Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

Byr_sl said:

well again, hes saying most raiders raid for 40-60 hours a month but for every raider whos raiding 4-5 hours day, theres one thats raiding for a couple hours once every couple days. You guys see it from your perspective since your putting in a lot of hours but to call yourselves "most" is a very skewed view of what playerbases consist of.

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I'm saying most, from talking to others, and seeing other guilds advertisements. And this is my usual experience across multiple games of raiding.

Even that aside, how can my view be " very skewed" , yet you pull a random "there's one that's raiding for a couple hours every couple days" out of your hat at the same time?

Cinge_sl said:

I'm saying most, from talking to others, and seeing other guilds advertisements. And this is my usual experience across multiple games of raiding.

Even that aside, how can my view be " very skewed" , yet you pull a random "there's one that's raiding for a couple hours every couple days" out of your hat at the same time?

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from common sense based off what the playerbase of every game consists of? The mmo genre is dominated by casual players.

Remove WoW from the equation and how many games have casuals as the majority of raiders? And I say remove WoW because of LFR which has allowed almost anyone in that game to be a "Raider". We're talking about people raiding, not total player-base.

Even the most casual raid guilds I've seen outside WoW, raid 2-3 nights a week for at least 3 hours each. So that's 24 hours at the very minimum. And that's the very super casuals who literally don't really give a shit and just mess around or have way too much RL to deal with. And these casual guilds are a small minority of the raid scene.

that post is so laughable I dont know where to begin.

People put in over 15 hours a month in LFR.

Byr_sl said:

that post is so laughable I dont know where to begin.

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My experience is very similar to Cinge's. He's right on with the numbers I've experienced.

<In Virtue> in EQ during progression was 20-24 hours per week. Sometimes more if we were going for a significant first.
<Afterlife> was anywhere from 8-30 hours per week depending on the content cycle.
<Dawn Eternal> during progression was at least 16 hours per week. World 3rd (I think, maybe 4th) Nefarian.

Then I've been in a number of casual guilds in different MMOs (Eq2, Vanguard, EQOA, etc) and they are generally 5-12 hours per week, and attendance rules aren't very strict.

I would have imagined AL would have spent more than 30 hours during progression in EQ. I guess it depends on the expansion you were on. Its also debatable what exactly you consider raiding. I know we spent a freakishly large amount of time during Planes of Power. Classic through Velious wasnt that intensive (Im not counting farming raid mobs for gear, that shit wasnt hard). -- Either way, its really surprising that at least half of us arent walking around with some serious health problems.

I dont know what exactly makes me have this opinion, but when I watch the videos of the raid boss fights.. I feel like some of those fights would wear on your average raider pretty hard. Even after those bosses become farm status. But then again, muscle memory and all that blah blah blah.

Daidraco_sl said:

I would have imagined AL would have spent more than 30 hours during progression in EQ. I guess it depends on the expansion you were on. Its also debatable what exactly you consider raiding. I know we spent a freakishly large amount of time during Planes of Power. Classic through Velious wasnt that intensive (Im not counting farming raid mobs for gear, that shit wasnt hard). -- Either way, its really surprising that at least half of us arent walking around with some serious health problems.

I dont know what exactly makes me have this opinion, but when I watch the videos of the raid boss fights.. I feel like some of those fights would wear on your average raider pretty hard. Even after those bosses become farm status. But then again, muscle memory and all that blah blah blah.

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I'm not counting that 1.5-2 years of Luclin & PoP.... Those were pretty dark days. It wasn't unheard of to be playing EQ 40+ hours per week.

Nothing here is surprising and you can say out of all the of the recent MMO's that have come out recently, this one was the easiest to predict. Mainly that a large portion of the playerbase was probably going to hit the wall come endgame because the average MMORPG player these days is not conditioned nor has the time to deal with head against the wall difficulty. Everyone constantly brings up Dark Souls as proof there is a sizeable amount of people who will play this type of game but that all goes out the window when the difficulty of content is not based on your skill level, but the skill level of 5 other (more than likely) strangers. Beyond all that though, I really think if Wildstar continues to trend down it's just another nail in the subscription model coffin. The two exceptions are WoW (for obvious reasons) and probably FFXIV (due to the license behind it).

Cinge_sl said:

Not sure why you looked at this game for that. It was very obvious what this game was before launch.

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Yeah I knew what I was getting into, Like I said I enjoy raiding and have yet to spend more than the box price on this game. Credd really makes this game easy to play.

Vandyn_sl said:

Everyone constantly brings up Dark Souls as proof there is a sizeable amount of people who will play this type of game but that all goes out the window when the difficulty of content is not based on your skill level, but the skill level of 5 other (more than likely) strangers.

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Excellent point.

Also, that seems like a dumb argument from whoever brought it up first. A mmo comparision to a single player game. The reason a lot of people will tolerate those single player head-on-wall games is because for the most part, two things will happen:

1.They will play the game at their own pace and when they get tired they will stop.In MMO raiding, most of the time the majority is playing at someone else's leisure (raid time) and for how long they want to fail at it until they cry Uncle (put in extra time). Being able to walk away from a game like Dark Souls for a day, two or a week and not even think about it helps immensely so you don't feel as if youhaveto do it. It's the same formula that makes games like Skyrim great; it's there when you want it and not on a prescribed, rigid mandatory schedule. That doesn't work in MMOs. You don't get better at raiding the more time you spend away from it, you have to grind that mess out until you're a robot. WildStar's goal seems to be to make the best robots in the industry, except I thnk a lot of the robots are ultimately more Bender than KITT in this game; they are going to walk away from it shortly.

2.They will cheat when they can't figure the shit out.Bang your head up against enough stuff for long enough, and the vast majority of people will seek an easier way, and that means guides, hacks and glitches. Doing it in Dark Souls is acceptable because it is recognized as a hard game most people will need help on and besides... no one can see you cheating. In an mmo, there's at least 5-39 other people who saw you cheat. Doing it in WildStar is what you have now with all those Silver runners climbing walls; not cool.

I cancelled my sub. I like the mechanics a lot, and it seems like the Dev team really worked their asses off. On the other hand, I can't stand quest treadmill leveling, especially of the quest spam variety. They needed about 1/10 the number of quests with 10 times more experience per quest. They could have then focused more on the remaining quests to make them more engaging. I mean for fucks sacks, I feel like I am at work pouring through Excel spreadsheets every time I open the quest tracker. I resorted to using battlegrounds for leveling, but as you can imagine, that quickly got boring. I never intended to get into raiding, but it seemed like I might have been able to keep occupied with expert adventures and maybe dungeons.

I am honestly not sure how anyone can get excited about raiding anymore. It was cool when it was novel, but not so much anymore. Schedule 3 to 4 hour blocks of my precious free time to listen to necks beards scream at each other on mumble? No thanks. I am even more perplexed that anyone thinks they can make bank catering to that crowd explicitly.

headspace_sl said:

Schedule 3 to 4 hour blocks of my precious free time to listen to necks beards scream at each other on mumble? No thanks.

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So pretty much any form of organized multiplayer gaming, be it a fps, a moba , mmo pvp or raiding etc.

So pretty much any form of organized multiplayer gaming, be it a fps, a moba , mmo pvp or raiding etc.

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It's much worse in an MMO. The other activities you list don't penalize you for saying fuck it and logging out. You can't do that in an MMO if you ever want to experience end game raid content. Yes professional gamers in those genre's don't have that option, but that is hardly a representative sample.

Who the fuck screams on mumble? It's like that one "50 DKP MINUS!" video thing makes everyone assume that's how every guild is. Personally, I've never experienced anything even approaching that, across 6-7 different raiding guilds over the past 10 years. Was I somehow an outlier?

I guess it's the same as watching TV shows, and coming away believing every authority figure is black, and every group of 3+ people has a homosexual.

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OK you caught me. I exaggerated. On top of that, I am excessively irritable, but I stand by the premise of my statement...... voice chat is an abomination. If you want to chit chat like a teenage girl, go out to the bars with your friends. I play games as a leisure activity. The amount of enjoyment I get out of a leisure activity is inversely proportional to how much I have to listen to other people talk while doing it.

headspace_sl said:

OK you caught me. I exaggerated. On top of that, I am excessively irritable, but I stand by the premise of my statement...... voice chat is an abomination. If you want to chit chat like a teenage girl, go out to the bars with your friends. I play games as a leisure activity. The amount of enjoyment I get out of a leisure activity is inversely proportional to how much I have to listen to other people talk while doing it.

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That's why you have to find the right guild for you. Not all guilds act like that. I'm not saying it is easy, but if you put the effort in to find the group of like minded people your experience will improve dramatically.

I'll just cut through the fluff:

If you're casual
If you're bad
If you want lore
If you want a sandbox
If you ONLY do PVP

This isn't your game.

Xevy_sl said:

I'll just cut through the fluff:

If you're casual
If you're bad
If you want lore
If you want a sandbox
If you ONLY do PVP

This isn't your game.

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My only contribution to this discussion is to disagree about the (Eldan) lore point. Some of the datacubes you really had to read between the lines on, though.

I suppose I probably should explain WHY I disagree, a little:

- They were rather prevalent with the Eldan lore, which was the entire point of going to Nexus in the first place. The whole premise of "present day" WildStar is that it's a big archaeological mission to find out what happened to what was known to be* the most advanced scientific race in the galaxy.
- The Datacubes indirectly explain a great deal about some of the environs of the planet, as well as (to me) heavily imply that the Eldanwere not nativeto Nexus. Why do I say that? They were pretty ignorant of the ecology, as shown by the wording of various cubes in Ellevar and Wilderrun. I find it very strange they would be studying Nexus as if they had known nothing about it, if it was their homeworld in the first place. In other words, you can't convince me that a scientific race wouldn't have their homeworld bagged and tagged long since. My current thought is that they migrated to the planet because it met the criteria for the Project (abundance of each Primal Power). This then begs the question of where they camefromand why they migrated (expansion content?!).

* There's a very heavy implication of at least one third party who can match if not exceed the Eldan in scientific advancement. Example: the Protoplasmic Resonator used for the creation of Drusera was provided by "an interested party" to the Archon. Even the Eldan didn't fully understand it, and Nazgrel deliberately sabotaged the calibration with help from his "ally". Why would that be if the Eldan were "the most advanced"?

I listened to every data cube. I would go out of my way to find them.

Cinge_sl said:

I listened to every data cube. I would go out of my way to find them.

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Much to my anger. I will never forgive or forget the great Datacube dabacle of Stormtalon, Cinge.