Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

Pyros_sl said:

Running a competitive raiding guild in vanilla wow was a fucking nightmare.

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Totally agree with you, managing 40 man raiding was a fulltime job chore, whenever you wanna be competitive or not. You'll have to deal with skilled players with awful connections, top key players with IRL matters, people not giving a fuck about plannings, drama queens, trolls and such. Don't get me wrong, you'll have to deal with these guys on any format, but wherever it's 40 or 20, as a manager / raid officer it will save you days. I'm cutting the hardcore cake there, killing Ragnaros / DW / C'Thun was balls fun, but it always takes some people to get commited to the bone. And whether you're Dallas' Jr or not, managing people on a paying entertainment platform is as rewarding as picking elephant shit on a zoo. Everyone looks at the elephant, no one gives a fuck about the crap guy.

They've listed both PVE and PVP gear tiers:

PVE: Dungeons < 10-20 Man < 40 Man

PVP: BG's < Arena < Warplots.

Wildstar Community Beat: PVP rewards, Warplots trump Arenas | WildStar Junkies

Edit: There's a similar post about PVE somewhere...

Warfronts are more 'base vs base'. So I think it's going to be about 35% player vs player fights with 65% being the actual castle vs castle battle. I think you need your small groups to go out and grab different resources (think early/mid Alterac Valley) and then based upon how well they did your base's strength will vary.

Or at least that's what I'm hoping. I used to love mid-era AV before it was boss rushes when it was an actual systematic pushes. The 'good' guilds would have 3-5 people take key points and hold them to turn the tide while the zergs got their free honor in the middle murdering each other as the tide slowly pushed in/out.

To be honest I'm eagerly waiting for their January beta patch. Unless we have some serious endgame content out there, I'd call it a loss. We definitely need more information, endgame content wise. I do understand how vidya PR works nowadays, you wouldn't show everything because you have to sell boxes, but right now 1-36 feels like Tortage. They emphasize a lot on "Elder" (endgame) content but right now we've yet to see it.

Bondurant_sl said:

To be honest I'm eagerly waiting for their January beta patch. Unless we have some serious endgame content out there, I'd call it a loss. We definitely need more information, endgame content wise. I do understand how vidya PR works nowadays, you wouldn't show everything because you have to sell boxes, but right now 1-36 feels like Tortage. They emphasize a lot on "Elder" (endgame) content but right now we've yet to see it.

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i cant wait to see it too. Not because i think there will be any hint of end game in it, but theres been a ton of discussion regarding difficulty and key systems like AMPs, breakouts, etc on the forums and it will be interesting to see what way they choose to go with this. If they make the telegraphs easier and make white damage higher i dont think it will be a good sign for the direction they intend to take.

Rhinohelix_sl said:

Can we talk about the 1-15 game yet or is the NDA still in place? I have a ton to say about my limited time with it but don't want to hurt myself or the generous soul who gave me a stress test key.

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The NDA is still in effect for everyone, including for the 1-15 game minus for a select few who were invited by Carbine to stream those levels.

I fear warplots will be a massive failure. I mean, the idea on paper is kinda cool, build your base, stuff it with your slained pve bosses etc. But from my experience, managing a 40 man pvp its even more terrible than the PVE counterpart. From what i understand its a sort of guild vs guild, on an instanced zone. Problem with it i think there will be very few guild that will be able to pull that. Even on gw2 (at least from the time i played) there was few organized group and mostly random ppl hopping up. Arena teams works cause its easy to organize, and is easy to find 2, 3 or 5 ppl that want the same thing and coordinate themself. But 40? from the same guild? Yes, there will be some dedicated pvp guild, that will run it, but i dont think the majority will be, and it will end with the same couple of team runnin, and huuuuuge wait times. Dont know really especially on a game that point so much toward competitve pve.

I would prefer a sort of old alterac valley concept, with maybe a min number of 5 or 10 ppl that build and control a base, and then allows for randoms to get in.

Pyros_sl said:

There might also be a ranked warplot queue for full 40man guilds, and then a casual warplot queue where anyone can queue however they feel that has pregenerated bases instead and it's basically a 40man BG. Would be the simplest way to implement it, but I don't see ranked warplots having much success that way.

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Indeed having 2 guilds having full 40 ppl dedicated to it? yeah sure few will manage, but to hope for it to become the crown jewel of your pvp game seem rather unprobable. I dont think it will be as common as they hope/plan. I was thinking exactly the same with the mercenary idea. Coordinating wouldnt be too much of an issue. like on Alterac valley (or the rift bg that was basically the same on a city enviroment, forgot the name) you ll have your main group carry the rest with random ppl doing their own sologanking/killling/whatever.

zzeris_sl said:

I think the Warplots are definitely the way to go and I'm actually going to try this game mainly to see what they can get right and improve on from WoW. Much like early AV, they can spread out objectives so that zergs aren't nearly as effective. Then it becomes 5-10 teams of players are better than a zerg. Then we can hopefully get some good group PvP. Arenas are so easy to manipulate in WoW and small team tactics can really get boring fast if not unbalanced. Having SuperRoxxerzPvP sell his services in 3 mans left a bad taste in my mouth for Arena.

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The way you describe them it sounds like BG-like instances. My understanding was that warplots are "guild housing" in a fortress style that you can let others fight through. Like I said earlier I considered it a feature that was mainly guild housing but with a fun twist. To hear that it is supposed to be pvp endgame is a big surprise for me, and tbh I think that'll fall flat unless its really polished.

Hell even if it is great, alot of people will be put off by it because pvp is supposed to be a solo/trio path to endgame lewts for skilled people, as opposed to the no-skill zerg raids. And now they need 39 other people to outgear the bg noobs.

It's instanced. It's large scale BG's basically. It's the highest tier, so your try hards and uberl33ts (which about half of this forum CLAIM to be) will be the only ones that are consistently successful and completely geared out by it.

Arena gear is still above BG gear so your 2v2 3v3 5v5 cookie cutter class setups and bullshit burst/invuln mechanics will be safe for people who rely on that stuff to get gear.

Xevy_sl said:

It's instanced. It's large scale BG's basically. It's the highest tier, so your try hards and uberl33ts (which about half of this forum CLAIM to be) will be the only ones that are consistently successful and completely geared out by it.

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if you could do it with any regularity it might matter, but getting 40 people on to raid is hard enough, 40 people to pvp is going to be next to impossible.

Xevy_sl said:

It's instanced. It's large scale BG's basically. It's the highest tier, so your try hards and uberl33ts (which about half of this forum CLAIM to be) will be the only ones that are consistently successful and completely geared out by it.

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And therein lies the possilbe design flaw imho, depending on how they will implement it.

possible scenario
Do u need full group to enter the que? if so there s going to be massive que problem unless its manages as a sort of guild vs guild war declaration. If that is the case then they will allow guild to trade off even pugs etc (dont think there is any way to stop trade off if its guild vs guild declaration). If u dont neeed full 40 ppl to enter, but doesnt allow ppl outside your own guild to enter then it going to have some unbalance, like 30 vs 10 or things like that.

Now that i think bout it, the only way it would work is if they would allow like 5-10 ppl to start the istanced battleground, cap the number of ppl evenly on both sides (add a dynamic que so if 2 more from each side want to enter while the fight is going on it goes from 10 vs 10 to 12 vs 12 and so on untill its capped to 40vs 40 if it will every reach it), sorta like they did on latest version of AV (or was it wintergrasp?). In such a way both side get it fair number wise, and then the matching should be random so it would be difficult to fix beetwen the 2. Something like that may work.

There's some info that can be gleaned from the group queuer in beta right now, but who knows if that's accurate. I'd say more, but I'd rather not violate NDA.

I think the raid testers have a much stricter application process so at best you'll know some people who are testing it but don't expect them to leak anything on either the 20s or the 40s. Probably have to verify personal information up front for actual legal action.