Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Ironwood]

Ethics in Games Journalism ?

[Paelos]

Ethics in Games Journalism ?

What does this have to do with Shadowbane?

[HaemishM]

SB.EXE

RAGE

[sam, an eggplant]

Heh, we're so much more cuddly than we used to be 10 years ago. Even Rasix! 

This is totally true. We all cared so much more, 10 years ago.

[Rasix]

We were definitely more tolerant of pseudo-intellectual musings about this genre.  We were all doing it.  It was like heroin, but with more swearing.

I've long since hit the acceptance phase with MMOs.  They are what they are. 

[Samprimary]

I'm still in bargaining, like there's this possibility that an MMO might come out someday that really scratches the itch like in the good ol' days when we would tolerate EQ or WoW

[Hawkbit]

I have a feeling a bunch of our gen are going to hit retirement and instead of making birdhouses and complaining about shit all day, we're going to make EQ again. 

[sam, an eggplant]

I'm still in bargaining, like there's this possibility that an MMO might come out someday that really scratches the itch like in the good ol' days when we would tolerate EQ or WoW

I'm happy with games like Neverwinter. Comes out, free to play, the actual combat is fun, I blow past all the content in a week or two giving them twenty bucks or so. Occasionally they release expansion packs and I check it out again. Wish they didn't push the cash store quite so hard but hey, it's basically free. No commitment. It's not my life, I don't think about it when I'm not playing, and it lays unplayed for months at a time.

[Malakili]

I'm still in bargaining, like there's this possibility that an MMO might come out someday that really scratches the itch like in the good ol' days when we would tolerate EQ or WoW

I'm happy with games like Neverwinter. Comes out, free to play, the actual combat is fun, I blow past all the content in a week or two giving them twenty bucks or so. Occasionally they release expansion packs and I check it out again. Wish they didn't push the cash store quite so hard but hey, it's basically free. No commitment. It's not my life, I don't think about it when I'm not playing, and it lays unplayed for months at a time.

I basically did this with Neverwinter (and never played it again after I maxed out one character).  On the one hand, a decently fun game with X hours worth of sort of fun content is ok on its own I guess.  But on the other hand I'm less and less interested in games that I don't see myself playing long term. If I'm only going to get 10 hours out of something, even if those are 10 hours, I feel like why bother.  I might as well put those 10 hours towards something else that is equally as fun AND that I'll be playing 6 months from now.

[HaemishM]

I have a feeling a bunch of our gen are going to hit retirement and instead of making birdhouses and complaining about shit all day, we're going to make EQ again. 

I hope by that time the tools for multiplayer sandbox type games/spaces are prevalent enough that anyone with time and energy can put one together for the same fees as FPS server hosting are now. So many kids playing Minecraft at a young age would lead me to believe this is more likely than not, once bandwidth gets a bit cheaper/more prevalent.

[Threash]

I still have hope, since 2004 we've had nothing but games that figured doing exactly what WoW did was the way to be successful.  MMOs take so long to finish that all the WoW clone failures are only just now starting to make their impact felt.  EQNext is probably the first "maybe let's not WoW so hard" game coming out, but there will be more eventually and they'll grow out of the failures of the past five years rather than WoW's massive success.

[Paelos]

The MMO that actually lets people change and build in their world in a freeform fashion like minecraft, and it actually works, will win the day in my mind.

[Fordel]

So never then. 

[sam, an eggplant]

If I'm only going to get 10 hours out of something, even if those are 10 hours, I feel like why bother.  I might as well put those 10 hours towards something else that is equally as fun AND that I'll be playing 6 months from now.

The problem is you're looking at your entertainment as an investment. It should be much simpler than that. Either you're having fun or you're not. If you are, cool. If not, stop whatever you're doing and do something else.

[Malakili]

If I'm only going to get 10 hours out of something, even if those are 10 hours, I feel like why bother.  I might as well put those 10 hours towards something else that is equally as fun AND that I'll be playing 6 months from now.

The problem is you're looking at your entertainment as an investment. It should be much simpler than that. Either you're having fun or you're not. If you are, cool. If not, stop whatever you're doing and do something else.

It's not fun vs. "not fun".  It's fun vs. fun + more fun later because I spent my fun time on this one instead of the other one in the first place.

[sam, an eggplant]

Yeah, and that's how MMOs snag you, that feeling of steady (but VERY slow) progression. Need to switch off the portion of your brain that wants that poison.

[Malakili]

Yeah, and that's how MMOs snag you, that feeling of steady (but VERY slow) progression. Need to switch off the portion of your brain that wants that poison.

It's not even an MMO thing necessarily.  In fact, I can't think of the last MMO that made me think it REALLY had long term potential.  I played WoW for a while.  But the other two "big" MMOs of the last 10 years for me have been World War 2 Online and EVE Online, both of which I haven't played in years.  The genre as a whole hasn't given me the bug in a LONG time.

It's just more that I like entertainment I can be engaged with for a long time.  That's *part* of the enjoyment.  Even something like Team Fortress 2, which I played for a long time, had a lot of that. Let alone more obviously competitive games like Counter Strike or Starcraft.  I guess it's progression in the sense that I like learning games at a deep level.  But it's not dinggrats.

[sam, an eggplant]

Ahh. I've only had the "understanding at a very deep level" feeling with MMOs, and that feeling of high-level expertise, which I definitely had with Everquest back in the day, is another toehold keeping you playing. It was also a source of immense frustration, as I (correctly) felt I knew better than the developers and gosh, why wouldn't they just listen?

I'm looking for booty calls, not love affairs. I don't want to play league of legends for months on end. I want to blast through something like Neverwinter, Shadow of Mordor, Wasteland2, etc, enjoying an engaging experience with no repetition or artificial extenders, and then move on. The gaming industry has grown to the point where I can consistently do that in genres I enjoy.

I treat WoW the same way. I've said this before on here, but I strongly feel that WoW's solo content is some of the best gaming available, period. You're constantly moving through, seeing new stuff, and they spend a ton of money on production values. I picked up the WoW expansion. I'll make it to max level, do a couple dungeons, then quit until the next expansion comes out in 2 years.

[Malakili]

Ahh. I've only had the "understanding at a very deep level" feeling with MMOs, and that feeling of high-level expertise, which I definitely had with Everquest back in the day, is another toehold keeping you playing.

See, I think it's the opposite.  Once I feel like I have nothing left to learn about a game I get bored in 5 minutes.  It's not expertise that keeps me playing, it's knowing that there is some higher level of expertise that I still have yet to reach, that there is something more to learn.

I get this feeling of inevitability in single player campaign games where I realize - ok I "get it" now and all that's standing between me and beating this game is X amount of hours sitting here.  And I pretty much always quit the moment I feel like that and don't fire it up again.  That's how I've felt about pretty much every MMO I've tried in recent years.   

That's not to say fun games aren't fun.  I play Diablo 3 all the time still, for example, and I don't have a lot to learn there.  But at least smashing hoards of monsters is fun.  So I get what you're saying.  But it's a rare game that is actually fun enough to get me to turn my head in that respect.  Certainly another 1-max level run in an, even well made, MMORPG isn't enough to make me care anymore.

[Nebu]

See, I think it's the opposite.  Once I feel like I have nothing left to learn about a game I get bored in 5 minutes.  It's not expertise that keeps me playing, it's knowing that there is some higher level of expertise that I still have yet to reach, that there is something more to learn.

You should love WoT then.  I've played 18k battles and I still feel like I have a lot to learn.

[Malakili]

See, I think it's the opposite.  Once I feel like I have nothing left to learn about a game I get bored in 5 minutes.  It's not expertise that keeps me playing, it's knowing that there is some higher level of expertise that I still have yet to reach, that there is something more to learn.

You should love WoT then.  I've played 18k battles and I still feel like I have a lot to learn.

I played it a little, it wasn't bad.  I never got super into it because I didn't love the pacing of the battles.  But it seems like a pretty good game.

[Ginaz]

See, I think it's the opposite.  Once I feel like I have nothing left to learn about a game I get bored in 5 minutes.  It's not expertise that keeps me playing, it's knowing that there is some higher level of expertise that I still have yet to reach, that there is something more to learn.

You should love WoT then.  I've played 18k battles and I still feel like I have a lot to learn.

Some people have played many more times that number and still need to L2P.

[Draegan]

See, I think it's the opposite.  Once I feel like I have nothing left to learn about a game I get bored in 5 minutes.  It's not expertise that keeps me playing, it's knowing that there is some higher level of expertise that I still have yet to reach, that there is something more to learn.

You should love WoT then.  I've played 18k battles and I still feel like I have a lot to learn.

I get this for LOL. There is always a higher rank to achieve.

[Draegan]

Hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhahaaaaaa 

https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/118364-changes-coming-to-datascape/

We are re-balancing Datascape to be a 20-player raid instance instead of its current 40-player size.

This is, obviously, a big change and will frustrate and excite players to varying degrees. I would like to take the time to explain some of the reasoning behind this decision.

We spoke to a number of raiding guilds--including all of the ones at that time who had experience within Datascape. The feedback across the board listed the extreme pressure that the 'roster boss' put upon those guilds, and the (in our opinion) excessive amount of additional stress it required simply to maintain a stable 40-player raid roster.

Our analytics shows that the player buy-in (number of players attempting the raid) is too low and that the player turnover (players who entered, then left and did not return) is much too high.

This change should greatly help in addressing 'roster boss,' player buy-in, and player turnover rate without losing the epic experience of defeating some of the most challenging encounters in the market. Making this change will also allow us to improve the experience in several additional ways:
Combat - Our combat system functions much more cleanly in a smaller 20-player raid environment. We feel that it has been extremely successful in Genetic Archives. Reducing the number of players in Datascape to match Genetic Archives allows the encounters and rooms and mechanics to be much cleaner, clearer, and enjoyable for players.
FPS - More people means more load, and a 40-player raid further restricted the pool of players with machines that were capable of running the content as smoothly as we’d like. Reducing the player count will greatly reduce the load on players' connections and computers, helping out quite a bit for a number of rooms and encounters within Datascape.
Future Content - With a consistent raid size, it allows us to streamline our future content and no longer split it among varying raid sizes. This will allow future zones to have more clearly defined places in the progression, and avoid the disconnect that can arise when attempting to compare raids of different sizes.
Guild Management - Running a guild is a lot of work. Having two separate raid sizes forced many guilds to attempt to rapidly expand from 20 to 40 players after finishing Genetic Archives, additionally causing the work required to manage that many people to increase exponentially. Having our raid sizes be consistent across all zones will create a clear expectation and balance for players and guilds that they can plan and build around.
Testing - It is very difficult not just for players, but also for us to assemble 40 people to test these encounters. This has made it very difficult for us to adequately test many of these encounters internally. Reducing the size will allow us to balance, tune, and bug-fix our encounters much more effectively.
Finally, I'd like to make a couple more points that deserve clarification and answer a few questions that are surely incoming:

When is this happening?
Currently we are planning to convert Datascape to its 20-player version with our 1.2.0 patch.
It will be available on PTR in its 20-player iteration as soon as the next drop arrives there, and we would greatly appreciate all help players are willing to offer in testing it!

[luckton]

Looks like they finally hit the Wall of Current Reality.

Hope they can still put the pieces back together from the crash. 

[sam, an eggplant]

Not quite. They'll cross that threshold when they add difficulty modes.

On another note, there's supposedly a money exploit that completely destroyed the economy on Wildstar as a whole. The auction houses were completely wiped out, and inflation is approaching Zimbabwe levels. No sign yet of a rollback; the only dev response has been a "we'll ban you if you exploit" forum post, but the exploit was so widespread that they would have to ban half their playerbase. And of course they can't afford to ban anybody, they need the revenue.

So from what I've read a bunch of exploiters got... drumroll... 72 hour bans. And no rollback, so the money remains in the economy and the inflationary effect is unmitigated.

http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/2m7d0m/economy_is_destroyed_30plat_for_credd/

[Pennilenko]

You can't permanently ban exploiters in today's free to play world because they are major spenders. I really believe that people that are that into your game are the marketplace whales at the same time they are exploiting.

[sam, an eggplant]

Wildstar isn't free to play.

I know, right? It's surprising.

[Paelos]

Is it possible to have a Karma boner? Because I think I have one.

[Pennilenko]

Wildstar isn't free to play.

I know, right? It's surprising.

I got my games crossed, For some reason I thought I was in an Archeage thread.

[Draegan]

Is it possible to have a Karma boner? Because I think I have one.

I really don't see how karma has anything to do with it. The guys in charge tried to make a game they wanted to play. They made bad design choices. Game failed.

[Paelos]

I really don't see how karma has anything to do with it. The guys in charge tried to make a game they wanted to play. They made bad design choices. Game failed.

The guys in charge made a game based on the idea that they were smarter and better than everyone else, who already realized building around a hardcore philosophy is patently flawed. That's not bad design decisions. They crossed over into ridiculous levels of hubris.

[Pennilenko]

The guys in charge made a game based on the idea that they were smarter and better than everyone else, who already realized building around a hardcore philosophy is patently flawed. That's not bad design decisions. They crossed over into ridiculous levels of hubris.

I get what you are saying, I just don't think its accurate. I would be willing to bet these guys made a game they wanted to play themselves, and can't possibly come to terms with the fact that they are part of an extreme minority.

[Paelos]

I agree. That's hubris. The unacceptance that your opinions are in the extreme minority (despite other games move away from this model) is the issue. They looked at WoW and said, fuck those guys did it wrong, we need to go backwards to when games were FUN AND HARD!

It's one thing if there were no other games out there and they made the call to go with a more hardcore model. It's another thing entirely to repeat the exact mistakes of other more popular games, and then never question why they went away from that.

[Rendakor]

I can see the logic they used. "WoW has been both steadily losing subs and getting easier for a while; if we make a harder game, we will have more subs!"