This past week I got the opportunity to ask a few questions about WildStar’s new “stat refactoring” patch that’s coming this fall. There were several finer points that I wanted clarification on, but the big one was this: Why didn’t the devs identify how confusing the stat names and applications were back before the game launched? The answer, to paraphrase, was that the team thought that the cute names added to the unique flavor to the game (at the unintended expense of being obtuse).
The stat confuzzlement has never been a deal-breaker to me, but it is indicative of the design and business flaws that have steered an otherwise exciting and fun MMO off-course. Being too cute and believing one’s own hype — especially about the mythological millions out there clamoring for “hardcore” endgame activities — caused Carbine Studios to develop a blind spot as to where WildStar’s true strengths lay.
No MMO launches smooth, but with enough time, dev effort, and community patience, even the most rickety ship can be righted. It is the beauty that MMOs offer that traditional video games don’t. So what can be done to get the S.S. WildStar sailing straight?
The key issues
With a year’s worth of post-launch hindsight, the key issues that crippled WildStar out of the gate are pretty obvious. The first was that the business model (subscription-only with the weird CREDD thing) was wildly optimistic for its day and age. Sure, some games could do it, but it was an unnecessary handicap that forced initial gamers to take a much harder stance much more quickly as to whether or not they would continue to play. It was the wrong business model for the game at the time it was launched, and everyone screamed it from the treetops. It was doubly weird that NCsoft, no stranger to free-to-play, gave this model the big thumbs-up.
Even more significant was how WildStar turned its back on the casual market over the course of development to focus on the hardcore crowd. Everything in WildStar suddenly had to be tougher and bigger than its rivals: dungeons, raids, and PvP. Was there overwhelming demand for raid attunements and instances that only a bare fraction of the game’s population would see? No, but that didn’t stop Carbine from defaulting on more casual-friendly features like the path system to hop on board the hardcore train.
There’s nothing wrong with developing for a wide spectrum of players, but it felt like a betrayal that as one segment got roped in, they were fed a bait-and-switch about WildStar suddenly being this elite activity MMO. Carbine pushed the hardcore line too far and set itself up for a dramatic fall when the expected population either didn’t arrive or found what was present lacking.
There are other smaller issues that could be mentioned, but I think that a misplaced business model and a misplaced attitude combined to become an obstacle to interested players and bait for disgruntled fans and other oppositionists. Strangely enough, the core game was — and increasingly continues to be — a real treat to play. WildStar is a good game with terrific art, music, NPC personalities, humor, world-building, and even engaging storytelling. But these dual albatrosses around its neck nearly sunk it.
Hard to port
I haven’t been using a nautical analogy here lightly. I often see MMO development as being a big, ungainly vessel that takes a lot of foresight and planning to guide and tremendous energy and work to change its course. It’s all well and good to blithely point out a problem and its solution, but to actually fix it could take a long time.
I’d say that after the second quarter of falling earnings and developer desertion, we started to see the ship start to change course. Carbine dropped the “hardcore” nonsense and began to focus on the crowd that it had and the content that players liked. The housing system got beefed up. Introductory shiphands and dungeons were introduced. The raid size was cut in half. A much better cosmetic wardrobe system was installed. Storytelling cutscenes and interactive elements were stressed.
Come this fall, we’ll be shedding the second albatross with the advent of free-to-play along with several other game improvements (such as the aforementioned stat refactoring). These decisions have actually introduced hopeful talk in the midst of what had been a dire discussion about WildStar’s future. And don’t get me wrong here: WildStar’s future is far from assured. F2P and easier-to-understand stats aren’t an instant win button, merely part of a strategy to give the game as close to a second launch as it could get. But it needs to be designed right and executed perfectly to avoid even more backlash.
Heading out of the storm
Other than what’s been announced, what could Carbine do to fix up its product and lay a strong foundation for WildStar’s future?
The first thing that I would love to see happen after the F2P launch and subsequent patches is for Carbine to announce that it will be giving the path system a serious overhaul. While this could be another article entirely, I believe that paths have great potential but were installed half-heartedly, taking what could have been one of the most unique aspects of the game and downgrading it to a mere gimmick. WildStar needs to tap into sandbox elements to enact this change, which is something I’ll be discussing next time in this column.
I’m also of the strong opinion that so many of the game’s interfaces need a lot of work. Crafting gives me a headache, and the less said about the ugly, non-intuitive AMP interface, the better. Plus, why is WildStar the only MMO I’ve ever seen where the default UI breaks constantly, triggering an error message and necessitating a /reloadui command? Carbine, this is the default UI. It shouldn’t decide that it’s taking the day off from doing its job.
WildStar’s going to need a lot of positive publicity if and when it rights itself, too. Winning back disenfranchised players and attracting new ones is much easier if popular opinion is the wind in its sails instead of a cracked hull. Trust can only be built up over time, they say, and that will be true here. But if the game is in a much better place now (and it is), then Carbine and NCsoft need to display public confidence in their product and get some marketing out about it.
So here’s hoping that the worst of WildStar’s history is already receding into the past. I can’t say with any certainty that it is, but I am hopeful of where it’s going and happy with the game that I log into every night.
