104528-necessary-changes-to-wildstar

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Hi,
 
I have been playing wildstar since beta in 2013 and have followed how the game has changed ever since then, I believe wildstar is one of the most well made MMO's out atm(although I don't think most MMO's are very well made with huge glaring problems), which had great potential and could possible still as most features and elements of the game are very well implemented and maintained but there are a few game breaking/logging out/unsubbing problems.
 
These problems aren't strictly only to do with Wildstar but the current MMO(online)generation which I'll explain later, as the MMO community isn't going to change the changes have to be made to the game.
 
I started at head start/early access with a group of 7 other friends. Two left a few days after hitting 50 as they were getting terrible lag and low fps, another 3 left after seeing how boring the daily zones were becoming and the main point of the thread seeing the attunement and what is required, the amount of time etc. So it is just myself and one friend left currently and they have been very busy lately so that could be the only reason they haven't left. I have recently just finished my attunement and looking back don't think my friend will go through it without quitting as they have limited time.
 
Since starting at level 1 till today I am in my fifth guild already.
 
The first guild of 120+ players disbanded after a group of 7/8 got attuned and left, the guild leaders deciding it would take too much time and effort to replace them and get new players attuned, I believe only 10 or so from that guild still play,
 
Second guild, also 100+ players, same story, few got attuned fast and left to join a guild that was closer to raiding, again guild leaders didn't want to replace/help others get attuned, the guild leaders took themselves and few other attuned players and went to a guild close to raiding, before that happened I said why don't we just help new players get attuned(I was at world boss stage at the time), there response was I am sick of running through dungeons, wiping and explaining you can carry them, that was only 1 month after the game launched.
 
Third guild, after a week I saw that it was pretty much inactive with few logging(mostly low level players) despite having 80+ members, left after it became clear would never get attuned.
 
Fourth guild, decided to join an already raiding guild that was looking for those attuned past dungeons, after two weeks I left. I was at the world boss stage and was afking/camping/soloing bosses/zone hoping. When ever I would ask in g chat for help, it would either be no response or some saying we did it now you have to as well, obviously they did it a while ago when most were, and they were in groups. I left after becoming bored of 30+ min soloing low level bosses. They had done there attunement and weren't going to go through it again. In a dungeon run when in this guild I heard few players saying hopefully we can recruit some new raid able players and get better progression, again they would rather recruit fully attuned players than help those in there guild get attuned.
 
Fifth and current guild which seemed more active and not raiding when I joined but currently are 4/6. I was able to get my attunement after a week with a group of us spread out at world boss spawns. I will also most likely leave this guild as a few of the officers and members have formed there own cliques, most likely when attuning themselves. Most who attuned fast would not help those still needing last parts and would run farm groups on certain bosses. An example was when in VC with a few officers and GL, a player with 0/4 dungeons joined and asked if anyone could help them in sc/kv etc, I responded I can come, but as just 1 dps, no one else responded, the GL moved myself and 3 of the other fully attuned players down to another channel without a word and said they wanted to do SC as they want the gloves. I declined and said that the player in lobby can take my spot, they asked were they attuned I said no and few mins later another fully attuned dps joined the channel.
 
This is not necessarily carbine or the games fault as this is what the MMO generation is, and carbine should have been aware of this players won't help others unless it benefits themselves and most won't keep boosting or running new players through same dungeons over and over when they need to replace those who quit/leave/take breaks.
 
New players coming into the game are already so far behind only 3 months after launch and most won't last the attunement unless they get lucky and find a guild still doing dungeons. Most will either quit either tired of waiting for a group to do silvers or world boss spawning and trying to solo them. They will only fall more behind as more of the active guilds start raiding and have less time to help those still attuning.
If they do really want to raid most likely how they will get attuned will be either paying plat for a silver dungeon run or there guild doing the dungeon and inviting them for last boss. Entirely defeating the purpose.
Wildstar during attunement stopped being fun and started becoming a job which on top of dailies was/is becoming extremely time consuming and tedious. There are other problems but I believe this to be the most urgently needed.
TL;DR
My suggestions for changes to attunement to help new players as those attuned will eventually become tired and bored of attuning replacements that's even before they have to raid gear them up.
Make dungeons the last part of the attunement as it is the hardest part.
Allow dungeon and world boss progress at same time so people can help each other if they are on different parts.
Lower amount of world bosses needed to 6. spawn camping for hours is not skillful.
Last change would be remove the time requirement, if a person has killed every dungeon boss and completed the dungeon that should be enough aka a bronze.
 
From reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/2cc1q5/necessary_changes_to_wild_star/
 	
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I agree with the TL:DR.
 
(i would nail the world boss part completely, and trim SSM into 1 or 2 dungeons that take 45mins max as a 75min run is harsh outside of a raid that people can sync up to in their weeks)	
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I personally agree with this, though many people (Carbine apparently included) seem to equate lengthy gating via attunement processes to hardcore gaming. I suppose it does in a certain sense, in that it allows those with ample free time and fewer non-gaming comitments to progress through quicker than others. But really, ample free time is not the same as skill. I have no problem with the upper end of raiding being punishingly difficult, that to me is what things should be like, but to make access to it gated doesn't diferentiate skill, and just creates problems where as you say, guilds not ready for raiding just become staging grounds for people to attune and move on to a guild ready to go. And eventually you're left with a player base where the majority simply cannot raid regardless of how good or bad they might be at the game.
I think the main problem seems to be that many people (Carbine apparently included) seem to equate the decline in a certain other MMO giant's game's (let us call it Morld of Mawcraft) percieved 'hard-core' raiding scene with a shift away from attunement process barring large parts of their playerbase from ever seeing a majority of the content.	
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But really, ample free time is not the same as skill. I have no problem with the upper end of raiding being punishingly difficult, that to me is what things should be like, but to make access to it gated doesn't diferentiate skill,
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I disagree with the proposed solution, but I do believe that there are problems identified in the text:
 
Dungeon rewards so low and content challenging enough that players who complete it never want to go back.
Lack of social tools outside of the fairly bad "guild" structure to arrange grouping with other players at similar attunement levels. (seriously, next gen MMO with 1st gen "guild", wtf?).
Distribution of world bosses and lack of instancing (which is to be expected) makes travel time for support/help a real chore for those who have completed it and aren't incented to help.
No social, cross-guild (alliance), lfg/mercenary system or other tools (not just chat channels, tools that evaluate past success, gear, etc) to help align players at similar progression levels resulting in guilds disbanding once there is progression striation amongst the membership so that the most progressed members can align with other more progressed guids.
 
Also: Meanwhile all players on world boss at any % completion were just advanced to 100% completion. I'm pretty sure this will just make the scenario the OP is having trouble with even worse since a big portion of the active player base working on that part where just moved past it.	
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I would have no problem with any of these changes, and would recommend their implementation.  None of this dampens the purpose of attunement, but they remove some of the non-skill based portions.
 
I would also recommend reducing the amounts of incoming elder gems, but also removing the cap and increasing the sources you can receive them from.  It's better to give players a trickle to follow than to stop them cold and tell them to wait for the artificial cap.
 
Also, more stuff to buy with elder gems.  Give people a reason to want to continue to run dungeons for them even after hitting 50 and attuning.  We've got some good suggestions for added content using a lot of existing content right now that might also be helpful.  It'd be easier to make veteran shiphand modes, for instance, than a new game mode to keep 50s occupied when queues are long for DPS.	
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 though many people (Carbine apparently included) seem to equate lengthy gating via attunement processes to hardcore gaming.
 
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Dungeon rewards so low and content challenging enough that players who complete it never want to go back.
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			I have fallen so far behind on my attunement, I am still at the Adventure part and most of the guild I was in were already doing the world bosses or were already finished. None of the people wanted to do any adventures anymore, because of that I turned my attention more to PvP, since I am more a PvP player by heart, but because of the many issues it had I took a small pauze of a couple weeks. Now with Sabotage, I started to play again, decided to reroll on a different server (my original server is dying) with a different class, but I am a bit scared to do my attunement once I am 50. I don't like to pug in this game mainly because of the 'gold or disband' mentality, or one guy screws everything up and leaves. For the first time ever I was very excited to do PvE in an MMO but as I said, I don't like to pug and most guilds are close to finishing their attunement proces or already started to raid so finishing my attunement will take very long and it will be very annoying.	
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I have fallen so far behind on my attunement, I am still at the Adventure part and most of the guild I was in were already doing the world bosses or were already finished. None of the people wanted to do any adventures anymore, because of that I turned my attention more to PvP, since I am more a PvP player by heart, but because of the many issues it had I took a small pauze of a couple weeks. Now with Sabotage, I started to play again, decided to reroll on a different server (my original server is dying) with a different class, but I am a bit scared to do my attunement once I am 50. I don't like to pug in this game mainly because of the 'gold or disband' mentality, or one guy screws everything up and leaves. For the first time ever I was very excited to do PvE in an MMO but as I said, I don't like to pug and most guilds are close to finishing their attunement proces or already started to raid so finishing my attunement will take very long and it will be very annoying.
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Wildstar failed for my friends because:
Customer so-sad-too-bad "Service".
The miserly rewards aren't worth the bother.
It opted for punishing instead of challenging.
Grindcore.
And not even crafting is a safe harbor.  You know the old joke "Why do you keep hitting yourself with a hammer!?  Because it feels so good when I stop!".  That's what Wildstar became.
 
When we hit 50 we basically ran out of fun.	
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Great ideas OP but I fear it's too little, too late.
 
The devs seem completely lost as how to provide entertainment at level cap. Maybe only having 4 dungeons and a million daily quests wasn't the smartest way to build a game.	
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They have said repeatedly that Raiding is meant for the hardcore nuts out there. It's not meant to be easy to do, and honestly, the attunement actually does get you prepared somewhat (getting silver in dungeons requires your players to learn coordination, in addition to improving your gear, something that isn't really needed in WoW anymore). It's a real challenge in a game.
 
While I do get frustrated on bosses and whatnot, I think of it as a challenge to overcome. I have a feeling most players nowadays would cry if they had to do the old Onyxia attunement chain back in WoW.
 
It's not really a matter of the content being changed to become easier, it's a matter of the people in LFG need to learn how to actually play. It also doesn't help that there are primadonnas that leave at the first sign of issues, so the group disbands without anyone learning the fights a bit better. Bronze rewards are still rewards, and just because a group wipes doesn't mean that it's over. Grow a backbone and keep with the group and actually help, and stop expecting to find a group that will carry your whiny ass.
 
And if your guild has become cliquish and refuses to help people gear up, you need to find a better guild. I'm on the dungeon step in my guild, but I have no problem running vet malgrave or whatnot to help get people geared and past that step. Most of my guild is like that too, so the great majority of us are now on the silver dungeon step and trying to get through that part.
 
If anything needs to be changed or "fixed" is the mentality of changing things for the PvP crybabies that completely borks PvE (warrior tanking, spellslinger ignite, etc)	
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 It also doesn't help that there are primadonnas that leave at the first sign of issues, so the group disbands without anyone learning the fights a bit better. 
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Also, more stuff to buy with elder gems.  Give people a reason to want to continue to run dungeons for them even after hitting 50 and attuning.  We've got some good suggestions for added content using a lot of existing content right now that might also be helpful.  It'd be easier to make veteran shiphand modes, for instance, than a new game mode to keep 50s occupied when queues are long for DPS.
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The game heavily encourages players to do this. The fundamental design of Wildstar is so out of touch with players I really don't know how anyone could be surprised it isn't working.
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The game heavily encourages players to do this. The fundamental design of Wildstar is so out of touch with players I really don't know how anyone could be surprised it isn't working.
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That doesn't mean that players should be acting like little craps just because they can. I don't find the game that out of touch at all. It just requires some maturity. While that seems to be asking a lot from the average person, it's really not that hard of a concept to follow. Blame the players on the "gold or gtfo" mentality, not the game. That's like blaming the store if a customer steals all the pennies from a "take a penny, leave a penny" tray at a cash register because nobody is stopping them. Just because you might not get the best reward, doesn't mean you should over the rest of the group. People need to grow up.
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I like the vet shiphand idea. Some of those are crazy fun, so having these quick themed runs that require a group would be awesome. Nice little time consumer.
 
However, there are plenty of things to get with the EGs. Get yourself Ability/AMP points. They are quite worth it. Someone with 50-55 ability points is going to be worth a whole lot more to a group than someone with 40-45 (the t4/8 abilities really boost things up, so getting more will help). Also most endgame raiding requires you to be at least competent with an offspec set (ie, healing set for those who primarily play dps), so trying to build one of those up will make things better if you intend to hit endgame content (Hell, I play DPS mainly, but I've been practicing healing on Elyona or Scorchwing to brush up on it for adventures/dungeons). That's not saying I wouldn't want more EG options, if more are added that's awesome, just mainly saying that there are plenty of things to get, and I highly doubt you ran out of Ability/AMP point slots already.
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There is no reason to continue the instance under the current setup. You say it's not out of touch while commenting on the results of the game being so completely out of touch. Your penny comparison is nonsense. When people start talking about needing patience and maturity and whatever else is necessary to deal with bad design, that's a big problem. It's a video game. If it's not fun, people will quit. Wildstar isn't very much fun currently and people are quitting as a result. Wildstar is projected to be the least profitable game NCSoft has. It's so far out of touch it's not even funny.
 
 
 
More excuses, see above. You can try to blame the player for not enjoying a very tedious setup until the end of time, it won't change a thing. Your attempt to claim that games are either like Wildstar or a complete cake walk is disingenuous at best. Wildstar is "difficult" in all the wrong ways.
 
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There is no reason to continue the instance under the current setup. You say it's not out of touch while commenting on the results of the game being so completely out of touch. When people start talking about needing patience and maturity and whatever else is necessary to deal with bad design, that's a big problem. It's a video game. If it's not fun, people will quit. Wildstar isn't very much fun currently and people are quitting as a result. Wildstar is projected to be the least profitable game NCSoft has. It's so far out of touch it's not even funny.
 
 
 
More excuses, see above. You can try to blame the player for not enjoying a very tedious setup until the end of time, it won't change a thing. Your attempt to claim that games are either like Wildstar or a complete cake walk is disingenuous at best. Wildstar is "difficult" in all the wrong ways.
 
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GA and Datascape bosses have chance to drop attunement key pre-ready for GA or Datascape depending on which you're running.
 
It's also BoE.
 
So once you're in and running it, you can get EZ alt access or fillers for new peeps.
 
At least this is the vicious rumor on the streets.
 
Unless I am getting confused over a suggestion I've read on here.	
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As an aside, what exactly about Wildstar do you find so grindy compared to other games out there?  Every MMORPG has a grind, most a lot less avoidable than raid attunement.  Wildstar might have less comparable content than some of the older games, and it has a lot more REAL difficulty (no zenning through dungeons in Wildstar), but I wonder if sometimes people forget how much grind and gate there is in other MMORPGs they're espousing the virtues of.
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GA and Datascape bosses have chance to drop attunement key pre-ready for GA or Datascape depending on which you're running.
 
It's also BoE.
 
So once you're in and running it, you can get EZ alt access or fillers for new peeps.
 
At least this is the vicious rumor on the streets.
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You sound like an absolute joy to group with. I find the game absurdly fun for the most part.
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Wildstar failed for my friends because:
Customer so-sad-too-bad "Service".
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I am sorry that uncomfortable truths have caused you to lash out. It says a lot more about you than me, however. Saying the game is "absurdly" fun comes off as a little desperate as well.
 
If you enjoy it, great. No need to get offended when people point out legitimate problems though. Getting defensive just shows you find the points valid.
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You'll get your Attunement done in vet Adventures with LFG 100% no problems.
 
But Vet Dungeons... *sigh*
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GA and Datascape bosses have chance to drop attunement key pre-ready for GA or Datascape depending on which you're running.
 
It's also BoE.
 
So once you're in and running it, you can get EZ alt access or fillers for new peeps.
 
At least this is the vicious rumor on the streets.
 
Unless I am getting confused over a suggestion I've read on here.
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Still, if one thing goes wrong they always want to disband. Wich is a stupid mentality.
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Heh, I remember us having a "list" of people who screwed us over on WoW (Emerald Dream) in the days before LFD.
 
You could blacklist yourself for asshattery.
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I find the timers add challenge. It makes it more difficult and you may not agree because you see it as more frustrating. So you come on to the forums to argue about how frustrating and rushed it is while I come on to the forums to complain about how hard it is to complete the dungeon in the allotted time.
 
Combining attunement steps would be nice in some aspects. The reputation one is already like that. The world bosses could be tweaked, but if you didn't know the R-12 event in Malgrave can have any one of 5 different bosses, each one a unique world boss for this attunement step.	
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There is no reason to continue the instance under the current setup. You say it's not out of touch while commenting on the results of the game being so completely out of touch. Your penny comparison is nonsense. When people start talking about needing patience and maturity and whatever else is necessary to deal with bad design, that's a big problem. It's a video game. If it's not fun, people will quit. Wildstar isn't very much fun currently and people are quitting as a result. Wildstar is projected to be the least profitable game NCSoft has. It's so far out of touch it's not even funny.
 
 
 
More excuses, see above. You can try to blame the player for not enjoying a very tedious setup until the end of time, it won't change a thing. Your attempt to claim that games are either like Wildstar or a complete cake walk is disingenuous at best. Wildstar is "difficult" in all the wrong ways.
 
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Wich is handled by NCSoft.
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Hardly excuses. you're failing to see that the points you raise are all based upon subjective values.
 
I find the approach to dungeons in this game fun, that does not make me wrong. You may not agree with it but that's up to you but I assure you I am not alone in my view point.
 
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Heh, I remember us having a "list" of people who screwed us over on WoW (Emerald Dream) in the days before LFD.
 
You could blacklist yourself for asshattery.
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There is no reason to continue the instance under the current setup. You say it's not out of touch while commenting on the results of the game being so completely out of touch. Your penny comparison is nonsense. When people start talking about needing patience and maturity and whatever else is necessary to deal with bad design, that's a big problem. It's a video game. If it's not fun, people will quit. Wildstar isn't very much fun currently and people are quitting as a result. Wildstar is projected to be the least profitable game NCSoft has. It's so far out of touch it's not even funny.
 
 
 
More excuses, see above. You can try to blame the player for not enjoying a very tedious setup until the end of time, it won't change a thing. Your attempt to claim that games are either like Wildstar or a complete cake walk is disingenuous at best. Wildstar is "difficult" in all the wrong ways.
 
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Not sure if you're agreeing or hand-waving (I'll assume the former :D ).
 
MMO's are an entertainment service first and foremost.  Its CS had darn well better be a world class core-competency.  Wildstar's is even more fail than SW:TOR's and that takes some real effort.  Yes WoW was a mess at launch but their CS actually helped people out when stuff broke because of their own bugs (heck, even TOR does this).  WoW's CS was even known to comp people sub time as an apology.  Did they comp time for the people caught in the over-zealous bot scripts?
 
The CS provided by NCSoft is a problem.  They need to be fired and the CS function brought in-house.
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Wildstar itself has nothing to do with CS, this is entirely on the publisher. Whereas WoW, made by Blizzard, were also their own publisher so they handled it themselves.
 
A publisher that has nothing to do with the actual game is always a problem, imo, if they don't do their job right it's the game that suffers. I still wonder why Carbine decided to go with NCSoft as their publisher, they are known for their crap CS and other things.
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There's only so much attunement carrying a guild can do with absolutely nothing to show for it.
 
If there were valid rewards in dungeons, I'm sure it'd be easier to get groups for them. But there aren't.
 
 
Resetting dungeons for 4 hours while getting nothing out of it but helping a guy get attuned, who might up and quit or hop guilds, after having done it so many times already... is not any fun.	
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