CBT3- State of the Beta, July 16, 2013

from DapperDonatelli, Carbine Design Director

A little over a month ago I posted a big update about the feedback we were seeing in beta and the things we were doing to address it. After considering a variety of options drawn from your feedback and our vision for WildStar, we've decided on a number of changes to the game. Please note that most of these systems are currently in the design stage, so it may be a few beta phases before you see any of them in the game. However, we wanted to bring you into our plans early to give you some idea of how we're planning on reacting to your feedback. Let's break down the upcoming changes in the context of the problems we'd like to address:

Leveling doesn't feel exciting enough / Too many systems are left unexplained to the player!

Currently, most of the game systems are thrown at the player at once. From the moment you log into the world, you've got access to gear customization, milestones, ability slots, and more.

While we love the idea that players can start messing with these systems immediately, it has in practice proven to be extremely overwhelming to a new player. Further, it is simply not the right way to teach a player our systems.The design team has met and put together a detailed plan for how we roll out the game systems to the player from level 1 through level 50. Here's an example design of that plan, covering levels 1-10 (subject to change)

Link: http://imgur.com/LPFX7Ag

By planning this out level by level, it makes it much easier for our team to visualize how we introduce systems to the player, and makes the new player experience much smoother and more understandable. On top of this, we're also going to make sure that when players gain a level, they are made aware of the new content, systems, and awards they've unlocked. We'll let you know what new abilities are available for purchase, which new Dungeon is now in your Group Finder, and the like.

We've also got an internal team that is focused completely on the tutorial/new player experience. We'll be introducing a better UI which allows you to review tutorials you've missed or unlocked previously, as well as finishing up the Arkship zones (the level 1-3 content for both factions) which will teach basic game concepts to players.

Challenges don’t really feel compelling enough to be repeatable.

We're addressing a few things with Challenges to continue improving the system:

Challenges will now count the "first" kill/collect you do for the challenge instead of starting at zero.

Reward selection will no longer be gated by completing bronze/silver/gold. Completing a challenge at any tier will allow you to select any of the rewards.

Completing higher tiers will grant you a larger roll bonus for the reward (2x for Bronze, 4x for Silver, 10x for Gold).

Cooldowns have been removed completely… you can now repeat a challenge ad-infinitum if you enjoy it (or if you want to go for a different reward).

Tanks don't feel tanky, and armor isn't as powerful as it should be.

You can find the dirty details in Clynch's combat update, but we're removing armor graduation from the game. For example, Warriors will start with Heavy Armor, rather than having to wait until mid-game to graduate from Medium to Heavy armor. On top of this, we are also improving Armor Mitigation so that Heavy Armor feels much more powerful than Light Armor does.

With these changes, we have also removed Armor Graduation from the game. For those of you that are unfamiliar with this system, it involved having certain classes get access to better armor at around level 35. For example, a Stalker would have started the game in Light Armor, but at level 35 they would have graduated and received access to Medium Armor. Likewise for the Warrior, who would start in Medium and graduate to Heavy. Now, your class will start with the armor type they would have eventually graduated to, which should lead to improvements in the experience of a class from the very start. As an example, the Warrior will now feel more ‘tanky’ at the start of the game, instead of waiting until level 35 to gain this feeling.

I want to know my progress through a zone!

We'll be creating an optional UI element that consolidates information about progress in Quests, Challenges, Events and more. This will help players know if they have completed all of the content in an area or if there are areas they've missed.

Mob tagging and shared quest credit are not emblematic of a modern MMO.

Our solution to this hotly debated topic is by far the biggest change we've got planned, and it will fundamentally change the entire quest system in our game. After taking a step back and evaluating our current questing system, we've come up with a redesign that we believe addresses the concerns our players have expressed about the current quest/tagging system while remaining true to the vision of WildStar.

So, what is this change? Well, it comprises two major shifts in design:

1. We are going to remove numerical quest objectives from the game (i.e. "Kill X Vinds" and "Collect X Sentient Veggies") and instead introduce a "quest completion bar." For kill quests, this bar will increment the player’s quest progress in relation to the amount of XP earned. For interact quests, this bar will simply increment in set amounts for each completed interaction. This helps improve the system in the following ways:

a. By basing quest completion off XP gains, players can now choose to go after larger targets or smaller targets and earn quest progress appropriate for those choices. While killing harder things is slower, you will earn more quest progress for it. Those who prefer to fight easy things will kill faster, but progress more slowly for it. Because the full completion amount will be directly based off our XP formulas, we can then tweak these amounts easily in the future to adjust quest completion rates as needed.

b. This approach also helps groups stay on target for leveling progression. Even though groups will destroy creatures much faster, they will need to kill more in order for each player to earn the credit needed to complete the quest objective.

2. By making this change, we have the opportunity to remove mob tagging, with regards to XP, from the game. XP gained per mob death will generally be based on the amount of damage a player contributes to that kill. This will still encourage players to group (where they would get full XP credit for the kill rather than a percentage), but also encourages players to help out a passerby in the open world in order to receive a comparable XP reward.