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The Grind - Wildstar I am Dissapoint

tr1age

tr1age

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DISCLAIMER: I feel as though wildstar is a very good game in terms of engagement. It is also extremely fun to play with friends. I will continue to play it. That being said I still disagree with WHY it is engaging and what we as gamers consider "fun" and that is what this rant is about.

I feel like I am the only one who feels betrayed by Wildstar. As if I am the only one who realizes I am being scammed for 15 $ a month here to invest my time into a game that is a re-skinned version of World of Warcraft 2004 with so many time sinks, my watch fucking broke.

First: level 35+ turns into a complete grind. You no longer give a flying shit about anything you are doing, the questions, the people around you, on PvP servers players just ignore one another and often help tagging mobs. Because we all realize how shitty the grind is we don't wanna slow it down for one another. Faction pride... gone.

Go to Wildrun and do the "kill every type of animal quest" and tell me it isn't a grind.

Why is this a problem?

Because A, this isn't vanilla WoW, and B, we were promised different:
Originally posted by Jeremy Gaffney via WildStar Central
Grind in my estimation means "repetitive task". For instance, pre-WoW (in general) quests didn't give XP - only killing mobs did. So what you'd tend to do is camp in an area, killing the same things over and over, which even if fighting was fun, was basically incenting really tedious behaviors.

Some games improved on this - in Dark Age of Camelot, guards gave you tasks to kill 20 of a given creature types - well, now at least you were incented to kill different mobs. They did something subtle but even more clever - the longer a mob was in the world, the more XP bonus you got for it. Now you're incented to find mobs no one else was camping/fighting/knew about and you were effectively rewarded for exploration. Clever.

I played all those. I didn't mind killing mob after mob in EQ, or Dark Age, I didn't mind doing quest after quest (which incented via XP and drops you to move from area to area and gave context and story to what you were killing in WoW - in EQ/DAOC they gave you a little story and some loot)

But in this day and age I can't handle a lot more "go kill 10 goblins" quests. I want more variety. Thus when we give those kinds of quests, we make sure there is lots of overlap and fun stuff (random Discoveries, time challenges, path content, temp powers, environmental hazards, etc.) to make killing goblins or whatever more fun - I can get extra benefits by killing them near a huntress in Deradune for her to cheer me on and give me rep, or try to kill them faster and faster to get an item reward from a challenge, or scare them into jungle cats hidden in grass to weaken them, or whichever.

So I'm not arguing for there to be less difficulty or even time to level/cap out - I'm arguing that it needs to be more fun/interesting while you do so.

Now here's a counterargument - there's something to be said, oddly, for a game as a semi-interactive screensaver - i.e. shutting your brain off and coasting may help you relax. We tend to make you engage your brain more often - we don't have "cigarette combat" where you can smoke and play with one hand clicking the mouse, we make you have to interact more. One of the things we try to tune is making sure we're engaging enough but not too much - there is something zen I'll admit about the "I have 100 monsters to kill, clickclickclick."

But that is not really our focus, I admit. We prefer variety, and enforcing some skill in most combats. Mostly because we've done the opposite before enough and wanted to try something different. We'll see how it works (IMO so far well in practice, but there's lots to do still)
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Second: Level 50.

You hit level 50 and realize, holy shit, if I want half of the things "Elder Gems" give me, I am going to need to invest MONTHS AND MONTHS for a skill point. Literally. One amp point = 4 weeks of elder gem grinding. So to improve your character to compete in things like PvP, World PvP, and other shit that has nothing to do with End game raiding you are left with a pit in your stomach when you realize you have no choice but to play this game every spare moment you have in order to even compete.



Sure you can get them in 40 man raids.. but as we all know, the chance of that happening and not being part of the few elite guilds that have it on farm status....

DAILIES: I swear to god, if you say you like dailies you are a lying piece of shit. You may not mind them, but you don't LIKE THEM. they are a grind, a time filler, a way to get to the end result a little bit faster but still being capped out and waiting til the end of the week to do it all again.

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40 Man Raids: NOTHING gives me more pleasure than playing MMO's with my friends. But with things like Attunement and the like it forces me to A: wait to play the fun parts of a game and B: organize 40 people into a group to do shit.
You WoW junkies are in for a wakeup call when you get to the 40 mans, I will hopeflly be there too because I enjoy the content but when there aren't enough people on and guilds break apart, I won't be surprised. It takes a LOT of effort from those in charge of guilds to get members, let alone organize 40 capable players of running a VERY DIFFICULT encounter. You cannot just check in, you cannot have wife time, you have to be WILDSTAR 24/7. You have to always be visible for those who are playing to get more.

THE CUBICLE MENTALITY:
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I don't know why we are so blind that we don't see that these games are playing off our need to "get the next best thing" or the feeling that our "hard work" paid off. In this case, we put in a month of play time, and we get out a pretty pixel. What does this pretty pixel do? It allows us to kill the next thing that has a replacement pixel. Throw in some RnD and you have the perfect formula to literally play into the addictive side of every human brought onto this earth. Why? Because we are idiots and we all think we should be #1 and recognized. We are the best PvE, PvPer, famous, better than you, etc. And games allow that status to be shown via colors and armor sets.

But what does that leave for the actual GAME EXPERIENCE?
So far... the PvP is fun if you have a group.
The PvE is lacking group or not after the 20th time.
The grind is killer.
Every dungeon is a grind, every quest is a grind, every end game objective is a grind.

You would think killing a boss 1 or 2 times and feeling accomplished would be enough, but no, tag in "loot" and random drop rates and you can make someone do it 100's of times.

Why the fuck won't we as gamers wake up and refuse this kind of gameplay by developers? We are literally lining their pockets on our stupidity.

Did I expect this game to be anything more than a WoW alternative? No. Why am I pissed? My friends are playing it and I feel like due to my lack of game time I won't be able to play it with them after time. Even in the beginning we hardly played together as we rushed to get past the mind numbing questing system.

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This guy had it right. He fucking burned it all down to the ground. When are we gonna get the balls to grab the torches and burn it all down so that we can get a GAME that is ENGAGING and FUN. Not just a way to fill time and fulfill our need to feel "accomplished" in a world other than our work lives. Because right now we are just mimicking our work lives. This feels NOTHING like Firefly or Lord of the Rings. I do NOT feel epic. I feel like a fucking hamster.

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By the way this is the same reason I quit WoW after Wrath. i don't want to compete with myself every week to replace the new armor I JUST got. I got loot fatigue. I want to be challenged, not put to work.
 
honestly i am surprised by this. i feel that while the game has some flaws it is the best mmo experience available by a landslide. while i dont agree with all the arguments in your post i respect your rite to hold those positions. i am sorry you are not enjoying the game but i am a little offended that you took these comments as far as you did as it started to feel like you were insulting the game and by the transitive property those who enjoy it. i just think you might have been heavy handed with your criticism. i hope you can understand my position here, and not take offense that i disagree with you.
 
I actually enjoy aspects of the game. The parts that feel like a game. The parts where we play together. But the goals we are going toward together pisses me off. I want to play for the enjoyment of the content not grind for 5 months solo or at different levels than one another to eventually play together for the promise of more grinded gear that gets replaced a half second later. Side note: this is the rants section this is where we are allowed to opinionate this crap: http://alttabme.com/forum/index.php?threads/before-you-rant-read-here.1817/

That being said, I honestly believe the "hooks" built into this game are as insulting to us as people as are those in farmville. They play off our addictive tendencies and we sit here doing mundane tasks and call it "fun".

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I am mostly on the same page as you Tr1age. When we were in beta I just stopped playing because it felt like more of the same old WoW in everything except combat mechanics. Not only that it was a buggy, lots of crap missing, WoW.

Granted they have cleaned some of the stuff up and the launch was pretty decent other than not enough pvp servers (which is crazy with this game). One of the major problems I have is that there are quality of life things going on here that were never addressed and has to be fixed with addons. Addons should add flavor to your game, not functionality. The quest log and delivery system sucks balls. You can't even click on a quest and have it tell you what to do. The Auction house is utter crap. There are places to make gold and I have, but it is so horrible in its design that I see it really failing for 90% of the populous.

The only thing Carbine did right is the combat. It is engaging and fun to play. Face tanking your mobs is not only dangerous its boring. Healing actually takes skill. Dps (especially in group content) means you have to know your role and pay attention unlike any other game. PvP takes more skill than any other game I have played. It just comes down to... its fun to play that part of the game.

Too bad the rest of the game is a less good knock off of WoW.
 
I understand the frustration with the 'busy work' involved in attuning and such, but at the same time, we were praising this game for not making it easy and not appealing to casuals. Yes, a lot of it is boring, but at the same time I'm glad not everyone will be running around in LOLPWNTIER7DUNGEONLEWTZ. Some of the complaints tr1age has do sound dangerously close to "Give me all the things! For I deserve it!" just saying. :p

At the end of the day, this is a theme park. As far as theme parks go, I am really enjoying this game (albeit I haven't hit level cap yet). Don't get me wrong, I am pining for a good (or even decent) MODERN sandbox to appear and steal my heart, but we aren't playing a sandbox. Theme parks longevity is dependent on how long it takes players to reach goals vs. how quickly new content is released. Yes, there are bugs, and yes, some of those bugs are pretty severe, but this is just the beginning of this game's lifespan. I signed up for a new game knowing all the problems that tend to come with it and, unfortunately, that means wasting some time and money while they flesh it out. I personally don't mind that; I get to look back fondly and remember the time when pvp was filled with bots and buying a mount speed increase was a prank that cost you 40g.

The wilderrun quests and on have been pretty lame, but I do feel like the pace on my leveling has picked up. Not sure if it actually has, but it seems like it for some reason. As far as dungeons being a grind, I would disagree so far - they have all been fun and engaging to me.

I guess it comes down to the fact that theme parks use disposable content, so it will inherently become repetitive and boring to some degree. I think they did a good job of alleviating some of that by having dungeons that can change up and adding raids and such. I'm hoping as content is regularly released we will see some great new stuff coming in quickly.

I do hate dailies though. Dailies are just like blatant busy work.
 
I don't want all the things I want all the things to not be a necessity. And until they nerf my heals I am good. But I just know sooner or later that gear grind that I am in now will begin again and it will become annoying to fall behind once again. I am a sandbox player by heart so I knew what I was getting myself into. I just wonder why on a larger scale level people are still ok with games mimicking life but more so the tedious crap. Meh.[DOUBLEPOST=1403069190,1403069096][/DOUBLEPOST]I found this article interesting:
http://www.ihatemmorpgs.com/2014/05/from-korea-with-love.html#.U6EidfkwdJk

I also watched both videos and really enjoyed watching the guy amazed by walking around. I miss that. The feeling of going somewhere in a game, not feeling rushed to a certain level, and just exploring and being wowed.

I have not had one moment of "WOW" in this game. I did get nauseous at one point with Subtle though haha!
 
I will say this, I really have been enjoying the combat and healing and instances. I just start to enjoy them less on the 50th time around. Ya feel?!

On that note I am enjoying how we are working as a guild at the moment. Somehow doing a whole occupy strategy with leadership and still coming out ok. I like it and am glad. As we get older we get busy and being able to be useful when online and then another when they are is awesome. So keep up the good work.
 
I agree with most of the sentiment in this post. It was touch and go for a bit there as to whether most of us would actually play. I will say that between housing and thoroughly enjoying combat and PvP that I am having a good time. I do look forward to the actual raid challenge itself.

I'd be lying though if I said I wasn't patiently waiting on Star Citizen and EQ:Next...mainly Star Citizen.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
 
For me the experience I had with Wildstar is better than most themepark MMOs. I agree with most of the points you have said, but let´s break down my experience quests in other games compared to Wildstar:
In other games you have to kill "that one type of mob" and all the other mobs don´t count. In Wildstar it usually doesn´t matter which one of the group you kill. Also in other games, the mobs in one place are reskins with the same abilities, here you have at least some variety in the types of attack. It never happened to me that I had to wait for a respawn of a leader type monster because somebody else stole the mob right in front of my nose.
If you are in a group, you can kill the big mobs and get a huge bonus to your quest meter.
If you have quests that requires you to collect 20 heads, every mob will drop a head. There is nothing more frustrating than being asked to collect something that EVERY SINGLE MOB has visually attached to him, but is not dropping.
In most themepark MMOs that´s pretty much it from quest variety. In Wildstar you at least sometimes have some interesting quests. (Like infiltrate that or do some senseless click puzzles)

One thing that I don´t like are the "Kill X Mobs in certain amount of time"-Challenges, but the other ones are actually fun. Another thing is that you cannot do quests from all paths. I see something in front of me and I know that this is something a Explorer/Settler can interact with, but due to me being a Scientist I cannot use it. That is really frustrating.

______
I enjoy Wildstar right now, but I will probably not stick around for more than 6 months. I dislike Sandbox MMOs because I have a dislike for PVP in general and in most Sandbox games there is only one map for everyone, so yeah...


Also this is probably what the guy at Blizzard got when he came up with Dailies:
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I personally don´t mind dailies, but I rather have them in normal repeatable form. So if I can finish whatever they give me within a few days instead of logging in every day just to do the dailies.
 
Just a quick 2 cents from an observation today.

In the Crimelords of Whitevale adventure we ran, you opted we just run the most efficient route instead of trying some new routes, and only wanted to complete it for the purple at the end in a gold run, not to enjoy the content. What happened to the Tristan I know that's up for trying something new? Something different? You're currently playing for efficiency, and I assume it's because you don't want to fall behind the curve. Your mentality for approaching this game isn't what I expected, and then you're bashing the game for your play style. Spend some more time on your house and being creativity, leave the mundane grind to us who actually do enjoy it.
 
one last thing i want to point out here is that one of the things GW2 got railed for was removing almost completely the gear grind. they made end game gear extremely easy to acquire and the pieces that were harder to get had barley more stats then the stuff that was easy to get. additionally they make pvp have a completely even playing field with no gear stat progression only cosmetic. the response from the community was we already got the best gear and now we want more because we want a way to make our character to feel like it is growing and gaining strength. i think that with our current technology and the climate of the current gaming populous the idea of a sandbox mmo is a pipe dream. the current community says they want moves in that direction but then critiques the games who change for the vary things they asked for. Wildstar is not a new generation of mmo but it is a better version of an mmo than any other on the market and that is enough for me. currently i think we can ask for one of two things from an mmo, a sandbox, or a competitive forum for pvp and difficult pve content; which is why i am happy with the way the game came out and i expected nothing else.
 
Gyoin said:
Just a quick 2 cents from an observation today.

In the Crimelords of Whitevale adventure we ran, you opted we just run the most efficient route instead of trying some new routes, and only wanted to complete it for the purple at the end in a gold run, not to enjoy the content. What happened to the Tristan I know that's up for trying something new? Something different? You're currently playing for efficiency, and I assume it's because you don't want to fall behind the curve. Your mentality for approaching this game isn't what I expected, and then you're bashing the game for your play style. Spend some more time on your house and being creativity, leave the mundane grind to us who actually do enjoy it.
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I don't want to fall behind. You are correct and to me that is the #1 thing that frustrates me in these games.

I also think that when we say "a themepark mmo is x" we are doing ourselves a disservice. A themepark mmo can be a lot of things :) we just need to be creative.

And try pugging a dungeon and voting for the "fun" path lol anyway I have done most of the paths beside the weird one we picked. But I have done it way more than I enjoy.

To say go play with your doll house and ignore the grind is dismissal. I enjoy games for combat mostly and aesthetics on the side.

I do enjoy the dungeons because of the challenge to keep people alive. So paths don't matter to me really. Ideally the dungeon is fun the first and second time not the 50th.

Luckily it is fun regardless with the people you run it with. But it still gets slightly old.
 
Subtle said:
one last thing i want to point out here is that one of the things GW2 got railed for was removing almost completely the gear grind. they made end game gear extremely easy to acquire and the pieces that were harder to get had barley more stats then the stuff that was easy to get. additionally they make pvp have a completely even playing field with no gear stat progression only cosmetic. the response from the community was we already got the best gear and now we want more because we want a way to make our character to feel like it is growing and gaining strength. i think that with our current technology and the climate of the current gaming populous the idea of a sandbox mmo is a pipe dream. the current community says they want moves in that direction but then critiques the games who change for the vary things they asked for. Wildstar is not a new generation of mmo but it is a better version of an mmo than any other on the market and that is enough for me. currently i think we can ask for one of two things from an mmo, a sandbox, or a competitive forum for pvp and difficult pve content; which is why i am happy with the way the game came out and i expected nothing else.
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Difficult pve combat is exciting. Grinding to it through mundane tasks is not.

Gw 2 I believe failed because they removed teamwork. The lack of a trinity was a bad idea. You don't actually feel like you are helping just all doing as much damage as possible alone hoping not to die and make the group wipe. I loved loved loved the pvp system. The arena/bg/warp lot gear in this game makes me anxious. "Do I have enough bank space" "omg I need three sets" "did I equip it all properly?" If there was a slot on your paper doll for all this different armor that would be cool versus 6 costume slots lol.
 
tr1age said:
And try pugging a dungeon and voting for the "fun" path lol anyway I have done most of the paths beside the weird one we picked. But I have done it way more than I enjoy.
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That's exactly the issue here, we weren't a pug but a guild group. We can always mix it up then. I was learning to tank for the first time in months, I haven't done these adventures many times, and when I suggested we do a different path what did you do? "LOL NOPE"

That's pretty infuriating.
 
tr1age said:
Difficult pve combat is exciting. Grinding to it through mundane tasks is not.

Gw 2 I believe failed because they removed teamwork. The lack of a trinity was a bad idea. You don't actually feel like you are helping just all doing as much damage as possible alone hoping not to die and make the group wipe. I loved loved loved the pvp system. The arena/bg/warp lot gear in this game makes me anxious. "Do I have enough bank space" "omg I need three sets" "did I equip it all properly?" If there was a slot on your paper doll for all this different armor that would be cool versus 6 costume slots lol.
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you make it sound like i am saying that's why GW2 failed, but it is not and that's not what i said. that was simply one problem that many people had with the game. more and more i feel like you are criticizing Wildstar for not being the perfect tr1age game instead of for being a bad game. in doing this it makes others feel like their opinions are invalid because you are thrashing the game they enjoy. maybe i am alone here but this thread makes me sad. this is exactly what i expected from wildstar and the game i foresaw coming from the first time i started researching it. i feel the developers have been extremely open handed and to say you did not see it coming that this is the type of game they were making then that sucks, sorry but this type of game has value to a lot of people.
 
Subtle said:
you make it sound like i am saying that's why GW2 failed, but it is not and that's not what i said. that was simply one problem that many people had with the game. more and more i feel like you are criticizing Wildstar for not being the perfect tr1age game instead of for being a bad game. in doing this it makes others feel like their opinions are invalid because you are thrashing the game they enjoy. maybe i am alone here but this thread makes me sad. this is exactly what i expected from wildstar and the game i foresaw coming from the first time i started researching it. i feel the developers have been extremely open handed and to say you did not see it coming that this is the type of game they were making then that sucks, sorry but this type of game has value to a lot of people.
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I am sorry I am not praising the game.

I knew what this game would be and I will enjoy it for those aspects, but I am ranting my frustration with a gaming industry and people who will go to bat for mechanics in a game in 2014 where we WANT CHANGE, but because we don't want to rock the boat, we are content with dailies in and out and the developers know that so there is not much on the horizon of innovation.

THIS DOES NOT HOWEVER take away from you liking the game. So stop continuing to go back to that. If you have an opinion voice it, if you disagree with me you can ignore me or disagree. It doesn't mean I am talking about you.

It is much bigger than just Wildstar honestly it is humanities ability to curl up in a cubicle and accept their fate. As we are doing with majority of these "themepark" mmo's.

Anyway Gyoin next time stress you want to do another path to explore. I wouldn't mind exploring some other ones with you, but I also assume most people want to be in and out of the dungeon quickly, collect their purps, and do it again.
 
tr1age said:
Anyway Gyoin next time stress you want to do another path to explore. I wouldn't mind exploring some other ones with you, but I also assume most people want to be in and out of the dungeon quickly, collect their purps, and do it again.
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You were in a mood, easier to just let you have your way. :p
 
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