Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion
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The problem with closed beta programs with a small population is that the crowd of people that contribute and post more often than not are always going to be a group of people who are usually the exact opposite of normal players and are exactly the people you do not want to listen to at all.
If you're actually going to use the public at large for actually developmental feedback, you need to have a large pool of players. It's even better if there isn't an NDA. Small closed beta tests usually boil down to a core group of people who are just fucking crazy. It happens with every single game. Normal gamers don't stalk pre-release MMORPG forums, let alone beta forums.
If you're actually going to use the public at large for actually developmental feedback, you need to have a large pool of players. It's even better if there isn't an NDA. Small closed beta tests usually boil down to a core group of people who are just fucking crazy. It happens with every single game. Normal gamers don't stalk pre-release MMORPG forums, let alone beta forums.
Honestly, I just want to help squash bugs. I'm good at writing bug reports. I've done it for most of my life.
My dad used me as child labor.
My dad used me as child labor.
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Not sure its always going to be this small. I think they said atm it was 2k ppl?(Thought I saw that somewhere). With 15k invites for this weekend and supposedly people in stress test get into the regular beta, so numbers should be going up.
That's not near enough people at all. You need enough people so that the population on the forums is large enough so that one group of neckbeards doesn't out talk the rest of the sane people.
Using random numbers, if you invite 100k people a small percent of people won't even get the invite, will miss it, not care, or whatever, let's call it 5%. A huge percentage of people, let's say 50% will only play the game and not participate on the forums at all but will fill out bug reports in game and populate the game enough to internal data can be collected efficiently.
That leaves around 45-40% of the playerbase that know the forums exist. Now, cut that in half for the people who play the beta long enough to actually understand the game or care. Then take 30% of those people as the people who are NOT lurkers.
Mathmathmath
That's like 10% of your tester base actually participating in forum discussion of any substance that you can make serious design decisions on.
Anyway, these design concepts like easy/hard respecs have been done every which way in the industry that I have no idea how the developers are even considering this seriously. I mean, just look at fucking history.
Using random numbers, if you invite 100k people a small percent of people won't even get the invite, will miss it, not care, or whatever, let's call it 5%. A huge percentage of people, let's say 50% will only play the game and not participate on the forums at all but will fill out bug reports in game and populate the game enough to internal data can be collected efficiently.
That leaves around 45-40% of the playerbase that know the forums exist. Now, cut that in half for the people who play the beta long enough to actually understand the game or care. Then take 30% of those people as the people who are NOT lurkers.
Mathmathmath
That's like 10% of your tester base actually participating in forum discussion of any substance that you can make serious design decisions on.
Anyway, these design concepts like easy/hard respecs have been done every which way in the industry that I have no idea how the developers are even considering this seriously. I mean, just look at fucking history.
If you look at the spoiler'd part of the 2 hour long dev interview a few posts before you, you will see that the devs are clearly aware and working to balance any possible issue. "Devs are being careful with path abilities. DO NOT want you to feel it's advantageous to re-roll the same char with a different path simply because the abilities may be better." I didnt say it didnt matter, I said I highly doubt there would be a huge difference between optimal vs sub-optimal. When your two choices are: Play X path because I enjoy the content it will provide vs play X path because an ability might make me the tiniest bit better in a handful of certain situations, I will always pick the first option. If thats not the case, then the devs have failed.
Xevy
Log Wizard
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A: The people cooch splurting over this beta are NOT your typical gamer. Us being in beta may not help satisfy the regular gamers, or 'normies'.
B: Stress tests are exactly to test their capacity. I'm sure the more input the better, but they don't have the physical means yet of allowing in 100k or 50k or 30k people in yet.
C: I've been in some huge betas and I think 90% of the people give incorrect feedback/no feedback. It's more about the game designers picking and choosing and ironing out bugs in this phase than anything.
D: Back to point A, most people in this forum will devour all their content and then whine on forums that beta doesn't have endgame, more pvp maps, etc etc. People here, myself included, treat betas as early game access. They are not.
F: Yourself. Best thing to do until you can get into beta.
B: Stress tests are exactly to test their capacity. I'm sure the more input the better, but they don't have the physical means yet of allowing in 100k or 50k or 30k people in yet.
C: I've been in some huge betas and I think 90% of the people give incorrect feedback/no feedback. It's more about the game designers picking and choosing and ironing out bugs in this phase than anything.
D: Back to point A, most people in this forum will devour all their content and then whine on forums that beta doesn't have endgame, more pvp maps, etc etc. People here, myself included, treat betas as early game access. They are not.
F: Yourself. Best thing to do until you can get into beta.
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Only way to make something truly equal is to give the same thing to both sides. Since that wont happen, I can almost guarantee x will be ~1% better for this class then Y and a big group of players will adjust their play-style accordingly.
Right, and Im not saying there wont be situations where X ability from a path is better then Y ability from a path. Im saying since the choice of those abilities are attached to your Path, which provides different content to play based on your own playstyle, will you choose your Path based on the content/playstyle choice, or will you pick your Path based on the slight advantage of one ability over another?
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I'm not sure for myself, depends on the advantage. But given I will probably be entering the game without solid numbers in the raid/pvp scene, and paths cannot be re-specced, most likely just end up picking what I enjoy most.
I was more saying, how its not really a development failure(unless if course its a big advantage).
I was more saying, how its not really a development failure(unless if course its a big advantage).
Thats what I meant. That if there was a big advantage, then it would be a dev failure. I dont see that happening though. Im sure there will be some small advantage, based off your class choice and your focus PvP/PvE, but I dont think it will outweight the choice to play the path that you find most enjoyable. I was just telling Onoes that I thought it was sad that he feels like he gets more enjoyment out of play a small stat game vs playing the actual game content. I understand those people exist, I think that is what he was trying to ask earlier if he was in the minority on that. Im sure its closer to 50/50, just depends on what you enjoy.
Onoes
Trakanon Raider
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I did think it was funny that in that interview they said they are aware and trying not to screw it up, the day after I had this huge conversation about that being a concern. But lets take a look at one of the supposed leaked abilities for a concrete example of what I'm afraid of. A leak claims that the warrior path gets an ability that is an AOE knockback + breaks any CC on him. If the leak is true, this is a real thing in the game currently. Now, my understanding that being able to break CC in PvP is pretty much the best thing you can possibly have in any situation. If my big time wow PvP friends are any indication, the more CC break you have, the more murder you produce.
Lets assume all the other paths get alternate abilities, and this is the only path that has a CC remove option. What are the chances that anyone serious about PVP are not going to choose that path? If every single endgame arena team consists of all warrior paths, what are the changes my settler who's ability is say... increase run speed by 20% for 5 secs is going to be desired over someone who can always break CC? Sure, it might have a niche team it fits into, but yeah.
So.. thats my concern, and I certainly hope its not justified, but looking at the current path skills leaks doesn't make me super confident.
Also, send out more beta invites please. <3
Lets assume all the other paths get alternate abilities, and this is the only path that has a CC remove option. What are the chances that anyone serious about PVP are not going to choose that path? If every single endgame arena team consists of all warrior paths, what are the changes my settler who's ability is say... increase run speed by 20% for 5 secs is going to be desired over someone who can always break CC? Sure, it might have a niche team it fits into, but yeah.
So.. thats my concern, and I certainly hope its not justified, but looking at the current path skills leaks doesn't make me super confident.
Also, send out more beta invites please. <3
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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They could also go the route and just not allow path abilities in arena. Doesn't really matter much in open world pvp(pvp server) and in the 40 vs 40 warplots.
The settler two that were listed, look great for a healer though. I liked settler at first, but I am worried about what happens if you are not in the initial rush of a area, how will you get to build anything? Will you be just stuck repairing stuff?
Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Win Win imo. I want both.Anyone sees that there is mail in their spam folder and become all excited hoping it's a Wildstar invite, only to open the spam folder and find it's some penis enlargement advertisement?
TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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They've talked about this a bit. Apparently, repairing is one of the few things you can do as a solo-Settler. The Tier 2 and Tier 3 town improvements require a degree of materials that one settler won't be able to collect on their own in a reasonable amount of time. Making the Settlers have to cooperate to make the better structures. Most things require mats to do though. In one of the videos, the guy needed mats for just about everything short of repairing the street lamps. All of the structures built degrade over time and must be maintained by Settlers.
