Cyglaive had a chance to sit down and chat with Carbine President Jeremy Gaffney about content in WildStar.

As April nears its end and summer rapidly approaches, Carbine Studios, remains hard at work in preparation for the launch of its upcoming MMORPG, WildStar. This latest MMO, scheduled to hit the market in early June, takes place in an expansive universe that blends science fiction and fantasy elements into one action packed space. While this brand new IP has heads turning with interest, WildStar will still need to go blow for blow with some of the biggest names in the genre in order to come out successful. According to the President of Carbine Studios, Jeremy Gaffney, they’ll be battling with giants!

If you’ve been following my coverage of WildStar here on ZAM, then you probably know that one thing the game definitely has going for it: its ridiculous amount of in-game content. In truth, it will probably be the only MMORPG in history to launch jam-packed with this much stuff on day one. Coupled with the fact that, according to Jeremy, over 50% of beta weekend participants are giving WildStar a 5 out of 5 “fun factor” rating, it seems to be on the right path for launch. While long-time fans and beta testers may already be familiar with the game’s plethora of activities, new players just dipping their toes into beta may not know all of the options they have available as they make their journey across Planet Nexus. In order to shed some light for those players, I recently received the opportunity to sit down with Carbine’s Jeremy Gaffney himself to talk about a few different types of content that new players can expect, how beta has been faring in general, as well as the team’s plans for launch and beyond. So sit back and relax as we take a journey to Planet Nexus!

Beta So Far

After having spent many hours in the beta myself, I decided to start off by asking Jeremy how beta has been faring and what they’ve learned from monitoring beta tester data. From the sound of things, beta has been going pretty smoothly as the team has continued training in delivering monthly updates and reacting to player feedback.

“So here’s something cool we do. We track everything by data. How much fun are people having? How likely are people to buy the game, etc. But one of the things that we do that’s really useful is that if you don’t log onto your character for a couple weeks, we put a skull on the map saying  ‘this person left’. They might come back or whatever, we just assume. But we look at where you were when something made you want to leave and then [we] look at where all those skulls are. Is that in one particular zone? Well maybe something sucks there, maybe it was a grindy series of quests or maybe it was too boring, or there were too many bugs in that area. Then we go in and fix it. So that’s why beta’s been so useful and successful for us. That’s why our surveys go up and say over 50% [of players] say five out of five for fun. Those are pretty ridiculously [good numbers] when that’s not our fan boys in there. Those are the last couple thousand people we dropped in for the beta weekends. Those aren’t people who love us or hate us, they’re just checking out the new game on the block. The way you get there is by listening to people; it’s by tracking the data and by reacting to it. So the other benefit of having those monthly updates is, when there’s something that’s influencing the game negatively, we find out about it and then we train the team to be able to react—hopefully without shooting ourselves in the foot—and [continue to do] stuff that makes it better and better.”

Customization: Creating Your Legacy

Moving on to some of the actual gameplay aspects of WildStar, let’s say you’re a brand new player who is looking to embark on the treacherous journey to Planet Nexus. Well, just like in all MMOs, the first and most fundamental step is character creation. And thanks to the most recent beta update, players are now given various body options to go along with the previous race, face, and hair options that were initially available, giving them more ways to customize their legacy.

“We didn’t do a full slider system, but we put in some more options you can choose from, so you can kind of customize the way that you actually want to appear. That Silhouette really [is] important because a lot of the facial customization in MMOs gets hidden by helms—which is why so often you turn helmets off—but also just distance. You’re far away from people, so it’s hard to see subtle differences. So having more difference in silhouette is good, because it’s a way of customizing yourself that’s actually visible from a distance, which is nice.”

Along with a fully integrated dye and costume system, the new body sliders seem to have been the icing on the cake for most players in terms of character customization, but another type of customization option players will choose, one that is unique to WildStar, is their Path. This is another permanent character choice that, unlike your race and class, provides extra content for you to do based on the type of MMO player you are.

Like taking on impossible odds with your buddies or laughing psychotically as you set things on fire? Maybe you’ll choose the Soldier Path. Or if you’re into helping out your neighbor and making Nexus a safer place to live by building beneficial structures, then you might be the Settler type. There are four Paths in total—Solider, Settler, Explorer and Scientist—and each one does its best to cater to a specific type of player and give them more content to enjoy. I asked Jeremy Gaffney how players in beta were taking to the Path system and how he thought it was impacting the game.

“It’s a system that I think has really had two big successes. One of which is, people understanding very early on who they are and what they’re about and getting rewarded for it. The other success is something our designers do: they made it so, in general, all of those paths are making the areas that much better and cooler. You’re not bummed because someone ran around you and stole your kill, you’re stoked because the Settler just built you a mount vendor and now you can get a mount at level 6 to run back to town on. Or a Scientist unlocks a healing bush, so now the two of you can drag monsters back to it without worrying about your health going low. It’s very powerful having that ‘you don’t need to group, but you’re just better off being near other people’. Those social benefits pay off in the long term, both in terms of making friends and just making the game feel like a positive place. It’s a very different experience when you’re all working together in an area because we’ve encouraged you too and you get rewarded for doing so.”

As you level your character you’re also given ample opportunity to level your Path, which does in fact have a separate progression that isn’t tied to your actual character level. How you go about leveling your Path ultimately depends on the Path you chose. If you choose to be an Explorer, you’ll gain Path experience by discovering all the areas in a given zone, or even by completing Indiana Jones-style scavenger hunts that lead you to hidden treasure. Scientists, on the other hand, gain experience for scanning the environment and collecting various bits of data as they uncover the mysteries surrounding Planet Nexus.

Each Path has multiple mission types, but as you increase your Path level there are also multiple Path-related cosmetic rewards you’ll receive that can range from cool costume pieces to mount rewards and titles, and even Path-specific abilities.  As Jeremy said, offering your Path’s unique perks to other players is a great way to meet potential allies and give you a creative approach on how you tackle each zone.

One last bit that ties into player customization also ties into WildStar’s social systems: Player Housing. Upon reaching level 14 players will be contacted by the Protostar Corporation. They’ve commonly been referred to the “used car salesmen” of the galaxy—take that as you will. In any case, upon signing a contract that I’m sure has plenty of soul-selling fine print, you’re granted a plot of land that, over time, can become a pretty significant part of your character’s journey through Nexus. You see, Player Housing in WildStar not only provides a great social hangout for you and your buddies, but it can also provide active benefits as well, such as extra rest experience and the ability to create crafting stations, banks, challenges, mailboxes and more right in your front yard. By gauging some of the closed beta housing competitions, I’d say crafting has been a pretty big hit so far. Asking Jeremy if they’d always intended on having housing be an integral part of WildStar’s gameplay, it sounds like it was something that just kept getting better over time.

“[Originally] I wanted to do housing as a stepping stone to Warplots. I thought housing had been done before, but along the way something happened. That something is that we have some really good guys on the housing team and they just kept adding all of this great stuff to it. Then they started adding stuff like giant ferris wheels and they added the housing dungeons, and then they added in all these challenges. Now all of the sudden there’s all these advancements I can do in my house. They added the rest XP system and now [suddenly] my house feels like a home, because I go to sleep there. Collecting stuff is always fun, not just for Scientists, but for everybody. Before we added all that stuff, I thought housing had been done before, but apparently it has not. That took everything up to a level that I had not seen before. Those guys just kept quietly working and now you can make changes to the sky until you’re on this nice little planetoid as you’re tumbling through space. I can put the noir [lightning] on and now everything’s black and white inside of my house and it feels like I’m in a 1930’s movie. People’s opinions may vary, but I think we really have the most complete housing system in the planet right now, certainly one that anyone’s launched with.”

 

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