WildStar Wednesday: October Game Systems Update

By David "Scooter" Bass - October 02, 2013 

It's been a while since we've mentioned the B-word, hasn't it? (Um, we're talking about "beta," not sure what you're thinking about.) Anyway, this week we thought we'd give a little update about where we're at in development, what changes we've been working on since the last beta phase ended, and where we go from here. We'll be referencing Mike Donatelli's State of the Beta from August, so if you haven't read it yet, go do that right now. It's cool, we'll wait.

Back already? I bet you just skipped ahead so you could check out the new hotness. That's fine, I'll just remember that next time you're begging me for a beta invite because you have such great attention to detail.
I want to talk about three major systems we've been working on in the last few months that needed some major facelifts. They're not quite done yet, which is why we're still holding off on the next beta phase, but they're in a basic working state, enough that we're comfortable pulling back the curtain a little to show off the progress.

 Leveling Up

A common piece of feedback we heard during beta was that leveling up was, to be frank, boring. You dinged, there was a cool little animation that played, but then what? Is it worth making the trek back to town to purchase new abilities from the ability vendor? Did I unlock a new dungeon? What did I just earn for reaching a new Path level?

The game now answers all of these questions for you through the new Level Up interface. When you level, you'll be able to click to pop open a window, showing you all the new class benefits, game features, and so on that you've unlocked with your new level.

By making what you've unlocked much clearer, leveling up feels much more like a celebration, and less like a paralyzing choice of what to do or where to go next.

Ability Loadouts

Gaining new abilities as you level feels great, but it can also be overwhelming when you're not sure what situations the abilities are appropriate for, or which one is more suited for tanking or for DPS.

Enter, the new Ability Loadout UI.

Abilities are now sorted at the top by Assault (i.e. DPS), Support (i.e. Tank or Heals), Utility, and Path, making it much clearer which abilities fit into which spec. This allows players to build their Action Set with the abilities they want much faster. We've added sorting of the abilities you've unlocked vs. ones you will eventually be able to purchase, and also made it simpler to add/remove abilities from your loadout quickly.

New Quest System

This is the big one that's been taking up the majority of our Content Systems team's time over the last few months. As mentioned in the last State of the Beta update, we agreed that our quest system needed some work to make it feel more like a modern MMO. Happily, our first major revision of the quest system has been completed!

Quest objectives are no longer listed as "Kill 6 Squirgs." Instead, you gain progress across a bar the more creatures you kill. I can already hear most of you saying "So what? Big deal! You just changed it visually so that you could mess with our minds, this doesn't actually change the fundamentals of questing." Well, sure, I guess the cynics could look at it that way, but the true benefit becomes clear once we add in two extra features:

• Creatures of varying difficulty can now count for more or less quest credit rather than every creature incrementing your kill count by one. Kill a Squirg? Maybe you earn 16% towards your quest objective. Take on a MEGASQUIRG DESTROYER™? Suddenly you've completed 40% of your quest with one badass kill.
• Open tagging is now in the game. See a dude or dudette having trouble with a critter? Run over to help them take it down, and you'll both gain XP, quest credit, and loot for it. Even if you're not grouped with them!

These combined improvements to questing are definitely one of the largest changes we're most excited about, but it's also one that requires the most extensive internal testing.

The specifics of Open Tagging are crazy complex and we could spend an entire devblog talking about the system behind it. For now, rest assured that we've kept in mind the usual concerns about open tagging when implementing this system, including powerleveling concerns, high-level gank squads, and the oft-used "tag-and-forget" scenarios that terribad players use.

We're also putting tons of polish and love into all four of our classes right now because we want to start diving deeper into them in a very public way in the near future. Wait, did I say four? It's six, I meant six.
That's about it from us; it's time we head back to our desks to keep working towards the next phase of beta. See you next week!

The Business (Model) of WildStar

By Jeremy "Gaffer" Gaffney - August 19, 2013 

I've got two big-ticket things to talk about this week: our anticipated launch date shift and our business model.

Hopefully you saw last week's State of the Beta blog post by our Design Director (and Beta Pope) Mike Donatelli, so you know we've got some big changes in store for WildStar.  We’ve been watching and listening to the outstanding feedback from our Beta community over the last few months and right now, with the changes planned, we’re projecting a Spring 2014 launch. Over the coming months, we'll also dive into some of the smaller (but just as important) changes we've been planning in reaction to beta feedback we've seen, so you know what to expect when we ramp up beta again later this year.  Our number one commitment is quality; we think that having a ton of fun, polished content and deep top-level gameplay is a big chunk of what separates the big boys from the also-rans in the online business.

Now, let's talk about the WildStar business model. Have a seat and let's talk this through.
The short-form is this: We've decided to go with two major options at launch for how you can play the game. We figure at this point in the biz, most players are pretty passionate about what models they will or won’t play – so why not provide options? 

First thing's first: you buy WildStar (either via a box or downloading) – this will give you 30 days of free gameplay. After that, you have two options to play, or pay, for your game time.

Option 1: Monthly subscription

Option 2: C.R.E.D.D.

A monthly subscription is pretty standard fare – you probably know what that’s all about.  Subscribe, and every month you pay for another 30 days of game time.  Straightforward.

But some people don’t like subscriptions. Maybe they just want to play for free, maybe they’ve been burned by a subscription game before and dislike the model.  OK, we hear you – for you guys we have C.R.E.D.D.

This is an item that can be purchased online at the WildStar website, and can then be bought and sold with other players in-game.  This trading happens via the Commodities Exchange – basically a stock market that lets you trade C.R.E.D.D. to other players for earned in-game gold.

So for those of you who don't want to pay a subscription fee: you can use your first month of gameplay to earn gold while playing WildStar. When the next month comes around, instead of paying the monthly subscription fee, you can use gold earned in-game to purchase C.R.E.D.D. from other players on the CX. Boom, you cash in a C.R.E.D.D for a month of game time. You can continue this cycle over & over again, enabling you to “play to pay” for WildStar.

So that sounds good – but what about those players who don’t have as much time as they'd like to play WildStar, but want a little extra in-game gold? Those folks can purchase C.R.E.D.D. online from our store and trade it on the CX for gold: basically trading their extra cash to help another player play for free in return for a pile of gold. We see this as a safe and secure way for players who want to buy gold to have a way of getting some in-game cash without funding gold farming outfits and all the hacking and scamming that can entail.

We’ve put together a handy guide and collection of Frequently Asked Questions regarding our Biz Model, which you’ll find here. Like all things WildStar, your feedback is crucial to refining and defining the FAQ information found at that link, so we’ll provide regular updates to that page throughout this process, letting you know when we’ve added important information.

We're at Gamescom this week and will be at PAX at the end of the month, and we'd love to continue the conversation there if you want to come visit us! Check out all the details here to see where and when you can find us.