Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Merusk]

No, he's just as crazy as he's ever been, like Falconeer.  There's got to be something in the water in Italy.

[Ingmar]

You've got him confused with Abalieno/HRose.

[Numtini]

You must have 4 friends that are good gamers.  Without that, the dungeons are a lesson in keyboard bashing and screaming at your monitor.

With friends that stuff is the best. With a PUG, it's hell.

[Lakov_Sanite]

You must have 4 friends that are good gamers.  Without that, the dungeons are a lesson in keyboard bashing and screaming at your monitor.

With friends that stuff is the best. With a PUG, it's hell.

I notice the PA/PVP comic writers are having a blast with the game too.  I suspect this is strongly the case where wildstar is concerned, that if you have a gaming group it's a blast and if not, hammering testicles.

[Abelian75]

I actually am just playing with a guild I happened to find (though it being a pretty pleasant group of people is probably a big part of my enjoyment), but yeah, I haven't even tried pugging the dungeons.  It would be a goddamned nightmare.  Honestly I don't even think they should have had a group finder for the dungeons at launch... it just sets the expectations all wrong.  There's definitely a massive missing step between the adventures (the easier five-man choose-your-own-adventure content) and the dungeons (which kick your testicles straight away).

I do think the game generally has more "good" difficulty than it may appear to have from a distance.  The attunement chain looks like a life-killing time sink just for the sake of being a time sink, for instance, but in practice it pretty much feels like you're already doing the cool shit once you hit the dungeon step.  It feels like having to do Molten Core before doing Blackwing Lair, rather than having to do a whole bunch of boring shit before doing Onyxia, if that makes any sense.  That doesn't mitigate the OTHER, and imho more significant, problem of attunement, of course, which is the problems it creates for new players joining the game well after launch.  So that'll still suck I'm sure.

You do have me confused though, I'm usually right there with you guys making fun of this sort of shit.  I was the dude who said this game was a piece of shit after playing the beta just before launch, and making fun of their terrible font!  (And their UI is generally awful and just technically unsound... probably because of their commitment to not having any protected API calls at all.  Essentially there is no distinction between the game's UI and a player-made mod, which means you get all the weird little glitches with the base UI that you would with a UI mod in any other game)

But you're absolutely welcome to laugh at me.  I would!  And am, actually.

[Merusk]

You've got him confused with Abalieno/HRose.

Could have sworn he was Italian, too.

[Simond]

A simple flowchart for Carbine to study:



Okay, a little cheap but if Carbine had been working in a vacuum I could see where their thought processes were coming from - not agree, of course, but at least understand. But Blizzard tried this "let's make dungeons unfun and tedious um I mean difficult" shit in Cataclysm Heroics and lost millions of subs for their troubles. Why did Carbine think they'd be any different?

[Ozzu]

Okay, a little cheap but if Carbine had been working in a vacuum I could see where their thought processes were coming from - not agree, of course, but at least understand. But Blizzard tried this "let's make dungeons unfun and tedious um I mean difficult" shit in Cataclysm Heroics and lost millions of subs for their troubles. Why did Carbine think they'd be any different?

I'm not sure I'd agree. I don't think the dungeons are tedious. They're just difficult. There's very little trash to work through and the boss fights are very intense. Whether that's fun is up to the individual, but they were definitely fun for me even when we weren't successful.

[sam, an eggplant]

Do we have any substantiated numbers on Wildstar's performance? Best I've been able to find relied on Xfire stats, and it's 2014, who the hell uses Xfire?

Lots of posts on reddit etc about Carbine's mistakes, recently starting to align with more clueful posts here. Tons of anecdotal posts about servers being empty, but that could just be population push to higher levels.

[Stormwaltz]

Do we have any substantiated numbers on Wildstar's performance? Best I've been able to find relied on Xfire stats, and it's 2014, who the hell uses Xfire?

Didn't Raptr eat their lunch after the assclowns who ran IGE bought out Xfire and fired all the developers?

Raptr's Wildstar group has 174,622 members and logged 525 hours of play. That seems like a pretty low ratio to me, but I'm not the norm.
http://raptr.com/game/WildStar?search_pos=1&query=wildstar

Also mentioned in their last top games tracking, from June.
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-june-2014-wildstar-on-the-rise-steam-summer-sale-aftermath/

[Abelian75]

The server I'm on (Stormtalon) is definitely very populated. Easily feels as bustling as the WoW servers I've played on.  That said, I'm on the most populated PvE server.

I suspect it isn't doing as well as I wish it was.  I just hope they can support themselves, cuz fuck I love this shit.

[Setanta]

I can play for 30 minute bursts and not see anyone - on an Oceanic server in prime time. That's not good. I do like the combat mechanics but it does feel limited. In fact it feels more limited than GW2s bound-to-weapon skills - locked skill bar is a nice idea, but tbh, it feels like it should be as smooth as GW1 but instead feels a bit clunky. Admittedly I'm only 33 and on an engineer running Shell/Auger/Electrocute with 2 bots out.

Storyline/lore - ummm yeah, I'm sure it's there but I barely notice it. I like the world but I'm not immersed in it. At least it isn't a case of NPCs jamming story down my throat - the GW2 devs could learn something from that.

I haven't run dungeons yet but I do like the mini-instanced stories - lots of fun compared to kill10ratsthenfedex in the PvE world. PvP is fun but the telegraph system might as well not be there when it's all in.

I'm sticking with it but to be honest, I don't think it has the level of polish it needs underneath all the shinies. Costumes is buggy as hell and why on earth didn't they just use the GW2 system. Housing is a lot of fun and shits all over the projected WoW model (I'm sure Blizzard will steal it).

If this game was F2P I'd probably stick with it and revisit it - but from what I've read of raids etc... well, this is isn't 2005 and it seems like a casual's nightmare.

And that's what I've become, a casual. Someone who plays for fun, not as a second job.

Will the game be worth a sub in the long run? WoW isn't - for me. EvE is because I jump in and play it casually and perversely, I feel that the sub is still worth something even when I don't play for a few days. GW/2 I go back to because it's on my drive and costs me nothing. But do I want to pay for a game and grind out/run dailies a la Pandashitsville in WoW as "progression when I could be playing my backlog of games? Nope. I'm not sure I'm alone in this.

[Ozzu]

I play on the Oceanic server too and like was said above, it's very underpopulated. The only time I really see a large group of people is next to the auctioneer and it's not really a large group. We're talking ~7-10 people. In the daily quest zones, I also see the occasional person, but it's not uncommon for me not to see another person. Now, I know they split zones into instances as population grows, but I can't imagine I'm just really unlucky and playing in instance2 by myself each time and there's some other instance that's bustling. Some further anecdotal evidence is that the guild I'm in, Pax Fatalis, has almost 400 members and I've never seen more than 10 people on at a time.

On another note, I uninstalled Wildstar today. I got a good couple of months out of it and even used some CREDD to keep my account active through September. Normally, I'd just start an alt, but I just can't work up the motivation to do the slog to 50 again. The leveling/questing in this game is just brutally boring to me. There's just too many quests that involve item collection or killing a certain number of mobs and it just saps my life force. The rest of the game I enjoy, but I guess that's just not enough.

[sam, an eggplant]

Raptr's Wildstar group has 174,622 members and logged 525 hours of play. That seems like a pretty low ratio to me, but I'm not the norm.
http://raptr.com/game/WildStar?search_pos=1&query=wildstar

Also mentioned in their last top games tracking, from June.
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-june-2014-wildstar-on-the-rise-steam-summer-sale-aftermath/

Wow, it jumped up 23 ranks with the July content patch? Or was that the jump from beta to release? It released June 3.

525 hours played, and the game has been out for 54 days, that comes out to 9.7 hours per day which is actually very high for a MMO. Probably includes beta play time. But even then, that number seems very high.

Xfire numbers are here, for comparison.

http://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-digital-dozen-1-july-2014.html

Raptr is kind of interesting. It's yet another useless highly monetized game tracking service designed to advertise to you like Xfire, but AMD is integrating their version of nVidia's Geforce Experience into Raptr, where it optimizes games for your GPU, etc. So it'll come with the AMD drivers, and we should start seeing huge representation in Raptr from people that don't immediately get annoyed and turn it off.

[Shatter]

Never heard of Raptr before, their tracking list from June looks like shit IMO.  Xfire isn't great either but I would say its more accurate, and I use that term loosely. 

[Miasma]

A simple flowchart for Carbine to study:



Okay, a little cheap but if Carbine had been working in a vacuum I could see where their thought processes were coming from - not agree, of course, but at least understand. But Blizzard tried this "let's make dungeons unfun and tedious um I mean difficult" shit in Cataclysm Heroics and lost millions of subs for their troubles. Why did Carbine think they'd be any different?

Carbine's whole thing revolved around the belief that the bottom right of that flow chart should read "That was a horrible change and it ruined the game forever ihateyou ihateyou ihateyou put it back" while stamping their feet and crying.

[Paelos]

It will be fine as long at their expectations were a couple hundred thousand subs. If it was a million, they are stupid and deserve to go out of business because they've learned nothing from the last 6 years of failures.

[Rendakor]

It will be fine as long at their expectations were a couple hundred thousand subs. If it was a million, they are stupid and deserve to go out of business because they've learned nothing from the last 6 years of failures.

You think a game copying Vanilla WoW learned anything from MMO history?

[Simond]

It will be fine as long at their expectations were a couple hundred thousand subs. If it was a million, they are stupid and deserve to go out of business because they've learned nothing from the last 6 years of failures.

You seriously think it would hold that many? I was thinking more along the lines of five-digits - I mean, it's not like there's a shortage of F2P diku-clones out there and if they want twitch GW2 only needs a box price (no sub) and doesn't put your e-peen in an e-dickclamp and stomp on your e-balls for the temerity of wanting some sort of end-game that doesn't need guild pre-mades  co-ordinating over Mumble and skipping half the instance via jumping puzzles.

[Stormwaltz]

Wow, it jumped up 23 ranks with the July content patch? Or was that the jump from beta to release? It released June 3.

Those numbers are for June (first month).

[Paelos]

It will be fine as long at their expectations were a couple hundred thousand subs. If it was a million, they are stupid and deserve to go out of business because they've learned nothing from the last 6 years of failures.

You seriously think it would hold that many? I was thinking more along the lines of five-digits - I mean, it's not like there's a shortage of F2P diku-clones out there and if they want twitch GW2 only needs a box price (no sub) and doesn't put your e-peen in an e-dickclamp and stomp on your e-balls for the temerity of wanting some sort of end-game that doesn't need guild pre-mades  co-ordinating over Mumble and skipping half the instance via jumping puzzles.

I don't know if it would hold that many forever, but I do think that's probably the goal. I don't know if people make large release MMO projects like this, with the marketing this thing had, for 60k subs. Just getting back the investment would take years.

[Rendakor]

I think they banked on at least half a mil, but doubt they'll still have more than 100k by year's end.

[Ingmar]

It will be fine as long at their expectations were a couple hundred thousand subs. If it was a million, they are stupid and deserve to go out of business because they've learned nothing from the last 6 years of failures.

You seriously think it would hold that many? I was thinking more along the lines of five-digits - I mean, it's not like there's a shortage of F2P diku-clones out there and if they want twitch GW2 only needs a box price (no sub) and doesn't put your e-peen in an e-dickclamp and stomp on your e-balls for the temerity of wanting some sort of end-game that doesn't need guild pre-mades  co-ordinating over Mumble and skipping half the instance via jumping puzzles.

Er, have you played any GW2 dungeons? 

[Nebu]

GW2 dungeons and Wildstar dungeons are both bad.  They're just different in how they're bad.

Rift still has my favorite 5 man dungeons in an MMO.  They just needed fewer trash mobs.

[Simond]

It will be fine as long at their expectations were a couple hundred thousand subs. If it was a million, they are stupid and deserve to go out of business because they've learned nothing from the last 6 years of failures.

You seriously think it would hold that many? I was thinking more along the lines of five-digits - I mean, it's not like there's a shortage of F2P diku-clones out there and if they want twitch GW2 only needs a box price (no sub) and doesn't put your e-peen in an e-dickclamp and stomp on your e-balls for the temerity of wanting some sort of end-game that doesn't need guild pre-mades  co-ordinating over Mumble and skipping half the instance via jumping puzzles.

Er, have you played any GW2 dungeons?  

GW2's actual end-game is Pretty Princess Dress-Up.  

Not that there's anything wrong with that.  

Also: GW2's dungeons are bad because Anet removed the trinity and replaced it with nothing, not because they wanted to make their players suffer. It was just a side-effect.

[sam, an eggplant]

GW2 dungeons are pretty grim, yeah.

GW2 doesn't really have an endgame, which is fine since they don't charge a subscription. You just login every 2 weeks, play the new shit, then return to trolling Romanian girls on Chaturbate until the next 2 week content drop. If you miss a 2 week period, you need to pay them some money. No biggie.

[Senses]

Wildstar dungeons are far from bad, they are just hard.  I realize to some people that distinction is meaningless and that's perfectly valid, but lets not confuse the garbage piecemeal crap that gw2 was with Wildstar, especially when most of the people complaining haven't even tried them.   As stated before, if you aren't retarded, and you can find 4 other people who aren't retarded, the dungeons are really fun.   This game really just lacks a good casual foundation for someone who has zero interest in making the friends required for pve and is too scared to try pvp.  Basically 90pct of the F13 mmo crowd.

[01101010]

As stated before, if you aren't retarded, and you can find 4 other people who aren't retarded,

This pretty much rules out any online game. Ergo, the dungeons are too hard. 

[Nebu]

Wildstar dungeons are far from bad, they are just hard. 

There's thinking/strategy hard and there's 'I need more Red Bull' hard.  Wildstar is the latter.

[Ingmar]

There's also a difference between making targeted endgame content very hard, and making leveling content that you get into with randoms in a group finder very hard. The first one is a defensible, if niche, design choice. The second one is just plain dumb.

[Threash]

Wildstar dungeons are far from bad, they are just hard.  I realize to some people that distinction is meaningless and that's perfectly valid, but lets not confuse the garbage piecemeal crap that gw2 was with Wildstar, especially when most of the people complaining haven't even tried them.   As stated before, if you aren't retarded, and you can find 4 other people who aren't retarded, the dungeons are really fun.   This game really just lacks a good casual foundation for someone who has zero interest in making the friends required for pve and is too scared to try pvp.  Basically 90pct of the F13 mmo crowd.

Sorry, wow tried the same thing and they were wrong.  Dungeons should be doable by a bunch of complete strangers paying about 25% attention otherwise your game will fail.  Getting to play with friends and people you know is fun, but it is the exception, not the rule.  Your game should be enjoyable with random people who have no incentive to try hard.

[Zetor]

Wildstar dungeons are far from bad, they are just hard.  I realize to some people that distinction is meaningless and that's perfectly valid, but lets not confuse the garbage piecemeal crap that gw2 was with Wildstar, especially when most of the people complaining haven't even tried them.   As stated before, if you aren't retarded, and you can find 4 other people who aren't retarded, the dungeons are really fun.   This game really just lacks a good casual foundation for someone who has zero interest in making the friends required for pve and is too scared to try pvp.  Basically 90pct of the F13 mmo crowd.

I played through both of the dungeons (which is 100% of the pre-50 dungeon content) as a healer and dps with a mixture of friends and pugs, and while I didn't have any problem with the difficulty (it's mainly a latency check, ie. avoiding telegraphs and quickly reacting on critical boss abilities to interrupt), it just was nowhere near as fun as any of the difficult dungeon content I did in other games. To stick with WOW, I found the following things just as 'difficult' and a lot more fun:

• vanilla: timed Strat run, Valthalak (tier0.5 questline)
• BC: all heroic dungeons really, especially MgT and Shattered Halls in appropriate (blue) gear
• Cata: doing heroics near the start of the expansion when everyone was still in crappy gear
• MOP: doing gold-level challenge mode dungeons. Bonus for difficult solo content: high-end Brawler's Guild bosses, getting 30+ waves on the endless healer/damage challenges.

The main reason why I didn't find WS dungeons as fun was that wildstar puts an extreme amount of personal responsibility on EVERY player -- and if someone fails, the group wipes, period. Some of my most memorable WOW moments were recovering from a near-wipe situation (mainly as a healer or tank, though my warlock saved the day a few times as well) in one of the 'difficult' dungeons I listed above by pulling out stuff like a clutch offtank pet, busting out offheal capabilities to help the healer stabilize the group (or replace the healer who just died) while still doing CC/kiting on the enemies, chain CCing the enemies while the healer got a battlerez off on the tank, or even aggroing some of the enemies on myself as a healer and kiting them to reduce pressure while still healing the crap out of the group. In Wildstar I can shrug, press my 4 healing buttons a bit harder, and helplessly watch as people STILL get one-shot and we wipe. Yay, I can feel the ~fun~ radiating from my computer screen!

[Abelian75]

I definitely think the dungeons are fun, but they are still "bad" as what you guys are thinking of as dungeons, it's true.  They're basically 5-man raids, which in my opinion is an awesome direction to move in.  Unfortunately, their only other 5-man content are adventures, which are roughly equivalent to WoW's non-heroic dungeons.  As in, pretty much facerollingly easy (I'm bluffing a little, as some sections of them do require some coordination, but predominantly they are pretty trivial).  So basically it's like WoW with raids and scenarios and no dungeons, effectively.  The game basically sucks ass for PUGs as a result.

It doesn't help (in fact, this may be the key problem) that the dungeon rewards are based on how quickly you do them, which on top of just being kinda stupid in principle (you already get rewarded for speed... you get your loot faster), basically means that nobody ever wants to do "learning" runs.  You have to do it under the time limit every time, for the most part.  If there's a single design decision that you can point to that fucks over the social aspect of the game, it's timers imho.  I don't think the difficulty alone would necessarily be problematic for the audience they're targeting, but christ, if you kill the last boss of a dungeon, it should feel like you beat the dungeon.  Currently any run that doesn't make the timer feels like a failed run.  Stupid as fuck.

(To be fair to Carbine, the next dungeon they are adding does not have timer-based medals, so they seem aware of the problem.  I don't understand how it could not have been obvious as fuck that this would be a problem, though.)

[Wahn]

I finished one of the dungeons in normal mode with a PUG, which I consider a lucky constellation. The first healer left after the 2nd wipe on the first mob because "we are all fucking retards" but the replacement staid on.

 I agree on the dungeond being basically 5-man raids - and I actually enjoyed it, coming from a  good raid alliance in EQ2 after a long break. BUT, this PUG was like a one in a million regarding to PUGs, people actually willing to learn the mechanics and hanging on to it through several wipes. Took us about 3 hours to finish the dungeon and I had a blast  beating it.

The other <50 dungeon I tried was with 2 other people from my guild and 2 pickups and we never passed even the first mob in the dungeon...

The dungeon design caters to a very select group of players, which I probably would fit in, if it was like 5 years earlier. But now, I'm not willing to put in that much effort into dungeons, as I retired from raiding because it is just to time consuming if you're having a relationship with someone who isn't into games at all.

So, I played WS, but left before the first 30 days were over. I enjoyed much of the overworld leveling content, but I could see that once I finished the soloable content, it would result in catassing to progress.

Carbine  made a game that is enjoyable in overworld - at least it was for me,  but their dungeons are way off from the overworld experience even in normal - and this is just plain stupid regarding to retention.

[Rasix]

That sounds exactly like something I'd write, complete with the SO who doesn't game. Well, except I never even tried the dungeons. I'd feel bad bailing on a group, because I rarely have more than 2 hours of consecutive play time.  

So, while it's tempting to resub and complete a side to 50, I just don't see the point.  There's nothing really waiting there to try that I care about.