109118-open-letter-to-carbine-revitalising-your-game

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Mixed feelings about this one. In order: 1.  I don't think people will play more if their servers are merged. Just, pointblank, that's not going to fix things. It's a hot complaint, just as server queues were in the beginning, but people aren't leaving because their servers are empty, they're leaving because they don't know how to find people. You'd be amazed how many people don't know how to find and join a circle for content their guild doesn't do well enough. With that said, it doesn't necessarily affect me (I'm on Evindra), so I would personally recommend that Carbine just offer free transfers FROM a couple servers for a day or two every month for population rebalancing if they need a quick fix. That way, people who think it's really a problem can get off their server without costing any money. I mean, a lot of those people will get there and have the same issues, most likely, but it might work and it would be especially helpful for the PVP servers. Mergers are just too hard to pull off with the populations they still have, considering their issue is that there are still too many active accounts to merge servers. At least it gives people who don't like their own servers a chance, every month, to transfer off the lowest pop servers to the higher ones. Maybe then they can merge some servers more easily. 2.  I think you're talking about zone sharding here, and if that's an issue, yes, fix it. It wouldn't surprise me if the sharding was increased at launch and can now be tuned down. As I said, though, "empty" servers, I don't think, are actually a problem. A complaint about an "empty" Illium, when it's fairly obvious that the population lives on housing plots in Wildstar, is catering to a system in other MMORPGs where a central city is a thriving hub where everybody lives. In Wildstar, you can port directly to your house, and visit town once a day to do business, then leave. If you want to fill the inner cities again, you'd have to put a lot more there that people want to do and interact with (as my own town of Columbus if finding out). That might take longer, but would maybe "feel" more full since people would have a reason to be in town. Until then, though, Wildstar is a very suburban game, where you drop by the CX once every few days. 3.  I'll respond more to this...

I agree with a lot of this, save a few points. There is content for fewer and more casual players. However, people don't want to be fewer or more casual. Wildstar is a game that has things to do if you can't raid or even clear a vet dungeon, but everyone on these forums wants to raid and do vet dungeons. What this is supposed to do is convince players to practice, join social circles, read guides, find mentors, and get better. The last decade or so of MMORPGs have taught people that "You can't do it, go play with pets." People are self-defeating. I'm all for adding more content, even for casuals who defeat themselves, but I actually applaud Wildstar for not putting in the "kiddie pool" for people who want to see the content and get their carrots without learning to be better. It's led to a generation of people who are okay at not being good enough, rather than wanting to get better. People who say, "Well, I can't raid when I can only play 3 hours a day 3 days a week." It's depressing, really, how people have come to view difficulty as an impenetrable wall because they can't just walk through it or see beyond it, so they sit down, content to live on their side. 4.  It's nice if bugs and QOL improvements are implemented quickly and effectively. They will never be done fast enough for the playerbase. The rate Carbine, for a small subdivision of a company, can put these out is really staggering for people who've ever had to troubleshoot, but it's not ever going to be good enough to silence everyone. If Blizzard is still having to deal with people talking about bugs (and they are), trust me, Carbine will never escape the criticism there. Blizzard is one of the hands-down most reliable developers on the planet, and even they can't make a patch for a ten year old game deemed bug free enough not to conjure up some people sneering at the "buggy mess". Software development is a highly underappreciated profession. 5.  PVP botting is the same as WoW. They'll win some battles, lose others. There's only so much they can do since PVP bots, in fact bots in general, are meant to mimic the actions of actual players. So you have to script automatic protections that don't kick legit players out for accidentally doing something bot-like. It sounds easier than it is. On the other hand, the tanked ratings do seem to be a problem. Carbine has a solution, but honestly they may just want to scale PVP according to gearscores rather than rating. It's hard to 'fix' PVP, since it automatically scales difficulty. Half the people are winning and don't complain, half aren't and may complain. Hell, EVE has been going strong for a decade despite having an absolutely attrocious UI for PVP and being based on it, solely because it will automatically scale its difficulty curve. There are universal improvements, though I don't see Carbine being able to suddenly make PVP complaint-free. Nothing is. 6.  On board with this point 100%. I started playing because I got a beta access key. I wasn't even planning on playing this game (I was really hyped for WoD and was grinding through FFXIV:ARR when I shrugged and jumped into the beta on a whim). The fact remains that almost everyone who has played this game loves this game; they leave because they get to the endgame without social connections and get lost because the only other thing they can see that has linear progression is raid attunement. Raid attunement doesn't favor solo play well in the later stages. Free trials may infuse us with a few more people more amenable to group play. It certainly doesn't hurt to have new people in the game. I'd even say to make the trial 14 day or make the first 15-20 levels with limited social functions (so we don't get goldspammed). Let people play; the gameplay speaks for itself.


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And I agree with them. They should NOT nerf dungeons or raids. However, what they should do is make raids more accessible. And by that I mean shorten the attunement quests, remove the requirement for rep and the requirement to buy stuff for elder gems. Keep the world bosses requirements and the dungeon medal requirements, I can get behind that. Lower the amount of people needed for a raid, 40 is too old fashioned. 25 man can still be made hardcore for that amount of people and it is more accessible Other than that, dungeons are a lot of fun, even adventures can be a lot of fun. I have not tried raids and probably won't either because I also have a fair interest in roleplay and is thus on a roleplay server, guess how much of a chance I have to find a raiding guild here, especially with a declining population, harh.


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Well it doesn't look like it is enough for majority of the casual and PvP is pointless due to the rating system.


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