and yet you are doubling down on the irony? It's like inception in here.
The guy went on a rage induced temper tantrum about how mmo games are ruined because of 'bads'. He needs a sippy cup and a nap nap.
All I am saying is that I don't understand people sitting in a game thread posting how badly the game is failing when they don't like or play the game. If you don't like it that's fine but there is no need to post BS speculations about numbers and deter others from trying it when you don't play or like the game to begin with.
I would understand someone posting saying, "hey I really like the game but I can't ...", but people putting all this energy into telling NCSoft a multi billion dollar corporation what they need to do to save themselves is a tad strange.
and yet you are doubling down on the irony? It's like inception in here.
The guy went on a rage induced temper tantrum about how mmo games are ruined because of 'bads'. He needs a sippy cup and a nap nap.
All I am saying is that I don't understand people sitting in a game thread posting how badly the game is failing when they don't like or play the game. If you don't like it that's fine but there is no need to post BS speculations about numbers and deter others from trying it when you don't play or like the game to begin with.
I would understand someone posting saying, "hey I really like the game but I can't ...", but people putting all this energy into telling NCSoft a multi billion dollar corporation what they need to do to save themselves is a tad strange.
simple. We want the game to survive. If we feel that it won't in it's current incarnation we suggest what could be done to save it. Then white knights tell us to go back to WoW and hilarity ensues. A tale as old as time.
If all feed back was "your game is da beeeeest" Carbine wouldn't have any feedback they could use to improve.
When I look at the WildStar system requirements, I see the following:
Components
Minimum System Requirements
Recommended System Requirements
Operating System
Windows® XP SP3 (32-bit) or later
Windows Vista® (64-bit) or later
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Pentium® Core2 Duo 2.4 GHz, AMD Phenom™ X3 2.3 GHz, or better
Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core 2.66GHz or better, AMD Phenom™ II X4 3GHz, or better
Graphics Card
NVIDIA GeForce® 8800 eGT, ATI® Radeon® HD 3850, or better
Radeon® HD 5830, or better
Memory (RAM)
3GB
8GB
Storage
30GB free HDD space
30GB free HDD space
Screen Resolution
1024x768 minimum display resolution
1920x1080 minimum display resolution
Peripherals
Keyboard & mouse
Gaming keyboard & mouse
Do you want to know requirements I don't see?
TeamSpeak or Ventrillo use
Third party app use
Guild Membership
It is that way for good reason. First of all, you don't need any of those things to play the game. WildStar combat--like every other combat--is based on reacting to visual cues on the screen. It doesn't take rocket science to figure out what to do, and it doesn't take an order or a question to figure out how to support one another. Sheer observation, practice and attentiveness are ten times as important as barks and whines on voice comms.
Second of all, those things are outside of a developer's ability to control and manage. Players come to the game with their own preferences; just because a person doesn't want to game with third party apps like TS/Vent doesn't mean the developer doesn't owe them entertainment for their time and money. They do. And if the developer can't provide this when a player does his or her part, then the game is broken.
Likewise, guilds come to the game with their own preferences, and their function isn't to make the game accessible to everyone, but only for their members. I heard earlier in the thread about the guy whose guild is so picky, the players have to fill out an application and wait a week before they are admitted. Jesus, I can get a mortgage with less hassle. But that's par for the course these days when guilds--and MMO play in general--has become so stat-driven, achievement-centric and efficiency minded.
But you know what the saddest thing is? Games like Vanilla WoW and WildStar give players and guilds much more reason to NOT group with people than to group with people. "We can't group with him because he's not on TS/Vent" or "He's not the right build" or "he hasn't had his week probation"...all of which can be boiled down to "we can't take a chance."
When games produce more reasons to not group with people than to group with people, the game has a problem. All the developer can do is provide the game, provide the price and provide the system reqs. If the player meets the requirements, and gives the game a chance, then the developer needs to give them some sort of entertainment for that price. Failure to do that means the developer has failed, and whether or not Carbine has failed is a question that has yet to be decided.
But most of this problem is a result of players--powergamers mostly--who themselves are so anti-social and intolerant that they will only ever group with people they know, will only group with people who do things their way, and who are wedded so strongly to this stupid relic of a mechanic called "Guild" or "Clan" that they refuse to game with their fellow players.
My question to you all is this. Have you all forgotten how to play?
Because I remember a time when we grouped with people not because they were the best at a class, or had a headset on their heads, but because they roleplayed well and had in-character reasons for doing so. I remember when pick up groups weren't this big mark of shame, but was part of the fun. I remember when grouping with strangers wasn't so stigmatized like it is now, and guilds were nothing more than glorified roleplay plot devices, not the hyper-bureaucratic content-consuming cabals we have now.
LFG and LFR came about because the raid-centric format (which was only ever a blip in time in the history of the genre) didn't lead to greater accessibility for the guy who met the system reqs and is expecting fun. Instead, all it did was lead to greater exclusivity as professionalized guilds treated group inclusion like an HR manager looking at resumes. It isn't that the average guy couldn't do raids. He could. But the guilds don't want the 95% of players out there...they want the 5% of players who have bought into "raid culture" complete with third party apps and a high tolerance for unimmersive bullshit like guild forum registration and game hopping. And if WildStar wants these folks--and only these folks--then they shouldn't be surprised if their game is only 5% as large, and 95% of people complain about it.
Why?
Because Carbine put down the reqs, and those 95% of players met them. Carbine set out the fees, and those 95% paid them. And after meeting the reqs, and paying the fees, they are still not able to play the game because of reqs left unsaid, and feels left undisclosed.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Recently I have seen a lot of negative comments about Wildstar. Something like "the game is too hard", "attunement takes too long" or "the game is dead".
Now I know MMORPG is not the right forum to write it in because lets face it, the only community that is more toxic is the LoL community, but still I find it relevant to post here.
People in here like to think they played old-school MMORPGs, back in the days when it was hard and took time. Well, Wildstar is hard and it takes time, but now its bad because of it? When people suggest shit as Raid Finder and easier attunements, thats where I dont get it... Raid Finder is NOT an easier way to get gear or progress! Raid Finder is an EXCUSE for not being willing to find a guild.
And thats the main issue. People complain because they dont want to find a guild. They just want to queue and get items by themselves. And its the same people that complain about too much single player content. Double standards at its best.
Now some might say, "The guilds demand too much time from me", but you also know that Raid Finding will take twice as long to progress 20% of what a guild could. People have forgot what it means to have hard group content and now they are whining because they dont remember how to play an actual quality MMORPG. It doesnt hurt me that people cant figure it out, it hurts me that you have to talk shit about the best game out there because YOU dont remember how to play a group-focused hard game.
On the note, I have played almost every game to the late game (WoW, Rift, TSW, Vanguard, STO, Vindictus etc. etc. etc.) and this game is more polished, more difficult, more enjoyable and has a lot more players than the average MMORPG and is definately NOT dead.
dont worry its coming the era of destiny and other similar games, where there is no community just coop without talking to other players, people will become like bots looking for cheesy experiences. Half posters in this forum don't know what they want, only to pay more and more cause the more expensive the better it is.
no forced use for outdated WASD for moving, using mouse
fun, humor
very fluid movement, controls responding as expected, very well
client loading very fast
no single bug or crash in 3 last beta days (but one of worst headstarts I ever played ... actually .. there was no headstart I guess for majority of at least EU players)
only game (known to me) so far where i.e. river is driving you in direction of water flow ... amazing! Must constantly battle water flow. :-)
love double jump and missing already in other MMO’s :-)
underwater combat and quests (even if small number of them)
so far not a single gold spam message in chat! Very few in ingame mail, bots in game have been truly eliminated in a week.
love idea of no need to go back to quest giver on completion, solve quest, get reward; with exception of some chains
CONS (absolutely worst on top!)
Only 1 (ONE!) toolbar with 8 active keys; if, actually when, I will stop to play I’m already sure this will be for this problem because problem it is; usually this spells button mashing, especially as abilities starts to pile up; always hated when game enforces me to “select” only some spells out of zillion; leave that to PLAYER!, if somebody likes can play game with single spell and any game but if i wish to have 2 or 3 toolbars full of abilities that is MY problem.
Even on that single toolbar keys are unlocked with leveling so up to i.e. only at lv. 9 you will have 6 unlocked, at lv. 1 only single; I always in any game have “spam” spell on button 5 and hate being forced move that to key 1 or 2; want to have healing spells on other toolbar and usually main 2 linked to F4 and F5, ... etc .... whole toolbar(s) should be unlocked since level 1; fortunately is possible at least to move spells to any already unlocked button, lessening somewhat this problem; at level 9 there are 1-6 keys unlocked.
Some even say “wait until lv. 30 and will understand 8 buttons is fine” .... sorry, do not want to wait past half game for that to happen if will happen; surely will come to lv. 30 with at least some of my alts; at lv. 22 with majority of alts button mashing is just killing my will to play.
And then another problem of limited number of spells, I would call it “social aspect”. I like to help others when in trouble. But here I can mostly kiss good by this aspect. Many times happen you see player or two in trouble with some big mob, players being at last drops of blood ... and I would like to help first with healing then dps-ing... but’t CAN NOT! Why? Because for my PVE play I might have on my toolbars only dps abilities.
Etc, etc, ... there is NO SINGLE reason pro this madness with single toolbar and there are ALL AGAINST. Yet somebody smart decided this would be good. Ok, as usually, never will everyone be happy with everything ... but currently I think this first sub I did on 3.7.14 will be also my last.
I HATE from bottom of my heart that silly, booooooring, annnnnoying .... as hell minigames with pressing F at certain point, remembering color combinations, .... or pressing A, W, ... etc while being stunned. I HATE using WASD for move and I will NEVER (again) play such games. Wildstar support mouse for moving, but still that silly letters WASD are used at certain point to get out of trap or stun .... while my fingers are far from that key. This could be second most important reason besides 1 toolbar that could make me go away; fortunately at least F and color combinat games are easily “fixed” with addons, but not WASD.
small number of different spells/abilities
some patch at the end of beta caused fps to drastically fall down with same computer and same settings; stayed so at release, too; and I’m not alone in this; this workaround: http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/read/31563#post helps a lot of getting at least 10-15 fps at same conditions
“active combat” mean one have to spend more time just to dodge and jump like monkey, left, right, back, forward, ... instead of actually doing any combat as combat should be; in close quarters you are dead; same with ads; another problem related to this ... in game where one is FORCED to constantly move out of telegraph that does massive damage, surprising number of spells requires player stand still, so jumping or moving constantly cancels spells - all in all this is not what I consider fun
small number of classes and races
incredibly (for new game) complicated and confusing (no, it is not only me!) interface for wardrobe implementation
JUST NOTE
graphics and style somehow reminds me CO (just noted, is not for bad or for good)
I agree with the OP. Today MMO gamers are no longer MMO gamers, they are wannabe MMO gamers. When you say Hey I had Guild Drama in 1 guild and I never want to join a guild again you really dont belong playing an MMO. You belong playing Dragon Age because no matter what when you deal with other people you need to deal with BS. This can be at work, at the gym, calling the gas company, your family or friends, and in an MMO. If you dont want to deal with people in an MMO why are you playing one? Dont give me that crap about times have changed blah blah blah. The last 7 years of MMOs have been the downfall of the genera. Most MMOs that have come out in the last 7 years have had issues making money back on their investments, that is why they gone F2P because they are not worth the month of a Sub. WHY? Simple why would I pay a sub to play Dragon Age? I would not, its very simple. If its a single player game there is no reason to have guilds or chats or any of that stuff. However You want to play an MMO without interaction. These are also the same people that complain that ArcheAge will not have a PVE server for them so they can be tradesmen when the entire game is built around player interaction. That means Pirates to kill Merchants and Mercs to Protect Merchant. Take out PVP and well guess what you have nothing more than another single player game.
Do we need 40 man raids again? Nope
Do we need Long ass attunements like the Ony attunement? Nope however the Kara Attunement was not really that hard, Only players that had problems playing with other people ever cried about the Kara attunement. Why? Simple because it required them to work well in a group to get each part of the quest done that required instances. Again its an MMO getting 4 other people to do an instance is not hard. 40 yea I can understand that
Do we need WildStar like treadmills? No there should be no need to do 20 man raids to get into 40 man raids. This was a bad design flaw that Wow had with BC 10 man raids to get into 25 man raids. It was not an easy conversion
Do we need LFR or LFD for group? No. Why do we have it? Because people feel entitled to run an instance any time they please. Instances were never designed around players running it 25 times in a month with a random group finder tool. Why? Because they get boring after a while and take time to create. Even if you allow tools like Neverwinter have for making instances it makes the game feel too much like a dungeon crawler and you are not making an effect on the world. Also with instances LFD instances have to be nerfed down to SMASH BUTTONS WIN in 15 MIN content. Why? Because people bitch that they have to CC, they Bitch they need to Interrupt and if X player completely refused to do what they need to do having a LFR/LFD tool allows them to be vampires. What I mean by a Vampire is like in Wing 2 SoO I had tanks refusing to tank the towers. Well guess what if you dont tank the towers you fail you will never down the boss. But if you have 2 tanks that refuse to do this they pull and wipe the raid. Costing everyone else time and stress. WHY? Because Blizzard wants everyone to feel warm and fuzzy inside instead of saying Find a guild and if no one will take you because your a DBag O WELL. Your responsible for your own enjoyment. But we have people that love to blame everything else and everyone else that thinks a person should be responsible for themselves.
The MMO community has become a very sad state today. Right now Publishers should stop having forums and feedback on the game and the developer should create the game they want to create and let the game find its audience. Stop trying to make everyone happy because all it turns out to be is a pile of crap because Mike who plays 30 minutes a month wants the same stuff Todd has which took 30 hours that month of game time to get what he has. No matter if its Gear progression like in WOW, A Cattle in UO which took 100 Million Gold to buy or more, 500 Rocket launchers that are the best on the server from a WeaponSmith in SWG, or sell their wares in ArcheAge at the highest price without risking getting killed to sell the wares. These people feel they have the same say because they spent $15 this month and why does it require more Effort than 30 minutes this month. The problem is Just because you spent that $15 does not mean that you are entitled to get the same stuff someone who spends the time to achieve gets for spending less time on getting. Its like just because you paid for a college education but didnt show up for classes you do not have the right to the degree when John paid for his college education, shown up for classes daily and did the work required to achieve a degree.
People who want to say this is a GAME will never understand. Just like saying Football is just a game. Game has many definitions however MMOs just like Football are played by people who want to be involved in their Hobby. VS if you play solitaire which is not an in-depth game and is very casual and often not looked at as a game that can become a Hobby. Single player games are like solitaire fun for a while but after a while the depth of the game goes only so far. MMOs by contrast are meant to be an in-depth game that is more involved and have several thousand hours of content and the only true way of enjoying it is several hours a week. Does it need to be a job no does it need to be something more than what you can do completely on your own yes.
+1
One of the most lucid posts I've seen in a while. I completely agree with your analysis.
You know what is worst? The same mentality is being carried over to the single player territory, especially in genres a/o franchises that have been traditionally complex and intellectually demanding (dumbed down Sim City 2013 and Rome Total War 2 are good examples).
The casualties of the so called casuals (AKA entitled crowd that conceive games as a passtime instead of a hobby and who don't really know what they want except a guaranteed win and "finish the game" ASAP lol) keep engrossing its gruesome and already long list.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
I really dont understand why people consider this game to be hard. It's not really that hard....move out of the mobs telegraph and make sure yours is faced toward them...
I had more of a problem with the repetative combat and pronounced grind.....
I really dont understand why people consider this game to be hard. It's not really that hard....move out of the mobs telegraph and make sure yours is faced toward them...
I had more of a problem with the repetative combat and pronounced grind.....
Didn't you realise, trying to play through the repetitive combat and pronounced grind is the difficulty.
Rather than change the way I play the game, I expect Wildstar to accommodate myself and my gaming habits. They should have systems built into the game that makes it easier for smaller guilds to band together or be used in conjunction with larger guilds. Hell, if guilds were going to be so important, they should at least have something similar to WoW's looking for guild. Instead, they consolidated it all into one section of their forums and in game chat. They then make Pugging pointless so you will have less of a chance to meet people and join their guild that way.
If Carbine is unwilling to accommodate us, I am more than willing to take my money elsewhere and with it my guild. I have already quit Wildstar as has most of my guild. The few holdouts won't last long before they are gone too (as is evident by their posts on our guild forums venting constant frustration).
Join a guild.....psh.....GREAT RESPONSE!!!
So it's carbines fault that you have ridiculous requirements just to join your guild, which results in to few players to do content that you seem interested in doing, and instead of adjusting the stupid interview process so that you're actually able to get enough people into your guild you think that carbine should change the game to suit you.
And you think the OP is what's wrong with wildstar?
I think a lot of people would think that you are what's wrong with MMO's today. A self entitled attitude that demands developers should cater every game to your exacting specifications, even when the problem is your own unwillingness to adjust the way you bring new members into your guild.
Carbine didn't tell you to make people jump through hoops in order to join your guild, that's your fault. As if you're offering something that no other group of players is able to offer. Seeing as you're unable to get enough members to do the raid content, you're clearly not able to offer more than other guilds. You obviously need new members more than they need you, by your own admission.
If your guild was worth being a part of you wouldn't need to worry about members being poached; yet you had a problem retaining members in wildstar.
I understand though. It's easier to blame others than to accept fault.
I really dont understand why people consider this game to be hard. It's not really that hard....move out of the mobs telegraph and make sure yours is faced toward them...
I had more of a problem with the repetative combat and pronounced grind.....
Didn't you realise, trying to play through the repetitive combat and pronounced grind is the difficulty.
I agree with the OP. Today MMO gamers are no longer MMO gamers, they are wannabe MMO gamers. When you say Hey I had Guild Drama in 1 guild and I never want to join a guild again you really dont belong playing an MMO. You belong playing Dragon Age because no matter what when you deal with other people you need to deal with BS. This can be at work, at the gym, calling the gas company, your family or friends, and in an MMO. If you dont want to deal with people in an MMO why are you playing one? Dont give me that crap about times have changed blah blah blah. The last 7 years of MMOs have been the downfall of the genera. Most MMOs that have come out in the last 7 years have had issues making money back on their investments, that is why they gone F2P because they are not worth the month of a Sub. WHY? Simple why would I pay a sub to play Dragon Age? I would not, its very simple. If its a single player game there is no reason to have guilds or chats or any of that stuff. However You want to play an MMO without interaction. These are also the same people that complain that ArcheAge will not have a PVE server for them so they can be tradesmen when the entire game is built around player interaction. That means Pirates to kill Merchants and Mercs to Protect Merchant. Take out PVP and well guess what you have nothing more than another single player game.
Do we need 40 man raids again? Nope
Do we need Long ass attunements like the Ony attunement? Nope however the Kara Attunement was not really that hard, Only players that had problems playing with other people ever cried about the Kara attunement. Why? Simple because it required them to work well in a group to get each part of the quest done that required instances. Again its an MMO getting 4 other people to do an instance is not hard. 40 yea I can understand that
Do we need WildStar like treadmills? No there should be no need to do 20 man raids to get into 40 man raids. This was a bad design flaw that Wow had with BC 10 man raids to get into 25 man raids. It was not an easy conversion
Do we need LFR or LFD for group? No. Why do we have it? Because people feel entitled to run an instance any time they please. Instances were never designed around players running it 25 times in a month with a random group finder tool. Why? Because they get boring after a while and take time to create. Even if you allow tools like Neverwinter have for making instances it makes the game feel too much like a dungeon crawler and you are not making an effect on the world. Also with instances LFD instances have to be nerfed down to SMASH BUTTONS WIN in 15 MIN content. Why? Because people bitch that they have to CC, they Bitch they need to Interrupt and if X player completely refused to do what they need to do having a LFR/LFD tool allows them to be vampires. What I mean by a Vampire is like in Wing 2 SoO I had tanks refusing to tank the towers. Well guess what if you dont tank the towers you fail you will never down the boss. But if you have 2 tanks that refuse to do this they pull and wipe the raid. Costing everyone else time and stress. WHY? Because Blizzard wants everyone to feel warm and fuzzy inside instead of saying Find a guild and if no one will take you because your a DBag O WELL. Your responsible for your own enjoyment. But we have people that love to blame everything else and everyone else that thinks a person should be responsible for themselves.
The MMO community has become a very sad state today. Right now Publishers should stop having forums and feedback on the game and the developer should create the game they want to create and let the game find its audience. Stop trying to make everyone happy because all it turns out to be is a pile of crap because Mike who plays 30 minutes a month wants the same stuff Todd has which took 30 hours that month of game time to get what he has. No matter if its Gear progression like in WOW, A Cattle in UO which took 100 Million Gold to buy or more, 500 Rocket launchers that are the best on the server from a WeaponSmith in SWG, or sell their wares in ArcheAge at the highest price without risking getting killed to sell the wares. These people feel they have the same say because they spent $15 this month and why does it require more Effort than 30 minutes this month. The problem is Just because you spent that $15 does not mean that you are entitled to get the same stuff someone who spends the time to achieve gets for spending less time on getting. Its like just because you paid for a college education but didnt show up for classes you do not have the right to the degree when John paid for his college education, shown up for classes daily and did the work required to achieve a degree.
People who want to say this is a GAME will never understand. Just like saying Football is just a game. Game has many definitions however MMOs just like Football are played by people who want to be involved in their Hobby. VS if you play solitaire which is not an in-depth game and is very casual and often not looked at as a game that can become a Hobby. Single player games are like solitaire fun for a while but after a while the depth of the game goes only so far. MMOs by contrast are meant to be an in-depth game that is more involved and have several thousand hours of content and the only true way of enjoying it is several hours a week. Does it need to be a job no does it need to be something more than what you can do completely on your own yes.
^ this, great post! I pretty much feel the same way you do on this subject. You can't be everything to everyone and by trying to do so you become nothing to no one, which is what I think most MMO developers fail to realize.
You get what you put in to things in life, it's that way in almost every aspect so why do people feel that a hobby should be any different?
The problem is most people don't know what grinding actually is. Most people's MMO experience comes from WoW, and games like WoW. Try some pre WoW grinding back in the late 90's once. Try grinding to 60 in old school Everquest where you grind in a group, not doing quests, just killing the same set of mobs over and over for a full day to watch your XP bar barely move once you hit a hell level. That was grinding. Getting wet nosed through quests to max level isn't grinding.
Try finally getting into a raid guild and grinding through North ToV every night for an entire week. That was grinding. Try being in a guild where you're required to give your guild leader your phone number once, just in case that rare mob is up for someone's epic, so you can get up at 1 in the morning to go kill it when he calls you. That's what hard core raiding guilds used to be like.
MMO's aren't what they used to be, and they never will be. I sympathize to an extent because I don't have the amount of time I used to for an MMO, and the WoW like experience is just less time consuming. That being said, end game should be more difficult. That's why it's end game. People just want to blaze through the content, get all the purple shit, and then bail because it's stale. I'm happy with an MMO that at least requires some effort.
At some point, people are going to have to accept that WoW didn't change people's expectations or alter how people play MMO's; instead, WoW was the first game that actually changed itself to match what the player's wanted as time passed. Blizzard was always smart about player data and observing trends, they just adapted WoW to what people were doing, not implementing something and telling people to like it.
Not to mention, a lot of "features" like quest finder, gear score, etc were player made mods first that Blizzard found were being used by a huge portion of the playerbase.
Blizzard didn't adapt to what their player base wanted, they adapted to what they believed their non player base wanted. While it was a brilliant business model, it was kind of a slap in the face to their long term player base. People like myself that played in vanilla and TBC stayed playing because we had a huge time investment in our characters not necessarily because we liked the direction the game was heading.
Another thing that really helped blizzard stay top dog was the rest of the industry's lack of delivering anything worth while. I personally tried to leave WoW many of times for many other titles only to return because none of them did it for me.
This is nonsense. Blizzard listened to their 12m subscribers as best they could and adapted to what they wanted. They didn't care for non-subscribers as they had plenty already. Yes they've lost subs as the game is old now and people can't be expected to stay on board when 100 MMOs a year come out now. Too much choice so people spread it around.
Over he years, people's tastes and demands change - but the main thing is that their original players have aged by 10 years and have different demands on their time. Today's players now have jobs and kids so they can't be bothered, in the main, to do content that takes 8 hours a day to do; they just don't have time tbh. Blizzard just moved with the times and that's why even after 10 years, their subscribers are what other games can only dream of.
This is nonsense. Blizzard listened to their 12m subscribers as best they could and adapted to what they wanted. They didn't care for non-subscribers as they had plenty already. Yes they've lost subs as the game is old now and people can't be expected to stay on board when 100 MMOs a year come out now. Too much choice so people spread it around.
Over he years, people's tastes and demands change - but the main thing is that their original players have aged by 10 years and have different demands on their time. Today's players now have jobs and kids so they can't be bothered, in the main, to do content that takes 8 hours a day to do; they just don't have time tbh. Blizzard just moved with the times and that's why even after 10 years, their subscribers are what other games can only dream of.
For starters blizzard reached 12 million subscribers because of how good classic and TBC were. They peaked at 12 million in Wrath and it's been down hill ever since, which is also around the time where they started nerfing the game big time and making everything accessible to everyone. Truth is rushing to end game, plowing through content doesn't keep people around, it bores them and they move on only to return when the next bit of content is released.
Their model promotes a revolving door instead of a dedicated player base. Which is also a double edge sword because content needs to be made easier and easier to do to sustain this model, which then in turn means people burn through content even faster. Take a look at even hard mode content, in TBC it took the world top guild over two months to clear sunwell which only had 6 bosses and it took them 3 weeks to down HM Garrosh, which one of those weeks had to be spent clearing reg mode to unlock HM, so basically 2 weeks.
That right there says something for the shift in the model even for the "hardmode" raiders.
The problem is most people don't know what grinding actually is. Most people's MMO experience comes from WoW, and games like WoW. Try some pre WoW grinding back in the late 90's once. Try grinding to 60 in old school Everquest where you grind in a group, not doing quests, just killing the same set of mobs over and over for a full day to watch your XP bar barely move once you hit a hell level. That was grinding. Getting wet nosed through quests to max level isn't grinding.
Try finally getting into a raid guild and grinding through North ToV every night for an entire week. That was grinding. Try being in a guild where you're required to give your guild leader your phone number once, just in case that rare mob is up for someone's epic, so you can get up at 1 in the morning to go kill it when he calls you. That's what hard core raiding guilds used to be like.
MMO's aren't what they used to be, and they never will be. I sympathize to an extent because I don't have the amount of time I used to for an MMO, and the WoW like experience is just less time consuming. That being said, end game should be more difficult. That's why it's end game. People just want to blaze through the content, get all the purple shit, and then bail because it's stale. I'm happy with an MMO that at least requires some effort.
The way quests are now has just transitioned the traditional grind to a different form. Quests are really meaningful as they were when we grinding on monsters for a tiny amount of experience. In those days quests did something specific (the ones that people did anyway) like help get you a mount, help transfer your class, introduce you to a very interesting/hidden area, open up some other part of the game. Nowadays quests are the means to leveling rather than being the means to do and learn interesting things. In a sense it is now a quest grind and not a mob grind. I think the quest grind is worse because there is never a need to make friends or find a party. I enjoyed the mob grinds because you could have some interesting conversations grinding for a couple hours with friends.
Obvious all my opinion and my personal preference. Is meaningful quest + mob grind. Mob grinding is mostly useless nowadays in terms of efficiency.
Comments
All I am saying is that I don't understand people sitting in a game thread posting how badly the game is failing when they don't like or play the game. If you don't like it that's fine but there is no need to post BS speculations about numbers and deter others from trying it when you don't play or like the game to begin with.
I would understand someone posting saying, "hey I really like the game but I can't ...", but people putting all this energy into telling NCSoft a multi billion dollar corporation what they need to do to save themselves is a tad strange.
simple. We want the game to survive. If we feel that it won't in it's current incarnation we suggest what could be done to save it. Then white knights tell us to go back to WoW and hilarity ensues. A tale as old as time.
If all feed back was "your game is da beeeeest" Carbine wouldn't have any feedback they could use to improve.
Why oh why the cartoooonz? Oh god WHHHYYYYY?
Literally everyone I know skipped the game due to its art design.
Pro tip: If you have a budget of a billion dollars, don't design as if you are broke.
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
When I look at the WildStar system requirements, I see the following:
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
dont worry its coming the era of destiny and other similar games, where there is no community just coop without talking to other players, people will become like bots looking for cheesy experiences. Half posters in this forum don't know what they want, only to pay more and more cause the more expensive the better it is.
My updated pro and cons list.
PRO
no forced use for outdated WASD for moving, using mouse
fun, humor
very fluid movement, controls responding as expected, very well
client loading very fast
no single bug or crash in 3 last beta days (but one of worst headstarts I ever played ... actually .. there was no headstart I guess for majority of at least EU players)
only game (known to me) so far where i.e. river is driving you in direction of water flow ... amazing! Must constantly battle water flow. :-)
love double jump and missing already in other MMO’s :-)
underwater combat and quests (even if small number of them)
so far not a single gold spam message in chat! Very few in ingame mail, bots in game have been truly eliminated in a week.
love idea of no need to go back to quest giver on completion, solve quest, get reward; with exception of some chains
CONS (absolutely worst on top!)
Only 1 (ONE!) toolbar with 8 active keys; if, actually when, I will stop to play I’m already sure this will be for this problem because problem it is; usually this spells button mashing, especially as abilities starts to pile up; always hated when game enforces me to “select” only some spells out of zillion; leave that to PLAYER!, if somebody likes can play game with single spell and any game but if i wish to have 2 or 3 toolbars full of abilities that is MY problem.
Even on that single toolbar keys are unlocked with leveling so up to i.e. only at lv. 9 you will have 6 unlocked, at lv. 1 only single; I always in any game have “spam” spell on button 5 and hate being forced move that to key 1 or 2; want to have healing spells on other toolbar and usually main 2 linked to F4 and F5, ... etc .... whole toolbar(s) should be unlocked since level 1; fortunately is possible at least to move spells to any already unlocked button, lessening somewhat this problem; at level 9 there are 1-6 keys unlocked.
Some even say “wait until lv. 30 and will understand 8 buttons is fine” .... sorry, do not want to wait past half game for that to happen if will happen; surely will come to lv. 30 with at least some of my alts; at lv. 22 with majority of alts button mashing is just killing my will to play.
And then another problem of limited number of spells, I would call it “social aspect”. I like to help others when in trouble. But here I can mostly kiss good by this aspect. Many times happen you see player or two in trouble with some big mob, players being at last drops of blood ... and I would like to help first with healing then dps-ing... but’t CAN NOT! Why? Because for my PVE play I might have on my toolbars only dps abilities.
Etc, etc, ... there is NO SINGLE reason pro this madness with single toolbar and there are ALL AGAINST. Yet somebody smart decided this would be good. Ok, as usually, never will everyone be happy with everything ... but currently I think this first sub I did on 3.7.14 will be also my last.
I HATE from bottom of my heart that silly, booooooring, annnnnoying .... as hell minigames with pressing F at certain point, remembering color combinations, .... or pressing A, W, ... etc while being stunned. I HATE using WASD for move and I will NEVER (again) play such games. Wildstar support mouse for moving, but still that silly letters WASD are used at certain point to get out of trap or stun .... while my fingers are far from that key. This could be second most important reason besides 1 toolbar that could make me go away; fortunately at least F and color combinat games are easily “fixed” with addons, but not WASD.
small number of different spells/abilities
some patch at the end of beta caused fps to drastically fall down with same computer and same settings; stayed so at release, too; and I’m not alone in this; this workaround: http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/read/31563#post helps a lot of getting at least 10-15 fps at same conditions
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/42544-client-optimization/page-83
“active combat” mean one have to spend more time just to dodge and jump like monkey, left, right, back, forward, ... instead of actually doing any combat as combat should be; in close quarters you are dead; same with ads; another problem related to this ... in game where one is FORCED to constantly move out of telegraph that does massive damage, surprising number of spells requires player stand still, so jumping or moving constantly cancels spells - all in all this is not what I consider fun
small number of classes and races
incredibly (for new game) complicated and confusing (no, it is not only me!) interface for wardrobe implementation
JUST NOTE
+1
One of the most lucid posts I've seen in a while. I completely agree with your analysis.
You know what is worst? The same mentality is being carried over to the single player territory, especially in genres a/o franchises that have been traditionally complex and intellectually demanding (dumbed down Sim City 2013 and Rome Total War 2 are good examples).
The casualties of the so called casuals (AKA entitled crowd that conceive games as a passtime instead of a hobby and who don't really know what they want except a guaranteed win and "finish the game" ASAP lol) keep engrossing its gruesome and already long list.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
I really dont understand why people consider this game to be hard. It's not really that hard....move out of the mobs telegraph and make sure yours is faced toward them...
I had more of a problem with the repetative combat and pronounced grind.....
Didn't you realise, trying to play through the repetitive combat and pronounced grind is the difficulty.
So it's carbines fault that you have ridiculous requirements just to join your guild, which results in to few players to do content that you seem interested in doing, and instead of adjusting the stupid interview process so that you're actually able to get enough people into your guild you think that carbine should change the game to suit you.
And you think the OP is what's wrong with wildstar?
I think a lot of people would think that you are what's wrong with MMO's today. A self entitled attitude that demands developers should cater every game to your exacting specifications, even when the problem is your own unwillingness to adjust the way you bring new members into your guild.
Carbine didn't tell you to make people jump through hoops in order to join your guild, that's your fault. As if you're offering something that no other group of players is able to offer. Seeing as you're unable to get enough members to do the raid content, you're clearly not able to offer more than other guilds. You obviously need new members more than they need you, by your own admission.
If your guild was worth being a part of you wouldn't need to worry about members being poached; yet you had a problem retaining members in wildstar.
I understand though. It's easier to blame others than to accept fault.
LOL...shame on me
^ this, great post! I pretty much feel the same way you do on this subject. You can't be everything to everyone and by trying to do so you become nothing to no one, which is what I think most MMO developers fail to realize.
You get what you put in to things in life, it's that way in almost every aspect so why do people feel that a hobby should be any different?
The problem is most people don't know what grinding actually is. Most people's MMO experience comes from WoW, and games like WoW. Try some pre WoW grinding back in the late 90's once. Try grinding to 60 in old school Everquest where you grind in a group, not doing quests, just killing the same set of mobs over and over for a full day to watch your XP bar barely move once you hit a hell level. That was grinding. Getting wet nosed through quests to max level isn't grinding.
Try finally getting into a raid guild and grinding through North ToV every night for an entire week. That was grinding. Try being in a guild where you're required to give your guild leader your phone number once, just in case that rare mob is up for someone's epic, so you can get up at 1 in the morning to go kill it when he calls you. That's what hard core raiding guilds used to be like.
MMO's aren't what they used to be, and they never will be. I sympathize to an extent because I don't have the amount of time I used to for an MMO, and the WoW like experience is just less time consuming. That being said, end game should be more difficult. That's why it's end game. People just want to blaze through the content, get all the purple shit, and then bail because it's stale. I'm happy with an MMO that at least requires some effort.
This is nonsense. Blizzard listened to their 12m subscribers as best they could and adapted to what they wanted. They didn't care for non-subscribers as they had plenty already. Yes they've lost subs as the game is old now and people can't be expected to stay on board when 100 MMOs a year come out now. Too much choice so people spread it around.
Over he years, people's tastes and demands change - but the main thing is that their original players have aged by 10 years and have different demands on their time. Today's players now have jobs and kids so they can't be bothered, in the main, to do content that takes 8 hours a day to do; they just don't have time tbh. Blizzard just moved with the times and that's why even after 10 years, their subscribers are what other games can only dream of.
For starters blizzard reached 12 million subscribers because of how good classic and TBC were. They peaked at 12 million in Wrath and it's been down hill ever since, which is also around the time where they started nerfing the game big time and making everything accessible to everyone. Truth is rushing to end game, plowing through content doesn't keep people around, it bores them and they move on only to return when the next bit of content is released.
Their model promotes a revolving door instead of a dedicated player base. Which is also a double edge sword because content needs to be made easier and easier to do to sustain this model, which then in turn means people burn through content even faster. Take a look at even hard mode content, in TBC it took the world top guild over two months to clear sunwell which only had 6 bosses and it took them 3 weeks to down HM Garrosh, which one of those weeks had to be spent clearing reg mode to unlock HM, so basically 2 weeks.
That right there says something for the shift in the model even for the "hardmode" raiders.
The way quests are now has just transitioned the traditional grind to a different form. Quests are really meaningful as they were when we grinding on monsters for a tiny amount of experience. In those days quests did something specific (the ones that people did anyway) like help get you a mount, help transfer your class, introduce you to a very interesting/hidden area, open up some other part of the game. Nowadays quests are the means to leveling rather than being the means to do and learn interesting things. In a sense it is now a quest grind and not a mob grind. I think the quest grind is worse because there is never a need to make friends or find a party. I enjoyed the mob grinds because you could have some interesting conversations grinding for a couple hours with friends.
Obvious all my opinion and my personal preference. Is meaningful quest + mob grind. Mob grinding is mostly useless nowadays in terms of efficiency.