Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Typhon]

I look forward to guilds trying to organize twenty (or worse yet forty) people together to run this training raid with the promise of no loot.  I mean if anything part of attunement that could actually be useful is having to get 'gold' in a solo simulator where you do nothing but stay out of fire and cycle your key skill (taunt, heal, interrupt) when appropriate.

Actually, what would be hilarious, is if the training raid simulator isn't something that teaches you to get out of fire and cycle interrupts but instead trains raid leaders to herd kittens.  I mean that's the biggest stumbling block really, trying to get 25 people on your raid team at the right place at the right time.  Having five for alternates who may or may not get in.  Having a proper dps/tank/healer split.  Having an off tank that can take over as main if he doesn't show.  The trainer should teach you how to use voice comms with different hotkeys for raid-wide and officer-only.  How to keep morale up by having fun instead of screaming and sniping at people.  How to deal with fucking drama queens.  Knowing when someone is just straight up hopeless at staying out of fire and replacing them.  Knowing when to call it a night.

Corporations would pay out the nose for a project/program/department manager trainer like that.

[Draegan]

The game is just not fun to mechanically play from all aspects that people don't really want to bother with attunement shit. I'm not saying the attunement shit isn't retarded, but the underlying game is just not fun to play in any aspect.

[Nebu]

Dodging all manner of ground effects sounds more fun on paper than it is in practice.  The game attempted some interesting new ideas for mechanics in an MMO.  Sadly, the result was failure.

[angry.bob]

Any hint on this turning free to play? I'm really wanting to make a robot with giant breasts and then uninstall.

[Merusk]

Given the developer's attitude, it's more likely to shut down than to go F2P and invite all those fucking filthy casuals around.

[rk47]

I look forward to guilds trying to organize twenty (or worse yet forty) people together to run this training raid with the promise of no loot.  I mean if anything part of attunement that could actually be useful is having to get 'gold' in a solo simulator where you do nothing but stay out of fire and cycle your key skill (taunt, heal, interrupt) when appropriate.

Actually, what would be hilarious, is if the training raid simulator isn't something that teaches you to get out of fire and cycle interrupts but instead trains raid leaders to herd kittens.  I mean that's the biggest stumbling block really, trying to get 25 people on your raid team at the right place at the right time.  Having five for alternates who may or may not get in.  Having a proper dps/tank/healer split.  Having an off tank that can take over as main if he doesn't show.  The trainer should teach you how to use voice comms with different hotkeys for raid-wide and officer-only.  How to keep morale up by having fun instead of screaming and sniping at people.  How to deal with fucking drama queens.  Knowing when someone is just straight up hopeless at staying out of fire and replacing them.  Knowing when to call it a night.

Corporations would pay out the nose for a project/program/department manager trainer like that.

Wildstar - The Aerobics MMO

[luckton]

Given the developer's attitude, it's more likely to shut down than to go F2P and invite all those fucking filthy casuals around.

Close. NCSoft would want to F2P it, Carbine devs would quit, new devs would be hired to carry out the conversion. It'll be this generation's City of Heroes.

[rk47]

I can't believe their ego would be so huge that they'd refuse to change course even when proven wrong.
Don't people want to keep their jobs nowadays? Fucking manchildren. 

[Lantyssa]

Aaaaand.... Wildstar just sent me a 7-day pass for me and a buddy because I had played in beta.

That's a wrap.  We're done here.

[Fabricated]

Ditto. Yeah, RIP Wildstar and Carbine. You should've known better.

[Nebu]

I bet they go F2P but only after it's too late for it to actually help.

[Fabricated]

I bet the people with all the "CREDD" or whatever might not like that.

[Goreschach]

Can we just go ahead and graveyard MMOG Discussion?

[Nebu]

I bet the people with all the "CREDD" or whatever might not like that.

I totally forgot about that crap.  Man, they really are screwed.

[Shatter]

I bet they go F2P but only after it's too late for it to actually help.

So...like now then

[Paelos]

CREDD could easily transition into F2P right?

[Threash]

I hope this is the final nail in the coffin for the "hardcore raiding" mmo.

[Paelos]

I hope this is the final nail in the coffin for the "hardcore raiding" mmo.

Nah. Where there's a troglodyte with too much time on his hands, there's a way.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I hope this is the final nail in the coffin for the "hardcore raiding" mmo.

Nah. Where there's a troglodyte with too much time on his hands, there's a way.

Man this game.  So much potential...it's like someone designed a ferrari and painted a mural of Flo from progressive in a chainmail bikini fighting a dragon on it.

[Wahn]

Also, the Design Producer Stephan Frost is gone now:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/30/wildstars-stephen-frost-calls-it-quits/

It really pains me to say this, but this will be my last show and my last week at Carbine," he said on the show. "I'm off to a new adventure; I got an offer that I couldn't turn down and so I'm going to take it. This is super-hard for me. This is one of my proudest achievements. A lot of my heart and soul is in this game.

Frost assured fans that it had nothing to do with the game and the community, and he promised that he would still be playing WildStar even after his departure.

Yeah, sure. 

[Paelos]

I should have bet on this one crashing and burning before 2016 too.

[Lakov_Sanite]

If I had known how much of a hardcore cockfest the game would be in later levels I would have adjusted my expectations accordingly.  I was far too generous based on my early beta assumptions.

[angry.bob]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/30/wildstars-stephen-frost-calls-it-quits/

"I'm off to a new adventure; I got an offer that I couldn't turn down and so I'm going to take it.

I really hope that his new offer didn't involve designing a game in any way. Talk about a game that looked like a lot of fun and making every wrong decision with it.

[Merusk]

CREDD could easily transition into F2P right?

Looks like it. CREDD just goes from being able to pay for your sub to being WSPoints or whatever they choose to call their F2P "You'll never spend all of this so you'll always have a balance and think, 'Meh, $5 more'" currency.

So all that CREDD goes to inventory, skins, expansions, whatever.

[01101010]

YAY! I got my email pass +guest too! Unfortunately, I signed up for beta and never actually got in. Only the preview weekend things.

[Nebu]

I was in beta and never got any passes.  It's fine though.  I have no interest in playing this game again.

[Setanta]

I read this thread mostly to see where the train wreck is heading, but perversely it makes me sad. I got within 10 levels of cap but got tired of playing a MMO that rarely had other players around me. Yet I had fun. I actually liked the combat mechanics - they grew on me and the story instances were fun as was the housing. But I'm not hardcore enough to play it anymore (although I was part of Vanilla-WoW rainding in AQ and Naxx).

I no-longer want to play an MMO as a second job, I just want to have fun.

If this went F2P I'd revisit it and ignore the hardcore BS. How the hell did Carbine/NCSoft forget that although hard-core is vocal, filthy casuals pay the bills in an MMO. It's like they looked at what Blizzard had to do to WoW over the years and then decided they were wrong. Yet they managed to do a better job with GW2 - also published by NCSoft.

[Fordel]

It's because even Blizzard doesn't realize filthy casuals pay the bills, or doesn't want to admit it. For all the joking about the raid training mode dungeon thing above, that is basically WoW's entire design scheme for it's entire history.

If you take Blizzard's game decisions and look at them from the PoV of "if only we could teach people to love raiding", then it all 'makes sense'. The fact they made a game that regular folks would also enjoy is basically a happy side effect.


It's all moot for me though, Wildstar either gave me n64 level graphics or single digit frame rates. Doesn't matter WHAT you're game is like at that point. 

[Surlyboi]

I was in beta and never got any passes.  It's fine though.  I have no interest in playing this game again.

You can have my codes. I'm damn sure not using them.

[angry.bob]

It's because even Blizzard doesn't realize filthy casuals pay the bills, or doesn't want to admit it. For all the joking about the raid training mode dungeon thing above, that is basically WoW's entire design scheme for it's entire history.

If you take Blizzard's game decisions and look at them from the PoV of "if only we could teach people to love raiding", then it all 'makes sense'. The fact they made a game that regular folks would also enjoy is basically a happy side effect.

Yeah, I still don't understand why they still refuse to connect that the game's peak in subscriptions and player satisfaction coincided with raiding meaning next to nothing. And what raiding there was, was apparently ludicrously easy. Of course guilds cried and the game will never recover from the crap they've done since.

I stand by my statement that no MMO should have a single item or single piece of content that will not scale for a solo player to do it.

[rk47]

MOAR PLZ

[Falconeer]

Well, I toldja so!

[tmp]

Next: bargaining.

[Cyrrex]

I played some beta, thanks to a free key one of you peeps gave me.  My time in game (which ended up being shorter than download/install time), was something like this:

1) Create character.  Something with big sword, big tits and a sassy name.  
2) Enter game.  Talk to first dude.  OMG the whole universe is about to implode!  Quick!  Go over and talk to that dude over there that all the other big titted sword carriers are currently huddled around!
3) Uh oh, it looks like Captain Thunderpants, destroyer of 10 galaxies, is up to it again!  Hurry, Jizzpants27, follow this magical arrow to the next room, where you'll conveniently find 4 other noobs pounding on some level 1 mob that probably looks like a goblin!
4) Hit 1 ten times.  Face Stab 1, or somesuch.  Can't tell what the hell is going on, but his health is going down super fast and mine isn't even moving.  Must be my great tactics.
5) Great job Jizzpants27!  You've saved the galaxy and as a reward here is a set of fur underpants!  Now go talk to the Librarian.  Stupid cunt lost a valuable artifact...just follow this magical arrow!
6) Woe is me!  Jizzpants27, you must help me retrieve the Sword of Stabbiness!  I was attacked by 3 Giant Robot Hamsters on the way to work this morning, and for some reason they left me alive but stole my sword!  You might need to wait your turn, Jizzpants27, currently 3 other people are also retrieving this sword, and there is a short respawn timer.
7) Hit 1 ten times.  Target next mob, and hit 1 ten times.  I am totally standing in the fire, and it does not matter one bit.  Target next mob.  Hit 2, looks like a buff I can toggle.  What did that do, gave me +3 to virility?  Hit 1 nine times.  Oh look, Giant Robot Hamster number three had the sword, what a coincidence.
8) Ding!  Level up, bitches!  Now I have Face Stab 2, but also something called Bum Rush.  Test Bum Rush on a random mob.  Oh cool, I can no leap into combat from 10 meters away.  And now Face Stab 2 kills in only 8 hits! So! Much! Power!  Until I face a level 2 mob, in which case we are back to taking 9 or 10 hits.
9) Return to Librarian.  Gives me the Sword of Stabbiness as a reward (why was it so important to you if you are just giving it to me?  you like messing with people like that?), plus his life savings of 2 copper pieces.

This is why modern MMOs fucking suck...because while the details vary ever so slightly, this is the beginning of every fucking one of them.  You follow the arrows and clickety click click, mission accomplished.  No thought to what you are doing and why, you can totally shut off your brain, and not in a good way.  This was all fine back int 1986, or whenever it was that WoW came out.  Some manage to distinguish themselves in certain ways (SWTOR had cool stories, Conan had graphics and tits, LOTRO had lore, etc.) but at the core it is all still the same.  This is why they fail, not because of decisions about raid mechanics, PvP or other end-game content.  They simply are not fun to play anymore because it is all the goddamned same at the end of the day.
 

[Kageru]

There's nothing wrong with game mechanics being simple and trusted ones re-used, but they need to be wrapped in an experience not as desperately generic as Wildstar is.

I almost think wildstar is the prime example of how to build a world that fails to engage. I was never even entirely sure why. The game mechanics too obvious with their "dodge the shapes" mini-game, the attempt to build a world out of cast-off MMO tropes that really aren't clever or coherent, the boring but tiring gameplay the yawn inducing loot. One of the few games where I was completely done with the game in a week of open beta.