115782-changes-that-many-people-have-talked-with-me-about-page-2

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So what? You and your friends obviously liked what Wildstar had to offer, and that's why you're still playing. But for Wildstar's survival the isssue isn't why folks like you have stayed -- it's why so many other people have left. In order for Wildstar to stabilize its population and recover, it needs to please the people who do not currently like it. This is why I even bother to offer feedback. If it were just me and my guildies who tried it and didn't like it, no one would notice or care. But our experience with the game was far more common than your experience, and that's why the population has taken a nosedive -- well, one of several reasons, of course, but definitely a real reason. If Wildstar's current players actually want the game to survive, they need to exercise some empathy and some perspective-taking skills and make an effort to understand why the people who left did so. Saying "Well I like it just fine the way it is! The problem must be you, not the game!" is great for you, but utterly useless in terms of figuring out exactly why so many other players were so unsatisfied with the game experience. If you care about this game and its long-term survival, you need to learn to listen and not just keep chirping "Works great for me! No idea what your problem is!" That's not helpful to anyone.


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I'd love to have a clarification on what qualifies as "players who did a dungeon." Does that mean "players who attempted and failed to clear dungeons stuck around" or "players who attempted and succeeded in clearing dungeons stuck around"? This is a crucial distinction. How many players who never successfully cleared a dungeon are still playing the game? Can you divulge this information? I have a hunch that players who attempted and failed to clear a dungeon most definitely did not stick around, and that there were a lot of them, based on anecdotal reports from all over the gamesphere. I'd be fine with being proven wrong on this with real data. I also don't see what you're talking about by "trivializing" the content. What's wrong with easy content as long as more difficult content is also available? This is what I mean by the devs encouraging a lot of the elitist nonsense that's gotten them so much blowback and resulted in so much "HA HAH WILDSTAR IS DYING SUCK ON IT!" talk throughout the gamesphere. Making dungeons that average players can get through to go alongside your tougher ones is...somehow beneath you guys? Or what? It's fine to focus on pleasing the hardcores if you can make a living off their approval, but that does not look like what is happening here, so a shift in focus really does seem to be called for. Because seriously, video games are inherently trivial. They are entertainments. They don't feed starving children or build bridges or provide housing for poor people or stop the spread of malaria. They're for fun. Improving your video game skill gets you absolutely nothing in terms of real-life advantages, which is why hardly anyone wants to spend time skilling up at video-game playing. It's like skilling up at advanced basketweaving. Sure you can make a few nice baskets and maybe sell a few on Etsy, but otherwise what good is it? Improving your skill at playing video games just doesn't get you anything tangible, so why would any developer expect that to be an attractive feature of a game meant for the masses? "We'll help you become a better video game player if you spend enough time on our game!" "Sorry, I don't care if I become a better video game player. It's not one of my goals in life to get a server world first, because that's not actually a worthwhile thing for me to spend my limited time on this Earth achieving. I'm just here to kick back a bit and relax. What have you got for me?" "No trivial content. We want you to get serious about your video gaming!" "Not interested. Bye!" The really questionable thing that's always been floating over Wildstar's head (and is now raining crap down on it in the form of jubilation among the game's foes) is -- what's so wrong with trivial video game content anyway? It's not a crime for a game to have trivial content. It's just good business sense. "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. :(" -- Ghostcrawler https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/340939865858396162 That's from over a year ago. Things haven't changed on that front in the MMO world and they aren't going to change.  If Wildstar wants to live, Wildstar needs to be the thing that changes.


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I'm glad that your metrics support what I and my guildies/friends in the game have often said - the dungeons (and raids that I've seen thus far) are amazing and fun! I've told almost everyone I know to just make it to 15 and run Hycrest..and 20 to run STL and KV...and you'll be hooked. Nearly all of them found that to be true. And the ones that left generally left for other reasons (like not liking the class they picked, or feeling like the gearing and itemization made it not worth it to keep running stuff once we knew it). I look forward to the changes you are making to improve QOL and player experience, and I look forward to whatever you throw at us next.


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Thank you Timetravel. I can only speak for my own experience and that of my guild members and friends in the game, but all of us think that this is the right approach to take. If more is needed after this, then I'm sure that more will be done.


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Well, this might be the post that finally makes me give up and go away I'd been holding out hope that Carbine might come to their senses and re-tune the game to appeal to more than the 1% HARDCORE elitists, but it looks like that's off the table


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i agree with much of this post, drokks add phase is hard on healers because of the damage discrepancy the targeted person take depending on if it is a clothie or a heavy. if you have 3 clothies in a row get targeted, this will very hard on the healer, but warr and engi classes laugh at the damage(no really, but it is a noticeable difference) also the mechanic is hard to deal with because it encourages the target being healed to run away(not get hit by the chasers) from the healer. if you use a movement ability(something i believe should be encouraged and is a clever use of mechanics) you are signing your own death certificate. doing fire boss with 3 melee dps is hell last phase. these are not mechanics that i personally find difficult, but seem to not coincide with so much of the other boss mechanics which tend to be very reaction based, players reacting to the boss, the SSM fire boss is very rng based, to the point hat no other fight has near the same amount of rng, not rng that could kill you at least, other bosses rng tends to be things that will make the fight longer, like last boss of ssm, if the shadows that you need to interrupt keep spawning across the room, bug deal, re group and get the next wave. i think the fire boss is the worst designed boss in the game that i have seen.


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But what if there are easy, medium, and hard difficulty dungeons? Right now, all WS dungeons tend to lean towards the harder difficulty side. Difficulty of admission must be easy so that players have something to do while they are striving for the harder content. Let players feel like there is a clear line of progression. Adventures->Dungeons->Raids is no good. Progression should look like this: For group play - Dungeons and adventures on a parallel line. Both should have easy, medium, and hard maps. Raids - Easy, Medium, and hard. 10 and 20 man raids. Carbine can throw a curb ball here and make a really hard 10 man raid. For solo - Shiphands and vet shiphands. GW2 literally showed us solo "dungeons" can be very challenging and exciting. Besides GW2 players soloing every dungeon, which can be soloed, in the game....everyone who beat Liadri in Queens Gauntlet will tell you that it was probably their most exciting fight ever. I was cupcake ecstatic when i beat her on my 50th or so try. It felt a lot better than beating a dungeon with other people because I know I beat her and it was all me and no one else. What I am arguing for, is to broaden the appeal of WS to a wider audience. I don't want the difficulty to go away. There should definitely be difficult content in the game....but there needs to be easier content too. TimeTravel does not share this feeling unfortunately but I'm hoping he does.


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Where's the argument? This completely blows the argument that dungeons are too hard out of the water if people are significantly more likely to leave if they've never even bothered entering a dungeon. That means it's not casual players leaving, it's people who are literally doing nothing in endgame PVE. The entire premise of the idea that "people are leaving because the content is too hard" is complete and absolute rubbish if there's a much higher chance the player will leave without ever even trying it. That means people aren't leaving because of gear (they've never even rolled on or seen dungeon loot) it's not because they're dying (they've never even seen a trash mob to die against, much less a boss) and it's not because of their bad experience in a dungeon PUG (because they've never stepped into one to even fail at getting a medal). So, essentially, if your argument is that dungeons or even endgame dungeon experience is why people leave, you either didn't really grasp that point or you think Timetravel is blatantly lying. Me? I obviously think that's not the case. It seems pretty obvious that dungeons aren't even an ancillary cause and making them easier would do absolutely nothing if our sole goal is to increase the playerbase. People who don't do dungeons don't fill your queue times. People who don't do dungeons aren't going to fix the faction or skill position imbalance. It makes it seem like all those people leaving because there's no "casual content" are leaving specifically because they ran out of solo content and split. No wonder we'll have had two solo drops and a new solo dungeon by the time we get some of our dungeon changes; dungeons aren't even the problem.


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