Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

I honestly believe MMO developers don't even know why they design their games the way they do any more. I can't see a logical reason to create all these zones that are supposed to make up your world for the express purpose of cramming the exact amount of repetitive quests into them to get you enough levels to graduate to the next zone. And then at the end of that tedium that only occupies your players for a couple weeks at most many of the zones go completely neglected for their 'endgame' content that they hinge everything on and is usually completely lacking.

What's the justification of wasting development time on a system like that? I don't think there is one other than "other games did it this way"

Many successful MMOs have claimed stats showing a large portion of the player-base doesn't reach the level cap. I think WoW brought that fraction down through conscious design changes, but it can't be eliminated. Now why did they quit before maxing their level? Would they rather have more of that somehow or more of what's at the end? Figuring that out is worth some money, and I think Blizzard has been betting that they want more of what's at the end.

The genre won't get interesting again until developers get rid of the "leveling crutch". Leveling content is stupid and a waste of time like bayr mentioned. It also creates barriers of entry for new players and friends. Until a new player and vet player can play in the same space and have fun, the genre is going to be stale.

Down-leveling, sidekicking or whatever is just a one-way bandaid. Sure high level players can play with new players. That new player is having a fun time, that high level player is just repeating old content again with no real reward or benefit other than maybe grinding points or something. The actual gameplay is boring to them.

The only way to break that up is to be able to create decent procedural content so things are always interesting and new. Building 15 static zones that are painstakingly designed to be run ONLY ONCE per character and sometimes only provide 2-5 hours of play is a horrible waste of time for a game that is designed to occupy people's time for months (sub based).

Agraza_sl said:

Many successful MMOs have claimed stats showing a large portion of the player-base doesn't reach the level cap. I think WoW brought that fraction down through conscious design changes, but it can't be eliminated. Now why did they quit before maxing their level? Would they rather have more of that somehow or more of what's at the end? Figuring that out is worth some money, and I think Blizzard has been betting that they want more of what's at the end.

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Answering this question is really tricky and it's important that you don't make the wrong assumptions. The majority of gamers never beat the game they buy anyway, so it's not an MMORPG problem. For a game that is banking on subscriptions to pay the bills, this is a really difficult problem to solve which is why a lot of games are going free to play.

If I don't reach level cap in an MMO it's because the game is stale and boring and I don't feel like treadmill questing to another irritatingly boring end game of heroic dungeons and raids.

I probably won't play another MMORPG for more than the free month again until a game can break that paradigm. I need something more than Quest Gather -> Look at Map -> quest finish -> quest turnin -> repeat for 90-120 hours.

Draegan_sl said:

The genre won't get interesting again until developers get rid of the "leveling crutch". Leveling content is stupid and a waste of time like bayr mentioned. It also creates barriers of entry for new players and friends. Until a new player and vet player can play in the same space and have fun, the genre is going to be stale.

Down-leveling, sidekicking or whatever is just a one-way bandaid. Sure high level players can play with new players. That new player is having a fun time, that high level player is just repeating old content again with no real reward or benefit other than maybe grinding points or something. The actual gameplay is boring to them.

The only way to break that up is to be able to create decent procedural content so things are always interesting and new. Building 15 static zones that are painstakingly designed to be run ONLY ONCE per character and sometimes only provide 2-5 hours of play is a horrible waste of time for a game that is designed to occupy people's time for months (sub based).

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It feels like GW2 (and to a lesser extent, Rift) are trying to accomplish what you are talking about here. GW2 is kicking out new content fairly regularly, changing up old zones, and they way they uplevel/downlevel people keeps it still somewhat challenging. Rift has a fairly robust mentor system as well, though I don't think you can mentor 'up', though when you are downlevel'ed I believe you can still get relevant currency rewards if you tackle stuff at the appropriate level for which it was designed.

You would almost need a Star Trek (the series, not the MMO) / Mass Effect (mins the ending of 3), space exploration type of approach to really be able to fully realize what you are looking for. Something like Elite, the MMO (or Eve lite, in other words). Or Earth and Beyond, may it rest in peace, amen.

I have alot of qualms with the direction GW2 is taking but that you can do content anywhere in the world without it being a total faceroll is a very good innovation. I played 10 day free WoW recently and was already missing that when I went into some low level zones (granted same level zones in WoW are fairly faceroll too, but you get my point). I hope all games going forward have automated player scaling if they cling to levels, or preferably remove them completely.

To ask an on topic question, how is Wildstar approaching that situation? Standard WoW copy in this regard or do they do something different?

Wildstar is your typical quest based leveling system with some extra activities to do outside quests.

Draegan_sl said:

I probably won't play another MMORPG for more than the free month again until a game can break that paradigm. I need something more than Quest Gather -> Look at Map -> quest finish -> quest turnin -> repeat for 90-120 hours.

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sounds like great person to be running a network of fansites for mmos.

What I mean is I would enjoy hub-based quest games a bit more if there was more optional story/content on the side that I could do without facerolling through it. All the questing zones I didnt use to level are on that list of additional content, but they are pointless and dead boring because they provide no challenge. To give a WoW example, doing a reputation for an old expansion is killing me, running around one-shotting stuff as fast as the global cooldown allows. It might take longer if I was scaled down but assuming being scaled down gave useful loot/xp and at least a bit of a challenge (like it does in GW2) I would still find it more fun.

I'm one of the few people who feel levels should be removed completely from these games and replaced with new forms of progression that do not splinter the player base into various level ranges. It's one of the few things I feel EQ Next is doing right.

I wouldn't mind some sort of progression like levels but having them not really mean much other than your playtime. Such as Planetside 2 or really any shooter with levels, or even dota. I really hate questing though like other people mentioned.

I agree though, it's one of the first things that really caught my attention is EQN getting rid of levels, but they're still having tiers of content so we'll see. I just hope questing in Wildstar isn't so fucking boring or that it's not something I HAVE to do. I went back to WoW recently for 7 days and I just can't fucking do it. I made it to about level 15 before I quit again.

Questing in Wildstar is exactly like any other quest driven game. Instead of kill 10 wombats, you're getting 100% of wombat kills. But the gameplay is exactly the same as WOW.

The main difference is that combat. They are banking on the fact that the combat is more action/twitch based so the act of playing the game is more enjoyable no matter what kind of content you are doing.

xzi_sl said:

I wouldn't mind some sort of progression like levels but having them not really mean much other than your playtime. Such as Planetside 2 or really any shooter with levels, or even dota. I really hate questing though like other people mentioned.

I agree though, it's one of the first things that really caught my attention is EQN getting rid of levels, but they're still having tiers of content so we'll see. I just hope questing in Wildstar isn't so fucking boring or that it's not something I HAVE to do. I went back to WoW recently for 7 days and I just can't fucking do it. I made it to about level 15 before I quit again.

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If you hate questing, I am not sure why are you even wanting to play this game. Unless you are going to level via pvp or something.

Sithro_sl said:

I'm one of the few people who feel levels should be removed completely from these games and replaced with new forms of progression that do not splinter the player base into various level ranges. It's one of the few things I feel EQ Next is doing right.

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Are they not just replacing levels with "Tiers". Need Tier x to do this zone that is designed for tier x , won't get this armor or this ability until tier Y etc .

cinge_sl said:

Are they not just replacing levels with "Tiers". Need Tier x to do this zone that is designed for tier x , won't get this armor or this ability until tier Y etc .

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Afaik EQN will have 5 tiers, that's far from having 50/60/90 levels. If you translate that by adding a zero and calling it the same thing as people did in August I would say there is no difference. However if someone in tier 2 gear can generally face the challenges of the content of the next tier, then it is a big difference, because translating that into levels means someone thats level 20ish handling lvl30-40 zones. Something that isnt really the case for current MMOs due to lvl-based hit table shit that they could flat-out remove and be no worse off, imo. Increased stats and damage difference between the player and mob will make things hard enough pretty quick without missing all the time.

Draegan_sl said:

Questing in Wildstar is exactly like any other quest driven game. Instead of kill 10 wombats, you're getting 100% of wombat kills. But the gameplay is exactly the same as WOW.

The main difference is that combat. They are banking on the fact that the combat is more action/twitch based so the act of playing the game is more enjoyable no matter what kind of content you are doing.

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I'd argue that the old quest system has had it's time in the sun, but the millions of current WOW subscribers as well as many others playing similar games really makes me wonder if that's true.

Level's and quests are fine. However, if the loot and gear is generic and not acclimated to creating alts or an economy then the game probably will lack any real carrot. I can't think of anyone who plays MMOs for twitch combat or 'action'.

The old quest system was just fine back in the day because it was a good step in the direction of game development. However, since then it's been over used, over designed, and just plain bloated. You went from large quest strings and smaller tasks along the ways do a breadcrumb infested shit shoat. Even though people hated it at the time, those long winded quests in WOW that had you go all over the place were pretty engaging and fun. Their rewards were just shit for the time invested. If they gave a low grade level 40 epic back in WOW vanilla, they would of been immensely popular.

I played TERA for the combat, and played much longer than I normally would of because of the combat. The game's content was really shitty. I mean, it was as generic as fucking possible. Kill 10 X, Collect 10 Y's and world design was atrocious. The mobs AI was boring and repetitive after a while. However the combat lead me to make two characters into the 40s or 50s. If the game had better content I would of played a lot longer.

Levels and quests aren't fine because they handcuff developers into doing the same thing over and over again. Quests are good if you don't over use them. Levels are fine if you use them in a smart way but no one has in quite some time.

Gecko_sl said:

I'd argue that the old quest system has had it's time in the sun, but the millions of current WOW subscribers as well as many others playing similar games really makes me wonder if that's true.

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I'd wager that those "millions of Wow subscribers" have no clue what else is out there, or since there really isn't anything different, it's not indicative of that system being "good".

Just as there is no other system to show its not good. There has yet to be a good alternative that people would call "successful"(aka players only see WoW as successful numbers). Been a few skill based games but they all died out except maybe EVE but people these days think 500k subs is bad.

For me its not the PVE endgame but the PVP end game. Will open world, war plots, and scenario pvp be enough in wildstar to keep my interest ? The pve surprisingly looks fun but is there enough player vs player content to keep it fresh and fun end game ? I dont think I am alone when I say pve takes a second seat to pvp. I hope Wildstar is serious when they say they will implement open world pvp objectives after release.