Wildstar: Catch All

I should clarify - My use of carebear was meant to be sardonic. I was poking fun at how the Carbine devs and some of their fans love to talk about how EXTREME Wildstar is, especially their end game.

On a personal level I'm a rather casual player who would love more ways to stay invested in Wildstar beyond my house. But the main reason I'm still in the game now is I forgot to cancel my account so I have another month to putz around.

I would be happy if the top of this post could be fixed:

- No goodjers guilding
- I applied for Grievance and was categorically denied. I'm guessing they're "too serious".

Sigh. I bought the game so I could freaking play with people. The leveling zones are empty. This sucks.

---Nathaniel

Got denied for Grievance? Did they give you a reason why? I've never seen them not take someone. They have always accepted casual as well as hardcore.

Did you post in the correct forum to apply for Wildstar? I don't see your app listed anywhere (unless it was moved).

I applied under the name "Athenodorus" which is usually what I use for my healer characters.

http://www.grievancegaming.org/forum...

Here's what happened on the forums:

Killam wrote:
Can you share a little more about yourself?

Sure, wasn't sure what this was for.

Vital statisitics

Age: Older than you
Profession: The granting of deserving failing grades in college physics. Plus stuff involving particle accelerators. No, I'm not kidding.
Gaming habits: I'm on-again off-again on MMOs. WoW in the early early days. City of Heroes with my wife in the early 2000s. Star Wars KotOR before it started the slide downhill.
Roles: I prefer support roles. Building a medic now. I'm nearly always behind the power curve, but what I lack in power I make up for in sarcasim and lack of power.
Playstyle: Keep everyone else alive long enough that the wipe is truly glorious
Takes orders: moderately well
Hearing: fair
Gives orders: only when ordering cheeseburgers

Referred to Grievance by Gamers With Jobs, whom I frequent.

Did that cover the bases?

Raitha

Not a fit for Grievance.

The thread was closed and locked following that last comment, at which point I PMed that officer with a simple "Er... why?". No reply.

I can only imagine that they found my tone either two annoying or too casual, or both. (Probably both - my self-effacing humor sometimes comes off as arrogant.)

Yeah, I'd say it was the tone.

So they don't like "silly/fun sarcasm"? Sounds like he dodged a bullet then.

Should have answered with all Ghostbusters quotes.

They go up.

Age: Older than a Twinkie 35 feet long and weighing approximately 600 pounds.

Profession: I collect spores, molds and fungus.

Gaming habits: We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!

Roles: As a duly-designated representative of the City, County and State of New York, I usually order Gozer the Gozerian to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to its place of origin, or to the next convenient parallel dimension

Playstyle: Terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.

Takes orders: No. Because you did not say the magic word.

Hearing: Listen! Do you smell something?

Gives orders: Don't cross the streams.

Budo wrote:

Profession: I collect spores, molds and fungus.
return forthwith to its place of origin, or to the next convenient parallel dimension

Playstyle: Terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.

Hearing: Listen! Do you smell something?

I freely admit this is genius.

Exactly once in my career will I be allowed to say, "Back off man, I'm a scientist" and mean it. It's probably 30% of why I bothered to get the Ph.D. But today is not the day.

Budo wrote:

Age: Older than a Twinkie 35 feet long and weighing approximately 600 pounds.

Profession: I collect spores, molds and fungus.

Gaming habits: We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!

Roles: As a duly-designated representative of the City, County and State of New York, I usually order Gozer the Gozerian to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to its place of origin, or to the next convenient parallel dimension

Playstyle: Terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.

Takes orders: No. Because you did not say the magic word.

Hearing: Listen! Do you smell something?

Gives orders: Don't cross the streams.

Mine was pretty close, though I had "That was your plan? 'Get her!'?" for Taking orders... along with serious answers in italics afterwards... and I ended up being heal leader on a fresh BE to on through most of Work in WoW.

Wildstar dropping the monthly content updates.

Can't say this is any surprise. It kind of stinks that after only 2 releases they are coming out and saying this but the game still was a lot of fun

Nathaniel wrote:

I would be happy if the top of this post could be fixed:

- No goodjers guilding
- I applied for Grievance and was categorically denied. I'm guessing they're "too serious".

Sigh. I bought the game so I could freaking play with people. The leveling zones are empty. This sucks.

---Nathaniel

Sorry to hear that. OP has been updated to reflect the current reality.

I ended up dropping out of Wildstar and going back into ESO. Wildstar is a lot of fun, but I think the quests feel a bit deeper and more interesting in ESO.

Anyways, I was expecting ESO's early zones to be dead by now, and was very surprised to find them full of a lot of people. Sad to see that Wildstar appears to have died off quickly, at least in the early areas of the game.

That probably has something to do with the way TESO has that super server stuff going on while Wildstar has everyone split up.

Edit:
Grievance did let me in; apparently it they thought I was a troll. However, I've not actually seen another player in the guild yet; I think I'm so far behind the power curve I'm going to be the caboose forever.

Once you get to the main town you will see them everywhere. Glad you got in! Definitely hop on TeamSpeak each night. There are a few people who somewhat monopolize the chat channel but you can always hop in to ask a question. If someone has something game related and everyone else is BSing about things, the rule is to stop immediately and let the game question be asked. It is enforced as well.

Good news for those of us bored by the lack of people in the early areas: Megaservers.

Also, free server transfers until they're implemented.

Given the lack of discourse on this thread, should I assume that the GWJ participation has dropped off? How many Goodjers are still playing?

Edgar_Newt wrote:

Given the lack of discourse on this thread, should I assume that the GWJ participation has dropped off? How many Goodjers are still playing?

Yeah, I dropped off. Too many other games to play, way too much work/time to master crafting (materials out the wazoo for high level stuff + a 2-7 day variable cycle on learning special patterns, and their actual quality is more dependent upon the cores you use to make them, where the actual good stuff is not available (or wasn't when i was playing), too much work/time to attune for raids, and not a lot of solo content that's not basically dailies in an overpopulated zone. Instances were cool, but they're steep learning curve meant that while I was doing alright, a single failure from a random person could wipe us all over and over and lower my rewards. I suspect it'll get fun when it goes through it's WoW-ification on time spent versus rewards earned later, but I'll have a lot more to play by then anyway.

Yeah, I finally bored of it. Crafting became too monotonous and grindy by the mid-game, and the rest of the game simply lost my interest over time, especially due to this:

Demosthenes wrote:

Instances were cool, but they're steep learning curve meant that while I was doing alright, a single failure from a random person could wipe us all over and over

As I noted right off the bat in my first experience in instance/dungeon play, the game is tuned just a bit too high in difficulty to be functionally playable for random PUG's (i.e., knowing the way the internet and general mmo playerbase is, dungeons really shouldn't be tuned such that one person can cause the group to fail so readily, unless the business is expecting to lose the casual customer base).

Farscry wrote:

As I noted right off the bat in my first experience in instance/dungeon play, the game is tuned just a bit too high in difficulty to be functionally playable for random PUG's (i.e., knowing the way the internet and general mmo playerbase is, dungeons really shouldn't be tuned such that one person can cause the group to fail so readily, unless the business is expecting to lose the casual customer base).

The ranking system made PUG's absolutely toxic as well, it took me five separate attempts to finish my first dungeon because half the group would drop out as soon as it was clear that we wouldn't gold medal the run.

ruhk wrote:
Farscry wrote:

As I noted right off the bat in my first experience in instance/dungeon play, the game is tuned just a bit too high in difficulty to be functionally playable for random PUG's (i.e., knowing the way the internet and general mmo playerbase is, dungeons really shouldn't be tuned such that one person can cause the group to fail so readily, unless the business is expecting to lose the casual customer base).

The ranking system made PUG's absolutely toxic as well, it took me five separate attempts to finish my first dungeon because half the group would drop out as soon as it was clear that we wouldn't gold medal the run.

This too...but the random elements exacerbated this even more. One of the adventure dungeons actually requires a certain number of optional events be completed to get Silver or Gold... which would be ok at best... except part of the RNG is how many optionals you get... and it is entirely possible for there to be not enough for either. Add on top that there are two PVP style encounters which basically means there is no threat or agro so the two deaths needed to knock you out of gold are stupidly hard to accomplish. Skill plays a part, but RNG is so much larger in that instance that I just said screw it... and then I realized that I wouldn't be able to progress further because of that and I was done. Add in a rep grind with 3 daily EVENTS on long timers and I just lost all motivation to keep going. great world, good gameplay, horrible playing content that needs some serious WoW style overhauls... especially in regards to solos and small groups. There was no max level solo adventures as they suggested... and I was basically done then. :/ Outside of shared world solo-friendly games (Destiny, Diablo 3, etc...), I think the MMO scene just passed me by.

I picked up the latest WoW expansion, waited for the patch to drop ... and then remembered why I don't play WoW: antiquated controls.

It's a chore to play WoW when compared to the games that have come after it.

So I reupped with Wildstar and damned if it isn't pleasant to play. But it's still empty. Even with megaservers.

I think this game is going to die before it goes F2P. And soon, honestly.* Which sucks because there's so damned much to like about it.

[size=0]Note: I'm not usually a good predictor of these sorts of things, but when I log into TESO there's people everywhere. I log into Wildstar and see a couple people an hour.[/size]

Unfortunately I'm being reminded of Age of Conan and Vanguard. Both of those games were supposed to revolutionize MMO's and be the Next Big Thing™, just like Wildstar, but they never quite made it. I guess AoC has kind of ambled along but nothing like a lot of people had expected.

Thats just making me sad. Both Age of Conan and Vanguard were awesome games, but yeah, no kind of traction at all like was needed. Even though, I think Vanguard ended up running for close to ten years, due to how great SOE handled their older games.

As for Wildstar, its great looking and feels awesome, but its just so damn boring to play.

I don't think Vanguard ran anywhere near a decade, it just felt like it hung around that long.

(Looks like 7 years, shuttering this past July. Also, Brad McQuaid, ugh.)

garion333 wrote:

I picked up the latest WoW expansion, waited for the patch to drop ... and then remembered why I don't play WoW: antiquated controls.

It's a chore to play WoW when compared to the games that have come after it.

I'm curious as to what makes WoW seem antiquated in comparison for you. I played Wildstar and I'm playing WoW right now (ok, not NOW, but you know, "now") and I'm don't recall the two playing all that different aside from the action-based areas mechanic for Wildstar's abilities (as opposed to the range-based mechanics of WoW's abilities). Is this what you were referring to or do you feel other controls are different?

I used my Naga for both, pressed buttons to execute abilities for both, moved and controlled the camera similarly for both, etc.

Controls, but not in they way you mean. Recent MMOs make playing quicker and easier outside of combat. It's tough to play WoW after playing GW2 and Wildstar. I want the game to be smart enough to recognize that the dead enemy I'm standing above should be looted by a button press, not by selecting it and then pressing the appropriate button.

I know it's not that big of a deal, but it feels tedious. It's a number of small things that add up enough to generalized annoyance. WoW's engine is just too antiquated for me right now.

garion333 wrote:

Controls, but not in they way you mean. Recent MMOs make playing quicker and easier outside of combat. It's tough to play WoW after playing GW2 and Wildstar. I want the game to be smart enough to recognize that the dead enemy I'm standing above should be looted by a button press, not by selecting it and then pressing the appropriate button.

I know it's not that big of a deal, but it feels tedious. It's a number of small things that add up enough to generalized annoyance. WoW's engine is just too antiquated for me right now.

Hmm, I think I get where you're coming from. The biggest thing like this I remember encountering was area loot (looting one corpse in an area loots all corpses) when I experienced it in SWTOR and GW2 back when WoW had yet to implement it and was smitten. Then WoW smartly went back and implemented this indispensable feature.

You did have auto-loot enabled in WoW, right (i.e. right-click simply loots instead of opening the corpse's inventory)? I've also never checked into loot rebinding (again I just right-click), but it wouldn't surprise me if you could make it E or whatever other button you wanted.

Regardless, I get it - there are many neat ways other games have done little things to feel different, and smartly so. WoW feels like WoW, and that's good or bad depending on who you are. For me, everything else suddenly fades away when I summon a flying mount and press spacebar.