The dueling portion, the dungeon crawl and the overall look and feel of the game feels so polished when they play. The only thing that isn't polished is their streaming. I really enjoyed the warrior stream... I think they were a little more organic and not so rigid as the Esper stream was. But dayum, the game just screams quality. I really cannot wait for beta or launch. Prefer launch, because then it is permanent.
Yeah, the more I see about Wildstar the more hyped I get. I didn't post for a while and wasn't following Wildstar much after the Everquest Next announcement, but the more I look at both games, the more I think Wildstar looks more fun to me. As much as the EQN hype machine is promising, Wildstar seems like the pinnacle of classic MMO design but with a more exciting combat system, and that appeals to me greatly. Though Everquest Next Landmark may turn out to be an excellent alternative to Minecraft, and better in many ways, but EQN itself as an MMO doesn't excite me as much as Wildstar does right now.
Also props to Carbine for actually giving Wildstar a legitimate beta test and not a series of preview weekends disguised as beta testing like a lot of MMOs do. From the sounds of it they are getting a lot of good feedback and actually improving things based on it. Actual testing is going on! Amazing! I am expecting great things when this launches and will throw my money at them gladly.
(She/Her)
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Just remember, everything tends to change once a full release happens.
Though they are doing great things right now. That time off has shown great imrpovements already, and there is still plenty of fine tuning time left.
I just want every part of the PVP this game is going to have. World, arena, warplot, whatever. Give it all to me.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
The most important thing to see is what happens after the honeymoon period post launch.
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BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
Personally I can't wait to read Kotaku's post 1-month write up. It's the only thing I can stand reading from them anymore and is technically the best way to review an mmo
I might actually be hyped to be a healer for once. The only healing i ever did was as a chloromancer in rift, and that was incidental at best. the telegraphed healing and positional healing is way more interesting than making the stay full in wow ever was. Not to mention the showing 3 completely different ways to play the esper.
I'm curious if three hybrid classes would be as effective as three pure roles. Probably not, but even allowing a healer to burn everything in every third fight does wonders to keep them happy.
BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
I'm gonna reopen this can of worms again because recent discussion elsewhere has made me grit my teeth.
I'm going to come out and say it. I think 40 mans fucking blow, but only for the person (me) that had to organize that shit. The only reason 40 mans were ever difficult was because you had to carry 15-20 people that didn't know how to play their fucking class or weren't cut out for raiding because WoW was their first mmo and they just didn't know any fucking better. There wasn't any hard skill cap. You threw bodies at the bosses until you choked them with your dead.
You can't just say "yeah lets do 40-mans guys!" It is a logistics clusterfuck. if you want to raid reliably that meant keeping a stable of 60-70 able bodies to rotate in and out. You needed a loot system, you need class structure. you had to sit people, bench others and y`ou had to constantly be recruiting because those assholes from the #1 and #2 guild will always be poaching the good raiders. I think the only people that remember 40mans fondly are the people that never had to run one.
Not only that, the people that I used to do that shit with? We're all adults now. Most of us with jobs, families or other obligations. hell the mmo players that are the age I was then don't even want to put up with that shit these days. There's a reason people are starting to fucking groan at 25-mans in WoW even now.
Carbine must have some sort of Dark Lord or a fucking genie under wraps, siphoning its magic to try and accomplish what they claim they can accomplish in making a 40man an engaging thing that people are going to want to do, and be envious of the cream of the crop that complete it. I sincerely hope they do. But in the meantime I can't envy a 40 man player. I fucking pity you. I know that feel bro.
As someone who never participated in any raids, they always seemed like a horribly frustrating clusterfuck for everyone but ranged damage dudes #1-25 to me, to be honest.
I like the way FFXIV does it: 8-man raids consisting of two 4-player parties. The coming patch adds the Crystal Tower, which is apparently for 24 people. That's my absolute max, and I'm rather uncomfortable with it.
10-man content is ideal for me. Fuck the days where we had to herd cats and spend 15 minutes after each wipe getting all ducks in a row for one more two-minute attempt and then repeat it all over again.
Beezel speaks a pretty solid truth: you'll have members poached by that one poopsocking hardcore guild and then you can't raid until you find replacements, and then it happens again two weeks later.
I don't like them because it's a section of the game that takes a lot of time and resources and is really only available to a few people. People who pay the same amount as me to play the game, and yet demand way, way more developer time and attention because they are special.
I also don't like them because it's inevitably content that I just will never see. The more ingenuity, artistic, and design skill is held back for the ubar raid, the less I am getting for my money. Essentially my sub fee is a wellfare check to the hardcore players.
It's not like PvP or achievements, which are content that I usually don't see, but at least they are there for me if I want to. No, it's content that has a massive time and scheduling requirement and also is gated by other players - you must join one of the special guilds to see this. If they don't want you? Well then fuck you.
Honestly maybe they should offer two sub levels. 12$ a month for non-raiders 15$ for raiders or something. At least then I'd feel less ripped off. Especially after launch when more than half of the new content and development is exclusively for the treehouse people.
-edit-
I am literally that filthy casual who ruins your hardcore mmo
eh I think MMOs made some good progress in making raiding a lot more accessible than it used to be with the multiple difficulty modes, not having to grind 20 different flask, weapon oils and potions before raids etc, while still retaining a high difficulty for everyone that wants to bash their heads against it
idk just how much of that wildstar will have through
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BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
Wildstar is shipping with two raids I think. a 20 man and a 40 man. I'm not sure if there are going to be hardmodes but they talked about swappable modifiers and random occurrences happening in the raids to keep them feeling fresh
40-man raids also had a really weird composition issue back in vanilla WoW. Some fights needed five tanks, some fights just one or two. With smaller raids it's easier to tune it to a decent composition of 1-2 tanks, making it a more balanced role distribution.
40-man raids also have the issue of "just a nameless cog in the machine", where you don't really feel that you're contributing anything, compared to the 10-man raids in WoW where every warm body actually had to pull their weight. (Well, until everyone was geared out the wazoo and steamrolled things with the tank wearing no pants and the healers watching Netflix on the other monitor.)
Wildstar has no mana-using class (that I've seen so far). This pleases me immensely. I'm tired of that crap, because it's a resource that only matters when you run out of it.
I like the design philosophy the Dawngate designers have talked a lot about - they also have no mana-using characters. They prefer resources that build up instead of get drained, like fury on WoW's warriors, or rapidly regenerating, like rogues and energy.
...which reminded me of an old saying that stayed with us forever in my old WoW guild: "warriors generate rage in combat, mages generate rage in their downtime."
Because sitting down and chugging water sucks.
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BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
from what I've gathered, mana was renamed to "focus" and functions similarly to how WoW rogue energy works. With little extra bits thrown in depending on which class you are. With Espers this is especially apt due to the psi-point combo system that allows them to deliver their burst
40 man raids are a terrible fucking idea. No game should ever take something that WoW did away with and try to bring it back. Here's a newsflash: when it comes to MMOs, Blizzard is smarter than you, period. There's a reason their game is the top dog and remains so after all these years.
10/25 being basically the same was fine with me in WoW because I like 10 mans and I can respect that other people have bigger guilds and wanted to do 25, but at least we got the same content. Many years ago I had an idea of how great it'd be if an MMO dev could come up with a way to scale raids so that if you had like 16 people in your guild you didn't have to leave 6 out or recruit 9 more. Now in the next WoW expansion we're getting exactly that, scaling raids from 10 to 25.
I honestly think the scaling raids is the next big game changer for MMOs, and will be an expected feature if WoW implements it and it works like it should.
On topic of Wildstar, I was pretty pessimistic when I heard they took the game out of beta because systems were so bad and what not. But after a while, I started to realize I'd rather a dev/publisher do that and work on the fundamental flaws people had than to just pretend everything would be okay and release a game that's just doomed to fail. I've no idea how successful Wildstar will be, but it certainly has a lot of promise and the class streams have certainly looked like something I can have fun playing.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I wish to start a guild of Espers called 'Esper de Corp'.
Heh, mana and the regening there of has always been a sticking point for me in MMOs. Ever since my caster days in EQ. Honestly, I probably couldn't tell you what anything looked like in EQ since 90% of my time was spent staring at my spellbook. :P
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
10/25 being basically the same was fine with me in WoW because I like 10 mans and I can respect that other people have bigger guilds and wanted to do 25, but at least we got the same content. Many years ago I had an idea of how great it'd be if an MMO dev could come up with a way to scale raids so that if you had like 16 people in your guild you didn't have to leave 6 out or recruit 9 more. Now in the next WoW expansion we're getting exactly that, scaling raids from 10 to 25.
Next expansion? Siege of Orgrimmar is 10-25 flex right now and it's wonderful. Flex is just replacing normal difficulty in the next expansion, rather than being its own difficulty tier as it is now.
And 40 mans are fucking stupid. Hell, 25 mans are pushing it. I'm a fan of SWTOR's 8 and 16 mans. In my perfect MMO raids scale from 1xgroup - 4xgroup. That's right. I think a single group should be allowed to play the content and get significantly lesser loot.
I didn't realize the flex raiding was already in. I haven't played WoW since Cataclysm. That's great. And I agree about party size. IMO 8 and 16 was one of the smart things TOR did just because even the big group size isn't huge, and it makes it easier to balance how many tanks and healers should be needed imo.
At first I thought 40 mans would be cool. Like, in my mind it's just a dungeon door and everyone runs in and runs around killing stuff (kind of like the hectic escape scene in Moria). It's more like GW2 dungeons than anything, no trinity required, just apply damage to the bad guys.
GW2 really nailed dungeon content for me. Abandon the trinity. Just let people play their character.
Forcing that many people to get organized and follow directions in a video game is really ridiculous.
Depends how they do the 40 man stuff, really. If we're talking old-timey Molten Core or whatever the hell, then yeah, that's awful. If we're talking about something more like Hamidon, that could be entirely fine.
We agree with the tweets that there are pros and cons for every raid size, which is why we are approaching dungeon and raid design to accommodate as many styles as possible.
For Raids, we're going to have the big ones that some players out there are nostalgic for, and players participating in this tier of raids are expected to be the best of the best. These tough challenges will require significant coordination to overcome, but the rewards will be worth it. That's not to say we won't have smaller raids as well, because we understand that the logistics of the big raids can be tough. Therefore, we have every intention of accommodating smaller guilds & groups.
Dungeon instances will be much smaller than our raids, but will be no less interesting. There will be leveling dungeons, elder game dungeons, and veteran versions of the leveling dungeons, so that even at level cap, players can fight through their favorite content and earn desirable rewards for their level.
We want everyone to be able to experience our group content, hence the need for dungeons and raids of all shapes and sizes. Since these experiences are integral to our "Elder Game" plans, we are putting a lot of effort into making them sing. Thanks for your feedback!
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Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
That reads to me like they intend to gate off content to folks that can't find 39 other people to run around with.
At first I thought 40 mans would be cool. Like, in my mind it's just a dungeon door and everyone runs in and runs around killing stuff (kind of like the hectic escape scene in Moria). It's more like GW2 dungeons than anything, no trinity required, just apply damage to the bad guys.
GW2 really nailed dungeon content for me. Abandon the trinity. Just let people play their character.
Forcing that many people to get organized and follow directions in a video game is really ridiculous.
See, I found the opposite with GW2 dungeons. Because there is no agro table, and no dedicated healing, the dungeons were mostly cluster fucks, and I think the boss mechanics by and large suffered for it. Give me well done 5 mans that don't have a ton of trash but require CC and coordination, and bosses that require tanks using cooldowns, healers being on the ball, and DPS using all their utility.
I don't think any 5 man content has ever been better than Heroic Magister's Terrace for me.
I really enjoyed playing GW2 in general. The levelling and everything was very fun. But the dungeons fell super flat. Even the good things that came from it like using my thief shortbow to do splash healing in my ranger buddy's water fields and stuff like that was all stuff that wasn't necessary. I want my dungeons balanced for that stuff to be required.
All they did to me was trade in the coordination of having dedicated roles for instant kill abilities, and once you knew what those were, boss fights were basically just pounding away for 5 minutes while you dodged the instant kill abilities.
That reads to me like they intend to gate off content to folks that can't find 39 other people to run around with.
That's not okay.
Yeah, MMOs need to embrace scaling content instead of designing dungeons specifically for X people and if you have less, you probably can't do it. The minimum for a dungeon should never be 40, not everyone can(or wants to) find 39 other people to do content they can't see otherwise. Let it scale down with less players, even something like a 20-40 man scaling dungeon would be much better.
Different strokes for different folks, if a certain section of the population enjoys it then more power to them. If I were upset about MMO devs catering to sections of the game I have no interest in I'd have raids, PVP and an entire second faction to complain about in WoW.
Plus, it's been 9 years, it just might be possible to do 40 man better. Just sayin'.
Glal on
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Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
edit: if anything, plenty of WoW fights felt more epic because you were fewer people and thus had greater responsibilities for succeeding.
This. A million times.
Though really my biggest issue is that I'm paying months and months of subscription fees so that a small percentage of poopsockers can see content I don't get to see before they unsubscribe until I buy them the next batch of content I won't see. And yet developers choose to listen to these people for some reason.
Mana works fine in PvP, because then it makes sense to have a resource that requires budgeting and planning. Should I use an expensive spell to try and kill this guy now, or should I chip away at him to save enough mana for an escape, or should I try and lay down as much AOE as possible before my inevitable death? It makes for tough decisions.
In PvE it doesn't really work because the only question is, "Over the expected duration of the fight, how do I turn this mana into the greatest amount of damage?" Then you go look it up on a website somewhere and do that. It doesn't make for a lot of interesting decisions, although the arcane mage rework in WoW was pretty neat. (Your mana regen and damage were affected by the % mana remaining in your pool)
Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Mana works fine in PvP, because then it makes sense to have a resource that requires budgeting and planning. Should I use an expensive spell to try and kill this guy now, or should I chip away at him to save enough mana for an escape, or should I try and lay down as much AOE as possible before my inevitable death? It makes for tough decisions.
Only in a game like Dota where dying actually means something for the flow of the game.
Mana works fine in PvP, because then it makes sense to have a resource that requires budgeting and planning. Should I use an expensive spell to try and kill this guy now, or should I chip away at him to save enough mana for an escape, or should I try and lay down as much AOE as possible before my inevitable death? It makes for tough decisions.
Only in a game like Dota where dying actually means something for the flow of the game.
Sure, or arenas, and some objective PvP maps. If the average death occurs before you even have a chance to run out of mana, it's pointless.
Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
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BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
I'm gonna reopen this can of worms again because recent discussion elsewhere has made me grit my teeth.
I'm going to come out and say it. I think 40 mans fucking blow, but only for the person (me) that had to organize that shit. The only reason 40 mans were ever difficult was because you had to carry 15-20 people that didn't know how to play their fucking class or weren't cut out for raiding because WoW was their first mmo and they just didn't know any fucking better. There wasn't any hard skill cap. You threw bodies at the bosses until you choked them with your dead.
You can't just say "yeah lets do 40-mans guys!" It is a logistics clusterfuck. if you want to raid reliably that meant keeping a stable of 60-70 able bodies to rotate in and out. You needed a loot system, you need class structure. you had to sit people, bench others and y`ou had to constantly be recruiting because those assholes from the #1 and #2 guild will always be poaching the good raiders. I think the only people that remember 40mans fondly are the people that never had to run one.
Not only that, the people that I used to do that shit with? We're all adults now. Most of us with jobs, families or other obligations. hell the mmo players that are the age I was then don't even want to put up with that shit these days. There's a reason people are starting to fucking groan at 25-mans in WoW even now.
Carbine must have some sort of Dark Lord or a fucking genie under wraps, siphoning its magic to try and accomplish what they claim they can accomplish in making a 40man an engaging thing that people are going to want to do, and be envious of the cream of the crop that complete it. I sincerely hope they do. But in the meantime I can't envy a 40 man player. I fucking pity you. I know that feel bro.
Yes I am salty, why do you ask?
As someone who was in a realm first 40 man guild in Vanilla WoW, you are completely right. 40-mans are stupid on pretty much every level. As someone who quit WoW because of being in a 40 man guild, and only came back in Wrath due to 10 man raiding, I can tell you and everyone else; I wont do it again.
There was nothing hardcore about MC, BWL, AQ40 or really even 40-man Naxx. It was cat-herding, headhunting and gear grinding. That is not fun and compelling game play.
The amount of get-togethers, parties, outings, etc. that I missed out on; not to mention friends lost/potential friends not made, is in no way, worth purple pixels that will be replaced next patch.
10-mans in WoW, LFR (as bad as it is) and Flex are really the things other MMO developers should be copying from WoW's end game. TOR did right with 8 and 16 as others have said.
I have a feeling this 40-man raiding in Wildstar will be abandoned not only by the community, but by the devs as well, in a short time. I get that they say they're creating it for themselves, and I respect that, but it's not really sustainable or healthy for the game, in my opinion.
Out of all the "OH MY GOD! LOOK AT THAT!" moments in WoW or other MMO, my 40-man raiding experiences are a fraction of that. I'd rather have more "wow" factors out in the world, in dungeons, etc. than it be gated behind finding 39 other no-lifers to see it with.
I don't buy the argument that it needs tons of players to feel "epic". It's what players do that feels epic, not how many they are.
edit: if anything, plenty of WoW fights felt more epic because you were fewer people and thus had greater responsibilities for succeeding.
Wow was always really good at making me feel unimportant. I was unimportant, my character was a peon, etc. Like reporting for work as a junior functionary at a huge multinational.
Yaaaaaay. I'm a cog.
Their approach to raids really emphasized that theme. I like TOR, despite its many flaws, because they got one thing right: my character is the main character of his own story.
The counter argument to this is usually like "Well there's so many people it makes no sense otherwise you have to be unimportant."
Oh really. It makes sense for all these dungeon bosses to be killed every 20 minutes over and over again for a year? That's sensible? How many people has hunter Bob sent out to collect 40 bear asses?
Why is the village not buried in bear ass right this fucking minute?
Oh. Right. You can suspend your disbelief for that.
But not for "my character is important, a hero, not a random peon."
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited November 2013
Here you are a faceless nobody. Being ordered to complete seemingly pointless tasks, while continually being told you are an important and valuable member of the team despite not knowing exactly what the over arching goal your bosses are pushing you towards.
Yet you fall in line with everyone else, do what you're told, take your at-a-boys, and before you know it you're 60, looking back on your career and lamenting that at this point it's much to late to stop.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Posts
They confirmed that PVP gear is in the game
The good news is they said the parity that they're going for between pvp-pve gear is roughly 10%
"...only mights and maybes."
Guild Wars 2: Tyreh, asura Warrior
Also props to Carbine for actually giving Wildstar a legitimate beta test and not a series of preview weekends disguised as beta testing like a lot of MMOs do. From the sounds of it they are getting a lot of good feedback and actually improving things based on it. Actual testing is going on! Amazing! I am expecting great things when this launches and will throw my money at them gladly.
Though they are doing great things right now. That time off has shown great imrpovements already, and there is still plenty of fine tuning time left.
I just want every part of the PVP this game is going to have. World, arena, warplot, whatever. Give it all to me.
"...only mights and maybes."
I'm curious if three hybrid classes would be as effective as three pure roles. Probably not, but even allowing a healer to burn everything in every third fight does wonders to keep them happy.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
I'm going to come out and say it. I think 40 mans fucking blow, but only for the person (me) that had to organize that shit. The only reason 40 mans were ever difficult was because you had to carry 15-20 people that didn't know how to play their fucking class or weren't cut out for raiding because WoW was their first mmo and they just didn't know any fucking better. There wasn't any hard skill cap. You threw bodies at the bosses until you choked them with your dead.
You can't just say "yeah lets do 40-mans guys!" It is a logistics clusterfuck. if you want to raid reliably that meant keeping a stable of 60-70 able bodies to rotate in and out. You needed a loot system, you need class structure. you had to sit people, bench others and y`ou had to constantly be recruiting because those assholes from the #1 and #2 guild will always be poaching the good raiders. I think the only people that remember 40mans fondly are the people that never had to run one.
Not only that, the people that I used to do that shit with? We're all adults now. Most of us with jobs, families or other obligations. hell the mmo players that are the age I was then don't even want to put up with that shit these days. There's a reason people are starting to fucking groan at 25-mans in WoW even now.
Carbine must have some sort of Dark Lord or a fucking genie under wraps, siphoning its magic to try and accomplish what they claim they can accomplish in making a 40man an engaging thing that people are going to want to do, and be envious of the cream of the crop that complete it. I sincerely hope they do. But in the meantime I can't envy a 40 man player. I fucking pity you. I know that feel bro.
Yes I am salty, why do you ask?
"...only mights and maybes."
10-man content is ideal for me. Fuck the days where we had to herd cats and spend 15 minutes after each wipe getting all ducks in a row for one more two-minute attempt and then repeat it all over again.
Beezel speaks a pretty solid truth: you'll have members poached by that one poopsocking hardcore guild and then you can't raid until you find replacements, and then it happens again two weeks later.
With 10-15 man raids that's a much smaller issue.
I also don't like them because it's inevitably content that I just will never see. The more ingenuity, artistic, and design skill is held back for the ubar raid, the less I am getting for my money. Essentially my sub fee is a wellfare check to the hardcore players.
It's not like PvP or achievements, which are content that I usually don't see, but at least they are there for me if I want to. No, it's content that has a massive time and scheduling requirement and also is gated by other players - you must join one of the special guilds to see this. If they don't want you? Well then fuck you.
Honestly maybe they should offer two sub levels. 12$ a month for non-raiders 15$ for raiders or something. At least then I'd feel less ripped off. Especially after launch when more than half of the new content and development is exclusively for the treehouse people.
-edit-
I am literally that filthy casual who ruins your hardcore mmo
"...only mights and maybes."
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
idk just how much of that wildstar will have through
"...only mights and maybes."
40-man raids also have the issue of "just a nameless cog in the machine", where you don't really feel that you're contributing anything, compared to the 10-man raids in WoW where every warm body actually had to pull their weight. (Well, until everyone was geared out the wazoo and steamrolled things with the tank wearing no pants and the healers watching Netflix on the other monitor.)
Wildstar has no mana-using class (that I've seen so far). This pleases me immensely. I'm tired of that crap, because it's a resource that only matters when you run out of it.
I like the design philosophy the Dawngate designers have talked a lot about - they also have no mana-using characters. They prefer resources that build up instead of get drained, like fury on WoW's warriors, or rapidly regenerating, like rogues and energy.
...which reminded me of an old saying that stayed with us forever in my old WoW guild: "warriors generate rage in combat, mages generate rage in their downtime."
Because sitting down and chugging water sucks.
"...only mights and maybes."
10/25 being basically the same was fine with me in WoW because I like 10 mans and I can respect that other people have bigger guilds and wanted to do 25, but at least we got the same content. Many years ago I had an idea of how great it'd be if an MMO dev could come up with a way to scale raids so that if you had like 16 people in your guild you didn't have to leave 6 out or recruit 9 more. Now in the next WoW expansion we're getting exactly that, scaling raids from 10 to 25.
I honestly think the scaling raids is the next big game changer for MMOs, and will be an expected feature if WoW implements it and it works like it should.
On topic of Wildstar, I was pretty pessimistic when I heard they took the game out of beta because systems were so bad and what not. But after a while, I started to realize I'd rather a dev/publisher do that and work on the fundamental flaws people had than to just pretend everything would be okay and release a game that's just doomed to fail. I've no idea how successful Wildstar will be, but it certainly has a lot of promise and the class streams have certainly looked like something I can have fun playing.
Heh, mana and the regening there of has always been a sticking point for me in MMOs. Ever since my caster days in EQ. Honestly, I probably couldn't tell you what anything looked like in EQ since 90% of my time was spent staring at my spellbook. :P
Next expansion? Siege of Orgrimmar is 10-25 flex right now and it's wonderful. Flex is just replacing normal difficulty in the next expansion, rather than being its own difficulty tier as it is now.
And 40 mans are fucking stupid. Hell, 25 mans are pushing it. I'm a fan of SWTOR's 8 and 16 mans. In my perfect MMO raids scale from 1xgroup - 4xgroup. That's right. I think a single group should be allowed to play the content and get significantly lesser loot.
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
Switch: SW-0653-8208-4705
GW2 really nailed dungeon content for me. Abandon the trinity. Just let people play their character.
Forcing that many people to get organized and follow directions in a video game is really ridiculous.
That's not okay.
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
Switch: SW-0653-8208-4705
See, I found the opposite with GW2 dungeons. Because there is no agro table, and no dedicated healing, the dungeons were mostly cluster fucks, and I think the boss mechanics by and large suffered for it. Give me well done 5 mans that don't have a ton of trash but require CC and coordination, and bosses that require tanks using cooldowns, healers being on the ball, and DPS using all their utility.
I don't think any 5 man content has ever been better than Heroic Magister's Terrace for me.
I really enjoyed playing GW2 in general. The levelling and everything was very fun. But the dungeons fell super flat. Even the good things that came from it like using my thief shortbow to do splash healing in my ranger buddy's water fields and stuff like that was all stuff that wasn't necessary. I want my dungeons balanced for that stuff to be required.
All they did to me was trade in the coordination of having dedicated roles for instant kill abilities, and once you knew what those were, boss fights were basically just pounding away for 5 minutes while you dodged the instant kill abilities.
Yeah, MMOs need to embrace scaling content instead of designing dungeons specifically for X people and if you have less, you probably can't do it. The minimum for a dungeon should never be 40, not everyone can(or wants to) find 39 other people to do content they can't see otherwise. Let it scale down with less players, even something like a 20-40 man scaling dungeon would be much better.
edit: if anything, plenty of WoW fights felt more epic because you were fewer people and thus had greater responsibilities for succeeding.
Plus, it's been 9 years, it just might be possible to do 40 man better. Just sayin'.
This. A million times.
Though really my biggest issue is that I'm paying months and months of subscription fees so that a small percentage of poopsockers can see content I don't get to see before they unsubscribe until I buy them the next batch of content I won't see. And yet developers choose to listen to these people for some reason.
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In PvE it doesn't really work because the only question is, "Over the expected duration of the fight, how do I turn this mana into the greatest amount of damage?" Then you go look it up on a website somewhere and do that. It doesn't make for a lot of interesting decisions, although the arcane mage rework in WoW was pretty neat. (Your mana regen and damage were affected by the % mana remaining in your pool)
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
Only in a game like Dota where dying actually means something for the flow of the game.
To me defending the ziggurat in Zul'Farrak was one of the most epic quest events in WoW, and that was just in a 5 man dungeon.
Sure, or arenas, and some objective PvP maps. If the average death occurs before you even have a chance to run out of mana, it's pointless.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
All those cowboy puns...
"...only mights and maybes."
As someone who was in a realm first 40 man guild in Vanilla WoW, you are completely right. 40-mans are stupid on pretty much every level. As someone who quit WoW because of being in a 40 man guild, and only came back in Wrath due to 10 man raiding, I can tell you and everyone else; I wont do it again.
There was nothing hardcore about MC, BWL, AQ40 or really even 40-man Naxx. It was cat-herding, headhunting and gear grinding. That is not fun and compelling game play.
The amount of get-togethers, parties, outings, etc. that I missed out on; not to mention friends lost/potential friends not made, is in no way, worth purple pixels that will be replaced next patch.
10-mans in WoW, LFR (as bad as it is) and Flex are really the things other MMO developers should be copying from WoW's end game. TOR did right with 8 and 16 as others have said.
I have a feeling this 40-man raiding in Wildstar will be abandoned not only by the community, but by the devs as well, in a short time. I get that they say they're creating it for themselves, and I respect that, but it's not really sustainable or healthy for the game, in my opinion.
Out of all the "OH MY GOD! LOOK AT THAT!" moments in WoW or other MMO, my 40-man raiding experiences are a fraction of that. I'd rather have more "wow" factors out in the world, in dungeons, etc. than it be gated behind finding 39 other no-lifers to see it with.
Wow was always really good at making me feel unimportant. I was unimportant, my character was a peon, etc. Like reporting for work as a junior functionary at a huge multinational.
Yaaaaaay. I'm a cog.
Their approach to raids really emphasized that theme. I like TOR, despite its many flaws, because they got one thing right: my character is the main character of his own story.
The counter argument to this is usually like "Well there's so many people it makes no sense otherwise you have to be unimportant."
Oh really. It makes sense for all these dungeon bosses to be killed every 20 minutes over and over again for a year? That's sensible? How many people has hunter Bob sent out to collect 40 bear asses?
Why is the village not buried in bear ass right this fucking minute?
Oh. Right. You can suspend your disbelief for that.
But not for "my character is important, a hero, not a random peon."
That's a bridge too far.
Yet you fall in line with everyone else, do what you're told, take your at-a-boys, and before you know it you're 60, looking back on your career and lamenting that at this point it's much to late to stop.