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Wildstar Abandons Monthly Updates - Failure or Outbreak of Rational Thinking?
TheLizardbones
Member CommonPosts: 10,910
in WildStar
The Wildstar team has decided that updating the game every month is either impossible, or just a bad idea. I would tend to agree myself. You can code fast, or you can code clean, but you're probably not going to code clean and fast.
Now, here's the question. Do you think the Wildstar team knew they were going to fall behind, or do you think they really thought they would keep up the update a month pace?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
I don't know that lack of content is it's major issue right now anyway. I would hope the real reason they got pulled off new content was to fix or change what's wrong with the game right now.
Raiding for example is a huge focus of the game....but they put attunments on them ? if wow learns 6 years ago that you can't have hardcore raiding when guilds can't get enough raiders to fill their ranks and keep them full....there's no excuse for someone trying to become a raiding game to make that same mistake.
So first off.....this game isn't Wow and doesn't need to conform to their views or policies on the game.
Now that that's out of the way, the "guild's can't get enough raiders to fill their ranks" has nothing to do with attunements and everything to do with poor guild management. The complaints come from the instant gratification crowd that only want lightning fast progression, if they can't chew through content in less than 30 days, then its "a bad idea".
I see comments floating around from certain players in so called "hardcore" guilds, who announce that it took 3 days of raiding to defeat a boss....and they are exhausted and aren't sure if they want to continue.......really...3 raid days and throwing in the towel huh?, pretty disgusting.
Every MMO has this problem. So they were either very unexperienced or very arrogant to believe that they would pull off something the others can't.
So I went with "They knew, but like the good publicity".
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Bit odd they dropped that so quickly. That was actually a good selling point a lot of people commented on.
Read this article with quotes from their exec producer from before
http://www.vg247.com/2014/04/29/wildstars-first-16-months-of-post-release-content-are-already-in-pre-production/
Personally it makes it sound like they're going to spread the content out to make it last longer.
you forgot the not going as well as the devs hoped for and started to cut the dev team for a lower budget.
also Gw2 do the whole living story each 2 weeks with no bugs mostly
I have a few friends that were raiding in WS and where in top 100 US guilds. There bitch about WS raiding is everyone has to be on their game and one mistake by 1 person could wipe the raid. Thats mentally exhausting and I can see where they are tired of WS. Back in Classic WOW even during the BWL days you could take some mistakes from players and cover them up if you have a group of strong players. Even WoW 40 man raiding was forgiving enough that small mistakes were easy to recover from. One of the ones I remember very clearly in MC was Magmadar. I knew the tank we had the one night could not stance dance to save his life, however I knew this and when he got feared I picked up Mag after about 3 seconds and tanked him the rest of the fight. It pissed off the tank but o well. Raid didnt wipe because of 1 mistake.
Now when you talk about the instant gratification crowd that has even crept into the top end raiders. Right now during the WOD beta we have 14/14 H raiders to dont want anything more than 10 min 5 man heroics because they dont want to spend time wiping in a 5 man instance plus they dont want to put any effort at the 5 man level to so it has to be fast as possible. Yet I am a flex raider right now and play to get back to progression style raiding I did 5+ years ago and do Normal and Heroics in WOD. I would love BC Heroic type instances again because on my non raid nights I had a challenge and I was not bored out of my mind. I also learned from Classic that too many raid nights drove me batshit crazy. But most of todays MMO population want content done in 30 days like you said then they are bored for 6 months waiting for the next big raid.
Core problem? MMO players are no longer looking at an MMO as something they play for years, its 1 to 3 months then do something else. Its Sad.
I presume you're better than raiders in Death and Taxes then, one of the top raiding guilds in the world. Go to WS forums and read a lengthy post made by a DnT officer regarding the current state of the game. Feel free to leave a reply to said post calling him a "so called hardcore player" as well.
Well I think they probably felt that in order to get people to buy into the subscription model of payment, they had to offer pretty frequent updates. Monthly was probably a little over optomistic tho.
Which leads to the second point that Lizardbones mentioned. In order to program all that content quickly, you would need many people working on it. My guess would be that at this point the money isn't exactly flowing in the way they anticipated it would. I am thinking that they are already looking at going into survival mode and allocating resources to where it will do most good.
Promises have gone out the window now, its time to make players happy before things get out of hand.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
"Hey all,
So a lot of folks have been speculating about our next drop and I wanted to talk about it in detail.
The plan was to roll out a zone next month, and a pretty badass one at that. The new zone and its contents not only sets up the epic ongoing world story of WildStar, but provides more group and solo content along with costumes, items, etc. What we hadn’t planned for was the mountain of feedback. You guys have been vocal about everything from bugs, early level content, attunement, PvP and Elder Game. And we were listening.
Because of that, we decided to make a change. We are adding a month’s worth of feedback and bugfixes to the mix based on player feedback and user experiences. These are changes to core systems such as economy, classes, PvP, crafting - you name it. We’re knocking out bugs and making changes to improve your gameplay experience. We want to roll these issues into the patch with the new zone content and that’s going to take some more time.
How much time you ask? That’s an excellent question! We’re going to take the time to make sure that this next patch is not only badass but bug free. I’ll update you again shortly with the list of details on what’s being addressed in the game and the timeframe.
And from the entire team, thanks for your continued patience and support. We can’t do this without you."
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/110069-development-update/
Coding now is way complex. To release monthly content is almost impossible. Funcom tried it with TSW, Trion tried it with Defiance (just two examples) and so far failed to keep up the quality.
And i wouldn't call GW2 living content something to brag about given the scope of content they release.
There do seem to be a lot of recurring events in the release cycle of a new MMORPG. One is the increase in time between updates, and another is the influx of spammers, botters followed quickly by security holes and fixes. Though, if Wildstar and ESO can skip the security holes and fixes bit, I think that would be good. We don't need everything to be on repeat.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
My impression was arrogance that they knew what people wanted and how to do it. SWTOR started out that way too. But where they thought everyone would reroll 16 alts so they didn't need end game wildstar seemed to think everyone would raid.
Yea absolutely right BC, they are trying , lets give them props for that. I don't think stopping the monthly update thing is a big deal yet, but it shows they got issues and they working to get on them fast , rather than sticking their head in the sand until it is too late.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I haven't seen any announcements about dropping developers from their staff. However, I was trying to maintain a little focus, and not descend into negativity right off the bat.
I've been reading a few things about how "Agile" development has become sort of a mantra for people to just puke code out at people with the expectation that errors and bugs are forgiven and no matter how much it doesn't actually work, sticking to Agile must be done. I can see a parallel between pushing out a mess of code under the label of Agile and pushing out a mess of an update each month because "we said we would do it". To me, getting new information, like monthly updates aren't possible or "this Agile thing is making a real mess of our code" and then doing something different is a rational response.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Coding is not any more complex, but solutions and architecture/skills required is broader. I don't know about the gaming industry, but in other software development areas we are moving towards the ability to do weekly and eventually daily deliveries. This is achieved through smart slicing and dicing of features which takes experience and skill. The benefits are obvious - quick reaction to issues and an environment where you can actually follow the 80/20 rule in that you can react quickly in live to big issues such that the 20% does not represent a huge risk.
RE WS, they certainly did not need another zone, and everyone was crying out for issues to be addressed etc, so good on them to be honest, you don't run when you have a limp.
Re comments above, there is Agile and then there is pretend Agile. Good agile has total focus on testing, achieved through the development of small self contained features (test and sign off without impacting other areas of code) Bad Agile tends to consist of a team doing Waterfall development with a big white board with lots of cards on it - but entirely failing to design self contained small features, and usually with a secret Gant chart/manager pair somewhere behind the scenes, maybe even a spreadsheet.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
The real problem is too many MMOs and every new MMO is trying to bring more casual non MMO players into the market. I dont care if people dont agree with me, however an MMO should be something people play for a year or more and it takes most of a year to see all a game has to offer. Getting to end game and seeing all the game in 60 days is why MMOs suck today. They are great for a few months than you are bored.
Why? Because we have countless MMOs and businesses are trying to make money of them so these businesses need to try to get NON MMO players into MMOs to make money. You cannot have a game that last months if you are trying to keep someone who plays a total of 2 hours a week and 8 hours a month because these players can get the same content out of spending $30 on a single player game that will give them 2 to 3 months worth of enjoyment. Where as an MMO player wants the game to be a Hobby.
When when I say a hobby I think of a person who likes to bowl and is involved in the sport. They play several times a week for many hours. They buy a ball they love, the shoes and so on. They think about how to make their game better, they get friends involved. They dont look at Bowling as "JUST A GAME". Today MMOs are filled with people who think MMOs "ARE JUST A GAME" and MMOs just by the cost to make and keep running are not just a GAME. The Board game Life is just a game, a single player RPG game like Dragon Age is JUST A GAME. These are games you can pick up and put down anytime you want. Problem is we try to get these players into MMOs and they want MMOs to be like bumper bowling easy and fast games that take little time or skill to perfect.
This will not change until Publishers see that WOW is not the typical MMO genera and is not the future of MMOs. The best future for MMOS are about a dozen to 15 MMOs for a Niche market of players who make these games into Hobbies. MOBA or a new breed of MO games need to come out that are D3 like but a little larger and a bit more in-depth for the people that want an MMO feel but not the time commitment. That does not mean if its a themepark game instances need to take 5 hours. But if you cannot do 30 to 90 minutes for an instance then you dont belong. Running 3 to 4 instances in an hour is real fun? For about 2 to 3 weeks then you are bored and want to quit because its cheap easy content that is not worth a dam. But having a instance where you have to work as a team and need to pay attention or you wipe is more appealing to MMO players that will stick around for years. How do I know this? Since WOTLK I have had issues keeping my focus on WOW because cheap easy content so has hundreds of other players I have played with and been in game friends with for a while. All of them including myself were near always active during classic and BC WOW many of us came from other MMOs. Yea I might have had 4 months where I couldnt play because of work and life but I still managed to play at some level most of BC and all of classic.
Problem is NON MMO players want to be an MMO player and less than 8 hours a month and wanting all the best stuff in a few weeks because they dont want to put the time into the genera is why we have our problems. WOW going casual shows us all that they stop growing at a high pace when they stopped harder challenging content. While I agree it does not need to be as tough as BC or as many people at end game as Classic it does need to offer more than Hey you are fully Epiced out after 2 weeks of LFR raiding Gratz you did it. It should take months of effort. Gear drops can be increased after a boss is killed X amount of times to help with why do I need to rekill this boss for the 20th time but you should not see 9/14 Mythic in 3 weeks. Thats just bad.
Definately not re-subbing. The game is great but needs more content desperately and the only thing keeping it interesting was the promise of content every single month.
We got scammed once again.