WildStar's Community Plans for 2013

Written by: German Lopez (@LopezIRL) | January 2, 2013 4:35 pm

16 Comments

Community team outlines WildStar beta plans

It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for more news for WildStar, Carbine Studios‘ MMORPG. This week’s post has the community team promising more interaction with fans, but not through traditional means, in preparation for the WildStar beta.

Claiming “[d]esign decisions should never seem to come out of thin air,“ the community team at Carbine Studios says it wants fans involved the WildStar beta “from beginning to end.” That means design meetings on live streams and through phone. That’s right, if the developers like an idea posted on the game’s official forum, they’ll try to call the person making the suggestion, and it could lead to a live design meeting for all to watch.

Carbine Studios also pledged the WildStar beta will be a bit different. Instead of being the typical early game demo so many betas are today, the studio wants to make the WildStar beta a “a safe environment for feedback.” The community team added, “We want our beta to be different, to be an opportunity for players to tell us whether our direction is right or wrong.“

The studio is also going to be more active in other parts of the Internet. That includes Facebook, Reddit, general gaming forums, and even guild websites.

All that and more can be expected from Carbine Studios’ community team as the WildStar beta begins, the post claims. The team says it wants to “push the envelope” when it comes to community interaction.

What do you guys think? Is this just good spin or will Carbine Studios really take community interaction to another level? Make sure to comment below.

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http://www.facebook.com/harold.jones.9847 Harold Jones

I have no problem with Carbine Studios, i truly wish them the best of luck, But it’s NCSoft that i have problems with. I just hope Wild Star does not meet a untimely end like another great community game did. That is all i have to say. Its the community that will make or break a game.
- http://twitter.com/PoVGamingtv PoVGaming.tv
  
  Back in the day, it was the community that made the games great.. now developers are so pressured to bring out new shinies 24 hours a day because players only see each other as glorified NPCs and as a means to an end to progression.
  
  I don’t even feel like people have friends in MMOs anymore.. just people that are used to push their characters forward and sometimes they talk hah
  - Hicks64
    
    Totally agree. I enjoyed swtor, gw2, and other MMOs in the last few years, but I haven’t really made or necessarily felt compelled to make the same connections I’ve made in previous MMOs. Why? I dunno, but I’m starting to think sandbox games like swg and EVE might be the answer.
    - http://twitter.com/PoVGamingtv PoVGaming.tv
      
      Because it isn’t about connections it’s about content, in the early days, the players were the content and UO provided me with the best memories of being a kid to be honest. Nothing short of a brief run with Shadow Bane ever came close. It’s all math, gear, shinnies and using players like NPC party members to get you to a better spot. Sucks.
  - http://www.facebook.com/harold.jones.9847 Harold Jones
    
    I have been playing SWTOR, with friends i had in real life and back in my CoH days. With one being my son in law, and the other being my daughter, being two of them. Their are a lot of persons that had said Coh was dead then, and now saying SWTOR is dead now, i say BULL.. If the community is their and a person has fun, the next shiny that comes along is just that a shiny with no meaning at all too it. I tried GW2, i left after 2 months to come back to SWTOR for me that is weir my friends are at. I still here that WOW has its 9 10 mill persons still thats just do to the community that has formed in and around that game. If it was not for the Community even WOW would be doon gone too free to Play.
http://twitter.com/PoVGamingtv PoVGaming.tv

I don’t think extreme fan involvement is necessarily a positive thing.. feedback is good, but MMO players are extremely selfish and normally only want what’s best for their particular situation. An unbiased look is best if you ask me. Also, if they floodgates are open from day 1, and if they don’t come through immediately for “the fans” meaning the individual, its gonna get venomous… As far as MMOs go, I don’t think players have ever provided a safe environment for feedback.
- http://www.facebook.com/kirzansix Mike Coulombe
  
  I agree, someone who’s generally interested in giving everyone a fair shot, yet not particularly interested in WildStar specifically would be perfect. Each individual’s mentality is so different when it comes to MMORPGs though. The big fan of that one game that wants to branch out but will always ultimately compare with that one game. The guy who just jumps around every game playing a few days/weeks, not really serious about anything. The guy who’s a hardcore fan of the game and might think something’s acceptable when it really isn’t. It’s easy to be biased.
theunwarshed

if they were serious they would do focus testing with the most critical people that have followed the game’s development over a long period of time. it’s not like they don’t know who these people are. these are generally people who are really interested in the success of the game, yet have somehow managed to put aside their “fanboi” goggles long enough to point out obvious flaws with the design of the game. fail trolls are easy to spot and separate from the real/critical fans. stop treating betas as glorified test drives, marketing schemes and fund raisers.

devs shouldn’t need cheerleaders, so please keep out anyone who quotes old, tired cliches like, “They don’t need to reinvent the wheel”. i heard that so many times with SWTOR during the years i followed its development and look what happened to that game. every single problem with that game was voiced well in advance of launch and BW did nothing about them.

they also need to figure out who their target audience is and build the game for them. this is probably the single biggest mistake/lack of vision i see with game development today.

if they can come close to satisfying the most critical people than i think they have a good shot at making a long lasting, successful game.
- CRB_Aether
  
  Our testing schedule/plan includes several different tiers of testers, and identifying top-contributors is an important part of that plan. Given the nature of MMOs, it’s crucial that we find the right people for the right testing group. As an example, the community team will identify people who are particularly interested and adept with a specific feature (Combat, Tradeskills, Guild Management features, etc), and we will bring those people together for testing events that focus on that feature. We will of course have testing events that focus on the full game experience.
jayremy

Yes, actually listening to players is always a plus, bad designers will listen to bad ideas, good ones will run with any goo idea they hear, that is the truth of it.

If all the community spewed was b.s then a good designer should always know better. Those big bloated companies tend to not really care unless you can kiss butt on a forums and get noticed doing so- if that. Why make a game for the Masses (hence MMO) when you don’t want public feedback in fear of having to read some dummies, crazies(extremists) or troll post?

I criticized combat system and gameplay of TSW about 6-4 months before it released on the forums and one of the duds chastised me being rather arrogant about it and we all seen how the reception of the combat turned out.
http://www.facebook.com/kirzansix Mike Coulombe

I know it’s a fail game and all, but BioWare had the right idea in SWTOR’s beta by having in-game UI elements all over the place for feedback. As long as it takes less than 30 seconds to fill out and isn’t too frequent, why not fill it out? At least you know from that point on that it’s entirely in the dev’s hands and you’ve actually Beta “TESTED” the game.

Encouraging bug reporting would be really nice. Say they have a week-end beta. They could do it like this: If you get to the beta’s max level, your account gets flagged with whatever reward for launch. You can theoretically get to max level if you play like you would play your favorite MMO, a lot. But they could also give incentives in the form of various buffs for bug reporting, giving feedback, and other things, to help get that unlockable reward faster. Of course, nothing too fancy, but something. I’ve never seen this anywhere because most of the time, devs release a beta stable enough to not really care if issues are reported.
- CRB_Aether
  
  Hey Mike! This is excellent feedback, and we’re definitely working on systems that are very similar to what you are describing. In-game surveys are a big part of that. I’m taking your notes into account and sharing them with our Live Team for further discussion.
DoctorOverlord

This is good to hear. It has seems like there hasn’t been much community interaction around this game so far. Although showing live streams of design meetings might be a too much. The community could hear something mentioned in a meeting and then think it’s written in stone.

I think a company should interact with the community but released information should be careful managed. Live stream of design meetings sound more like a reality show-style gimmick, and a reality show where the MMO community is an active part just won’t end well.
- CRB_Aether
  
  Hey! Troy Hewitt here, Director of Community for Carbine Studios and WildStar. I understand the concern regarding the reality of what we want to do as game developers, and what we end up being able to do. For us, the commitment is to be as transparent as we can, and our beta engagement will be all about real dialogue with our testers.
  
  You are right though, we won’t always be able to share everything, and our testers won’t always see their feedback acted on. It’s just the nature of the work we do. That being said, we are absolutely going to communicate the reasons behind the decisions that we make, and our testing community will be a legitimate partner at the table.
  - DoctorOverlord
    
    Thanks for the reply TH! I appreciate the clarification. I really do enjoy seeing behind the scenes details for games that interest me and I’m glad to hear there will be some of that planned for Wildstar.
    
    The hardest part of developing any game is filtering through the noise and figuring out what the community is really saying but the first step of that is listening. It sounds like Carbine will be taking care of that
CRB_Aether

Quick apology for not checking in on this thread earlier. We’re just digging ourselves out of the holiday backlog of tasks. Happy New Year!

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