Wildstar MMO

[Stuebi]

I played it this weekend, as part of the Alienware Betaaccess. Altough im a bit pissed, now that I found out I pretty much participated in a glorified Stresstest. I spoiled myself the Starting Area of Granoks and 15 Levels of content in the progress, all being more or less buggy and here and there still unfinished, without getting anything from it. Im never gonna trust one of those promotions again.

I cant really spoil a lot because of the NDA, but the game's fun, altough in need of some polish. And im pretty sure that they will do an open beta, considering how much stuff is still undone and untested.

[Karoht]

I don't like the movement away from subscription-based fees. I feel it's unreasonable. You're telling them to make the same content, but you're going to spend less money on it. Anything made as a passion project will fail because they don't get enough mony. Anything made for profit will cut corners in order to make profits.

~snip~

The "60 dollars base game plus 40 per expansion plus 15 a month" is unreasonable. But what if it was, say, five dollars a month? Perhaps the game and expansions would cost less too.

3 Points
1-The above doesn't fit with the below. Separate posts but highly conflicting. That said, I'm not a fan of any a la carte service programs I've seen thus far, and Pay2Win forms of free2play are just terrible.
2-Battle Chest + Current expansion is all you need to pay for now. Typically on sale for as cheap as 10 + 20 dollars, then sub fee. Digital download price currently on battle.net is 40 + 40.
3-At $10 or $5 this would be unlikely to actually increase sub numbers.

I played it this weekend, as part of the Alienware Betaaccess. Altough im a bit pissed, now that I found out I pretty much participated in a glorified Stresstest. I spoiled myself the Starting Area of Granoks and 15 Levels of content in the progress, all being more or less buggy and here and there still unfinished, without getting anything from it. Im never gonna trust one of those promotions again.

I cant really spoil a lot because of the NDA, but the game's fun, altough in need of some polish. And im pretty sure that they will do an open beta, considering how much stuff is still undone and untested.

3 Points
1-Par for the course of every Beta Weekend I've ever seen. Not super reflective of the finish product, but not encouraging all the same. Closed/Open Beta will likely be very different from what you are seeing here.
2-Often better to focus on complete info that you can talk about, and stuff that you actually enjoyed. Especially this early into the development cycle.
3-NC often does very tightlipped testing. NDA's are almost pointless once the game gets to public testing of any kind, I'm really not sure why they do this. Most other companies encourage streaming and other means for people to check out the game without participating in the beta, especially if one can't for some reason (IE-They work weekends during the Beta Weekend). I really wish NC would stop with the NDA's, as it is typically seen quite negatively these days, unless we're talking about a standalone game where spoilers would be a big deal, like Mass Effect or Castlevania or something like that.

The CoH shutdown makes it impossible to trust NCSoft, since if they killed off one game while it was still profitable, popular and had a major update in beta testing, they could do it again. When playing GW2, there's always going to be that little suspicion that they could fire all the devs and shut down ArenaNet tomorrow, which would make just as much sense to the player base as the CoH closure did.

Despite recently dropping some major content, I've been hearing rumors in the direction of Aion. At least as far as the NA/EU servers are concerned. Just saying.

[Psyren]

3-NC often does very tightlipped testing. NDA's are almost pointless once the game gets to public testing of any kind, I'm really not sure why they do this. Most other companies encourage streaming and other means for people to check out the game without participating in the beta, especially if one can't for some reason (IE-They work weekends during the Beta Weekend). I really wish NC would stop with the NDA's, as it is typically seen quite negatively these days, unless we're talking about a standalone game where spoilers would be a big deal, like Mass Effect or Castlevania or something like that.

Totally agreed - all NDAs lead me to believe is that your game looks crappy, you know it looks crappy, and you don't want people to find out just how crappy it still is. Let people talk about it I say; if it really is in a state where you don't want people to see it, don't have the beta at all.

Despite recently dropping some major content, I've been hearing rumors in the direction of Aion. At least as far as the NA/EU servers are concerned. Just saying.

Aion's still around? Eh.

[Karoht]

Totally agreed - all NDAs lead me to believe is that your game looks crappy, you know it looks crappy, and you don't want people to find out just how crappy it still is. Let people talk about it I say; if it really is in a state where you don't want people to see it, don't have the beta at all.

Bingo. It seems shifty. And the rest of the industry seems to have mostly caught on that the NDA is pointless once the game hits Beta. Beta's are free advertising in addition to the testing, why stop people talking about what they see?

Aion's still around? Eh.

Just had a major update back in June. New classes and everything.
And I hear that NC has been hemmoraging money on these guys (Gameforge/Innova) for not much in the way of return. It's still doing okay in Korea, but not well anywhere else, and they supposedly spend huge amounts of money localizing it.
According to most, CoH was the most profitable it had ever been, and was shut down. This doesn't bode well for Aion.

[GungHo]

Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.

[Stuebi]

3 Points
1-Par for the course of every Beta Weekend I've ever seen. Not super reflective of the finish product, but not encouraging all the same. Closed/Open Beta will likely be very different from what you are seeing here.
2-Often better to focus on complete info that you can talk about, and stuff that you actually enjoyed. Especially this early into the development cycle.
3-NC often does very tightlipped testing. NDA's are almost pointless once the game gets to public testing of any kind, I'm really not sure why they do this. Most other companies encourage streaming and other means for people to check out the game without participating in the beta, especially if one can't for some reason (IE-They work weekends during the Beta Weekend). I really wish NC would stop with the NDA's, as it is typically seen quite negatively these days, unless we're talking about a standalone game where spoilers would be a big deal, like Mass Effect or Castlevania or something like that.

Beta or not, I will talk about every aspect of the Game, wether I enjoyed it or not. If they dont want honest feedback, dont allow people to play. I get that a lot of stuff will probably be fixed, and I catched some flak in the past for complaining about stuff like that's considered "beta-only" problems. But as long as they're in there, im mentioning them in Reviews and will then later update according to the finished product. Call me paranoid, but I was crewed over in the past with stuff like this, and I wont cherry pick for the sake of a Developer.

I wholeheartedtly agree on the NDA-thing tough. Let's face it, outside of Forums and Newssites people talk about it anyway. I alone have about 3 seperate Skypeconvos with people talking about it, and spreading opinions and "first looks". Even IF there were the risk of bad Reviews spreading, they'll spread NDA in effect or not. Without having numbers to back this up, i'd say they're missing out on a lot of good publicity with this whole NDA-BS. But what'ya gonna do, right?

And about the weekend-Beta thing, I should mention that it's probably my own fault for not doing proper research into the thing myself, but the promotion and some of the posts in the "advice"-Channel ingame made it sound that there was atually merit in participating in the Test, maybe a chance of a proper invite or some goodies. However, with the coming Wipes all I got was a first impression on a more or less still very buggy but Fun game, which I could've got just as well by waiting for the open beta or the finished product.

I've discussed the matter with some friends who wanted to have a go at a certain adventure on Level 15 with a group of 5. After i've found out that I was pretty much playing on a temporary account that would get deleted soon after the Test, I was unwilling to play any further and withdrew from the Event. They were rather upset, telling me that a Beta is offered to improve the Game via Feedback and Bug Reports, and in return you get the "privilege" to playtest the Game before its released. Combined with the whole "Don't give negative Feedback, it's a Beta, but please DO praise it if it's fun"-attitude it left me with a rather bitter mood after testing, even tough the Game is decent. It just feels like a rather one-sided Deal, where you're expected to kiss a Dev's boots for being ALLOWED to playtest a still broken game, without actually giving honest feedback because of the NDA and Fanboys pestering you with "It's a Beta Beta Beta!"-thing.

[mangosta71]

Yeah, the Beta thing seems like a huge scam to me. The company finds a bunch of boot-licking toadies to derp around with the product instead of hiring actual professionals to test it and give honest feedback. It's especially bad with MMOs. Every patch introduces a slew of unanticipated bugs, and since only a handful of people test the new stuff (Cthulu knows the company itself isn't going to hire people to test it, and because the players receive no compensation for it only the most rabid fans will bother) you end up with a lot of things slipping through the cracks into the release version, and then you get issues like chat servers being completely broken for weeks at a time.

[Karoht]

Here's some thoughts
I've been through many betas. Not flashing my nerdcred or anything, I'm just really really used to the development cycles these days.
1-Posting on the forums is often less effective than using the report bug function (assuming that function exists) or using other streamlined forms of feedback. Developers often do not have time to read the forums, and community managers are great people, they really try extremely hard to communicate problems to the development crew, but they aren't developers. That said, feel free to post, but if you aren't using their bug report system to discuss certain problems, it isn't likely to get fixed even if it is the most popular thread on the forums.
1a-I don't know how good Carbine is at following forums but I do know that NCsoft game companies have had a bit of a habit of more or less ignoring the forums, outside of a few outlier concerns.
2-"Often better to focus on complete info that you can talk about, and stuff that you actually enjoyed. Especially this early into the development cycle." I guess I should clarify this.
I am not saying to not talk about buggy things or stuff you don't like. By all means, go nuts.
What I am saying however, is that when talking game development it is often better to tell people (such as us here on the forums) what is working rather than what isn't. Buggy things will typically be fixed, more often than not with a minimal number of bug reports (unless the problem is particularly challenging). In the first Beta Weekend? The number of things that work is going to be a smaller list than the things that are buggy/unpolished. As such, the things that work are far more interesting than the things that don't. Right now, the stuff they are doing differently or better than X is more interesting than what is and isn't broken/buggy/unpolished.

[Stuebi]

Here's some thoughts
I've been through many betas. Not flashing my nerdcred or anything, I'm just really really used to the development cycles these days.
1-Posting on the forums is often less effective than using the report bug function (assuming that function exists) or using other streamlined forms of feedback. Developers often do not have time to read the forums, and community managers are great people, they really try extremely hard to communicate problems to the development crew, but they aren't developers. That said, feel free to post, but if you aren't using their bug report system to discuss certain problems, it isn't likely to get fixed even if it is the most popular thread on the forums.
1a-I don't know how good Carbine is at following forums but I do know that NCsoft game companies have had a bit of a habit of more or less ignoring the forums, outside of a few outlier concerns.
2-"Often better to focus on complete info that you can talk about, and stuff that you actually enjoyed. Especially this early into the development cycle." I guess I should clarify this.
I am not saying to not talk about buggy things or stuff you don't like. By all means, go nuts.
What I am saying however, is that when talking game development it is often better to tell people (such as us here on the forums) what is working rather than what isn't. Buggy things will typically be fixed, more often than not with a minimal number of bug reports (unless the problem is particularly challenging). In the first Beta Weekend? The number of things that work is going to be a smaller list than the things that are buggy/unpolished. As such, the things that work are far more interesting than the things that don't. Right now, the stuff they are doing differently or better than X is more interesting than what is and isn't broken/buggy/unpolished.

Which I cant talk about because NDA.

I see where you're coming from, and my very first post about it was actually fairly long (5-6 paragraphs) with me fawning over cool things, before I remembered the NDA and had to scrap it. Granted, it probably wasnt fair to then only leave the "Im pissed at the Beta because X, but the game's decent."-part, because it makes it sound pretty lame. But to be fair, its not like NC is giving me a lot to work with.

To clarify the thing a bit, I want to stress this. The Game is Fun. It definetly doesnt reinvent the wheel, but it combines a few cool features from past MMORPG's and balances it well and polishes stuff that other MMORPGs shoehorned in rather badly. But I just cant get into Detail about literally ANYTHING from that. And that doesnt really tell you a whole lot without providing some context and examples.

EDIT: NVM, NDA was just lifted along with the Release Date!

So, lets elaborate a tad:

Combat is a bit more action-oriented compared to Games like WoW. It works a bit like Guild Wars 2, you have to aim most kills manually towards the Enemy, and you have two dodge rolls with which you can evade enemy attacks, which is necessary since a lot of Quests and areas are pretty hard on your own. I generally recommend to get a group together once you hit Level 10, since Enemies have a pretty big Aggro-Radius and increase in numbers in later areas. The Game takes a while to get going,but once you have a good range of abilities, its fun mix/matching them to your tastes.

Quests are standard stuff. "Talk to x, kill y of z and report back to x.", not really much to innovate there anyway. The quests range from humorous over dramatic to actually depressing sometimes. Its a bit mixed up via challenges which appear while travelling, that award different goodies when you complete them. For example squash 20 spider eggs in 4 minutes, or disarm mines without getting hit, and ofc the usual "kill x in y minutes"-variety. While they're fun, they got annoying here and there, since other players can steal you Mobs or items, which makes them impossible to complete sometimes. Some are also poorly balanced, having to kill 10 giants in an area with maybe 4 that have a moderate respawn timer. Its also not very clear sometimes what coounts as progress and what doesnt. "Kill screechers", but only "Screecher warriors" actually give you progress, while shamans dont. A lot of this will probably be fixed and rebalanced, but expect the usual ninja-killing/looting from other players.

There's also Path missions. You basically choose a secondary occupation at the start of the Game, which will give you different missions in each area, and has a seperate leveling System. It gives you Items, furniture, money and abilities depending on your path. Its pretty straightforward. Soldiers kill stuff, defend points and rescue prisoners. Explorers discover hidden paths and shortcuts and Scientists analyze things to get more Background and Lore. It keeps you occupied, to say the least and is fairly entertaining.

Storywise, the Conflict between Exiles and the Dominion is interesting. While the Dominion may seem like the "Bad" faction at first, the Game quickly fleshes it out and gives context to a lot of stuff. Yes, its a regime. But Characters have motivations and their personal agenda anyway, and not everyone is a giant jerk ordering you to kick puppies (Altough that happens, and its awesome.). The Factions do seem a _bit_ too stereotypical at times, with the Exiles being freedom-lovin Space-bumpkins and the Dominion the classic "obey or be purged"-Empire. If you're not overanalyzing the factions too much, it shouldnt be an issue.

What I dont like is the often very sudden shift between Drama and Humour. Its very possible to turn in a quest where the outcome is almost depressive, and right next to it a quest where you had to remove radioactive Super-Slugs from Spaceship-vents while a Character pops cheesy one-liners. They should've sticked with mostly the fun parts, and less trying to pull your heartstrings every now and then.

The Housing is a lot of Fun, and has actual uses for people that arent into Roleplay or the Sims. Apart from vanity Items, like decorating your house, or placing a Grill-Pit with tons of beer, you can also place Mining-sites and other Resource-Nodes, allowing you to turn your home into a self-sustaining crafting station with a bit of patience and money. I dont know how much you can upgrade tough, im pretty sure you will have to go out and farm Nodes as well, since theres a limit on how many nodes you get in your home on a daily basis. Depending on what you build in your Housing-Area, you get differnt buffs that you can apply at your leisure. (Altough that requires you to visit it regularly.)

The Housingstuff may seem pretty steep when it comes to prices, but it will probably be less of a problem on higher levels, when you make a lot more money (as usual, on lower Levels, you have barely enough money to afford your skills on each Level.). Also, another reason to run around with Buddies, theres a resource called "Reputation", which is earned by grouping and mentoring. (Mentoring is basically playing with People of a lower Level than you, it will scale you to their Level so you can help them out.) This is either good or bad, depending on how much you like group activities in a MMO.

Last but not least, crafting is fun. You can choose a range of attributes on your items yourself and theres a whole system allowing you to further customize your equipment after its creation. Your armor can also be colored to your tastes by finding different paints in the World (Pretty much like Guild Wars 2.).

Thats about the input I can offer after 3 Days and 15 Levels on 1, and 10 levels on another Character.

[Karoht]

Which I cant talk about because NDA.
But to be fair, its not like NC is giving me a lot to work with.

I get that. I'm with you on the 'NDA on beta is bullshot' front. Yet another reason why I dislike NC. Makes them look and feel remarkably disconnected from the community, and even the modern development process. It's not a healthy sign.

To clarify the thing a bit, I want to stress this. The Game is Fun. It definetly doesnt reinvent the wheel, but it combines a few cool features from past MMORPG's and balances it well and polishes stuff that other MMORPGs shoehorned in rather badly. But I just cant get into Detail about literally ANYTHING from that. And that doesnt really tell you a whole lot without providing some context and examples.

Hmmm, can you talk about stuff that other MMO's shoehorned, without specifically mentioning Wildstar? Technically that wouldn't be talking about Wildstar right? /notreallyserious
If you don't want to risk it, that's totally fine, I am only slightly serious about that suggestion.

[Stuebi]

I get that. I'm with you on the 'NDA on beta is bullshot' front. Yet another reason why I dislike NC. Makes them look and feel remarkably disconnected from the community, and even the modern development process. It's not a healthy sign.

Hmmm, can you talk about stuff that other MMO's shoehorned, without specifically mentioning Wildstar? Technically that wouldn't be talking about Wildstar right? /notreallyserious
If you don't want to risk it, that's totally fine, I am only slightly serious about that suggestion.

I've edited my above post, since someone just told me that the NDA was lifted. If you have specific questions, ask away tough.

[Karoht]

Not really much to ask about. Sounds like GW2 mostly, with some minor innovations.

I'm a fan of the artstyle thus far. I'm a huge Ratchet and Clank fan, and this game basically sounds like playing Ratchet and Clank meets Firefly the MMO. I'd have to experience the gameplay elements themselves to see if they are for me.

I'm not really hearing anything new, mostly just some twists/polish/deconstruction of some old ideas. But old ideas are not necessarily bad ideas, nor are they inherantly good ideas either. It really sounds like they are trying to use old ground in new ways rather than make new ground, outside of the combat system and the quest objective differences.

@Questing
Innovations in questing don't happen often. And there aren't many games out there where their innovations remain unique for long. Questing is only as good as the writing and assets devoted to it. Hard to justify as most of the time the questing is really only interesting the first time or first few times you give it a go, with only a few outliers here and there. Hence why you see a push for branching story leading to greater variety of quests and paths for replay value (IE-SWTOR), rather than a lot of improvements on the quests themselves.

[Psyren]

I don't care about the quests themselves - just the gameplay mechanics required to complete them. Firefall has the most banal quests ever, but doing them is still fun because you feel like you're playing a shooter - rather than going through a rotation, moving a few steps, then going through another rotation.

I've edited my above post, since someone just told me that the NDA was lifted. If you have specific questions, ask away tough.

Was it fun? Did it feel different than questing/fighting in WoW? Were there instances/dungeons where you got to fight as a group, and if so, what roles did you need?

[Stuebi]

I don't care about the quests themselves - just the gameplay mechanics required to complete them. Firefall has the most banal quests ever, but doing them is still fun because you feel like you're playing a shooter - rather than going through a rotation, moving a few steps, then going through another rotation.



Was it fun? Did it feel different than questing/fighting in WoW? Were there instances/dungeons where you got to fight as a group, and if so, what roles did you need?

I ahve to admit that I didnt participate in the Adventures, altough there are 5-man instances. If they go along with the Games difficulty, im reasonably sure they're quite the challenge. I apologize for the meager information, I wasnt really motivated to get a group and do any, when the progress will be wiped the very next day.

Comparing it to WoW? Vastly different feeling. It feels...more active, more involving when it comes to combat. WoW is pretty much a 50 hour Checklist until you hit Level 90. Wildstar mixes some dodging in and makes the difficulty a lot harder. It requires you to pay attention (Ocassionally, you ahve to get out of a stun by quickly tapping a key, for example. Often combined with a rather strong flurry-attack.). The thing, I cant really say if that really eliminates the repetition, on the most basic level, it still comes down to a more soffisticated whack-a-mole and im pretty sure there will be optimized rotations pretty soon.

TL/DR: certainly more interesting than WoW, but dont expect to be slapped out of your chair.

And, as I said above, yes I had fun. A lot in fact. Fact of the matter is I actually like the basic idea of MMOs, but most Games i've tried get boring after a while, which usually results in me either taking a break and coming back later, or putting the Game down. WoW only still stands in my Game Librarby because its pretty much the only Roleplaying-Platform i've got left, not because its THAT good. And honestly, I cant tell you if Wildstar will hold on longer, or if it will be worth the subscription fee. I can just say I had quite some Fun these 3 days and that I decided to actually buy the Game when it comes out.

I played Guild Wars 2 for a while, and I liked it. But it wasnt able to hook me permanently. Wildstar is in many ways a more refined, upgraded GW2 with some Extrafeatures, and that might just be enough.

[t209]

I played it this weekend, as part of the Alienware Betaaccess. Altough im a bit pissed, now that I found out I pretty much participated in a glorified Stresstest. I spoiled myself the Starting Area of Granoks and 15 Levels of content in the progress, all being more or less buggy and here and there still unfinished, without getting anything from it. Im never gonna trust one of those promotions again.

I cant really spoil a lot because of the NDA, but the game's fun, altough in need of some polish. And im pretty sure that they will do an open beta, considering how much stuff is still undone and untested.

I played both Godankey and Alienware. I played as Cassian Engineer Settler. While this is my first time playing MMORPG game, except a brief time with Spiral Knights and Dragonworld, I kinda felt that Settler class's level 2 vending machine is nifty for getting repairs and selling unwanted loots. Unfortunately, I have to edit some properties and run it as admin to get the game started. Still, I wonder if I can read the comic book if I collect all the keys.
P.S- I kinda wonder why Dominion wanted to work with Communist Robots instead of dealing with Protostar (I mean their ideals and nature fit in with Dominion).
I kinda felt that Ellevar is the only place where Dominion weren't cartoonishly evil, especially Torric Antevian.

Spoiler: Spoiler from quest in Ellevar

Show

Torric's stupid brother turned himself into Thomas Marik, aka the ******* who started Word of Blake Jihad in Battletech, via Eldan machine.

[The_Jackal]

The value premise argument against MMO subscription fees is completely specious. Running an MMO is expensive. Youv'e got server costs, bandwidth costs, support costs and development costs. Those costs don't go away just because you change your profit model to free-to-play. What changes is how the game extracts money from its player base. In a subscription based game, the pay model is democratic: Each subscriber pays an equal share of the costs of making and supporting the game, and they are rewarded exclusively based on in-game activities. In a F2P game, the pay model is extortion: Only minimal gameplay is made available at the free tier, and all other rewards are contingent on opening up your wallet.

If you don't think MMO games are worth the investment, then by all means don't buy one. But don't tell me that F2P is a better model, because it's an utter, pernicious lie.

[Karoht]

The value premise argument against MMO subscription fees is completely specious. Running an MMO is expensive. Youv'e got server costs, bandwidth costs, support costs and development costs. Those costs don't go away just because you change your profit model to free-to-play. What changes is how the game extracts money from its player base. In a subscription based game, the pay model is democratic: Each subscriber pays an equal share of the costs of making and supporting the game, and they are rewarded exclusively based on in-game activities. In a F2P game, the pay model is extortion: Only minimal gameplay is made available at the free tier, and all other rewards are contingent on opening up your wallet.

If you don't think MMO games are worth the investment, then by all means don't buy one. But don't tell me that F2P is a better model, because it's an utter, pernicious lie.

I'm completely in agreement.
The F2P model of SWTOR provides an excellent example. If one were to purchase all the a la carte items/services/access separately and compair it to the previous subscription cost, the people paying a la carte are paying MORE for the same services (or level of access to those services) totalled together. At least, that's how I read it on Gamebreaker.tv, and I remember seeing someone break it down on another forum.

Now while this does not speak for all F2P's out there (I'll just pretend that P2W isn't an aspect of F2P until it becomes relevant to mention it), it also brings up another dirty aspect of the development side of F2P.
Lets take several content streams.
PvP-Small Scale (1-5)
PvP-Large Scale (5+)
PvE-Solo and Small Scale (1-5)
PvE-Large Scale (10-20 people)

If people are paying for these things separately, then you know exactly how popular they are and are not. There's a sudden dip in people paying for PvP that quarter? PvP's budget could be cut. Next quarter, because it was cut it was lower quality, no one is incentivised to experience that content stream, it's budget could be cut again. Meanwhile, development funds are funneled to something else that is making money, lets say it's some perk/pet/mount/costume. The slippery slope comes into play here, especially in ongoing development. Other games have had this problem, it's rarely worked out well.

Play to Pay to Pay (pay for subscription with real money or in-game currency) which can lead to no one actually paying for anything, can also hit this kind of wall. Suddenly, manditory pay walls are introduced. Sure, you can pay for them with in-game currency just like you can with your subscription, but now you need to play more to do it, or you in-game quality of life is impacted. What's worse, this can also facilitate being forced into certain types of content because they are the most profitable, rather than playing them because they are the most enjoyable. This is the really dangerous treadmill that can emerge, and it isn't healthy. Especially in a game that is being directly marketed as oriented towards a casual audience.
Prediction: Majority of the playerbase will play enough to earn themselves a free month 1-3 times per year. A minority will earn enough to get 4-6 months a year, and the number who score anywhere from 7-12 or higher will be even fewer. Minority will score 1 free month per year.

Eve circumvented this because just about all parts of the game that produce those currencies are grindy, but mostly automatable from what I understand. Truthfully I am not completely sure why it worked in Eve so if anyone knows feel free to correct me.

[The_Jackal]

What's worse, this can also facilitate being forced into certain types of content because they are the most profitable, rather than playing them because they are the most enjoyable.

Totally, but if it were just a matter of 'here, do this in-game activity and you'll get access to subscription-like gameplay', that wouldn't even bug me that much, but all the F2P implementations I see just squeeze off the reward schedule until you crack open your wallet. That's what I like about C.R.E.D.D., at least on spec: Carbine doesn't make subscribers go through the same content funnel as free-tier players, just with the nozzle opened up a bit more. You simply can pay your $15/mo and enjoy the game.

[Stuebi]

Ever notice how "becoming F2P" is treated as the tell-tale sign of a MMO failing? Nowadays, if a new MMO comes out and does not live up to expectation, most players on Web-Platform will talk about how the Game will go Free to play. I've heard and said it myself with TESO as a recent example.

The reason behind this, as you both stated, is that the majority of F2P models arent really a good deal, or fair at all for that matter. A mate of mine and me want to play a bit of SWTOR the coming weeks, since we need something to play together. And after adding everything up, it would be much simpler to just go for the subscription mdeol right away, instead of buying all the small features via Shopcredit. And I cant really blame Devs THAT much for this being the case. Free to Play means that there will be a substantial amount of people using your Servers, playing your game and taking advantage of your situation, while not actually netting you a single Penny. This leads to the need to charge rather hefty prices for a lot of stuff, meaning that dedicated Players who use the shop somewhat carry does Players that dont (and have no subscription).

Im usually violently against "Look at the poor Developer", because in todays industry, consumers are often treated as cash-cows waiting to be milked dry. But there's a certain limit where you gotta stop treating absolutely every attempt of them making money as evil. If I was hosting enough Hardware to allow hundreds of thousands of players to play, I would very much expect something in return. And the often very righteous attitude some Gamers have in this aspect drives me nuts. Its the very same attitude a lot of people have when pirating stuff. I realise some people have a limited budget and some of these prices might seem steep. But running Servers is expensive, not to talk about the cost of further developing on the side as well.

This isnt trying to "defend" Devs overly much. There are still a lot of jerks out there, trying to rip you off at every corner, bad business-practices and subpar Quality games charging full price. Especially MMO's are subject to a lot of mimickers, trying to get a quick buck by copying others, or charging subs for games of poor quality. And thats just the tip of the Iceberg. But calling subscription fees inherently "stupid" isnt right imho.

Also, the comparison a lot of people pull, saying that they could buy a new game every third or fourth month with the same money:

And?

Its not about the amount of games you can buy, its about the amount of time a Game entertains you. If you pay and play for MMO X for, say 40 hours a month because its fun, is it "wasted" money to pay 10 bucks so you can play it another 40 hours? Noone forces you to play, if it isnt a good deal to you, or if you think that you're not getting your money's worth, dont pay!

Back when I palyed WoW actively for Roleplaying and PvP, I would sink about 6-8 hours weekly into it, netting me around 24-30 hours a month. And that was worth 15 bucks to me. Thats about a third of what the current market wants for a AAA Game, and those usually dont even last that long.

[The_Jackal]

The root issue, as I see it, is that when WoW showed that a MMO game could be hugely profitable, the business droids funneling the money into the industry latched onto 'recurring revenue' as a business model, and they all tried to move into the MMO space, rather than having inspired developers who enjoyed the format and wanted to make a new, better MMO. The guys who made WoW were EQ players who worked at Blizzard and saw what they liked and what they could do BETTER. We saw the same thing when Bungie made it big with Halo. Suddenly every game HAD to have competitive multiplayer, because it's 'what players want'. This sort of 'development by buzzword checklist' approach is what gave us SW:TOR. It's why they had a game with every cutscene fully voiced and animated, superimposed on some of the most dull, uninspired filler content imaginable.

[Stuebi]

The root issue, as I see it, is that when WoW showed that a MMO game could be hugely profitable, the business droids funneling the money into the industry latched onto 'recurring revenue' as a business model, and they all tried to move into the MMO space, rather than having inspired developers who enjoyed the format and wanted to make a new, better MMO. The guys who made WoW were EQ players who worked at Blizzard and saw what they liked and what they could do BETTER. We saw the same thing when Bungie made it big with Halo. Suddenly every game HAD to have competitive multiplayer, because it's 'what players want'. This sort of 'development by buzzword checklist' approach is what gave us SW:TOR. It's why they had a game with every cutscene fully voiced and animated, superimposed on some of the most dull, uninspired filler content imaginable.

Thats the reason I often say that your wallet is the only authority you have, when it comes to the Gamingindustry. The only way to effectively show that you dislike something, and if you want to keep that somthing from being made in the future, is dont buy it. It's a bit easier with MMO's because you can cancel your subscription AFTER you bought the game, while in normal Games, even if the final product sucks, the Dev has your money and keeps that money. Considering how many skulls of slain Enemies pile up before WoW's cave, you'd expect Devs to have learned their lesson by now.

[Karoht]

Totally, but if it were just a matter of 'here, do this in-game activity and you'll get access to subscription-like gameplay', that wouldn't even bug me that much, but all the F2P implementations I see just squeeze off the reward schedule until you crack open your wallet. That's what I like about C.R.E.D.D., at least on spec: Carbine doesn't make subscribers go through the same content funnel as free-tier players, just with the nozzle opened up a bit more. You simply can pay your $15/mo and enjoy the game.

For this reason I feel that the CREDD model might work fine. Depends on how incentivized players feel towards earning free play time. Players often comment how certain types of content are 'required' when they really aren't, but I don't suspect that this will be one of those cases.

Im usually violently against "Look at the poor Developer", because in todays industry, consumers are often treated as cash-cows waiting to be milked dry. But there's a certain limit where you gotta stop treating absolutely every attempt of them making money as evil. If I was hosting enough Hardware to allow hundreds of thousands of players to play, I would very much expect something in return. And the often very righteous attitude some Gamers have in this aspect drives me nuts. Its the very same attitude a lot of people have when pirating stuff. I realise some people have a limited budget and some of these prices might seem steep. But running Servers is expensive, not to talk about the cost of further developing on the side as well.

This isnt trying to "defend" Devs overly much. There are still a lot of jerks out there, trying to rip you off at every corner, bad business-practices and subpar Quality games charging full price. Especially MMO's are subject to a lot of mimickers, trying to get a quick buck by copying others, or charging subs for games of poor quality. And thats just the tip of the Iceberg. But calling subscription fees inherently "stupid" isnt right imho.

Nailed it.
Developers aren't rich. Developers themselves (as in, the people who actually work on the game) typically don't see much of the money. Go ahead and look at the starting salary of anyone who works at Blizzard. Highest starting pay I've ever seen was 45K a year. In an industry that requires more than 40 hours a week, requires a substantial education, requires ongoing education, requires one to learn all of Blizzard's systems and integrate into their teams, etc. I have a friend who works in on one of the art teams, the pay is meh, the job is long and hard, and typically not conducive to having a social life.

I'll never understand why this happens. A visual thing like a pet or mount gets sold in the cash shop and people lose their minds. Okay, sure, they spent money on developing a product, they produced a product that is desireable, they try and sell said product.
"But their already charging me a subscription."
Nothing forces one to buy this thing.
"They wasted time they could have spent fixing X or developing Y."
Not really. Mounts and pets are often cobbled together from spare parts, usually 3D assets that already exist. The amount of money to make them is almost trivial, and it's a perfect project for people who have downtime (supposedly, some Blizzard developers are such nerds that they actually ENJOY their job and work on stuff like pets and mounts on their lunch breaks and in their spare time) when you can't commit them to a larger project. And this happens more often than one might think in software development, nevermind other industries. It's like a welding shop saying to a welder "Well, there's no point in sending you to the Peterson job by yourself, and we got these here scraps lying around, see what you can cobble together we'll try to pitch it as art or something."
And nothing forces anyone to buy it. But people freak out every time a new mount or pet or costume piece shows up in the cash shop.

Getting back to Wildstar...
I'm fine with a Subscription model existing with Play to Pay model. The two should work fine, and truthfully I'm honestly surprised that subscription based games didn't add in a Play to Pay option long ago, WoW included, though I think many of them avoided such to de-incentivize hackers/farmers. As long as CREDD gets you access to all the things the same way a 1-month subscription/timecard would, that sounds fine.
My other concern with CREDD is the possibility of a "Backdoor Pay to Win" system. We saw this with a couple of other games, but essentially, if I can trade CREDD (if it is not account bound) then it has a value, and can be traded for in-game currencies. Which is fine, so long as all the best things/significant in the game can not be bought with the common place tradeable in-game currencies.
Example: APB had a Play to Pay/Sub model. They had a currency, I'm going to call it X, which could be earned and used for play time. It was sellable on the in-game auction house. People bought this currency from the company, and then sold it/traded it for in-game currency, equipment, etc. It wasn't intentionally a Pay to Win game, but it had a backdoor Pay to Win system.

[Talderas]

Which is why Wildstar's attempt to nick Eve's sub+plex model isn't going to work, there isn't a large market of cash rich time poor MMO players who aren't already playing World of Warcraft and will switch to Wildstar (buying it upfront no less) and will be whale players who spend real money on plex to sell ingame to time rich cash poor players. (Who are already playing some other free to play game)

The sub + plex model requires a vibrant in game economy. The economy is only vibrant with consumable materials and not capital goods. If you're trying to drive the economy with capital goods then you need planned obsolescence (read new content with better statted items) or a constantly growing player base. Otherwise once a player acquires said capital good, the total potential demand for that good has permanently decreased by one. EVE makes it work by turning every asset into a consumable that can be bought with ISK. That in turn drive non-industrialists into buying PLEX in order to sell them to industrialists. This is what makes PLEX a worthwhile investment because it's relatively stable in pricing.

Trying to make a PLEX like solution work in an economy that doesn't have sufficient consumables is a recipe for unworkability. What you end up with is a situation where the supply of CREDD maybe insufficient (due to the lack of liquidity from consumables) driving industrial players into subscriptions due to a lack of CREDD showing up because the cost isn't worth it. It will create way too much uncertainty and the pricing of CREDD could fluctuate way to much in both price and availability to permit industrialists to plan around.

Or to look at it another way... any MMO that suggests to use a PLEX model while having the best items not be available on the market or does not permit the best items to be destroyed is probably not going to be longterm viable. It's a shortsighted attempt to cash in on players without understand the underlying economic aspects that permit PLEX to function.

[Karoht]

The sub + plex model requires a vibrant in game economy. The economy is only vibrant with consumable materials and not capital goods. If you're trying to drive the economy with capital goods then you need planned obsolescence (read new content with better statted items) or a constantly growing player base. Otherwise once a player acquires said capital good, the total potential demand for that good has permanently decreased by one. EVE makes it work by turning every asset into a consumable that can be bought with ISK. That in turn drive non-industrialists into buying PLEX in order to sell them to industrialists. This is what makes PLEX a worthwhile investment because it's relatively stable in pricing.

Trying to make a PLEX like solution work in an economy that doesn't have sufficient consumables is a recipe for unworkability. What you end up with is a situation where the supply of CREDD maybe insufficient (due to the lack of liquidity from consumables) driving industrial players into subscriptions due to a lack of CREDD showing up because the cost isn't worth it. It will create way too much uncertainty and the pricing of CREDD could fluctuate way to much in both price and availability to permit industrialists to plan around.

Or to look at it another way... any MMO that suggests to use a PLEX model while having the best items not be available on the market or does not permit the best items to be destroyed is probably not going to be longterm viable. It's a shortsighted attempt to cash in on players without understand the underlying economic aspects that permit PLEX to function.

Wow, you put that into words extremely well. Explaining why it works in EVE while explaining how it could be a problem in Wildstar. Awesome.

I know there have been a lot posts in here which may seem a bit off-topic, but often times it really is best to describe one MMO by contrasting it to another. That seems to be how the community treats it as well. Just saying.

[Stuebi]

Well, cant really tell if it will work until the Game goes live. I was allready suspicious when EVE announced the whole PLEX thing. But it works fine along with the Player-driven community, and actually creates interesting scenario. Its doubtful if Wildstar can pull this off from the get go.

[Talderas]

Wow, you put that into words extremely well. Explaining why it works in EVE while explaining how it could be a problem in Wildstar. Awesome.

I know there have been a lot posts in here which may seem a bit off-topic, but often times it really is best to describe one MMO by contrasting it to another. That seems to be how the community treats it as well. Just saying.

While I said that not having the best items available on the market is a sure way to make any PLEX-like model not work, that's not entirely accurate. If the acquisition and continued posession of the best items is dependent on the market it is workable. If, for instance, the best items dropped out of instances but would be destroyed and lost if they ever reached 0 durability and the only means to repair or slow durability loss is through items sold on the market that can only be created by players, then you have the potential to make a PLEX system work.

Essentially, the entire purpose of the PLEX system is to keep in game currency circulating from industrialists to non-industrialists and then back into the hands of industrialists. CCP provided the mechanism to permit the industrialists to play for free because they were so crucical to the game having any success. Without them there's no goods, without goods being produced the player base would dwindle into nothing as the successively were losing assets faster than they could replace them because inflation in prices from lower production totals would start to outstrip what people would make. The EVE economy is complex and it is that complexity which permits PLEX to succeed. In fact, it's the only MMO that I've seen that has an in game economy complex enough. Nothing I've seen has even come close. They're all simplistic and too reliant on capital assets. Wildstar is probably going to be too simplistic of an economy to support the model.

[Karoht]

The EVE economy is complex and it is that complexity which permits PLEX to succeed. In fact, it's the only MMO that I've seen that has an in game economy complex enough. Nothing I've seen has even come close. They're all simplistic and too reliant on capital assets. Wildstar is probably going to be too simplistic of an economy to support the model.

Not in the manner described, no, not as anything more than a perk used from time to time for some players to score a free month once in a while.
I previously predicted that a minority would get 6-12 months free per year in Wildstar, I'm starting to think it will be a very very narrow minority.

Then again, there may not yet be enough details available, this was of course the first beta weekend afterall.

[Gryffon]

I skimmed, so forgive me if I repeat anything that was previously said. I've previously read some of Karoht's opinions in other threads and wanted to address some of the things he said.

Housing is definitely instanced. Everyone receives their own plot of land in the sky. You can allow people to visit it and in terms of functionality, I believe it's intended to work similarly to the farm you from Mists, in that you can add resources to it for your own use.

40-man raiding. I'm a little unsure of, I wouldn't count it out of the question. Carbine was founded by a number of original WoW developers. But I'm pretty sure it's intended to be more accessible than that.

Additional, I don't know if it's been discussed, but crafting was of some interest last time I looked at it, with a guided discovery system. For example cooking. A base recipe cost X ingredients. Afterwards, you can add additional ingredients that change the "spiciness, savoriness, etc" that will give you a chance to discover additional recipies. The zone in which recipes exist is marked in the ui. In additional, crafting skills have their own "talent tree" for lack of a better phrase that allows some amount of customization in specialization.

I think from the point above, that the reason it is compared to WoW alot, is because this is probably the closest to non-Blizzard WoW there will be. It's got some of the original developers who designed WoW, that have been working on and designed this game. And in playing it, it shows. One of the reasons I'm personally interested in this, is that it's near enough to WoW, with being different enough to WoW. It's got a lot of the same humor. It's got a stylized art style. I personally would be willing to dub it a spirtual successor to WoW. In Space.

[Karoht]

40-man raiding. I'm a little unsure of, I wouldn't count it out of the question. Carbine was founded by a number of original WoW developers. But I'm pretty sure it's intended to be more accessible than that.

Previous WoW developers are in all kinds of places. Arenanet (GW 1 and 2), Sony (Everquest 2 and Next), and whatever studio it was that did Hellgate London (which I think got bought up by Arenanet when Hellgate London tanked).

As previous developers, you would think they would look at the design changes made by their former compatriots and think "I wonder why they did that exactly?" rather than "40 man was awesome, our former employer who's been in successful business longer than us, was totally stupid for going with smaller raid sizes!" And as far as I can tell from interviews with developers, this is basically about as much thought as they put into it.

What I'm expecting to see is a queue system/autogrouping instance system, something that didn't exist in the 40m era. They'll brag about it, INB4 GW2.
There are indeed reasons why 40m was good. There are indeed reasons why it was bad. 40m with strangers has all the potential to be really bad. At the same point, I will indicate GW2's auto scaling auto grouping system. It works and it doesn't. You don't know any of these people you are playing with, they just happened to be in the area. And if they suck, if they get people killed, you don't really have any way to help them when you try again, beyond giving them tips in the general chat (which most people are too proud/ignorant to read anyway, no matter what game we're talking about). The scaling doesn't really and truly increase difficulty, it mostly increases intensity scale of existing mechanics, hardly any of which require genuine teamwork really. It turns bosses into big meaty bags of hitpoints, and little more.
If a fixed 40m version of that is implimented? I see problems.
Yeah, early beta, this may all change, I sincerely hope they give out more details or start testing on one of these soon.

I personally would be willing to dub it a spirtual successor to WoW. In Space.

As a major fan of Warcraft, I completely agree, from what little I've seen of it. Again, I'm hoping against hope that the game will be good enough for me to lift my NCsoft ban.

[Gryffon]

Previous WoW developers are in all kinds of places. Arenanet (GW 1 and 2), Sony (Everquest 2 and Next), and whatever studio it was that did Hellgate London (which I think got bought up by Arenanet when Hellgate London tanked).

I always got the impression these guys were the ones that probably came from EQ raiding and brought 40 mans to WoW in the first place. They probably miss it.