123382-returning-player-questions-quit-after-1st-month

== Content ==
			
Hey guys,
 
I'm exploring the possibility of returning to Wildstar. I played on launch and quit after the first month, here are some of my reasons for quitting and questions as I am deliberating returning.
 
Reasons I quit shortly after release:
 
1) Combat
 
While I am a huge fan of skill shot based combat, I dislike the lack of rotation/natural synergy in abilities that I am accustomed to in WoW. It feels extremely simplistic in terms of Generator -> Dump abilities with very little to no cohesion in rotation.
 
I think this is extremely important to take note of as it has come up over and over during conversations with friends.
 
2) Lack of Skills
 
I am not advocating the need for 40 skills of which only 5 are used 90% of the time, but to only have 4-5 abilities at all strikes me as extremely bland.
 
3) Grind
 
I felt as though at lvl cap, I was hit in the face with a grind immediately. Be it reputation, dailies or instances to attune. I am not against attunement but I am not a fan of the way it was implemented. A suggestion I would have is to require the Raid Endboss of the current Raid to kill before being able to enter the next Raid.
 
5) Optimization/Performance
 
I will detail my computer specs, I also stream with this computer and play more intense games than Wildstar without any issues at all. However, I recall frame rate drops regularly in Wildstar... which is unacceptable. I am told that optimization has been increased.
 
4) Housing
 
Item limit was too low for my ambitions, I realize this has been greatly increased... so thats good.
 
 
Questions to you!
 
1) Population
 
Honestly, the #1 question that I have that has me on the edge of returning is this, is Wildstar dying? You may think this is silly, but to me an MMO is an investment, of my time... and effort. I do not want to come in to Wildstar, only to have it go belly-up in 2-3-5-9 months. 
 
I hate free to play conversions, with a passion. Suddenly development focus is divided to cash shop and quality of content drops etc.
 
So my question is, how populated is this game? This whole "Mega Servers" sounds like a load of BS to consolidate servers. I already know that out of the 2 (Holy sh*% this game has only 2 servers?!?!?!) only 1 is actually playable in terms of activity, that is horrendously sad.
 
2) Development
 
How frequently are content patches coming nowadays?
 
3) Developers/Studio
 
I see very little communication from Devs to Community here as in contrast in other games, this makes me feel uneasy about the product.
 
 
 
Thx boys n' girls	
----
			
1. There are still people playing and people starting to play.
2. I wanna say quarterly... but I don't think I can... Everyone says the most recent one was pretty good though.
3. Not a question, but I don't think they have a whole bunch to tell us, aside from the crap they already have and we already know.	
----
			
Quick thoughts/answersThey're still refining classes and aiming to create different playstyles for each class but overall it depends what you were doing. It seems easy when you're just tapping keys in open world/adventures but once you're in a difficult raid trying not to die while watching mechanics/red/interrupts it's a lot more difficult. If you want a rotation that takes mental power, consider Esper. In all honesty though, the players I've seen say this are usually being narrow-minded and don't even have the proper skills on their bar or are doing something else wrong.
 
Not sure what you mean by lack of skills, you get 8 on your LAS, you normally use 6 of them in your rotation and the other 2 are interrupts/CC/Movement in any mix. You have 30 or so to pick from and normally you will need to pick certain ones at times, example: Wars need to run defense grid for some fights
 
As far as the grind or w/e, not sure what you mean here either by your suggestion but in any case, if you're incapable of handling around 8-9 hours of effort total (not all at once) into attunement you can buy a pristine genesis key that drops from Ohmna. It costs quite a bit of plat but there's no grind involved if you're the type to sell CREDD, good luck in a raid if you had trouble in dungeons though.Optimization is a continuing effort from what we know, they've done pretty well making it better but it's still not amazing and quite a problem in datascape for certain areas.Population wise, I believe yes there are a lot of returning players and new players from what I've seen. The activity of queues is looking a lot brighter and I've pugged dungeons regularly/pvp'd daily for the past few weeks personally. I've also leveled up and seen lots of new players/alts in zones as I moved through. Second point, they are megaservers and you can take off the tinfoil hat. Last point, free transfers hurt the pvp megaserver in the end and continue to hurt how new players see the game sadly.
 
Content (drops) is about 4 months apart currently.Communication is about the same, more than likely if it seems lower lately it would be because they have very little free time. I hardly use the forums now though so I don't keep up with it.	
----
			
---------------------------------------------
re;how populated is this game? 
--------------------------------------------
Hi, I have returned also and am finding that this game has about the same amount of people in the zones I was questing in to be about the same if not slightly more than say a medium pop realm. I never checked if there is a /who command.
 
Differently more friendlies on the weekend I noticed, though my time slot could be different than others who visit and read the forum.
 
---------------------------------------------
re: I hate free to play conversions, with a passion. Suddenly development focus is divided to cash shop and quality of content drops etc.
---------------------------------------------
 
I haven't seen the mob drops past level 25, so can only comment up until that. I am not sure if it is the amount of mobs I farmed between 20-25 or standard for new characters but I had been happy with the gear drops to date (Seen a few Epics and a Dozen Rares). In fact I find that more gear drops than I currently need for the level I am at. (If it stays like this even at level cap, I would be happy)
 
In closing, I shall say welcome back.	
----
			
There is a /who command, but I believe it's limited to showing 50 people at a time. Loot drops at high level are decent, but don't expect to get geared that way (unles you are really, really into grinding mobs). You can do Veteran Shiphands, though. They give renown even when soloed, and there's a renown set that can get you started into the group content (because clearly soloers want to play in groups deep down, right? *snort*). You would also be more lucky grinding for platinum and trying your luck at the AH for crafted gear, though I'm not sure how much better/worse than the starter renown set those are.
 
Anyway, to the OP in no particular order:
 
-The active skill limit is there to ensure you have to approach things strategically and to reward players who know what they are doing. You need to switch skills depending on the situation and adapt to it. The number of skills (8) might be a bit arbitrary, but that's basically the limit of how comfortable your hand will be moving from the buttons 1-8. Unless you remap your keys to something unorthodox or your mouse has a ton of extra buttons. But most people don't have those and this game's combat isn't very good for clicking icons in your bar (though you can do that, funnily enough).
 
-Grind has been moderated somewhat. Certain missions require killing less enemies and there's Veteran Shiphands for level 50 characters now, that grant renown even when played solo. They are varied enough. At least much more than the daily zones. Of course, the daily zones are still there and you are still expected to maximize your reputation in those, but I can't tell you if it's any quicker than before. I'm certainly not looking forward to repeat any of it with any of my characters.
What I can tell you is that I tried the daily zones after Drop 4 and they seemed to go smoother and faster. Not by much, but I noticed it.
 
-Population seems fine to me. Naturally, the good the goodier guys the Exiles seem to have greater numbers. You might not run into loads of people everywhere, and I'm sure the population dries off at the middle levels (after 30, I'd say). But that's a guess based on other games.
 
-Patches are theoretically every 3 or 4 months, as stated above by other people. As you can guess, this might or might not change. 
 
-Can't comment on communication since I don't visit the forums that often, and when I do I keep myself to a handful of threads.	
----
			
1. Combat
I don't know to which level you played or which class, but there's a big synergy between skills. The base is indeed as you mentioned that it's builder and dumping it, but when you start looking at the tier bonuses of spells, you will see that spells actually start to work together, boosting the damage or effects of a given spells when another is used or active.
Unlike wow where you activate your spells in a given sequence, you actually have multiple options in WildStar.
 
2. Skills
Only 4-5 abilities?
LAS slots take up 8 skills out of your 40 skills.
This is simply the system intended: LIMITED Action Set. You need to make a decision what you want to use.
Want more then 3 buttons? Stop playing Warrior.
 
3. Grind
This killing of bosses is in place.
You cannot enter the Datascape before killing Ohmna in Genetic Archives unless you buy a pristine key from a guild who did.
Just know I won't take you onboard if you do. Clearing Genetic Archives is a mandatory requirements to even stand a chance in Datascape.
As for the daily grind, it's a timesink. The rewards are nice for end-game, but optional.
The money however is good, and run a few dungeons it rewards several plat a day.
 
4. Optimization
Is the simply the hardest thing to do for a Windows Based game.
Hardware is so finicky, and AMD and their drivers a pain to work with, that making one piece of software work on any hardware configuration is a feat on it's own.
They're working on it, and improvements have been made every drop.
 
5. Housing
Limits have been increased any many new features added.
Improvements can still be made however.
 
6. Population
Has dropped, but has been increasing again over time.
Many new people are joining with each drop and many are also returning.
The upcoming Drop 5 should revitalize PvP, and then we can start making assessments about the future of WildStar.
 
7. Development
Patches and hotfixes are being released on a semi-regular basis.
Drops have been promised to be released on a quarterly basis. Whether they can stick to this we have to see.
Bugs are being fixed, reintroduced and fixed again.
It's not perfect, but it'so obvious development is there and things are being done.
 
8. Developers/Studio
Bullshit.
Carbine is one of the most active in feedback, and many companies can learn something from Carbine.
I can write on these forums, send an email, open a ticket, tweet directly with the devs and I will get a response from them.
Last time I got response directly from blizzard was 7 years ago.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
There is a /who command, but I believe it's limited to showing 50 people at a time. Loot drops at high level are decent, but don't expect to get geared that way (unles you are really, really into grinding mobs). You can do Veteran Shiphands, though. They give renown even when soloed, and there's a renown set that can get you started into the group content (because clearly soloers want to play in groups deep down, right? *snort*). You would also be more lucky grinding for platinum and trying your luck at the AH for crafted gear, though I'm not sure how much better/worse than the starter renown set those are.
----
			Thanks guys for all the feedback, that is greatly appreciated. I believe I will return as I have 1 CREDD of time for myself.	
----