The Benefits of Gating

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I’ve long said that gearscore is one of the worst methods of determining a player’s value.  It just happens to be the easiest.  Playing in Wildstar after having done a fair chunk of FF14 sure does make you think.

When the family went to the zoo this summer, there was a section that had a height limitation, 48 inches.  My 5 year old was just under that.  She’s a giant (both are) but it still was’t tall enough.  Which is good, since the section had a clear strength requirement as well – I’d guess 7-8 year olds were the target demo.  What kind of test do they use then?  Pull ups and push ups?

Gaming isn’t much different.  Activities require 2 things, in varying amounts – skill and power.  FF14 takes a relaxed approach to this, with a 2.5s global timer in combat.  This slows everything down and the skill bar therefore drops down a lot in turn.  It then turns into a power game, where it’s slightly easier to balance.  FF14’s LFG system has a gear level requirement for some content – in order that you apply some meaningful benefit to random groups.

The question is always, what if I’m 1ilvl below?  Am I really that bad?  No, since in FF14 the gear level is so easily acquired.  You could certainly try the content at a lower level but a tank/healer that’s undergeared is a risk.  DPS… well that can be managed.

WoW has a gearscore requirement, that’s really more of a joke right now.  The only thing it prevents is alts joining top tier LFR 3 patches late.  Gear is like candy in WoW.  WoD forced people to go through proving grounds, which is great.  Probably #2 in my quality of life changes the game has applied after flex raids.

TSW has gear and skills, though only a single gate.  The Gatekeeper battles are what keeps you from top-tier content – ensuring that not only do you have the gear but also the skills and understanding to use them.  A fresh player will have a lot of trouble the first time in, though it does get better.

Wildstar though, that’s a different one.  Combat is extremely hectic, what with telegraphs all over the place.  The skill level is quite high, compared to what players learn while leveling.  What’s the last MMO you played where you needed to stun an enemy?  I mean to complete the content, not to get some sort of achievement.  Where did you need to coordinate interrupts in 5 group content? Most fresh level 50s don’t even have an interrupt slotted.  That means that skill level is super important.  Aside from raid attunement, there’s no content gating aside from level.

Some folks are pushing for an ilvl gate for dungeons.  While PvP gear can get you to ilvl70 for just a few gold, it’s not like ilvl alone allows you to complete content.  People still stand in the red.  People don’t slot runes, or amps, or use a mixture of support and assault gear.  There’s just a whole pack of variables well beyond ilvl that impact play.  And it’s those variables that are causing some frustration in the game today.  People are simply not used to the mechanics and admittedly, they are quite a bit more complicated that other games out on the market.

So my suggestion to Wildstar is the following:

  • A veteran dungeon has a pre-requisite that the Protostar dungeons be completed first
    • This ensures that the player has an understanding of group mechanics
  • A veteran dungeon has an ilvl requirement of 70 and that half the runes have to be filled
    • 70 is actually quite low, PvP gear can be bought at that level.
    • People need to rune their gear.  Not all slots are equal though and to save rerolls, only half need them.  That gives about 7 runes, which is about 1000 stat points or so.
    • Even at this ilvl, it’s should only be Stormtalon to start.
    • This ilvl requires a good amount of skill.

Anecdote quickly.  When my Esper was a fresh 50, I had a really, really hard time with the daily quest hubs, especially the 2man missions (spider queen is a good example).  It required a specific build to complete.  Now, with an ilvl in the mid 80s, it’s actually quite simple.  As if I had an additional 10 levels to the character.  The ilvl power curve in Wildstar is significant.

If the skill level in Wildstar was lower, then the ilvl itself could drop a fair chunk too.  It’s not, and unless there’s some sort of mandatory training (which any veteran player could do with ease), it’s a massive wall of hurt for new players.  The Protostar dungeons are a quick and easy way for people to learn the group mechanics, test out builds and ensure they can do group content.  It would be even better if they could be soloed (like proving grounds and the gatekeeper) in order to save time in a queue.  Keeping people playing is important and continual failure without feedback/practice does the opposite.

Unexpected Change

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Alrighty then.  It would seem I’ve woken up to a new government.  I did my duty and voted last night, bringing the little squirts along.  We were going to “hide behind the boxes” as my youngest put it.  And it would seem that I was not alone.  Canada rarely has large sweeps in office, unless there are mitigating factors – mainly an economy in the toilet.  We have one of the highest GDPs, 7% unemployment and a nomial inflation rate – so all quite good.  We’re not at war, inside or out the country.  Even the governing party was only in a majority for 4 years, finishing off a 9 year term.  No, this was an election that was won on ideals.  It was eerily similar to the Obama campaign.

Our previous PM did a lot of good; got through a recession, cut back on government spending, made significant trade agreements (though not all are ratified). Unfortunately, that office also applied some of the most divisive wedge politics ever seen in our country. If you’re at all familiar with the US style attack ads, those were pretty much non-existent in Canada up until a few years ago.  Most candidates focused on themselves, what they could do.  The party line however… not so much.  There were dozens of new and modified laws that brought us back 50 years in social liberties, many of which were overturned by the Supreme Court.  For all the good that was done, there was always that tinge of horrible right next to it.

It would seem that Canadians as a whole had enough of that.  From 35 seats to 184 is unheard of in our country’s history.  From a distant third to a majority.  Even the other parties who didn’t make out as well (Green and NDP) were happy it was anything but the old guard.  Heck, here’s Paul Dewar’s concession speech, after having lost one of the only seats the NDP thought they had no chance of losing.

“In fact, let’s celebrate tonight, because it’s the end of cynicism, it’s the end of Harper, it’s a joyous occasion,” he added.

It’s abundantly clear that it was less about who to vote for as much as it was “how do we get rid of these folks?”  Now it’s time for the new crew to step up and follow through with their promises.  Fingers crossed.

Shade’s Eve

I ran Wildstar’s event quests last night, and was neatly impressed.  There are some basic quests in town to complete, nothing terribly complex.  Then there’s a Trick or Treat quest that has you visit 8 different housing plots.  That one is neat since it has you see other plots but actually finding plots with the specific candy you need is a major pain (thanks Reddit!).  Plus, you’re not actually tracking the candy, just a %, so that needs a little tweak methinks.

The neato quest is an expedition-like zone called Quiet Downs.  There are 3 parts to it, with varying levels of success.  The first is a maze-like portion where you’re given a flashlight and instructions to find a fountain.  Little critters can come around and knock you out, but you can also outrun them.  You’re timed here, and my first run through I failed this portion.  I personally find this portion of the zone too long, though the suspense portion is cool.  The 2nd part is more an interactive play, with no real impact other than to the story.  The 3rd part is a mini dungeon, similar to the Gauntlet ship layout.  Kill some ooze, baddies and then the big boss.  I will say that Jack Shade looks amazing, and the voice acting is tops.

All those quests give event currency, used to buy housing items, pets, costumes or a hoverboard.  I’m pretty sure I can unlock most everything with daily logins.  There are 2 items in the cash stop, a fabkit for the house (single use) and a mount (single character) that are drawing some ire.  Each is about $20 and since it can only be used once… that’s ticking a lot of people off.  Issue 1 with the fabkit (which admittedly is pretty neat) is that you can’t remove it, or you lose it.  Issue 2 is that you can only use the items once.  Carbine is working on making more things go across the entire account though, so for the meantime I’m just stacking everything on my Esper.  I’ll pick up the mount, since it comes out to being the cost of a monthly sub – plus who doesn’t want to ride a flaming ghost/skeleton warpig?

I like this event because it doesn’t make you run all over the darn world, or force you to do PvP.  It’s contained, it looks good, the story is ok and the prices (outside cash stop) are more than reasonable.

Go Out and Vote

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In this lovely part of the country I call home, last weekend was the weekend for fall colors.  At least in terms of leaves still being on the trees and not in your yard.  The downside to last weekend is that it was bloody cold and we had quite a few snow flurries.  Not exactly pleasing.  Still, from the car it was quite a sight.  And there’s nothing like a cold day that makes you want to stick yourself under a blanket and not move for a year.

Get Out and Vote, Eh

Today is Election Day in Canada, where we vote for our next Space Olympian (Prime Minister).  It was the longest official campaign since the 1880s, though in reality it has nothing to compare to the US preparing 4 years ahead of time.  We have 3 official large parties, 2 small ones (Green and BQ) and then a bunch of fringe ones. Choice is good, though 4 of those options are all left leaning.  Canada is an interesting country, with fiscal conservatives and social liberals, by and large.  Aside from the past 8 years, it’s been a rather centrist country, without too many wild swings in either direction.

This campaign hasn’t been much fun, with a rather ridiculous amount of vitriol and rhetoric going around.  Apparently I have to worry about brothels popping up next to my house if I vote a certain way.  I’m really curious as to who actually believes that’s a possibility – and then shake their hand.  As with many large countries, we use a first-past-the-post electorate system.  The main flaw with that system is that over time it reduces options to just 2 (as occurred in the US) – which generally means much wider swings from one party to the next.  There are better systems out there…but they cost more money.  Who knows where we’ll end up.

All that to say that I’m voting today.  Every able Canadian should vote.  People have died for that privilege.  It’s a duty I’ll be certain to instill in my children because every single vote counts.

Wildstar

This weekend was double PvP currency weekend.  I’m clearly not the intended audience, as PvP as a whole turns me off quite a bit – stat based PvP even more so.  Still, I gave it a few runs since the queues were instant.  I played once as a DPS and the rest of the time as a healer.  Context though, I’ve healed in PvE content.  The gear isn’t the best, only around ilvl 80, but it gets the job done.  With one exception, I was outhealed by a factor of 2:1.  On a PvP bonus weekend, that’s not a big deal to me.  It does however, pretty much ensure that I won’t be PvPing in the future as it’s a stat wall I have no intention of climbing.  The maps are neat, and the objectives short enough but it still doesn’t scratch any itch that I have.

I’ve been reading on the Wildstar economy, primarily from the Reddit forum.  Either Entity is immune to pricing fluctuations or I am missing a 0 on some item prices.  I find it absolutely hilarious to see people posting about making #plat on rune fragments when they haven’t sold for over a gold in a long time.  I’ve been back about 2 weeks, I’ve made about 30 plat so far, which was ok enough.  I’ve put my foot back into the flipping business, with moderate results.  I’m sure I could park a mule there and just flip like crazy but that’s not much fun is it?  I do know that it costs about 100p to unlock all the ability/amp slots if I bought them on the AH, but since there are other paths, I’ll try that out instead.

Final note, I haven’t really found any big limitations being a F2P player who had a box copy – or at least, not enough to motivate me to become a signature member. I appreciate not being nickel and dimed or get spammed (NW I’m looking at you) for sure, but at the same time, I’m curious as to where I should spend my money.  TSW, Marvel Heroes and Path of Exile had ways for me to drop coin.  I guess the store is just a little too young at the moment.  There are a lot of people playing, word of mouth is great, so hopefully that translates into some forward movement on income.

WoW – Numbers and Trends

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Alt-Chat has a neat post that triggered a thought.  Then it had me dig a bit deeper around the data analysis of the game.

Let’s start with the following MMO-Champ post on garrison achievements.  I think it would be fair to say that raiders have top level garrisons.  Maybe not so much that they have invested in the monument achievements exactly, but it’s certainly a barometer. That half the current playerbase has hit 100,000 apexis crystals isn’t really that tough to believe.  We’re nearing the 1 year mark and those things drop everywhere.  Epic crafting is also pretty simple, gated only by time.  Legendary ring at 18%, you’d kind of hope it was higher – but it’s not too far from the “complete all normal raiding” sitting at 13%.  The Mythic achievement being low makes sense, you’d sort of expect it to aim for the top 1%.

Pet battles though…that’s an odd one. It was super popular in MoP.  There’s more data here, where it seems ~25% of playerbase has had some depth in pet battles (getting quite a few to level 25).  Though there’s a rather significant drop after the 300 battle mark.  Even more data here in terms of the number of battles, where clearly the WoD implementation didn’t resonate with players.  Also quite evident, nobody gives a toot about PvP pet battles.  I wonder what Wilhelm has to say about that, given his series of pet battle posts.

Flight in Dreanor is also an interesting topic, to me at least.  Here’s some data on it.  It shows that ~30% of the active players have the appropriate achievement, though about 60% have the basics down.  Very telling is the drop from 100-200 treasures, as only the first is needed for flight.  Even after getting the ability to fly, very few are chasing treasures.  Given those numbers, it really is a head scratcher as to how important flight is to the player base if 60% didn’t think it worthwhile.

Class representation per item level is also pretty neat.  The ones with a downward trend would indicate a more casual/non-raiding attitude.  Rogues and Monks have neat low ilevel appeal but then people either quit them, or go deep into raiding.  5x more Hunters than Monks is pretty darn telling though. I would have thought better representation since Monks are a triple-spec, sort of like Paladins and Druids, but it’s also a class with weird momentum.

I’m trying to find an up to date version of this, but this March 2015 data on raiding is telling, about 2 months after Blackrock (raid #2) opened.  60% completed the first raid on a minimum of LFR, 8% for raid #2.  0.4% completed Mythic raid #1 (that’s about 25,000 people) and I don’t think it’s worth talking about raid #2 (~1200 people).  These numbers align with what was seen in SoO back in the MoP days.  The trend was around 70/40/25/10 for the first tiers and 50/20/15/1 for the later tiers.  I’d be surprised if Mythic raiding was even an option in Legion.  Given the user base, it’s pretty striking how few people actually bother with it.  It’s hard to see the breakdown in WoD for Normal & Heroic with that data, but the trends are similar to what happened in MoP.  I guess the days of banging your head against a single boss for a week are gone, people would want some sort of steady progress. I would find it hard to argue that WoW being more casual killed Mythic raiding as the % is less important than the actual number of players.  If anything it would seem that Mythic raiders just moved on.

I’d be hyper interested in the 5 man dungeon achievements, per expansion.  WoD had some good ones that were completely useless in terms of gearing, but MoP’s launch had some neat ideas.  Once Timewalking is fully fleshed out, maybe there’s some data from that.  If it’s anything lower than 50%, I’d be truly surprised.

Analytics are a tough one, since you’re often missing context.  Raids in WoD are arguably much more accessible due to Flex, so that Mythic content is only about prestige/e-peen, clearly less important than originally thought.  Pet battles, once a darling, have been underused in the expansion.  PvE content is highly active, given the apexis numbers.  Flight has only minor appeal to the playerbase, either indicating that people never leave their garrisons or that the movement system in WoD is sufficiently good to not be worth the effort to improve (my vote on the former).  Class balance is actually pretty good, if you look at it objectively, with only small variances within a class.

It’s too early for a full post-mortem on the WoD expansion but there are certainly clear trends that emerge.  I’m quite curious as to how the developers can/will try to use those trends to their advantage.

Alts and Accessibility

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I played most of WoW Vanilla and the start of TBC before taking a break.  I clearly remember coming back and being so far behind the attunement curve, that raiding in WoW was pretty much done for me (at least until LFR gave me easy mode).  Sure, each expansion had the allure of a new set of raids (or recycled ones like in LK) but after being OUT of it, there was little motivation to get back into it.  RIFT was pretty similar, where a summer vacation for a few weeks broke the raiding guild into two pieces that never recovered.  Since that point, my will to raid has been pretty darn low.

The exception to this rule is FF14.  Raids (that have no trash I should add) are part of the leveling process and 8 to 16 players in size.  Sure, it’s LFR, but the challenge is there for all of them, unless you greatly outgear it.  I know I’ve wiped more on those raids than in all the dungeons combined.  Once I hit level 70, I’d queue up for the various daily roulette options, including the raids.  I enjoyed it a lot, made friends and joined a guild.

Ok, quick aside for a minute.  One of my favorite all-time games is Shadow of the Colossus.  I remember reading about it well before it was released and people were clamoring that an “all boss” game couldn’t work.  Well… suck eggs, it worked wonders.  The game was structured without loot drops (aside from bosses) so if it did have trash, it would be meaningless aside from time padding.  FF14’s raid structure is pretty darn close to the same – have engaging bosses, get rid of the rest.  Food for thought.

Back on topic.  FF14’s raids are accessible.  WoW’s were not, but then there weren’t exactly 100 games to choose from before LK came out.  Wildstar’s were not at launch (or ESO’s version but only due to veteran levels).  There’s a solid difference between making something accessible, and then making something engaging.

Diablo 3’s seasons are a pretty darn good example.  The Story Mode was required for each new season, up until Season 4.  Story Mode is fine and dandy, but it has half the loot of adventure mode and takes 5x as long.  Plus, after having done it a bajillion times, you’ve kind of proven capable no?  This gets into the whole character/player debate, where having to unlock more stuff on a separate character is mostly padding.

I get it, battle scars and all that jazz.  But the accessibility door for end-game content is measured in two distinct elements, which are related but not equal – time and stats.  Time is padding.  You need it, otherwise the game takes 4 hours to complete.  It’s not a measure of skill, it’s a measure of patience.  Daily quests, rep grinds and attunements on trivial content are all time-based.  Stats are just plain gear checks.  With enough skill/experience, you can often speed up the gear check process.

The first time through, people are willing to suck up the time portion and lack of experience makes the stat portion take a while.  The second time through the time portion is annoying, and the stat portion can be overcome more quickly.  I’m certainly not expecting an alt to be as powerful as a main without any investment but at the same token, the time padding needs to be drastically reduced.  WoW tried to address this in MoP with the rep tokens, that nearly doubled the reputation gained for all characters after you had maxed out one.  SWTOR’s legacy system provides similar perks for alts.  FF14 bypasses it altogether since you only have 1 character.

This is a long stretch analogy but let’s say you’re a manager at a sales company.  15 years of experience, lots of contacts and a solid knowledge of the business.  Layoffs come around and you need to find a new job (assuming jobs are to be found).  You’re not expected to be doing entry level work, having to put in another 15 years to get back to where you were.  There’s a learning curve for sure, but that should be relatively quick compared to what you went through before.

The more people have access to do, the more they will end up trying those piles of things.  Putting in artificial gates, especially ones that impede 80-90% of the playstyles (since every extra class is a playstyle) just seems like a weird position to me.  An alt-friendly game is quite clearly a long-term game.  It’s evidently the future…just depends on who decides to get on the train before getting hit by it.

MMOs and Stickiness

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For an MMO to survive, it needs stickiness – at least if they plan on getting people to continue to pay on a monthly (or just use the cash stop).  Destiny, D3, CoD aren’t really MMOs due to the lack of the word massive, but more so because their financial model is box-based.  FPS types in particular, launch a new version every year or two.  MMOs, the more generic kind, last for years.

Stickiness is important because it keeps people playing, it keeps the world alive.  It’s more than just a user base. As most MMOs have a leveling phase, even a high amount of players that played sporadically and left would cause a serious issue since there’d be less and less people as you leveled up.  Players need to play, and then keep playing for extended periods of time.  It’s been noted in quite a few places that people are what keep other people logging in.  If it wasn’t for guilds in WoW, it would be fair to say that a significant chunk of their users would have left a long time ago.  People need something to do when they log in, and someone to do it with.

A couple years ago (pretty much to the day) I wrote a series of posts about social economies (1, 2, 3 & 4).  In terms of timing, this was during FF14’s relaunch, a year after SWTOR’s conversion and during the “hype” phase of Wildstar and ESO.  Looking back at it, it’s almost a wish list for what I was expecting in both of those games and truth be told, I was generally disappointed.

Say what you will about the leveling portion of a game, the truth of the matter is that the mechanics either work or do not work.  Most people get a darn good feeling for a game in the first hour.  From that point until the “end game”, it’s the social aspect that keeps people playing.  Sure, there’s always the solo-minded player, but even they need to see other people playing the game around them.  But group-based activities have a massive impact on retention.  During the leveling portion it gets quite complicated mind you – travel time and level disparity the 2 main issues.  Mentoring/level sync is a key solution to address this, though only a few games support it.  Group teleports are also quite useful, though to avoid abuse they typically need long cooldowns.  While simple in concept, the mentoring portion can be quite complex to implement, still… it pays off exponentially later on.  FF14 learned this lesson well in v1, and made massive strides in progress with ARR.  There is group content everywhere while leveling, level syncs are included and group teleports are simple.

Once you reach end-game, then the real challenge of long-term gaming takes place.  Progress moves from “do anything and you get experience” to “do this small subset of activities to get gear”.  Both have the same result, more numbers, but one is a heck of a lot more complicated to balance.  The content needs to be accessible and engaging.  For every hurdle that’s put in front of content, a game loses players.  This isn’t a bad thing, as that hurdle is certainly a motivator ion terms of challenge to the player base.  It’s just balancing how many hurdles you put in to see the players using the content drop in line.

For example, ESO at launch had veteran levels.  You reached the max for your faction, then needed to do both of the other faction’s quest lines to reach the true end game.  It was pure padding and a massive hurdle for the player base.  People just abandoned the game completely at that point, since it opened up the same issues mentioned above about the leveling portion of the game – level disparity and travel time.  ESO didn’t have guilds as seen in other games either, it was simply a chat channel.  So the sticky glue keeping people together was pretty weak.

Wildstar at launch had veteran dungeons, adventures and raids for max level players.  Each was a solid content piece on its own.  Unfortunately, in order to move from one tier to the next, the attunement hurdle was present – requiring gold medals.  One small mistake and the gold medal was gone, and so was the group.  I personally ran dungeons with the guild and it was fun if you weren’t chasing a medal.  Sadly, if the guild wasn’t around, random groups were next to impossible to complete.  Without the ability to be social outside the guild, people left in droves.  It took a while but the devs updates the content to provide more solo/group options at 50, but also to drastically reduce the attunement requirements, making random groups much more viable.  Before the F2P conversion though, there were simply not enough people playing to get into a random group, making populations stagnant/decline.  It had a pretty solid guild structure, but without accessible content, people just didn’t have anything to do but chat.  And without “roots” in the game, people moved on.

WoW’s recent expansion went full-out on making content accessible, with the tiniest of hurdles.  I ran a test with my Druid and was able to level from 91 to 100, and complete LFR without leaving my garrison (aside to collect more building plans).  There was no incentive to be social and with the fast-food mentality of content, it was far from engaging.  Losing half the subscribers(!!) is a pretty solid sign in itself that the social glue keeping that game going has almost dried up.

Designing stickiness is hard work.  Looking at one item alone isn’t enough; it’s the sum of all the parts.  A game could have great dungeons but no group-finder.  It could have superb guild tools but nothing for the guild to actually do.  Beta testing, heat maps, analytics…those all indicate what is working and what isn’t.  It takes a really good dev team to plan that ahead of time and an even better team to make the changes after the game has launched.  It’s good that both ESO and Wildstar have made some large strides to address their core issues from launch.  Fingers crossed that the next MMO out the game applies all these lessons before launching, and saves themselves a ton of headaches.

Time is Relative

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Time is relative.  *deep thoughts*  Age certainly has an impact on my recollection of events, or even my appreciation of them.  The time at the pool watching my kids swim feel so much longer than actually being in lake with them.  Observing and not participating makes things take a long time, or at least make me think that they do.

I was baking on the weekend, and the squirts helped out at the start.  I’m sure it took 3 times as long to get the work done, but it flew by.  Making dinner with the wife to host Thanksgiving was also a real time machine.  And last night we watched a bit of Suits and the clock just seemed to drone on.  Maybe I’m just more time conscious lately, or perhaps living the moment a bit more.  I’m glad that I’m done with the White Rabbit syndrome of “I’m late”, and instead in the mindset of “so what?  Let’s enjoy it.”  I’d like to think it’s a healthier mindset.

Wildstar

I find that my Esper and Engineer aren’t as compatible as I’d like.  Because the Elder Gem experience is character specific, and that exceeding the weekly cap grants a decent sized boost to gold, playing 2 characters is actually worse off than playing one.  Housing, Elder Gems, Ability Points and AMP Points are character specific, which is a pet peeve right now.  Truth be told, it always has been, but after having played a fair chunk of FF14, it seems downright archaic.  The concept that a character is an island just doesn’t work for me anymore, especially if the “long tail” gameplay needs to be repeated multiple times.  WoW started paying a bit more attention to this in MoP, then stomped on the idea in WoD and just made everything easy mode, shortening the tail.  Making me play longer is a good thing.  Making me repeat the bite size pieces ad infinitum is what drives people elsewhere.

I started a Warrior for kicks, to see the starter experience.  It’s a whole lot better.  Crazy better even.  Then it gets into the regular starting zones, though the first quest hub has a ton of content to get a grasp on things.  Content overload almost. The skill distribution hasn’t changed, or at least not enough for me to notice.  This ends up a bit in the lines of the Tortuga zone in Age of Conan, where the starting experience is amazing, then there’s nothing for a long time, then amazing again.

The classes change so much with skill/amp unlocks, and tier upgrades, that it really makes it hard for the game to properly explain mechanics at the start, in that they are relative at the end.  FF14 addresses this problem with forced grouping, through dungeons.  They even have mini-instances to understand the ever increasing complexity of group encounters (stuns, avoid AE, AE attacks, running, using items, etc…).  I sometimes feel like Wildstar gets you to level 10, then it’s all deep end.  The deep end is amazing, without question, but the F2P conversion is showing the cracks at how prepared people are for it.  If the game forced players to complete the normal modes (scaled to the appropriate level) before the veteran modes, I think people would be better off.  And it’s not like there are 100+ dungeons either.

More ramblings than anything useful, I know.  But the game is just screaming potential, with a few tweaks here and there.  A metric ton of quality of life items were applied in the F2P conversion.  It’s those changes that really put into contrast the core mechanics that are just way more complicated to resolve.  Another post will have me get into the topic of solo vs. group activities.  The more incentives there are in group work, and the easier it is to access (not complete, just access), the healthier a game becomes.  Next time.

#Wildstar – How It Works – Rune Guide

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One of the neat, and at the same time complicated, aspects of Wildstar are runes.  For those who played WoW, think of gems, combined with enchantments.  When you really start to pay attention, you can get easily overwhelmed.  This Rune Guide aims to help people understand how to Rune.

The first and most basic question – is it worth it?  Yes.

Even without sets, a runed item nearly doubles in power.  It’s less noticeable while leveling, but once you start elder content at level 50, it makes a world of difference and is essentially mandatory.

Rune Overview

You’ll notice that some items have rune slots, linked to an element (air, earth, etc…).  In each of these slots, you can insert a rune.  Rune names can get really complex, but they generally break down into the following:

[Element][Quality][Type][Effect]

So you might have an Earth – Divine Rune of Critical Hit Severity.

  • Elements are rather straightforward. Air, Earth, Fire, Life, Logic, and Water are the basic types.
  • Helmets, Chests, Gloves and Weapons can also have a specific type of Fusion rune, which provides a unique buff similar to AMPs, and can’t be found in other item slots.
    • Fusion runes can go into ANY rune type slot.   There’s no need to roll one!
  • You can re-roll a rune slot to a random element for a gold cost, which depends on the item level.  This can get quite expensive.  You can also use cash-stop currency…so I suggest you don’t start re-rolling until ilvl 80/100.
  • The number of rune slots on an item is linked to the quality.  Lower quality gear (blue) can only have 3 slots, while the highest quality will give you 5 slots.  This gives you a total best of 35 runes TOTAL per character, across 7 pieces of gear.
  • You can add a new rune slot for gold as well, though this depends on the item quality for the maximum number of rune slots. The cost depends on the item level.
  • Rune quality comes in quite a few flavors. The quality decides if you can equip it or not, based on a combination of your level and the ilvl of the gear you are using.
    • Lesser – ilvl10
    • Normal – ilvl 20
    • Greater – ilvl 30
    • Refined – ilvl 40
    • High – ilvl 50
    • Superb – ilvl 80 (dungeon level)
    • Pure – ilvl100 (raid 1 level)
    • Divine – ilvl120 (raid 2 level)
  • You cannot slot 2 identical runes on the same piece of gear. So no 2 Divine runes of Critical Hit.  You can put a Divine and a Pure though, which is often better than putting in a stat you don’t need.
  • Rune types come in 3 main flavors (See LINK)
    • Basic runes add an amount to a basic stat – strikethrough, crit, etc…
    • Set Runes can stack to add a cumulative bonus to some basic stats. 2 points is strikethrough, 3 points is crit chance, etc…  The set cap is 6.  Any class can equip these.
    • Class Set Runes are specific to your class and impact specific skills, adding a cumulative bonus. The bonuses to skills are at 4 and 8 points.  They are very powerful.
  • The rune quality can add more than 1 power per rune. A fresh level 50 can only slot runes that give 1 power.  With raid gear, you can slot items with 2 power runes- the only way to reach the 8 point bonus.
  • Rune set bonuses are limited to a single item. This means, that to get the 8 point set bonus, you need at least 4 rune slots (2 power each – called Exceptional runes).  This means you can get multiple rune set bonuses instead of just one for the character.
  • Set Runes are limited by the ilvl (Devastation required ilvl 80, Onslaught is ilvl 50)
  • The effect of a rune is linked to the element. You can only have 1 effect per rune.
    • Earth – Critical Severity, Armor, CC resilience
    • Fire – Critical Hit, Reflect
    • Water – Multi-hit, Glance
    • Logic – Vigor, Intensity, Critical Mitigation
    • Life – Life Steal, Health, Focus Pool
    • Air – Strikethrough, Focus Recovery, Deflect

Inserting Runes for Beginners

Given all of the above, it takes a bit of work to figure out what is the best way to slot items.  This guide assumes that you are wearing ilvl 50 gear.  If you have dungeon gear, then there are more/better options available.

Let’s say that you’re a DPS Esper and have a set of blue ilvl 50 Pants, with 3 rune slots.  You can buy a 4th slot for 14 gold, which is a good idea.  You’re given an Earth, Air, and 2 Fire rune slots.  Given the item level of the pants, you can’t use Class Set Runes but you can use the general kind.  Given that you’re a new level 50, you likely aren’t running around full of plat, so you won’t be re-rolling the rune slots.   What’s available given those slots and at that ilvl?  You can use this link to get an idea: googledocs

  • Onslaught – Life/Earth/Air
  • Striker – Life/Water/Air
  • Havoc – Water/Air/Fire

The closest one, without re-rolling, is Havoc (3 points, Air/Fire/Fire).  So let’s craft/buy the runes needed!

  • 1 High Rune of Strikethrough (Air)
  • 1 High Rune of Critical Hit (Fire)
  • 1 Refined Rune of Critical Hit (Fire)
  • 1 High Rune of Critical Hit Severity (Earth) – not part of the set but a good stat to have

You’re now at a 3 power Havoc set, plus some additional Critical Hit Severity.  That gives +200 Strikethrough, +370 Critical Hit Chance and +200 Critical Hit Severity, plus the 0.17% Health and 0.2% Critical Hit Chance.  That is a massive increase in power.  You can repeat as you want on each piece of gear you get.

I do not recommend re-rolling for Fusion runes until ilvl80.  Class set runes start at ilvl80 for PvP, ilvl100 for PvE.

Optimizing at Maximum Level

At the best gear levels, you want to aim for 2 class rune sets, then 6/6 of the basic rune sets on the other pieces of gear.  Be aware, that getting the best runes is very expensive (re-rolling + the actual cost of the runes).

The general idea is the same as before, it’s just that you’re going to be re-rolling rune slots and going broke doing so (pray to RNGsus):

  • Buy any additional rune slots.
  • Find your class stat weights for priority.
    • You don’t want to stack Intensity as a healer for example
  • Find the your optimum class sets (2 of them)
    • Find 2 pieces of gear that match the closest and re-roll the runes to match your class set (4 rune slots needed to get the 8 pt bonus).
    • Slot each with Divine Runes (use Pure runes to avoid duplicates)
  • Look at Helmets, Chests, Gloves and Weapons to ensure you have 1 free rune slot
    • Apply the appropriate Fusion rune to that item
  • Find your best regular set (or sets)
    • Reroll the slots to match the set requirements.
    • The best is using +2 power runes in 3 slots (giving the 6 total), then the extra 2 slots for another set (giving 4 total).
    • For example with a 5 rune slot item, for a Devastation(6) and Onslaught(4) build, you’d be looking for Earth x2, Fire x1 and Logic x2 for the best of best stats (Crit Severity, Crit Hit and Vigor, respectively)
  • Super-mega-optimal-dream-world-RNGsus-loves-you has something like:
    • Weapon: Fusion + Class Set
    • Head: Fusion + Class Set
    • Shoulder: 6/6 Set + 4/6 Set
    • Chest: Fusion + 6/6 Set + 1 Rune
    • Pants: 6/6 Set + 4/6 Set
    • Gloves: Fusion + 6/6 Set + 1 Rune
    • Feet: 6/6 Set + 4/6 Set
    • For a total of 4 Fusion, 2 Class Sets, 5x 6/6 Sets, 3x 4/6 Sets and 2 extra runes.  Which is around 12,000 extra stat points, without set bonuses applied.

Runing Example

The following is an example of me actually applying runes to my engineer’s main weapon.  You’ll see that it’s ilvl 90, meaning that the only upgrades are going to be from raids.  So might as well make this one as good as I can!

Empty Gun - bad rolls

Empty Gun – bad rolls

You can see here that while the itself is pretty good, the actual rune rolls don’t help me.  I can have up to 4 rune slots.  I can’t use a Class set but I can use the Striker set, so I’ll aim for that.  Based on the runes needed (Life, Water and Air), the actual stats I need are Multi-Hit and Strikethrough. Since I can’t use the same rune twice, I will use 1 exceptional rune and 1 regular rune for Multi-Hit and then 1 exception rune for Strikethrough.  That means I need 2 Water runes and 1 Air rune.  The last one is going to be a Fusion rune, which can be any type.

So let’s start re-rolling.

Re-rolling for service tokens

Re-rolling for service tokens

With the F2P change, you get omnibits from time to time.  The absolute best use is to transform them into service tokens, and then use those on runes.  To re-roll a rune slot costs 12 tokens, to add a new one of a specific type costs 25.  I need 2 Water and 1 Air, so I’ll re-roll 2 of them and then add one.  Total cost = 12 + 12 + 25 = 48 tokens.

Can't have two of the same!

Can’t have two of the same!

You’ll see here the limitations of of stacking runes, you can’t have 2 identical ones.  You can see that one of them will add 2 points to the set (the purple one) and one will add 1 point (the blue one).  I could have added a lower ilvl rune for 2 points, but the Multi-Hit value on the rune is worth more.

After adding all the runes, this is the end result.  Notice also the set bonus.

Super power.

Super power.

Cherry on top.

Cherry on top.

This is what it looks like when it’s all done.  I went from 100 strike, 100 multi and 115 crit at the start and now I’m at 370 strike, 600 multi, 115 crit and Siphon.   Then there’s the set bonus to it all, which comes out to about 150 extra points or so.

I won’t go over how much it cost for the runes, but it was about 1.5p per on my server to buy them.  I was lucky enough to have most of the materials on hand, so it ended up a decent price for an item I won’t be replacing.

So if you think about it, for the total cost included, I easily doubled the item’s power potential.

Chit Chats are Good

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I wonder if water and pop have the same effect as beer and coffee.  There’s a greasing of the wheels if you will, when the latter is offered.  Having a chat with a friend just seems to go better when those are around.  Even as a kid it was the coffee shop.

I’ve been doing some chatting these past few weeks with various folks, talking about personal and professional goals. From a professional front, I think we tend to want to talk to people who have gone through something similar, to get perspective.  I don’t mean shop talk, I mean actual career discussions.  I usually work with a Plan™, where each steps in my career is rather thought out.  I find the job that can use my skills but also provide me new ones.  I tend not to do the same thing for very long, maybe a couple years, before moving on to the next challenge.  The good/bad news is that due to the project I’ve been working on, that progress has been accelerated at an incredible pace, where I’m now into the 5-10 year window of where I planned to be.  So this is uncharted waters for the most part and I’m a solid 15-20 years younger than everyone I work with.  With 2 young kids.  It’s not that I’m bad at the job, just the opposite – it’s that the expectations of the position require some sacrifices at home, which I’m not really willing to do anymore.  Suffice it to say, this past year has been a heck of a ride and I’m trying now to get a better handle on it all – with varying degrees of success.

On the personal side, it has taken a very, very long time to find someone impartial with whom I can have an honest conversation.  Oh, there’s always family and the close circle of friends for sure, but there are certain topics that require, um, a certain skill set to discuss.  I am often unable to communicate ideas that are crystal clear in my mind, due to their sheer complexity and nuance.  It’s one of the main reasons I write this blog actually, to practice communicating ideas.  My wife and I were talking about this problem last week, and the list of folk on the list of “talk about anything” can be counted on one hand.  I have friends with whom I can talk sports, other philosophy, others science, others IT – some even cross across multiple fields.  Those that cross ALL the fields, those are really hard to find.  So when I found a professional that I gelled with, it was a really cathartic feeling.  Exhausting is a better term actually, since I typically don’t have the opportunity to talk about anything.  Having to think/analyze/absorb a complex conversation is fun.  And the beauty of it, is that afterwards I have the toolset to communicate it more effectively with my family/friends.  I know a lot of people have issues with mental health, and just finding someone with whom to connect makes a world of difference.

Wildstar

I did another veteran expedition, Space Madness. It’s a 15 minute run, if not less.  It’s such a massive contrast to some of the other expeditions, 30+ minutes in length, that I’m thinking I’m going to skip those other ones in the future.  The rewards are the same, though the longer ones have a few more enemies to kill.  Not enough to make the drop increases to be meaningful mind you.

I also spent a bit of time trying to figure out my tailor skill stream.  With drop 6, every tier got massively simplified – 2 items each, plus a “capstone” for extra points in the talent tree.  I took a look at the auction house and there isn’t a single “Master” level crafted item present, which is making me wonder if it’s worth the time/effort to pump up the skill.  I have more than enough plat to get there mind you… so I set some buy orders for material and we’ll see where that ends up.

In the meantime, I need to figure out why the load times are so dang slow.  The gaming laptop is about 6 months old and top of the line, so…there be something wonky somewhere.

Wildstar – I Goes Squish

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I was pretty gassed out yesterday.  My eldest was in the same boat, taking a solid 12 hour snooze.  My wife is on a kick to redecorate the house, which is ok by me, but my ability to appreciate her efforts isn’t exactly stellar.  She spent a bit at the store, came back with bags and bags of knickknacks that seemed neat but I was just too out of it to really pay enough attention.  To bed I went and was out for 10 hours.

This weekend, I’ll make sure to spend the time focused on this redecorating.  It’ll be a nice change to the house and really allow us to put more of our own touch to what’s around us.

Wildstar

I mentioned yesterday that my power output had increased.  I ran a couple more tests and this is still accurate, for the most part.  Regular enemies die slightly faster than I recall, so it makes clearing some quests and expeditions all that easier.  Mind you, some are long as all heck.  Deep Space Exploration is nearly 40 minutes long, solo.  I enjoy it and the story but wowza, it takes forever.  I could clear all of Star Basin in that time, twice.

Where the power output has not increased is in elite enemies.  I clearly do not have enough strikethrough, as enemy armor is huge.  In the previous fight length, say 2 minutes or so, I could clear these guys, self-heal and allow my mini-pet to tank.  Today in the same time frame, I can barely get them down by 10%.

Which brings me to the next topic, crafting.  Top-level crafting was rejigged.  Instead of existing on its own, there’s a penultimate level which is a good level 50 entry point.  Then the top level has 3 specific tiers, one for dungeons, and then for the 2 raids – each recipe uses crafting vouchers to unlock.  Vouchers are acquired through crafting quests – not terribly hard to do.  Crafting the first item set requires some ingredients that are somewhat hard to acquire on your own (in that you can’t farm them, you need to open bags) but they have a decent power level.  The last 2 can be crafted but only unlock fully if you’ve cleared parts of the actual raids… so not much worth on the market.

I bought a few recipes, put in some buy order for the material (which is 50% less than the Buy Now option) and logged off for the night.  If things go well, I’ll have a few new pieces to craft tonight, focused nearly entirely on Strikethrough, to make those elites a whole lot easier to run.

And that’s just my DPS set…

Of note, I’ve updated both Esper guides – DPS and Healing.