Raids in vanilla WoW.  We went from having "too much" free time to having virtually no free time.  (That reminds me, I have to pick up my son from school soon and then I have to make dinner and load the dishwasher, and then fold the laundry...).
 
-Remove the requirement to find the entrance of an instance before being allowed to queue for them in the Group Finder, allow them to be queued for once the appropriate level has been reached.  Again, the purpose behind this is to break up the "grind" so to speak.  People are more likely to forget how long they have been playing if they feel as though they have a wider variety of activities available to them.  Right now the game does not seem to lend itself to that feeling.  This will be a good way to make the other activities in the game more accessible (especially for those leveling alts).
 
-Sever the connection between the Attunement and the Raids.  People will happily run the same Raid over and over and over and over again trying to perfect their technique while they wait for the next x-pac/drop to come out, but as you can see, most people are not willing to solo-grind the same Attunement dailies over and over again for weeks on end... they just quit instead.  The difference here is when people are Raiding, they're with their friends/guildmates and are being social and that is where the best part of the MMO experience comes in to play.  It is the experience of creating your own adventure when engaged in group activities. 
 
For a lot of people, grinding dailies as a mandatory requirement before they can enter that portion of the content is a HUGE deal-breaker in today's MMO market.  WildStar is an awesome game but it is also an awesome game that is swimming in a sea of awesome games, most of which don't have Attunements as a pre-requisite to the fun stuff.  Keep that in mind.
 
Remove the Attunement as a pre-requisite to Raiding.  Getting Attuned is not "hard" or a "challenge", it's not even a "skill-check".  It's a "dedication-check", it is boring as hell and a completely pointless Time-Sink, and you're charging people monthly for it - they're already paying, they're already dedicated.  Get rid of Attunement.  Seriously, get rid of it.
 
-So, let's say you do get rid of the Attunement, what are you going to do with those Months/Years of hard work in development that your people put into designing it???  Tweak it! 
 
Yes, the endgame solo-experience is lacking a bit isn't it...?  Well, you've got all this stuff you're not using anymore, now you adjust it and give the endgame Solo/Casual crowd something to do while you work on adding more new content to the game.  Combine this change with the changes to the dungeon difficulty system and the addition of the Ship-hands to the Group finder and now you suddenly have a whole plethora of activities available to players of all playstyles!  Sure, it's not the "perfect" solution, but it's a huge improvement over the current state of things and addresses many of the biggest complaints that come from people who quit the game after they hit level cap.
 
The best gear with the coolest designs should come from the more difficult content, like the Raids, right?  Well, adjust the stats on the gear that can be purchased from the daily quests, keep the best gear as Raid drops!
 
-Tone down the RNG for gear drops from Dungeons and Raids.  I see no reason not to keep the RNG where it is for the easiest content- like Shiphands and Adventures, but when people take the time to go through the hardest content, they do so with the expectation that they will be handsomely rewarded with "them lootz!" for their efforts.  Don't disappoint :)
 
Well, to wrap things up, here.  I am thoroughly enjoying the game.  You legitimately have an awesome game here, and everything you need to bring people back to it is already a part of the game.  I've seen it, and it is damned fun!  I think with a few adjustments you'll be in a great position to really show off all the great things that Wildstar already has to offer, and I wanted to share a few of my ideas for how I think that can happen.
 
Thanks for your time!	
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1.  Give your Marketing campaign a face-lift:
-Get away from "RAIDZ RAIDZ RAIDZ!  HARDCORE! YEAH!!!!"  Imagine if Six Flags never advertised anything but the Mr. Freeze.  How many people do you think would actually go? 
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Why do so many people think this?  AFAIK there is only ONE video that acts like this, and.. surprise surprise... its the video that actually highlights raiding.  Granted, I haven't seen every snippet of promotional material for the game, but people seem to be way over-blowing the emphasis of that one video.
 
I think the problem is that the raid video was released right before the game came out so its the one the most people saw.  However, there's tons of other videos that highlight the various other features of the game, they just came out earlier.  Can we please kill this annoying misconception?  Because it's not at all accurate...  I had to scroll almost to the bottom of the main website page to see anything about raids, and even then it was hidden under a button.
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I agree, I didn't actually see much about the raids before the game was released either.  Looking at the comments on the various news articles about the game, though, that seems to be the number 1 thing that people talk about.  So, yeah, I'm not sure where it came from, whether it was because of one video or something someone at Carbine said during an interview, but people got the idea from somewhere and they've been running with it.  I think with some judicious use of the various media outlets Carbine can kind of push away from the misconception though.  It doesn't even really have to be a full-blown ad campaign.  They can casually start mentioning it in various places and see if it catches on and then start jump-start a new ad campaign once they get some of the other issues sorted out.
 
I do have to say though, I haven't noticed any major issues with this game that aren't what I would describe as "par for the course" when it comes to new MMOs (except maybe the optimization issue, but clearly something there has improved significantly because I can actually play this game now and it runs pretty smooth compared to when I bought it at release, so kudos there).	
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I must admit that I showed the "RAIDZ" video to someone shortly before launch and it quickly turned them off. He were curious about the game and I thought he would love the fact that it wasn't a walk in the park. It had the exact opposite effect. This is a guy who has a lot on his plate. Job, family, yadda yadda. He felt that he simply wouldn't have the time nor desire to learn something that time/energy intensive. I tried to assure him that they was plenty of other things to do but the damage had already been done. Yes, he is by definition a casual now but he also knows what the hell he is doing in a MMO environment. His past gaming history proves that. Still, he was instantly turned off by it.
 
Less emphasis on the "Hardcore" might not hurt at this point. That crowd will always run for the hardest challenge and It certainly exists in the game. The problem is that some people are under the misconception that Wildstar is ONLY hard content. People might not always want to admit that they are casual players to the public. They do know it in their own heads and won't even touch a game if they think they will just constantly get stomped on.	
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			I definitely agree with almost all your points.  Not that raiding is a bad part of Wildstar, I am really jazzed for it considering how fun and challenging the dungeons are, but it has so many other amazingly fun and addictive systems like rewarding exploration and lore, fun and useful crafting, an insanely addictive housing system (I could not get into Landmark for anything but Wildstar housing has held my interest for days), and THE best community I have ever played with in gaming history(there, I said it!).  Carbine should really capitalize on this and market the crap out of the game once drop 3 hits.  I am trying my best not to white knight the game, it does have some issues, but it is honestly the most fun game I have ever played and I've been gaming since '83.  It really deserves a larger audience but SrFrogg I think it will happen once drop 3 hits since it's going to (hopefully) remove a lot of the bugs and streamline the game to Carbine's original vision and make it more tantalizing for new Cupcakes to join the ranks of Exile and Dominion.	
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I must admit that I showed the "RAIDZ" video to someone shortly before launch and it quickly turned them off. He were curious about the game and I thought he would love the fact that it wasn't a walk in the park. It had the exact opposite effect. This is a guy who has a lot on his plate. Job, family, yadda yadda. He felt that he simply wouldn't have the time nor desire to learn something that time/energy intensive. I tried to assure him that they was plenty of other things to do but the damage had already been done. Yes, he is by definition a casual now but he also knows what the hell he is doing in a MMO environment. His past gaming history proves that. Still, he was instantly turned off by it.
 
Less emphasis on the "Hardcore" might not hurt at this point. That crowd will always run for the hardest challenge and It certainly exists in the game. The problem is that some people are under the misconception that Wildstar is ONLY hard content. People might not always want to admit that they are casual players to the public. They do know it in their own heads and won't even touch a game if they think they will just constantly get stomped on.
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Oh, Carbine, here's another one, though, it should've happened waay before launch:
 
Stop crowdsourcing your game.
 
We suck at designing games, why would you take advice from people like that, now see the mess you're in
 
XD	
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			Pretty good suggestions overall.  As for the people saying that Wildstar didn't push this game as a hard raiding game, your wrong.  Besides the promo video with the guy repeating the words "hardcore" over and over during a raid, Carbine staff too a lot of opportunities during pre-game interviews, twitter feeds and game conventions to talk about how WS would have complex raids and would have a hardcore theme to them.  So ya, Carbine kinda did focus on it a lot, well at least any time discussions went into the topic of raids.	
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Pretty good suggestions overall.  As for the people saying that Wildstar didn't push this game as a hard raiding game, your wrong.  Besides the promo video with the guy repeating the words "hardcore" over and over during a raid, Carbine staff too a lot of opportunities during pre-game interviews, twitter feeds and game conventions to talk about how WS would have complex raids and would have a hardcore theme to them.  So ya, Carbine kinda did focus on it a lot, well at least any time discussions went into the topic of raids.
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Funny enough I always thought the 'You're going to Nexus, cupcake!' vids were tongue in cheek comedy and what made me think this game had a sense of humour for the casuals.
It's the same voice that tells you 'Ohhh SH-BLEEP You leveled up!' and the intro to new areas, as far as I know that kind of pumping-up is something that doesn't go on with the hardcore crowd, they're too serious and elitist to have that kinda fun.	
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I distinctly remember someone sporting a "Filthy Casuals" hat during a stream.
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I like your ideas OP, and very nicely stated as well. It's so refreshing to read a topic that not only gives some suggestions, but is respectful in the presentation of negative feedback (i.e. Not ranting and raving with hatred about some issues that you disagree with). I wish more people would learn how to be respectful and calm at same time when discussing issues they don't like or agree with. But, meh, that's just never going to happen.
 
Anyway, like I said, I really like your ideas. I would like to add a few minor ones if that is ok (not going to say anything major because one, that would take away from your OP, and two, with the focus on drop 3, I would never expect them to even consider major ideas/suggestions from us right now)
 
1. Add some way to advertise a person craft trade (meaning a way for someone to be able to "shop" a person's trade to see what that crafter can make.)
 
2. Fix the current in game chatting system (mainly the whisper, and sure there are add-ons, but with the upcoming megaserver, the chatting system is really going to be a pain. Maybe some type of scrolling from previous messages?)
 
3. More costumes! (and before anyone says anything about the dye costs, they have already stated they were looking into reducing the price of dying gear)
 
4. Give us pets/companions! (ok, this is more for my liking lol)
 
5. Allow Engineers to name their pets(shouldn't be hard to do since Scientists can name their Scanbots, again another personal enjoyment)
 
 
I know these may seem silly and small, but that's the point. Making bigger suggestions probably won't happen with devs focused on drop 3 right now.	
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I was just checking on the General Discussion because my buddy said Frost left and happened to catch this.  So I ran a heroic raiding guild in WoW, 10 man because I really like having the small, really tight group that could get stuff done.  Finding 20 (or 40) people who can get along, have a good time, wipe for hours and not take it personally, is a rough gig.  I was a part of a lot of crappy guilds in several MMOs prior to this one.  Community was key.
 
The problem I've had with Wildstar and why my account is only active due to CREDD is because the "hardcore mentality" plus the "uber l33tz" marketing really put me out.  I was literally "the old guy" at 29 years old in most guilds.  My buddy who's 31 would laugh because the only guild we were in that actually had the skill to raid was full of 15 year olds (or acted as such).  The hardcore thing also put a lot of stigma on never failing.  Oh you died to a Stormtalon swipe "OMG NEWB GTFO".  I mean every game has trolls, but this one seems like they're a magnet for them.  I had no problem teaching mechanics (so long as someone says it's their first time).  I don't take it personally when someone jacks up a mechanic, it's about the journey, and that was lost in this game.  I felt like if I didn't do it perfectly the first time, then I was just some "filthy casual".  Whatever.  Got more talent and strategy than most the kids out there. 
 
Truthfully, I feel like raiding wasn't even that difficult.  I ended at 2/6 GA on my DPS spellslinger in a matter of two weeks (including Gravitron and Genetic Monstrosity.  And the damn rhino).  These were people who had never played together, and weren't really disciplined or anything like that.  They just stacked the raid with Engineers and Warriors (around early to mid-July) and they'd just win. Oh, and egg rooms serve no purpose other than to test how many scientists you can bring to a raid to summon - ditch 'em.
 
I also like the idea of medal = difficulty myself.  Nearly every time I got into a dungeon, I'd bring myself and one other friend, and we'd PUG the other 3.  More often than not, we'd have at least one guy who was just struggling to learn his class or the fights (or both).  And then the run falls apart.  I was on the Stormtalon part of attunement for almost 3 weeks trying to get people to learn the fight, and I can't tell you how many people would show up for 2 attempts then bail because silver was no longer achievable, etc.
 
PvP was grossly out of balanced and not really fun at the end of the day.  You can only play Walatiki so many times, and nobody plays the other two.  I rolled Dominion in the beginning which was a huge mistake. Exile has way more people.  I even re-rolled a warrior, but the DPS is boring and nobody will take you seriously as a tank because they read tha one forum post that said warriors can't tank (I was able to do silver dungeons no problem, even with 2900 AP+ DPS).  I almost re-rolled spellslinger on exile, then I remembered all of my process in crafting, and daily factions, and that's about the time I put wildstar down.  There is a 0% chance I will ever re-grind those factions.  Those dailies are bad.  Really bad.  And at the end of the day it affords me the possiblity of buying a vendor item multiple times until I get good slots or the AMP/ability point now.
 
And last but not least, the SS class.  Great concept, loved to play it, but oh my lord choosing the Spell Surge innate was the biggest mistake ever.  Not so much a skill check, but how many bugs you can exploit.  The balancing still hasn't taken place and there's bugs galore.  We have some folks in the community who call them bugs but outright some of them are exploits.  The "free" surged assassinate is an exploit even if you "have trouble avoiding it in a regular rotation".  T4 Flame Burst still doesn't work last I played, and virtually no communication from the SS team lead whille I was still reading the forums.  Just really, really disappointed with how that turned out.
 
Great game, lots of promise, but really poorly executed.  I'll stop by again in about 6 months when there's a real shot that this game could be fun.  For now - I'm out.	
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To mention one more thing in regard to the NCSoft promotion of hardcore raiding: 
 
I truly believe that the hardcore elitist marketing campaign, the forums for a long time becoming a battleground between white knight hardcore elitests arguing with casuals (July and August mainly), Devs wearing 'filthy casual' clothing, punishing dungeons for casuals along with attunement all created and fostered a toxic gaming environment.
 
It was this toxic environment that pushed out most casuals leaving what we have for players today- which is a mix of elites, mid-cores and a much smaller population of casuals than we should have.
 
I think for marketing and game design moving forwards that NCSoft should make a more welcoming and friendly game for all. Don't nerf anything, but allow casuals and others to see all the content. I think we are actually starting to move that way right now, but let's keep going the friendly route and figure out how to get back all the casuals, mid core and others that left the game during the 'toxic months' that followed launch.
 
I think if the game were to promote more communication between players to build more in game relationships and comraderie that would help with the fun factor. Right now in game there isn't much need to talk with anyone for any reason. Anything that promotes players talking with each other to meet and making new friends in game goes a very long way for the 'fun factor' in MMO's.	
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I’ll start this up next week.
 
 
 
Providing better warplots rewards is the goal moving forward.
 
 
 
I like this. I’ll speak to the other stakeholding teams and see if I can get traction to move forward on something like this
 
 
 
 I’m not a fan of the idea of giving early access for something like runes.
 
 
 
A lot of good ideas here. I am currently working on a system that removes rating requirements and implements some of the things you have mentioned. It’s targeted for season 2, but unfortunately I can’t give an ETA on season 2.
 
 
 
Its not so much an issue of balancing for WPvP vs. Instanced, it’s a matter of having to balance abilities that are used in both PvP and PvE.
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ok, First of all
 
MMOs were always a niche genre
 
If this game is supposed to be for the masochistic, no life, "hardcore" elitist, toxic jerks or the casuals, the weekend warriors, the people with lives, the baddies, etc. It should be so, but, done right.
 
But as it is now, it pleases nobody.
 
The devs took so many decisions that tried to please the crowd that ended up delivering a half assed experience.
 
What the OP is suggesting here is pointless and will not work. It's not that easy
 
And Drop 3 is not actually gonna help that much, to be completely honest.
 
What Carbine needs to do is stop, and think who is gonna play this game, will it be the the casuals, the weekend warriors, the people with lives, the baddies, etc; or the masochistic, no life, "hardcore" elitist, toxic jerks? They can't go with both, they cannot have 2 different games in the same game with such incompatible people in it playing at the same. And then with that decision in mind, make the corresponding game design and development.
 
Basically, the game is a mess, and it will be until Carbine sit down and come up with a coherent design for it. Maybe in a expansion, if the game actually survives that long as it is. Unless they want to wipe everything and start everything from zero, a la FFXIV
 
That's it in a nutshell. And there is more, but, it would take me a lot more time and space because I'd have to cover from the leveling, the questing flow, the dailies, the timegates, the pvp side, the pve side, the fact that those sides exist. The game flow, that doesn't match the huge crowd they are trying to cater. It's just a mess.	
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It's not easy to get the balance right, but it is very possible to have a large amount of content that appeals to a wide variety of playstyles, given enough time.  I could list a few examples, but the most prominent example to date would be World of Warcraft.  Keeping in mind that Blizzard didn't turn it WoW into what it is overnight, they nonetheless were able to do it.  Now that is a game that ranges from extremely casual to ultra-hardcore and people can drift from one end of the spectrum to the other or anything in between.  So, it certainly is possible.
 
Also, keeping in mind that Wildstar has only been out for about ~3 months (?) going on 4.  There's definitely room for growth, and providing feedback as a customer helps to provide some direction for that growth.  Perhaps the ideas that people have suggested are not as simple as we, the customers, would like to believe they are, but it doesn't hurt to say "these are the qualities that I would like to see in the product that I am paying for". 
 
Carbine is a business, providing a product/service, and the design of the product is ultimately up to them.  As customer's, we have the option of explaining in plain terms, what exactly will entice us to continue spending our money on the product vs. what we are not willing to spend our money on.  If people don't take the time to explain what they are looking for in the product, how is the company supposed to know if they are providing the product that people are willing to pay for?
 
I'm failing to see how ranting gloom-and-doom is in any way constructive/useful on this thread.	
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			Oh, hey, would it be at all possible to get mailboxes at our housing plots?  I'm a bit of a shut-in and I don't like having to run to town just to pick up the mail :)	
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Oh, hey, would it be at all possible to get mailboxes at our housing plots?  I'm a bit of a shut-in and I don't like having to run to town just to pick up the mail :)
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Heh, I must have completely missed those.  Thanks, Olivar!
 
Just a side-question:  Where do baby Chuas come from...?	
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Heh, I must have completely missed those.  Thanks, Olivar!
 
Just a side-question:  Where do baby Chuas come from...?
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IMO wildstar should try and be a challenging game with awesome 5 man and 20 man content and keep improving the housing system.
 
Trying to cater to everyone else with free stuff everywhere, epics dropping left and right will, focusing too much on RPers and new zomes will not make wildstar stand out, it will be World of Warcraft V2.
 
Stick to what Carbine is good at, challenging, fun 5 man and 20 man content. Sure the game might have a million subs but I know there is a market out there for people that wants to put in effort to obtain something unique.	
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