MMOs and the Myth of Persistence

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Bhag has a post that got my fingers twitching on MMO persistence, or more accurately, why he won’t play Fallout 4.  Truth be told, when I hit the clickbait article title, I figured his PC was dead.  Or as Isey put it, he’s a hipster.  But we were both wrong.

There’s a chunk to digest in there but the core argument is as follows:

What matters is not that the worlds are still there, waiting, when I come back to them. No, what matters is that they won’t wait. With me or without me these worlds move on. Even my characters change in my absence. Those infuriating flurries of pop-ups and tool-tips that greet the prodigal player, informing him of the myriad changes to systems and processes and items and expectations that have happened behind his back are evidence of history, of existence, of a kind of ethereal solidity that mirrors life.

I am not quite sure what games Bhag is playing (other than GW2) but I can count on a single hand the MMORPGs (that distinction is important) that actually had stuff occur while I was away.  Or had stuff that I did in the game that actually mattered. I’d certainly like that to be the case!

I remember back in EQ, farming Nagafen (or heck, Plane of Fear).  For the first bit, it was a free for all since you had to wait a week for him to respawn.  Then rotations came into play.  Now EQ has instanced all these world bosses because they can’t manage expectations.

Aside from the e-peen of world first, what exactly did the Nagafen kill do to the world?  It was an empty hall for a week, then it restarted.  When I decided in BG2 that I wasn’t going to help Viconia… she was gone for the rest of the game.  All 100+ hours of it.  When I blew up Megaton in Fallout 3, it didn’t just magically respawn 2 weeks later.

You remember when Stormwind was attacked by Deathwing at the start of Cataclysm? Do you know when the walls were repaired? (answer: 4 years later).  It didn’t matter that for 3 years he had been dead. When you log in to WoW today, as long as you’re in the same expansion, 99% of the content is identical.  Mekgineer Thermaplug has been the end boss of Gnomeragan for 11 years.  He’s died thousands of deaths and Gnomes still don’t have a place to call home.  MMORPGs are meaningless skinner boxes, where your actions have no impact on the world.  The only people who have an impact are the devs.

Sure, the devs might come in with an expansion (or 20) but that’s no different than the modding community for single player games.  Oh wait, it is. You don’t wait 18 months between mods. What MMOs offer is the complete persistence to an old saved game.  It’s not much different than groundhog day (or a skinner box).  It’s like reloading a checkpoint, for months.  Or re-running that hard Super Mario level for the 100th time.

If you’re playing WoW, you could leave for a year and not see an iota of difference.  Most others are in the 6 month range of “new content” not necessarily “changed content”, which is typically reserved for expansions.

The true benefits, to me at least, as two-fold.  First, is the financial model allowing for a game’s life span to significantly stretch longer than a typical SPRG.  Mind you, that’s offset by sequel-itis (*cough* call of duty *cough*) where each iteration keeps enough of the core to be familiar but revamps other systems.  Sure, you get to keep your character name and acheivements, but they are by and large meaningless in the expansion (hence the sale of max-level characters).  Anyhoot, the finances make the game stable.  And to be quite honest, it’s rare to find a SRPG that passes the 100 hour mark (the same can be said of quite a few MMOs).

Second and most importantly, are the people, and the variable to the equation they become.  Meeting new people, engaging and having experiences with them, not seeing them online and then being happy when they do show up… that’s the benefit MMOs bring.  EQ was a glorified chat box where you spent half the time staring at a frigging spell book to get mana, might as well chat it up.

Would people play MMORPGS if everyone else was a bot or AI?  It’s the same game right?

NOTE: I am clearly generalizing.  Minecraft, EvE, ATitD, Istaria (Horizons), SWG (pre-NGE) are clear examples of how players impact the game – or more practically, are the game.

Playing as a Team

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I take athletics for granted.  I was raised with sports all around me, though the majority was hockey.  I like to think I have an aptitude for nearly any sport, as long as I understand the rules.  I can certainly appreciate sport plays, more so the ones leading up to the great play on the highlight.  I’m mentioning this because I’ve gone to see my wife play some ball hockey lately.  She certainly has a solid understanding of the mechanics, but the nuances of team sports are not her bag.  Give her a golf club and she’s a maniac though.

Which I think is an interesting idea to explore.  Working in a team, it’s fairly easy to find the best and worst players within a group.  They usually stand out.  The folks in the middle, those are a bit harder to qualify and find their personal spot.  As good as Messi is, there are 10 other players on the pitch with him and their play allows him to shine.  Each one needs to understand their role in the team and what’s expected.  They need to meet that expectation.  And often times it’s about multiple split second decisions while trying to stick to a game plan.  If the team is focused on zone defense, then chasing the opponents is going to go poorly.  Possession-based teams shoot infrequently, in order to maintain game control.

So watching my wife play ball hockey, completely recreationally mind you, puts into sharp contrast individual skill and team skill.  The former you can certainly practice on by yourself, but the latter takes hundreds of hours of group practice.  And as an adult, when exactly are you supposed to find that time?

Vault 75

I’m slowly moving around the Commonwealth, stabbing out away from Sanctuary.  I’ve hit Vault 81, Hubris Comics (which was awesome) and last night headed east to Vault 75, which was in the basement of a high school.  The experiment here really relates to the previous topic of skill refinement.  They studied and found genetic samples of teens that showed high potential and got rid of the rest.  There’s a target practice spot within the map too, fully functional with timer and everything.  My guess is that it was like a mini-Hunger Games or Logan’s Run in there.

It was also the first time I’ve actually met enemies with the skull icon.  These are folk who are a higher level and pose an additional risk.  One even had a plasma gun, which I was smart enough to pick up.  So while my super trusty sniper rifle helped out to clear the stragglers, these 2 buggers really took me for a spin.  I mean, how many sniper shots to the eyeballs can a dude take and still not realize I’m hiding around some corner? (the answer is 5).

I’m certainly appreciating the challenge here.  I’m making more use of Dogmeat as a distraction for battles, to help flush out the enemies.  He’s great at poking Deathclaws from their burrows (you can hear them breathing, which is cool and disturbing) so that I can send a missile on their foreheads.  The game is slowly inching away from a lone survivor vibe to one of effective team play.  I have a better understanding of how the party AI works, how they can disable mines or collect some loot for you.

I rather like the discovery aspect of the small things that make the game tick.  Sure, there’s a crapton that’s the same as in Fallout 3 but the finer details are where the meat is at.  It makes the game seem fresh while being familiar.  That said if people want to play it just like F3/NV, then there’s certainly nothing stopping them.  They’d just be missing out.

Concentrate… concentrate… bah

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It was a busy and slow weekend, so I guess that evens out.  Sunday I spent a fair amount in bed resting up from a long Saturday of making tourtières.  For the past 7 years now, 4 of the guys get together to make a bunch of meat pies.  This year we ended up with 43 total, which is a pretty solid run.  We had to tweak the pastry recipe a bit and 2 of the guys had to bow out from rolling.  I kept at it and once the grove was set, it wasn’t so bad.  It was long mind you, well over 4 hours straight of rolling, but the end result was great.

The day started just before 7 and I didn’t hit the sack until near 11.  The beer and wine throughout certainly didn’t help much.  Still, it was a good day.  The wife came over and helped babysit the squirts, we had a lot of laughs and the food was great.  Can’t really ask for more.

Fallout

I’m not the world’s biggest IGN fan but Dan Stapleton is one of my go-to folks for RPGs.  In his Fallout 4 review, there’s one particular quote that rings – and I’m paraphrasing – “I feel like a kid at Easter, whose parents did a really bad job at hiding the chocolate”.

I am completely incapable of completing tasks in any reasonable sense of order.  I’ll get a quest for a given spot on my map.  I’ll quick travel to the nearest spot then start walking over.  In nearly all cases, I see a proverbial SQUIRREL!! and sure enough, I’ve been sidetracked.  It could be a dock and boat.  It could be a 3 storey building where I’m being sniped.  It could be a factory of robots.  It could be a new radio signal.  Maybe Dogmeat found me some more loot.  Next thing you know2 hours are gone, I’m waist deep in ghoul guts, have too much crap looted and need to run back to town to unload. Then I repeat the quick travel option and try again.

There’s clearly an end point here.  A time where I’ve explored it all; where I see that building, check my map and it says [complete] and I keep moving.  A time when I’m no longer wondering how many super mutants can actually fit into a closet, or how a Mireluk can fit into a puddle.  But that’s not today and likely not tomorrow.

Fallout 4 – Suspense is Fun

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The worst part of a suspense movie is the silence.  You’re on edge, not trusting the tranquility.  You know something has to go wrong.  The whole edge of your seat aspect sure does get adrenaline going.  Once the surprise finally reveals itself, the rush of panic/adrenaline is what people get a kick out of.

Fallout 4, as much as it’s an action game, it’s also one of suspense.  You’re never really quite sure what’s around that corner.  In most cases it’s some interesting form of death.  Mole rats and radscorpions are a great example of that.  They can burrow and be silent, travel large distances and show up behind you in a flash.  Heck, I found a building that had bags of meat at the front door and not a sound heard in the place.  I knew instantly that I was in Super Mutant space and hoofed it out of there. There are plenty of “oh crap” moments in the game, and I know in my case, it’s the reason I keep playing.

And this brings me to Vault 81.  I won’t go into complete spoiler territory but I think this is a perfect example of the suspense/surreal aspect of the Fallout universe.  People that have played in the past know that every single vault was in reality a social experiment.  Either their water would fail, their doors had issues, psychological testing would take place or any other weird mix.    In Fallout 3, while it seemed normal, in fact the doors were never supposed to open.  The overseer changed that.

Vault 81 seems entirely normal when you visit it.  The people are normal, and I don’t mean freakishly so.  There’s a cheating couple, a drug user, kids, a doctor, cooks and a balanced overseer.  You run a few quests, get introed to the group and the entire time you’re looking at the corners for something to go wrong.  The music is even calming and quiet.  You’re always looking for something bad to happen, and it never does.  It’s like an eternal tease.

And of course, the shoe actually drops and you get to explore the “bad side” of the vault and get a new companion for your troubles.  It’s really like a mirror universe, truth be told and very surreal.  If each environment was taken on their own, then it would be easy to digest.  Taken together, it really highlights a big gap between both.

Pacing is key, and more so in suspense.  Fallout 4 is hitting the right notes for me.

Fallout 4

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So let’s forego the usual pretext and jump right into it.  Fallout 4 is great.

It’s not perfect, there are still the usual bevy of Bethesda bugs (ooh, that was nice) and the pacing/long-game has weird stretches, but the impressive majority of the game is of high quality.

The game uses the same engine as before, the same interface for lockpicking we’ve had since Oblivion, the same computer hacking password guessing mini game as well.  VATS is back, PIPBoy is near identical to before, body parts, physics, enemy types (more or less), quest volumes, hidden nooks, books and bobbleheads abound.  There’s a lot of “the same”, but when that stuff was working before, why throw it out the door (looking at you Blizzard and Ubi).

Instead, the various systems are augmented.  VATS isn’t a freeze-time attack anymore, things just move in slow-mo.  Weapon diversity is through the roof, with the additional of weapon/armor modifications.  Enemy AI is better, where they attack from multiple sides, use cover more often and hide if they can’t reach you.  It still goes full Gump from time to time but overall it feels like you’re climbing a mountain.  A dumb super mutant still hits like a freight train (or a mini-nuke train since they carry those too).  Creating a settlement seems pretty neat but even after a fair chunk of time, I’m not quite sure of the purpose – or how to get the various settlements to work together, even with the appropriate perks.

And perks are a bit of a weird one for me.  RPGs are about numbers, but the only real numbers you have control over are your items.  I honestly have no idea what a character with 3 perception looks like compared to one with 9.  I do know that they can unlock more perks, but the base stat certainly has some effect.  Perks themselves are neat-o, and it’s a novel approach to show everything under the covers from level 1. It’s a massive wall of perk options and you get to plan your way through it.  Gone are the days of hitting level 18 and realizing to get a perk you needed to start specializing at level 10.  But that’s the general feel of the game, saturate the player with information, let them make informed choices.  So while it was certainly jarring to see, it’s very welcome.  It’s a game that’s less about the now and more about the way forward.

The less obvious stuff is also quite improved.  Controls seem a lot tighter, and firing from the hip actually works now.  The music is still well above the norm and very mood appropriate.  Character animations have moved out of the uncanny valley, voice overs are delivered by humans rather than robots and the art style has moved out of the “grey, grey everywhere!” phase we’d been stuck in.  Death is everywhere this time, with a notably higher difficulty level than before.  Companions are actually useful.  Quests are multi-tiered, usually letting you move around and explore on the way to the next goal.

And I think that’s really the theme here, continuous movement forward.  The BoS motto ad victoriam is the heart of the game, ever moving forward towards the next goal, the next victory.  I am far from complete in the game but what I’ve seen so far is very impressive.   I’d be surprised if by the tail end of this I don’t end up with over 100 hours.

You’ve Increased Your Management Skills (101)

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Training is over.  Well, that part of the training is at any rate.  I’m a little split on it mind you, given that I’ve taken training that was more “advanced” than this in the past.  So I considered it as a refresher, plus the time to meet new people and share some ideas.  To further point, while I was in this course – let’s call it level 1 for lack of a better term – I was accepted into another course in March, which ostensibly we can call level 3.

I will say that I’m glad I was taking a refresher course and not a deep dive course of completely new material.  With a new government, and cabinet (because it’s 2015 is a great line), meant that I was rather busy.  The past 10 years of government have been, um, challenging.  Lots of good people were shut out of any decision making.  That’s changed overnight.  But old habits die hard and there’s still a risk-aversion attitude. I have a very just do it attitude at work, and while that’s been a double edged sword for some time, in this particular case it’s paid dividends.  Dealing with the highest level of government throughout the day is fun.  People are people after all, and this new government clearly wants to go social rather than the totalitarian viewset of the past (which as an aside, is a poor reflection on the high quality members that were present in the past).  I’m quite curious to see how the next year or so rolls out.

BlizzCon

This was the first year where it was evident I could care less what was being spouted.  You can check out MMO-Champ for a massive log of what did go down.  The highlights are: SC2’s final expansion is live today, D3 is the ugly step brother, HS is getting a new deck and mode, HotS is eating paint chips, OW’s closed beta is starting with a launch in spring, and WoW:L is still a year out.

That last one…I dunno.  The game is at 5.5M, a near 50% loss from the WoD launch. It’s still going to be 18 months between the final patch and the expansion.  And it’s not like the con didn’t talk about WoW, a lot of it was about that MMO.  But with the marketplace today, the sheer competition of everything else, it really makes you wonder what’s being smoked in those offices.  And some of the design promises just seem like a massive stretch for a 10 year old game.  After the sales pitch and delivery of WoD…I’d expect that most people have just plain ol’ given up and are ready to move on.

Wildstar

I decided to draw up another alt, this time a Stalker.  Back to my Rogue roots I guess.  Having gone through the leveling cycle a LOT, the first few zones were pretty quick runs.  The trick is to keep a 1-2 quest level buffer above your current level and simply move on when it gets easy.  More specifically, avoid quests that are tagged as tasks.  Think of it like SWTOR’s class quests being the most efficient XP route, same here.

So he’s level 30 now, has done some group content and the broad strokes of each zone.  The F2P tweaks and previous changes are obvious enough.  There are no more 5+ person quests, just 2+.  Mind you, soloing a 2 person boss is now actually hard.  The Stalker’s stealth mode is pretty sweet, making infiltration much easier.  Having a mount at level 1 is awesome.  Fast travel rocks.  Enemy HPs have been tweaked.  Quest objectives have been standardizes (very rare where you need to “farm” a quest for drops) and the social tools are super.  It really puts into contrast what was in the game at launch and what’s there today.

I will say that the burst damage appeal of the Stalker is neat, and much different than the sustain of my Esper, or the build up from my Engineer.  The downside is that if the enemy isn’t dead in 5 seconds, it turns into a slog.  When it does work, whoo is it satisfying.

The largest downside to the game right now is the lag, and not the network kind.  I’m well under 100ms ping and there is a consistent 3s lag that shows up every couple fights.  It’s much worse on weekends.  T reminds me a lot of WoW’s vanilla launch, and well, every expansion since.  It’s rather clear that the servers are unable to take the load, and it begs the question what NCsoft is going to do about it.  Always a tough question in a F2P environment.  My guess is that they are going to defer this issue for a little while.  I know I don’t care about it so much, as of today, because “war, war never changes”.

Fallout 4

So, early reviews claim this is the second coming.  I’m looking forward to the Bethesda bug-fest, combined with an amazing world and story.  I bought the game and it’s pre-loading for my play session in the evening.  Tell my wife and kids I love them, and I’ll see them in a month.

Away On Training

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This week is training week.  It’s also work-is-going-crazy week too, since a new cabinet is about to be named and that has a rather significant impact.  I’m not quite sure how I got nominated as the “he can fix it” guy, but I’m certainly the key point on a few of these things.

Ok, I’m lying.  I know exactly how I got here.

The training I’m on is about developing management skills.  One of the first topics is personality profiles, and this course focuses on the DISC model.  There’s a self-assessment as part of the course and it provides 2 results – one for “environment” and the other for “baseline”.  The former is how you are at work, the latter for general cases.

My baseline is an even D/C.  I like to analyse (duh!) and make decisions.  I’m not terribly concerned about what people think of me.

At work though, I am a solid D.  Everything else drops off the map.

So, given that I project an air of dominance, to a massive degree, I get the fun problem cases.  There’s a saying that goes “if you want something done, give it to the busy person”, so my plate seems to get bigger every year.

And while that’s manageable for pieces of time, there’s a point where the return on personal investment goes away.  There’s only so long you can juggle all those issues, manage that stress.  The whole idea of work/life balance is a very hard thing to manage when you’re tasked with making firm decisions, constantly.

So while I’ve been managing for some time and these personality profiles aren’t exactly news to me, I’m more in this for selfish reasons.  How do I personally manage all these various issues without going off the deep end.  And training, especially group training, is awesome for that.

I get to bounce ideas off other members, see their own experiences, relate to mine and work on refining my skills and style.  It isn’t so much about finding a true balance for myself, I know that isn’t possible, or even likely.  I will always be an outlier, and I’ve accepted that.  What I can do is find additional coping mechanisms, different communication tools to relate with other personality types.  Find a way to delegate some of these files, and do it in such a way that I feel comfortable having it leave my desk and that the person feels capable and supported while working on it.

I know it sounds pie in the sky, wishy-washy.  And truth be told, it is for a large part.  But when you get put into a position where people report to you, where you have authority, building a trusting relationship where all parties benefit (and you stay sane) is really the entire point.

I’ve already gotten a lot of useful info, looking forward to the remainder of the week.

Finances Are Important

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Cottage Time

After having run countless budget exercises, having met our financial advisor and talked to our broker, it looks like we’ll be moving ahead with the cottage purchase.  My wife can attest that my level of anxiety this week has been through the roof, though the last 12 hours or so have been much better.  As is clear with all of my posts, I’m a numbers guy, and I love analytics.  So when a large purchase like this comes around, not only do I get excited, I start going all over the place in terms of options/scenarios.

I remember on Sunday talking with my wife about the absolute need to take those three steps (budget, advisor, broker) in order to come to a conclusion.  I’m not buying a damn coat here, I’m buying property that I need to pay for the next 20+ years.  She isn’t as well versed in all this financial stuff as I am, which to be honest, ignorance is clearly bliss in this case.  Still, she knew it meant a lot to me and suffered through my protestations to get this going.  After it all being complete (well, the paperwork is next) she’s certainly more appreciative of the nuances within.  We spent more than a few hours looking over the budget spreadsheet, so I’m slowly converting her!

Which brings up an interesting topic, one that the advisor brings up from time to time – people do not know how to budget.  I don’t mean worry about every penny but I do mean understanding where the heck your money is going.  I don’t get how budgeting 101 isn’t mandatory in high school.  I remember helping out my brother a few years ago with his budget.  What he thought he was spending was actually less than half of what he actually was spending – and that was just fixed costs.  Brining those numbers to the front really shocks people into action.

Not everyone needs an official financial advisor, but everyone should have a friend who’s really good at accounting.  Everyone needs a budget.  There are plenty of sites for it too.  And evaluating your spending based on your budget is super important, so that you modify it as need be.  Heck, most banks will offer the service for free, then set up extra bank accounts and automated transfers between them.  As an aside, no one should ever pay banking fees – if you are, change banks.

All of that to say that a solid budget makes life so much easier, since you’d then have the basic tools to manage your money.  Heck, you might even realize that you have way more freedom than you thought.

Tablet Woes

The tablet fix still isn’t working.  I can read the device through USB but the screen (not the digitizer) will simply not work.  Next step is to try a HDMI output and see which component is faulty.  I was really hoping it was just a loose cable, but it wasn’t any of the obvious ones.  The sort of good news is that I’m realizing that I don’t need the tablet to get work done.  It’s incredibly practical, but not essential.

Wildstar Runes

By far the #1 page on my site these last few days has been my rune guide.  I’ve updated it with an example near the bottom, on an ilvl90 weapon for my engineer.  I used service tokens to re-roll the slot (all the tokens were from the daily login bonus) and it’s in pretty good shape.  It went from 315 secondary stats to 1115, plus set bonuses that come out to an extra 150 points or so.

It’s a very noticeable boost, though there’s more tweaking I need to do on other pieces.  I took my engineer to the Badlands and the 2man bosses within (bone dog and spider queen) dropped down much faster.  Even the regular enemies now fall down with a single electrocute channel.

I am surprised/disappointed as to how much runes are a major factor in end game now and as to how little NCsoft explains this to the player base.  It would be an easy argument to make that someone in fully runed ilvl60 gear would be more powerful than someone in un-runed pre-raid gear.  It’s why gating content behind ilvl is so tricky, you can’t really measure rune power with it.  And even some runes are very expensive for little benefit.  The raid level runes (ilvl 100) are cheaper than the dungeon runes (ilvl80), and by a wide margin.

I guess that’s why the guide is so popular.  People are starting to figure out how important runes are.

Rare Isn’t Always Good

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About a month ago, my youngest dropped my tablet and the screen cracked.  Then she did it again.  Truth be told, she’s dropped it more times than I could count… oddly uncoordinated child.  Anyhow, that made the device mostly unusable, since it detected touches all the time.  I did what any self-respecting IT guy would do – I went a-googling.

First hurdle, I have a TF701.  This is one of those Asus transformer tablets that works with android.  It’s a great tablet, quite powerful, good disk space, came with a keyboard that physically connected… all great.  But it was also one of those limited edition doohickeys, or at least you’d think so based on the google results.  I had replaced my wife’s Samsung screen (digitizer) a few years ago, so I knew that it was possible.  Sadly, there are no screens for sale in North America, so eBay it is!

80$ later (free shipping) and 30 days later, I received the digitizer.  No instructions, no tools.  Back to google.  I crap you not, there is 1 single video on how it’s done and it’s in Russian.  There are T700t videos, but they are not the same form factor passed step 1.  There are hidden screws (the extra tiny ones that require special tools), extra tape and removing the digitizer is a massive pain.

2 hours later, many 4 letter words later, I had the digitizer off and was ready to rebuild.  That part was faster but much less fun.  The power is back but the screen doesn’t display anything, so more troubleshooting is needed.  I know the thing works though, since the alarm went off this morning and I was unable to do anything but snooze it.  Ugh.

After 30 minutes of fiddling, I had to stop it.  I was ready to just throw it in the trash at that point.  Deep breath.  It’s going to be ok.

Engineer

My engineer has a fair bit less plat than my esper.  An order of magnitude in fact, so, time to see what I can do about that.

Making money typically comes in three main forms.  First is maxing out experience for the week, then completing quests for cash.  Each daily hub generally awards 10-15% of the bar.   So if you’re only running dailies, it’s 2-3 days’ worth to cap out.

Second is repeatedly running an expedition like M-13.  You usually end up with 1-2 purples, ok gold rewards and a token for more cash.  It takes a bit over 10 minutes to run the easy ones, so you can make a few plat an hour.  PvP is an option too, about 20g per win, though you really should be in a pre-made to make this work faster than expeditions.

Lastly is working the AH.  I have a post about that!  The real flips occur on the commodity exchange, as you can set buy and sell orders.  The problem with that system is that it’s even more based on volume than a more standard AH (buy/sell only), meaning massive price fluctuations.  I’ve had to install a mod to keep track of all the various price points and I’ll be waiting a few days to find some trends.  I think my main focus will be on Runes.  Not only the base price points but also in terms of selling completed high quality Runes as well.  There’s a noticeable markup in that field, if I can get superb components at a low enough price.

Aside from that, I’m re-learning the limitations of the engineer.  I find action combat very key heavy, almost a button masher.  Engineers don’t have much of that, what with Electrocute being a channelled ability and the rest being mostly based on cooldowns.  There’s a whole lot of waiting, then a frantic smash of many buttons, then waiting again.  It’s an odd pace and really hard to find the right rhythm.  It’ll come though.

#Wildstar – PvE Gearing Guide

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So you’re a fresh 50.   Problem is that the level 50 content is using you as a treadmill.  Wildstar is an MMORPG like the others, and getting better gear makes a world of difference.  This guide is based on the following reddit post, with my own additions.

First off, you need to know that items are clearly marked in power level, called item level (or ilvl for short).  For the most part, an increase in ilvl is an increase in power.  There are slight variations mind you, in that you want assault power for DPS and support power for Heals/Tank.  Mixing them is a bad call.

In terms of item power level, it generally goes like this (items with an * require a group to complete):

Quest Gear –> Challenge Gear  –> Expedition Gear –>  PvP Gear –> Contract Gear –> Adventure Gear –> *Dungeon Gear –> *Raid Gear

Finally, items have rune slots.  You can buy a bunch from the AH for pretty cheap.  I personally wouldn’t spend more than 10g per rune until you reach Expedition level gear. These have a dramatic impact on item power.  A fully runed item can double in power, and it doesn’t have to be expensive runes either!  See my rune guide for more info.  The general rule of thumb is “rune for groups”.

First Things First

I suggest you visit the Auction House and scan for gear upgrades.  You want to buy anything under 10g that’s also an upgrade.  This is likely to replace most of your quest gear.  Filter by item level, and sort Buy Now: Low to High.  *as of this posting, the default AH only filters up to ilvl 60.  Download the following fix to address this.  You want to filter for items above ilvl 61.

Challenge Gear (ilvl 50)

When you complete challenges in a level 50 zone, you get points that fill a progress bar (press “L” and look at the challenges tab).  The reward for completing the bar is a random item.  This should be done fairly naturally during your play.  I wouldn’t chase this gear, simply keep it in mind when playing.

Expeditions (ilvl 60)

Press N, look at the expeditions tab.  You can solo all of these at 50, though some are a bit harder than others.  There are item drops within, but what you’re looking for is 2 things.  Completing an expedition rewards Renown, used to buy PvE gear.  Getting a gold rating on each (completing all optional objectives) unlocks the ability to purchase an AMP upgrade.  Expeditions are the best way to generate money in PvE – M-13 and Infestation are my favorites.

PvP Gear (ilvl65)

Find the PvP season 2 vendor and buy whatever is an upgrade.  The PvP stat isn’t great mind you, but it’s likely better than the other gear you have so far, excepting AH gear.  Yes, this means you can skip all the gear before this.

Contracts (ilvl 57 to 80)

In the capital city you can find the contract board.  The level 2 contracts are easy enough to solo, regardless of your gear level.  The level 3 contracts are a pain, unless you find someone advertising in general (exception is the Star Comm Basin event, which is every 2 hours).  Getting to rank 5 of the contract rewards gives an ilvl80 item.  The rest are randomly selected and of lower quality.  It’ll take a couple weeks to complete a single pass through to rank 5 rewards.

Adventures (ilvl 68)

Press N, look at the adventures tab.  It takes 5 folk to complete, takes 20-45 minutes per and the loot rewards are decent enough.  Use the Glory you get as a reward to buy even more pieces from the vendor in the capital city.  Gold on everyone gets an Ability Point unlock.

Dungeons (ilvl 78)

Press N, look at the dungeons tab.  All dungeons are not created equal.  You want to be around ilvl 60 to do the basic ones.  Do not enter a dungeon unless you have put in runes inside your existing gear.  You should leave here with ilvl 80 gear on average, allowing you to enter raids.  The general consensus on difficulty is Stormtalon’s Lair (STL) –> Kel Vorath (KV) –> Skullcano –> Shield of the Sword Maiden (SSM).  Though in truth, if KV isn’t a rather easy pass, the last 2 are going to eat you up.

AMPs and Ability Point Unlocks

When you hit 50, you’re given 41 Ability Points and 47 AMPs to spread around.  Through various items, you can unlock an additional 7 Ability Points (48 total) and 10 AMPs (57 total).  There are quite a few ways to do this:

  • Complete your Path quests to the maximum level.  You’ll get 1 of each. One time only.
  • Complete every Expedition to Gold, that gives an AMP. One time only.
  • Complete every Adventure to Gold, that gives an Ability. One time only.
  • Each Dungeon has a chance to drop one or the other.
  • Complete Blighthaven or Defile to maximum rep gives 1 Ability each.  Takes about a week or so to max. One time only.
  • Complete Crimson Badlands, Malgrave, Northern Wastes or StarComm Basin for an extra AMP each, but that will take a few weeks. One time only.
  • PvP sells Ability and AMPs for Prestige.  4/5K for the first one, then 8/10K for every additional one.
  • Elder Gems sell Ability and AMPs for 300-450 each.  Unlimited.
  • Open World combat and PvP sometimes reward them as loot, though this is pretty rare
  • You can buy them on the AH, though unlikely to be cheap enough for a fresh 50.

I’d suggest you focus on Ability points first, since the tier unlocks are generally more powerful than an AMP upgrade.  Having 3 skills at T8 is a pretty big deal.