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How can WildStar be saved?
PioneerStew
Member Posts: 874
Here are my thoughts on the subject: -
Become more casual friendly
There are two ways this can be achieved without alienating the hardcore minority and these could be implemented quite simply. Firstly I would create tiered dungeons with tiered rewards, and secondly I would create 20 and 10 man raids.
I also feel that the jump from the casual friendly levelling experience to the PUG-unfriendly low level dungeon is too extreme. Players should be eased into the hardcore content rather than thrown into it only to fail.
Overhaul the quests and quest pathing
There are just too many generic quests which achieve very little in terms of xp gain. Quantity does not equate to choice when you are offered the same thing several times. Many of the quests could be removed from the game entirely or demoted to some sort of sub-quest or a precursor to a completion achievement.
The pathing between quests is also poorly realised and requires players to tread the same ground over and over. The pathing needs to be improved.
They also need to get rid of the unsolicited challenges which just become intensely irritating.
Whitevale
This seems to be the burn out zone for many players and largely due to the issues I identified above. The entire zone needs a rework.
Overhaul the combat
The telegraph system for me became swiftly tedious. Different sized red splotches on the ground does not provide variety to the combat. For combat that is tedious it requires an awful lot of attention and as a result it just becomes exhausting.
It feels like someone became pre-occupied with telegraphs and failed to take a step back and ask the question whether or not the combat is actually fun. For me they need to move away from the telegraph system and add in some alternative systems for some of the classes, particularly healers.
The monetization system
Simply put I feel that going F2P with a cosmetic cash shop is the only way to bring players back to the game.
Housing, cosmetics etc
I felt that the fluff in this game such as the housing and the cosmetic items was one of the games strong points and areas that could be developed further.
They are my thoughts on the subject, please share your own.
Comments
So I guess what you are saying is pretty much make it WoW 2 with F2P?
It can't be saved at this point, IMO. It is what it is and it may survive in some form with a minimal player base, as a F2P title.
But I don't see a redesign such as you propose, in the cards, as it would still be a risky venture to succeed even with those changes. Bad word of mouth and turning it into another generic themepark isn't exactly a recipe for success either.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
want 7 free days of playing? Try this
http://www.swtor.com/r/ZptVnY
But it is a generic themepark, just one with that is poorly realised with many bad design choices.
It shouldn't be saved.
Carbine is focusing on the 1%, and not listening to players despite getting constant questions on getting more of certain content.
The Forums have turned into flipping North Korea, and Moderators are banning anyone criticizing the game.
I say let Natural Selection handle this mess, and watch them lose their jobs.
Correct but those choices were intentional, not bad as you suggest. The bad choice was when they decided that there was a huge market for this type of game.
Your changes would not really bring anyone back to the game, as they could essentially go to any number of similar games. And they have.
Probably the biggest mistake they made was going subscription only. They should have gone for hybrid monetization, to retain the casual players. Let the hardcores who enjoyed the challenge pay for content via sub and the rest who just wanted a fun themepark pay for cosmetic and housing items.
Sub only was the kiss of death.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
It completely amazes me how many haters there are.
As Carbine said in the past.. 200k subs and they are profitable.
On Stormtalon the population is great. MMore than enough players to recruit from. Solid Auction House.
Will it ever be WoW, god I hope not. I dont think I could ever go back to the Boring Combat.
Could care less if there are 200k subs or 2million. As long as Carbine keeps moving forward the game will be fine.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
In past yes..what are the numbers now? a bad game has so many haters....shocking.
Your server is doing great, i am happy for you... what about rest of the servers? they do not count?
Yes, in all honesty I do not think there is much that could be done to save this game, I was just throwing some ideas out there.
If it went F2P in its current form it would not entice me back as I do not like the game, free or not.
?
Of the last several new "mmos":
I agree somewhat. The next raid should definitely NOT be a 40 man affair. Maybe a 10 man raid would be a good idea.
The biggest detriment to casual play is IMO the lack of voice com in PUGs. Challenging content in Wildstar pretty much requires it, unless everyone has run the dungeons 50 times already. If you "dumb the content down" so it doesn't require coordination it'll lose a lot of its appeal.
Agree for the most part, though once you stop questing mindlessly, you realize you can skip the more boring portions and move on to the next section. Even without dungeons or PvP, you do not need to scrape every last point of experience outof every zone to finish. Unless it's maybe your first character, you can keep your XP gains at good levels by doing stuff 2, 3 levels above you. Once all your quests are at level or level +1 you know it's time to move on.
No. Nope. Don't even.
This is what enables a lot of the other outstanding features. If you don't like the combat move on. This is not the game you are looking for. It's like asking Poker to come up with something other than cards.
I made a gathering circle with 200 members. I am tempted to check in to see how many of them that still play. I would guess a very low %.
Dunno what really made me quit, I still have 2 or 3 monthly subs that I bough with ingame gold. But I just dont see myself playing the game for more than a week if I were to return.
It is very much like a themepark, similar to GW2, daily quests, daily restrictions etc. Too many systems are in place to "force" the player do X,Y or Z. The combat in the game is good, but it does fall into the GW2 style to some extent. Too little variety, and you will have one or tree builds that are the "best".
I do like the way they went with back to the trinity, but the core game just did not feel right to me.
I guess its another "trying to please everyone" issue.
You sure? if anything this MMO tried to please only very small percentage of hardcore gamers. Wildstar isn't the MMO which welcomes all kind of players.
This right here.
They wanted the large-scale hardcore raiding demographic. That's what they got. Surprise! It's really small!
If there were that many people into large scale raiding Blizzard would never have scaled down to 10-25 person raids. If anything they would have just done 10-25-40. or some variation to cater to that crowed. But those players just don't exist in numbers great enough to build a game for.
If you were right i would be playing happily as we speak. There's nothing hardcore in WS before end game, and that's why i couldn't make it even on level 20.
It's yet another linear solo quest themepark with an arcade game feel in everything you do. Been there, done that.
If they redesigned the end game to more suitable for casuals, there could be hope for this game.
At this time the talk is whether or not WildStar will survive the coming of WoW's next expansion in a month from now. It is certain that people will leave for WoD and although they may not stay there for long WS absolutely can't suffer further loss of players.
The OP raises some valid points and it is apparent that the game needs a rework in certain key areas. Will NCsoft pay for such a rework should this be decided ? I will go with a wild guess and say, yes. WildStar is to big of a project to just let it go down the drain. I believe that NCsoft will try to salvage the game by enforcing certain things on Carbine.
My idea would be to make a F2P lobby game with PvP and PvE using most of the code, abilities, models, animations, etc. from the MMO. That way they can have the sub based MMO separate from the F2P game. Although it would take time to create another game it would be easier than starting from scratch and it would create another revenue stream.
I know this idea isn't appealing to many MMO players but it's like hitting two markets with one stone.
Only because they failed to keep even small minority of hardcore players happy doesn't mean they were not focusing on them.
Their sales pitch has always been about attracting hardcore.
Re. your last point, I would generally agree that if you dislike a fundamental feature of a game then perhaps you should find a different game to play. However, WS is clearly struggling and one of the issues I see cited repeatedly for people leaving is that they find the combat exhausting or they spend too much time starring at red splotches on the ground.
Particularly with regard to healers I think that the combat needs some revision.
TBH, It would have to be changed into a different game. Not trolling, just being realistic. It's too similar to other MMOs in it's current state, and as such has the same problems they've suffered through, while still charging a subscription.
That said, assuming you don't want to change the game mechanics much, the best thing they could do with this game would be to just go ahead and make it F2P. Implement a decent cash shop model (not too invasive), and eliminate that barrier of entry.
That would definitely help, though there is still the issue with raid content & dungeon difficulty. Which, while it's fun for some of us, is a huge turnoff to a lot of players. Because it makes key parts of the game more of a frustrating experience than fun.
I think it's actually a great lesson. Here's an analogy that I think is fitting. Wildstar created a great set of golf clubs. However, it's only really designed for people on the PGA tour, it's really expensive, and it's not so much better than what people are already using, if at all. A professional golfer isn't going to switch clubs just because you tell them you designed a set of clubs just for professionals. They're already invested in the clubs they have. They've put a lot of work into tuning their swing to that club, they're emotionally sound with that club, new clubs require a serious time investment and their current clubs are familiar.
Same as asking someone "hardcore" to switch to a new game. We know that the market is small, but how Carbine ever thought they could secure enough of that market to be successful? I don't know.
I think it needs to be tuned for Joe Average and also made F2P-Hybrid so that hardcore audience they're talking about can remain invested in their primary game while still playing Wildstar. They might do a few months subscription here and there, but I don't think it'll be the "one and only" game for anyone hardcore. However, especially for us WoW players, we've sometimes got months of downtime, so you could do a healthy business knowing how to target us during those valleys.
Crazkanuk
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