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[Column] WildStar: The Hardcore Label
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Did Carbine do the right thing by preaching to hardcore players, or did the studio create unreasonable expectations of their fledgeling MMO? Gareth Harmer wades in with this week’s WildStar Column.
Read more of Gareth Harmer's WildStar: The Hardcore Label.
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Comments
My mouse stopped randomly working, for over 3 weeks and support was useless. Sending in a ticket to get a automated response about another subject. Eng bot pathing was horrid causing many deaths. This game isn't so easy as some games out there.
They hyped up the game so much, just to fall short of the finish. I'll check in next year maybe, hopefully they "fixed" it by then.
A very well written article imo. If they indeed intend to please only the hardcore crowd, why are they taking months to fix the "hardcore" content? What is their plan to deal with the loss of players and most servers being low pop already? What are their plans to make the game playable for the section of players that can't run the game reliably and meet the system requirements? Why is all of this taking so long when ESO had most of the bots gone and bugs fixed 2 months into the game, and why is it taking so much longer for these same fixes for WildStar?
Keep us updated Carbine, looking forward to playing again some day when the game is fixed, it really is beautiful, it's just beset by game breaking problems in a lot of areas of the game.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Someone is mad they picked ESO...lol
...But there are also complaints about PvP bracket class balance?
...But there are also complaints about PvP bracket class balance?
...But there are also complaints about PvP bracket class balance?
...But there are also complaints about PvP bracket class balance?
oh did i mention
...But there are also complaints about PvP bracket class balance?
<.<
Ive made wildstar my home already- we just need to unpack and re-arrange the furniture a bit...
Not sure when you last played but I hardly ever see bots anymore. I play every night and actually don't remember the last time I seen one. As far as the bugs go, I think they are greatly overstated, yes there are some bugs none of them are show stoppers.
These folks at Carbine are working their butts off. Thank you for a wonderful game that truly takes some skill and patience. Someone posted on redit few days ago.
"Where did all the people go" ?
Reply
All the people who thought they were Hardcore, elitist and super skilled found out they were wrong and went back to WoW.
That made my week.
Love the game!
While I enjoy one of the PvP battlegrounds, I can only play it so many times. For me, the leveling experience is just not interesting enough for the solo play (ESO and TOR did it immensely better). And the challenges start to become really tedious for a completionist like myself. In short, I am quickly losing luster for this game. And the slow pace of addressing the population decline is really making me feel that this game might be very short lived. It's a shame because I did enjoy it for a time and I honestly believe the devs put a lot of their heart into this one.
i am actually friends with one of the content writers and I know this has been a labor of love for him. Very sad indeed.
For me, playing Wildstar felt like I was dosed with an extreme case of ADHD, force fed extasy, and thrown into a forest with a paintball gun and hang glider.
It was intense, then that extasy wore off...then I acclimatized to my ADHD, ran out of paintballs, and a hole torn in my hang glider. I was left sitting there feeling dirty, sad, and hungover.
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
I don't really think the "Hardcore" moniker really is what did it. The game was released half baked. Still fun in its own right, but even the white knights and apologists are starting to get frustrated with it, even on its own forums. Its having the same wishy washy WoW "balance", which just this last major drop nmade some...controversial nerfs.
Itemization is a mess, with "focus regeneration" (Aka, healer mana) appearing on Heavy Armor (Which has no healers), and slots are entirely random which can give you DPS sockets on Tank/Healer gear, or vice versa, right up to the maximum level 50 Purple class gear from hard mode dungeons. Get an item with less/bad sockets? Time to get a whole new item.
Population, despite the arguements, is definitely taking a hit in some servers more than others. Especially Dominion side, in which its been shown on some servers as being dead zones. Not every server is, but they do need to condense some of the number of servers, since while their low is allegedly up to medium, it doesn't mean that -all- low are medium.
I do hope Wildstar pulls together. It has the potential to be a good, challenging game, and many people do see that. But the game does need work. Its not original FFXIV bad, but its going to take a while before it really reaches its potential, and thats only if Carbine brings it in the right directions, and not just listening to those who complain loudest (Which, ironically, got them into this state in the first place, one might argue)
I'd be curious to know if he bounced his ideas off on you or asked your opinion on what to do? I'm hoping he didn't, but it would at least say, this guy had a direction, a vision, and went with it as opposed to this guy panicked every day over what others would think of the content and changed directions according to those panics.
That doesn't even make sense. I love ESO, it's nearly a perfect game for me. WildStar is a great game too, and I enjoy it, but there are better options out there like FFXIV, ESO, Rift, etc.
One day, I think WildStar will be a great game, and I'll enjoy playing it again like I did for 4 months in beta and a month of release. That day is not today.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
As predicted, the "hardcore label" backfired hard. Population disappears at lightspeed, low servers at any given time.
Yes, "its summer, its morning, its working time, people are at school" -always the same excuses. Strange that other mmorpgs are still relatively well populated even though "its summer, its morning, its working time, people are at school". We've seen exactly these signs countless times in the last ~10 years.
I love the game and even bought a new videocard to somewhat cope with the abysmal performance (that won't improve any time soon, be honest here Carbine). The card arrived broken and i had to RMA it...it's very likely that there's not enough left of Wildstar once i get my card back for me to buy the game then.
I read in a posting of Gaffney (sp?) that Carbine is happy to cater to the 1%. Let's see how long NCSoft remains happy with making only 1% of the money they could make.
Hmm, my comedown was quite quick and painless.
No he never bounced any ideas off me. Not sure why he would. He has been a published writer for quite some time in the gaming world and was part of Carbine. I do not work in the gaming industry nor have any relation to Carbine. I'm sure if he bounced ideas off anyone it would have been with the other staff.
I'm not a huge fan of the article because I think it sort of tries to make "hardcore" and "quality" or "polish" synonymous.
Meeeeehhhhhh, I mean hardcore, to me, tells that the skill level required for the content is greater than the majority of the gaming community. Something that is reserved only for the elite. I think that Wildstar HAS achieved a level of that. It's not watered down. It's not easy (although outside the beta I haven't played it yet, so correct me if I'm wrong). When players are calling for you to decrease the difficulty of your content, I think that you can put a checkmark beside the "hardcore" column, no?
As far as quality goes, there isn't a single game that's launched without issue. The biggest problem is that they've also committed to creating regular content updates, meaning that will almost always take precedent over bug fixes, you know, since most games are driven by marketers and they don't want to hear about bugs, they want to hear about what new features we're working on. Yeah, ooooooo, shiny, yeah do that! *throwing money at you*
However, this will be their downfall. Luckily, the "hardcore" players will also be the most resilient, if for nothing else than the fact that it's the only content they can't faceroll while eating a sandwich.
If the hardcore label is going to hurt them anywhere, it's their subscriptions. When you consider that, what? 3-5% of people actually complete WoW's Heroic content? Your market is super duper small to begin with, even if you captured 100% of it. That could be their biggest issue moving forward. How do we scale this content down for everyone else so we can get some subs?
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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I'm not understanding what the content of the article has to do with the game being labelled as hardcore.
It was all about class balance and performance issues, which aren't specific to a game catering to hardcore raiders.
The author never really articulates what the issues he brings up in the article have to do with whether or not carbine made a smart move by labeling the game hardcore, and the title was only selected based on forum chatter as a means of drawing more attention to the piece.
The quality of the articles on this site have been going downhill lately, and it seems like you guys are resorting to more gimmicky writing in an effort to draw traffic.
Agreed.
I see where the author is going by saying that with balance issues some players might not get to do the hardcore content that they want to do. But do you know what the hardcore do then? They re-roll. That's old-school hardcore.
Funny story, class balance patch just went live.
It's not a catch-all, but it is improved. I play a dps medic, and the bug fixes went in, but not the appropriate buffs to put them into contention. They will be coming in a hotfix.
I liked the "reasonable damage" on engineer. They were brokenly OP where spamming your builder spell will put you at or above most other classes.
But like CrazKanuk said, I don't know where "hardcore" entered into the topics presented.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
Let me give you the ELI5 version:
Currently playing: WildStar, Guild Wars 2, EVE Online, Vain Glory.
I probably don't like the game the game you play. Sorry if I hurt your feelings.
See? No poops given.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
Even a casual player will do that, but I think that people (even perhaps Carbine) are mixing things up. Casual player is not synonymous with poor quality, stupid, lazy and hardcore as pointed out is not synonymous with fantastic and great. It only relates to how much time you can spend in an MMORPG.
A casual player who is well-organized, a minmaxer, and ambitious with raids can get just as far as a hardcore player if that is what he wants to do in the game. It just will take him more real time because he has to spread out his gaming sessions.
I am mostly a casual player these days, but I go through periods where I dilly dally in games and others where I am a serious achiever.
The problem I think with Wildstar is that Carbine tried to promote the four different types of MMORPG players with their path system during leveling, but they only really cater to one ultimate type of player for their endgame, namely the achiever. I think that there is a possible longetivity problem because I admit that I do not feel any driving force for making an alt well... ever and you need to have people rolling alts for the long-term health of the game.
Besides, Carbine released WS with other interesting game systems that I think they should expand upon for the endgame: housing and crafting namely, PvP as well and provide more than just BG grinds.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Can we please stop with the "..it takes skill." BS? Wildstar's PvE doesn't require more skill than any other PvE centric MMO. What it requires is more time invested. It is the standard gear based progress deal like WoW and TOR. Once characters get their full pre raid set things in vet dungeons and adventures become much easier.