Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[HaemishM]

Should Riot not have took the time to develop Master and Challenger tiers and how that system works for the top 1% of players in the world? Do hundreds of thousands of people not watch pro-LOL/DOTA streamers playing the game? It's the shame shit is spirit.

First off, that is an entirely OTHER discussion than raiding. Professional competitors are not even remotely like "hardcore raiders." For one, raiding takes almost zero individual skill. It takes some logistical skill at the leadership level but for the most part the individual skill is about facerolling the keyboard at the right time and staying out of the big glowy circle - oh and making sure to follow the escalating gear grind path so that skill really isn't an issue. Also, a 5-man team of LoL pro players is not the same as a 40-man raid. 5-men are much easier to control, schedule and train than 40+.

Top tier raiding isn't something broadcast to the casual public, whereas the MOBA pro leagues are. Most of the time, the only thing top tier raiders broadcast is how l33t their skills and how awesome their gear - most aren't streaming their raids because they aren't giving up their "secrets" to take down bosses.

[Surlyboi]

Should Riot not have took the time to develop Master and Challenger tiers and how that system works for the top 1% of players in the world? Do hundreds of thousands of people not watch pro-LOL/DOTA streamers playing the game? It's the shame shit is spirit.

First off, that is an entirely OTHER discussion than raiding. Professional competitors are not even remotely like "hardcore raiders." For one, raiding takes almost zero individual skill. It takes some logistical skill at the leadership level but for the most part the individual skill is about facerolling the keyboard at the right time and staying out of the big glowy circle - oh and making sure to follow the escalating gear grind path so that skill really isn't an issue.

This. I could tell you stories of how I fell asleep at the keyboard during raids of City of Mist or Plane of Hate back in the EQ days and still came out with amazing drops because the skill involved was zilch and I was auto-following the illusionist that handled crowd control so I was always safe anyway unless there was a total wipe.

[Ingmar]

EQ raiding doesn't really have anything to do with what happens now in the hardmode type environments, though.

[Venkman]

Top tier raiding isn't something broadcast to the casual public, whereas the MOBA pro leagues are.

And yet far more believe and probably will do the former than will ever have a shred of a chance at the latter.

Competitive PvP is the apex of one type of gaming, while raiding PvE is the apex of the other. They're not directly comparable, which is why any MMO that's managed to offer both has always  compartmentalized them, down to zones, objectives, stats and full economies.

Players want different things. Both have "grinds", but they're measured and rewarded differently, because the skill required is different. In PvP you're not only trying to get better, but you're constantly in an arms race against new choices the opposition is making In raiding, you're first trying to figure out the puzzle, then you're trying to figure out how to master it, and then you're trying to figure out how to speed run laggards through it until the publishers moves the goal post.

Both are chasing foozles. Neither is more fundamentally valuable than the other. But they motivate different people and monetize in different ways.

I've got nothing on Wildstar. Kinda done on that topic 50 pages ago 

[Rasix]

EQ raiding doesn't really have anything to do with what happens now in the hardmode type environments, though.

Or even normal mode. EQ raiding was not challenging in regards to mechanical skill.  It was largely organizational and timings.  Participation in higher tiers was exclusively time commitment and networking.

I don't really enjoy large scale raiding, but it has evolved over its EQ roots.

[Trippy]

Should Riot not have took the time to develop Master and Challenger tiers and how that system works for the top 1% of players in the world? Do hundreds of thousands of people not watch pro-LOL/DOTA streamers playing the game? It's the shame shit is spirit.

First off, that is an entirely OTHER discussion than raiding. Professional competitors are not even remotely like "hardcore raiders." For one, raiding takes almost zero individual skill. It takes some logistical skill at the leadership level but for the most part the individual skill is about facerolling the keyboard at the right time and staying out of the big glowy circle - oh and making sure to follow the escalating gear grind path so that skill really isn't an issue.

This. I could tell you stories of how I fell asleep at the keyboard during raids of City of Mist or Plane of Hate back in the EQ days and still came out with amazing drops because the skill involved was zilch and I was auto-following the illusionist that handled crowd control so I was always safe anyway unless there was a total wipe.

You were a Bard right?

[Threash]

How do you even loot stuff while sleeping?

[Surlyboi]

I was a ranger of all things. I woke up just in time for the important stuff. 

[Ruvaldt]

A ranger, eh?  So you woke up just in time to eat the Death Touch?   

[Surlyboi]

Well, considering Fippy Darkpaw could drop me on a bad day... Yeah.

[Pennilenko]

Well, considering Fippy Darkpaw could drop me on a bad any day... Yeah.

Fixed that for you.

[murdoc]

Should Riot not have took the time to develop Master and Challenger tiers and how that system works for the top 1% of players in the world? Do hundreds of thousands of people not watch pro-LOL/DOTA streamers playing the game? It's the shame shit is spirit.

First off, that is an entirely OTHER discussion than raiding. Professional competitors are not even remotely like "hardcore raiders." For one, raiding takes almost zero individual skill. It takes some logistical skill at the leadership level but for the most part the individual skill is about facerolling the keyboard at the right time and staying out of the big glowy circle - oh and making sure to follow the escalating gear grind path so that skill really isn't an issue.

This. I could tell you stories of how I fell asleep at the keyboard during raids of City of Mist or Plane of Hate back in the EQ days and still came out with amazing drops because the skill involved was zilch and I was auto-following the illusionist that handled crowd control so I was always safe anyway unless there was a total wipe.

Back in the DAoC days I would take my warrior and put guard on the nearest healer then do a /follow and let them lead me through Darkness Falls. I'd come back in time for the loot rolls at the end.

[Kageru]

Yes, EQ raiding allowed a lot of people of different abilities to still contribute, less dependence on a perfect balance of classes (outside of badgering people into playing clerics) and enough down time that there was space for socialising. In much the same way that Eve is as much as being part of a group activity as it is the moment to moment game play. While I think Eve goes too far in the boring stakes, Wild-star went too far in the "all twitch, all the time" busywork.

[Trippy]

I was a ranger of all things. I woke up just in time for the important stuff. 

Ranger down!

[Merusk]

EQ raiding doesn't really have anything to do with what happens now in the hardmode type environments, though.

Or even normal mode. EQ raiding was not challenging in regards to mechanical skill.  It was largely organizational and timings.  Participation in higher tiers was exclusively time commitment and networking.

I don't really enjoy large scale raiding, but it has evolved over its EQ roots.

Beyond evolved, it's nothing like EQ raids other than being called the same thing. 

Raids in today's MMOs are as similar to EQ raids as the leveling experience is to the "sit in one spot and pull mobs for hours to get a bar of XP" 'gameplay' of EQ.   To compare them as being the same thing shows just how out of touch you are on that front.

[sam, an eggplant]

My understanding is that modern EQ raids (the game is still active, if you weren't aware) are pretty comparable, actually. Back in 1999 they were just a ton of players dogpiling the boss, though, yeah.

[ezrast]

1) Raids are the only possible apex PvE content. Nobody said that.  That said, I haven't seen anything else that works. If anyone has any ideas, please do speak up.

Gear grinding is also a fairly proven endgame. It's typically thought of as more of an ARPG thing, but it works in traditional MMOs too. CoX had a pretty dedicated community of players who spent all their time min-maxing the everliving fuck out of their Scrappers for the express purpose of soloing things that were intended to be group content (I was one of them, except I did it on a Stalker because I hate myself). I hear people sink quite a bit of time into chasing legendaries in GW2, as well.

[Setanta]

Got a 7 day free offer today to go back and look at their new drop.

I just couldn't be bothered because the WoW steamroller just shows how badly Carbine fucked up by thinking that basing a game on vanilla WoW grind was fun.

[Nebu]

Got a 7 day free offer today to go back and look at their new drop.

I just couldn't be bothered because the WoW steamroller just shows how badly Carbine fucked up by thinking that basing a game on vanilla WoW grind was fun.

I felt the same way.  If I'm going to do another gear grind/raid, I'd rather play WoW.

[Ruvaldt]

My understanding is that modern EQ raids (the game is still active, if you weren't aware) are pretty comparable, actually. Back in 1999 they were just a ton of players dogpiling the boss, though, yeah.

Yeah, raids in EQ have changed substantially.  The changes started in Velious but were really cemented by the time the seventh expansion (Gates of Discord) was released.  Nowadays EQ raids are comparable to other MMOG raids except that they're larger in that they are often 50+ players strong.

[sam, an eggplant]

Gear grinding is also a fairly proven endgame. It's typically thought of as more of an ARPG thing, but it works in traditional MMOs too. CoX had a pretty dedicated community of players who spent all their time min-maxing the everliving fuck out of their Scrappers for the express purpose of soloing things that were intended to be group content (I was one of them, except I did it on a Stalker because I hate myself). I hear people sink quite a bit of time into chasing legendaries in GW2, as well.

You mean solo gear grinding? I didn't know any MMOs offered solo-attainable rewards past a pretty early threshold. Interesting.

[ezrast]

Almost everything in City of X was attainable solo, yeah. Drop tables were way random, but everything was BoE, so all you really had to do was learn to exploit the market. This was easier to do than in most games because the CoX economy was ridiculously broken. Some of the forum regulars who were considered experts on class builds literally never grouped.

I'm not too certain about GW2; I think I made it to level 30 in that game.

[Fabricated]

Got an email saying the game was now 33% off.

Yeah, thanks but no thanks.

[Paelos]

Reports from my contact on the inside say that he's looking for another job immediately. Shit is going to hit the fan soon.

Supposedly he's looking at Bioware, but we'll see.

[Outlawedprod]

Reports from my contact on the inside say that he's looking for another job immediately. Shit is going to hit the fan soon.

Supposedly he's looking at Bioware, but we'll see.

Judging by sub boost to wow I think we know where those left playing WildStar are bailing to. This could be just like warhammer when lich king came out?

[Soulflame]

It makes sense that they'd head back to WoW.  Wildstar is trying to recreate something that existed only because the playerbase had the time to invest.  College age kids don't seem to play MMOs much (anyone have numbers on this?) so I'm guessing WoW's demographic is people who've been playing WoW for years, but no longer have as much time to invest in playing an MMO.

Thus, they hit the attunement wall in Wildstar, remember why Blizzard ditched attunement in Burning Crusade, and quietly go back to WoW.  At least Blizzard seems to be able to correct when they fuck up.

[angry.bob]

You mean solo gear grinding? I didn't know any MMOs offered solo-attainable rewards past a pretty early threshold. Interesting.

I can honestly say that Pandera WoW was pretty good about this. I was never going to get top end raid gear, but for never having grouped once (except battlegrounds) since the game came out I was able to get stuff that was close enough I didn't care. There were some rough spots but Timeless Isle helped a lot.

[Sir T]

The downside is that anything that's mechanically more difficult than "don't stand in this shit" is almost an automatic fail.  The Marionette fight is just about the upper limit of what you can accomplish in GW2 raiding.  Even that can be torpedoed if you have a few wankers fucking it up.

Are the worm fights completable in non-organized pugs now?  Those AFAIK were only completed by organized raid guilds that were able to get all of their members in an overflow and with a large amount of build tailoring.   Nothing wrong with this sort of content, but it was just so out of place in GW2.  Then again, most of their PVE efforts were wildly inconsistent in the amount of skill/effort required.

Didn't see this answered. Tequatl, the second hardest boss, is completed all the time by non organized pug raids now. All you need is 4 guys with commander tags to stand in the right places and people will stick on the map and gather in the right spots. They don't do it as fast as the hardcore raid guilds but it gets done. The triple headed Wurm is really not completable by a disorganised group simply because the groups have to kill each wurm inside a minute of one another, and that requires co-ordination. However there is at least one loosely organized non guild group that does it and has a teamspeak for it. www.gw2community.com. So its not locked out of the reach of filthy casuals anymore.

[sam, an eggplant]

I can honestly say that Pandera WoW was pretty good about this. I was never going to get top end raid gear, but for never having grouped once (except battlegrounds) since the game came out I was able to get stuff that was close enough I didn't care. There were some rough spots but Timeless Isle helped a lot.

That gear was trivial to get, you just installed an addon and rightclicked on all the chests. Getting a full set of baseline catch-up gear is not what I personally would call compelling character progression.

[angry.bob]

I can honestly say that Pandera WoW was pretty good about this. I was never going to get top end raid gear, but for never having grouped once (except battlegrounds) since the game came out I was able to get stuff that was close enough I didn't care. There were some rough spots but Timeless Isle helped a lot.

That gear was trivial to get, you just installed an addon and rightclicked on all the chests. Getting a full set of baseline catch-up gear is not what I personally would call compelling character progression.

I don't call getting better from raiding any kind of progression at all, which is probably why I'm happy with it. A game where the most observable "progression" is going up loot levels is a pretty shitty game. Frankly I consider finishing the farm quest line and doing the dallies there more impressive and indicative of character progression than fuckwad raids. If I ever resub to wow it sounds like I'll be happy doing nothing but garrison stuff.

[Samprimary]

official report: wildstar hella losing subs and money. like, hella.

[Nebu]

official report: wildstar hella losing subs and money. like, hella.

If only this taught the MMO industry something about catering to the hardcore.  Sadly, it won't.

[Nevermore]

Obviously it wasn't hardcore enough.

[sam, an eggplant]

What people really want is a challenge. ALL PEOPLE.

[Maven]

When I think of the future of MMOs, I think of No Man's Sky and its ilk. That is, MMOs have no future unless they adapt to the Minecraft generation. Ignoring the monetization for now.