148841-game-feedback-from-people-who-lost-interest-in-ws (2024)

A few weeks ago I had a chat with a friend about Wildstar: He had tried the game, he thought it was a great game, yet he didn't continue playing it. We started to talk about this, as it seems like a peculiar pattern: He isn't the only one who has praised the game, yet doesn't play it. I think it's useful and interesting stuff to find out what puts people off eventually, so I want to base this thread on the feedback my friends, who does not play the game, said.He liked pretty much everything apart from the user interface. It annoyed him too much over time that he had to spend so much time to figure how the quest log worked, as it seemed unnecessary complex with story quests, zone quests, task quests so on and fourth - quests all over the place and a setup that was not very intuitive to deal with.I also asked him what he believed is the reason Sci-fi doesn't attract as large audience, as fantasy tents to do, and he answered pretty reasonable: fantasy is usually just easier to understand. Most people can figure what a farm does, what a mine is used for and through and through the plots are based on conflicts that are very easy to relate to.Sci-fi tends to get far more abstract for many, as it's quickly getting more complicated and deals with technology that is hard to understand - and as a result it's harder for the average to put themselves in it.Another friend who has played the game for just a bit longer, yet dropped out by now, listed same problem and included the chat UI and profession system to the argument. He simply couldn't bother level up a profession, because he just got so tired of how the system was so random, and even after setting the talent tree up, there was no guarantee for crafting what he wanted to make.He also thought Wildstar seemed like it was very much tailored to the American audience, as a lot of the culture was based on American arch types and accents. The only European feature was the Dominion, who at the same time wasn't introduced as particular good or even neutral aligned in most cases. He believes that could explain why the NA servers are a lot more populated than the EU ones, and used WoW as an example of how to feature nations in a more diverse and neutral way.Finally I asked three girls I know, who are pretty passionate MMORPG gamers, and they brought up sort of the same reasons for not playing it (some of them has tried and lost interest, while other won't even try it) - They found it a little too sexualized. One explained further that she loved World of Warcraft for its diverse characters: She could make a beautiful Night elf if she wanted to do so, a cute Pandaren or a wise Tauren if she preferred that. Something for every taste, while when she looked at the characters in Wildstar's races, everyone except the Chuas were based on very caricatured lady-features, stealing her options to choose what she wanted to go for.One of them also brought the same point about Sci-fi vs. Fantasy - she thought it quickly got a little too abstract for her and found it hard to relate to. She liked the noble houses of the Dominion, but didn't like to play villain and found it hard to find a place in the lore to back up playing a Dominion house family that wasn't based on religious fanatism, slightly nazistic traits or racism.Overall people have individual reasons for being turned off by Wildstar as a game and setting, and for my case; what frustrates me most of all is to see so many of my friends leaving one by one.But I hope that by sharing some of the feedback I've been introduced to, the development team can take it into consideration.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Space_Radish

The interface problem is a double edged sword really.Making an interface that pleases everyone is not possible. That's why all companies provide a basic UI that gives the required functionality, but is kept basic.When people then want to have changes, they use Addons to replace the parts they do not like.That being said however, there are major optimizations needed in Carbine's stock UI, the overal performance being one of the crucial aspects. It cannot be that the stock UI is such a memory hog or FPS drain on any system.As for the Sci-Fi theme, you either love it or hate it.But changing that is not going to be an option.Wildstar is Sci-Fi, so deal with it is all I can say. I don't agree that it deals with technology that is harder to understand.That same reasoning can be applied to "magic"I agree on professions.The way they are now is a complete Joke.They are expensive, and serve little to no purpose anymore in the game.I liked the old system a lot more, even with the flaws it had on discoveries and crafting. It was still a hundred times better then the mess we have now.The sexualism, Nazism or whatever else you want to throw in it is a moot argument in my opinion.It's a video game, and the style they took was caricature and comical.I personally cannot wrap my head around it that people seek to censore this out so hard.Underpants on Chua anyone?My opinion: If these things are such an issue for you, then something else is off.so tl;dr: Some points can and should be fixed, the other arguments I find are not fixable at all or not even relevant.

Feel like it'd just be prudent for them to chop most/all task quests and increase the experience on world/region/story quests, or convert the more interesting/fun tasks to world/other quests. VAST amounts of clutter gone, less overwhelming, and basically keeps it to what everyone in the know does anyways. I feel like that would be very helpful to the problem with the quest tracker if you aren't tracking a bajillion things. Condense the amount of quests you're expected to do at a time.

This is exactly why I think it's interesting to listen to gamers who does not play the game.Clearly, you are taking a lot of the game concept in defense because you already like and play it. Same goes for myself - I've taken the time and patience to learn how to deal with the complex UI, so by now it's easier to shrug at.However, first of all this post wasn't really addressed to those who plays the game and are happy about it - they can just continue doing so.This thread was addressed to the developers as feedback, and I hope it's of their interest to appeal for a wide audience as much as they can, and will aim towards a continuing development.It wouldn't mean they had to convert the entire setting, but remain curious towards the things that becomes popular and try understand what draws so many towards these things.I also think they already did make something unusual, which is what attracted me to it int he first place (I am generally not much into sci-fi, but still like Wildstar's universe, so I'd say no it's not a "either love or hate" case) by focusing less on super techy stuff and more on a story about settlers and colonizations adventuring wild new countries.I think they are on the right track, so this feedback could potentially just be used as a way to pin point what chapters could use a bit more attention.

That does not take away that some things can simply not be changed.For example, you cannot deviate away from the Sci-Fi settings, as that is what makes Wildstar Wildstar.This implies you will never be able to satisfy or attract the people that do not sci-fi games.If you change this, you will gain those people, but lose those that want a sci-fi game. So it's not about changing the game for attracting people, it's setting a theme and sticking to it, improving it to draw in more people who like said theme.It's also not irrelevant that this was not addressed to "us"We are currently the player base that does play the game.And although we do welcome more people into the game, see improvements and changes, this should not come at the cost of what makes the game fun for us.because see my previous point, depending the changes done people will leave.Implementing things that are "popular" is again a double edged sword.Implement too much of these things and your game is no longer the game you want it to be.This feedback is definetaly welcome and provides a few good points as I lined out in my first point, but several other points will change Wildstar into something that is not Wildstar.

Feedback from those who played at launch and not since F2P is worthless at this point. Many of their gripes will be fixed and they'll have no knowledge of the current issues beleaguering the game.Current players want three things, new core content, bug fixes and finally, the old communicative Carbine back. Give us those 3, or at least a dev roadmap a la Planetside 2, and you'll see a lot of at least placated voices in the community.

Adding more options doesn't take anyway from you, Olivar.If Carbine for instance added Ekovars as a playable race per example, making an option for a female character that could, but isn't necessary sexualized, it would not take anything away from you playing your character. It just adds and option that could mean a lot for another player base.Same goes to adding new side stories and characters to the game, along with the main story, allowing a more grey-shaded impression of both factions and a more clear idea of how it would be to live in Nexus even on an every day level.I did never say Wildstar should be changed away from Sci-fi. I said it'd be good to investigate what makes some kind of genres so popular, and implement some of that: That doesn't equal makeing Wildstar a into a different genre.You're allowed to speak your mind, and if you think Carbine shouldn't care about what may be putting a potential gamer off from paying them money and support their production, then fair enough.I just really don't think Carbine is of the same mindset, and considered 48% of the gamers in 2015 was female (at least according to this articlehttp://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2015-global-video-game-stats-whos-playing-what-and-why/),EU is a pretty big audience too (https://www.superdataresearch.com/market-data/mmo-market/) and fantasy just seems to have something that appeals a lot to a wide audience (http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/genre.png) it may be beneficial to look into and take the knowledge into accounter for ture campaigns etc.That's my 2 cents

Edited January 11, 2016 by Space_Radish

That makes no sense whatsoever.Why would people who have been playing since day have no valid say on this, or not be able to point out the issues with the game?

I have nothing against the points you just listed.That indeed would be things I can fully support/understand.Something I cannot understand was the whole censorship that ended at the end of closed beta.Still boggles my mind to these days.Heck I'd love more stories and characters to the game.We're far overdue for new stuff anyway as Ico pointed out.

They way you worded it, came across as if we should focus more on fantasy as they were more popular.Especially when you placed the example there for the sci-fi technology driving people away.That's what sci-fi is about and should not be changed.But if you're simply talking about game systems, then heck yes, open the discussions for those.But removing sci-fi elements because fantasy is more popular?No then you are indeed no longer a sci-fi game.

I'm a fantasy reader, I prefer to watch sci-fi as opposed to read it because my eyes glaze over as they get into explaining the technology and what not of their worlds. That being said, I don't see that as an issue in this game. Yes, it's sci-fi, but I don't feel like I have to learn the gameworlds made up technology to know what I'm doing and to enjoy the game. And to the sexualization, I'm sorry but out of all the games I've played and looked into for the past 10yrs now, this is one with the least amount of sexualization I've seen, which I found a bit disappointing, sometimes I want my character to be skimpy/sexy. It's only been recently that they've added more items that can be seen as sexy/sexualized. And the great thing about it is we can choose to have it on or not (which at least WoW finally gave us an ability to choose). In the game itself, the armors you get as drops, crafted, quest rewards, etc..., they all look the same on male and female characters(well, with the exception of the shorts -_- ), which made me giggle when your female friend referenced WoW as a good game for lack of sexualization. And I'm sorry, but WoW's females are sexy caricatures too, it just doesn't seem as obvious because you don't have choices in body type, but if you stop and look at them, yup big boobs and booty, and let's not forget the armorkinis and the female NE dance and idle animation. It's only when you get into the costumes that there are variations for male and female(though maybe they should have made the costumes have a gender-neutral option too). It always boggles my mind when people bash this game for over-sexualization. It's hardly there. IDK, it just seems to me that people are really reaching when they put down W* for over-sexualization or site that as a reason they won't play it.

Edited January 11, 2016 by beattlebilly

They can point out issues with the game, after experiencing the game in it's current state. It shouldn't be hard to understand why feedback from an experience 18 months ago would be largely useless now. The game has changed too much and any of the valid feedback would either be too vague to be of specific use or just adding another voice to the choir.

Indeed I am, my reply was targeted more at the original OP and less and the ensuing conversation. Feedback from those who've watched and been a part of the game's evolution should be integral to WS's ongoing development:).

AAh okay now you make sense :PYou're refering to people who played 18 months ago, but are not playing right now, am I correct?

Yep, fully with you on that one.

I think the interface is a victim of it's sci-fi genre, they feel it needs to have a sci-fi looks so you get these horrible chunky interface objects. The quest log for instance is horrible and really turns me off. The UI is much more user friendly than it was at launch. I think the idea of the quest categories is to tell you what are optional and what relate to the main story. I guess you feel it's not well done. The performance problems probably relate to the UI 2.0 issue. Months before launch Carbine took feedback and decided to essentially re-write the UI so they did that in such a short time space they didn't have time to optimise it properly and they likely thought, after launch. Well they laid off quite a few of their staff then and had other significant issues to fix with the game. UI is probably further down the line now, and we dont know what their development priorities will be post free to play.I think fantasy is much popular than Sci-fi really. I'd rather slay a dragon than I would... space ship? For the record I think Carbine did a good job with the game but it means certain limitations. The fantasy genre is much more flexible, if you want technology you can go the steam punk avenue, but magic in a Sci-fi game, very unlikely. Instead of mages we have espers. Instead of an archer we have spellslingers. There's also less scope to make classes. I fell the medic is an odd one - a guy who kills you with resuscitation equipment; this to me is indicative of the limitations of the Sci-fi genre.I think professions are one of the biggest problem in MMOs. Wildstar was like many, an attempt to make a better World of Warcraft, and featured devs who used to work for Blizzard. Now professions in WoW aren't very exciting, you have profession points and you skill up by making things and that unlocks new things to make. If you want to make something you get the mats and make it, you always make it. Is that exciting - no. The current crafting system i think they tried to make it interesting to craft and most importantly, not a guaranteed craft but in the end it just ended up frustrating when you 'lucked out'. What is the perfect crafting system and how should the reward stack up against raid gear?Interestingly the MMO genre I think attracts more woman, actual woman, that any other type of game. I've played WoW with quite a few woman. And couples I might add. This could be also be tied into the fantasy genre, does fantasy appeal to woman more than Sci-fi? Confession time. I'm male and I make female characters. A shock I'm sure. I always assume that a female char is played by a guy. Personally the big breasts I think are ridiculous. This was before I played any of the betas, but apparently the breasts were even bigger. Currently I have an exile human with the slightly wider waist but for some reason that means I need bigger boobs! Oh, Carbine. At least it's not as bad as Korean MMOs where they jiggle and are enormous. Why else do you need physics in games, presumably.It's interesting, why do Americans always cast baddies as English. If anyone watched the TV show Charmed the big bad was very often English. I'm Scottish myself and in a fantasy game we're dwarves. Unintentionally I think American game companies often typecast certain countries. Often Dwarves sound more Irish than Scottish and most think we all sound like Groundskeeper Willie where as that is in no way a Scottish accent. Also with English Accents people are either 'posh' accents like the Dominion, the Hugh Grant type, or the lower class co*ckney accent like Michael Cane, or worse the mockney, Dick van *cupcake*. The Exiles are the Southern American type but I'll leave that to someone else.Turning to game play, MMORPGs are very unique in that you need to spend a fair amount of time to get the fullest out of it. While modern MMOs are less RPG than they were due to the need to balance they still have a steep learning cure, and a lot of time if you intend to do any end game content at 'your best'. I'm going to comment on WoW again. Last year was WoW's 10th anniversary and they made one of those wall things. Currently the sub base is around 5 million but what we learned is that they have 100 million accounts. While people may say MMOs are far too easy levelling now they have to be especially early on to keep players. Retention rates are awful. Most people who try MMOs dont leave the starting zone. Blizzard have made many changes to the Human starting zone for that very reason. MMOs are not mainstream so it's not a surprise that your friends etc dont want to play it. Most people are more likely to play a shooter or a MOBA that requires far less investment and usually no sub, if the MMO has one, or requires one to progress.What Carbine should be doing is fixing the things that are obviously broke and drive away players. Olivar mentioned one and it's the UI performance. I think the graphics engine too. If any one has played Rift, Trion had, and still have, huge performance probables that they planned to fix after launch. It never happened. To this day it still turns new players away. I know Carbine have done some stuff towards it already. Carbine realised to their credit that there were a lot of bugs to fix before they released new content and they worked on them but they need to constantly do it. Look at the recent f2p relaunch and how badly that went. Let's hope that they have fixed that because if they go for a Steam launch and it's not fixed, it's irrecoverable. Word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool or an MMO.Well that was quite a post.

Wait. I thought All Scots and Irish sounded like Groundskeeper Willie.I HAVE BEEN DECEIVED!!!!(Ahem, sorry. Carry on.)

I agree wildstar suffers REALLY badly on the sexualzation (i mean, look at draken. And have you seen how the boobs on humans look? Their not supposed to stick OUT like that D:) BUT i can understand the art direction, and it's something you just have to kinda... "suck up" when playing MMOs (maybe one day it can be a bit more neutral).I would love to see some more characterization of each race, giving them more flavor, but I'm not too keen on the whole "take form RL cultures" just stinks of streotypes - you already get people being nasty about certain races based on RL cultures in other games - don't need anymore of it here.

I don't know if you saw the links I sent earlier, so just linking them as I think they're pretty interesting:

https://www.superdataresearch.com/market-data/mmo-market/showing that the EU and Asian market is remarkably bigger than the North American audienceSome statistics to show what's actual facts and what's outdated prejudgements about the gaming audience:http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2015-global-video-game-stats-whos-playing-what-and-why/

A diagram to prove your believes are pretty correct!http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/genre.png

There's a whole lot of replies here, so just to give a general reply to cover some of the questions and comments in one post:Once again I clarify that no I don't say WS should be revamped into a whole new genre. I say that it's wise to investigate what it is within certain medias that makes them so popular: What made Minecraft, WoW, My Little Pony and LOL gather such enormous communities? Researching this does not equal a revamp. It simply helps being innovative.Furthermore I couldn't help but catch onto the "And to the sexualization, I'm sorry but out of all the games I've played and looked into for the past 10yrs now, this is one with the least amount of sexualization I've seen, which I found a bit disappointing, sometimes I want my character to be skimpy/sexy."Well... you clearly state you're not in the same mindset as they, which is ok. It just doesn't really equals that everyone else agrees and that their opinion is invalid. Just because WoW also have sexualized characters, it doesn't mean that it's making the subject irelevant. Taking another game and say that just because it also has something, it makes it more right to be so.Finally, just because there's a bossom on a cow-anthro it still doesn't represent a standard female body and from what this friend told, the experience of playing a female Tauren vs. a night elf is very different. Which I think is the point: Some likes to play a sexy avatar, as you confirm you do - some people want something less sexy. None of these preferences are superior to another; It's not about taking anything away, it's about giving people a free option to choose what they prefer.If giving such options could mean that more people would enjoy playing the game with us, I can not see how it's lost.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Space_Radish

Oh yes and a last thing I forgot to say, is that I don't know where the assumption that these guys haven't played for over a year comes from: They've tried the game after the F2P launch, so their feedback is very up to date with the current game setups.

It's your fault you picked BodyType #6. :P

1. 7 is kinda flat chest flat butt if that's more your style haha.

Sorry, I didn't mean to reference WoW to invalidate their opinion of W* and sexualization, I referenced WoW because you/they did, and I was pointing out that this game has less sexualization than what I've seen anywhere else, including your/their reference of WoW. Since I do occasionally like to play-up my toon's sexiness I noticed that it was less here, and that's why it always puzzles me when people say W* is too over-sexualized. And while yea the female toons here do have medium to big breasts, they are so comically fake looking I can't bring myself to feel that they are over-sexualized at all, it's just too exaggerated to me. I guess that's just my personal bias, I can't look at fake ones and see "ooo, sexy" :P I don't disagree with you about giving more options and wouldn't be upset if they added less assetted choices(as long as they don't take away what's already here), I just think W* does a decent job of giving us the ability to de-sexualize our toons.

While Wildstar is played in space, I would hardly call it science fiction. It's a fantasy game based in space.

Truth.It's just a fantasy game that bought into the old adage that "any sufficiently advanced technology will appear as magic to less-advanced cultures."In our case, the Eldan, long thought to be Divine, we now learn were little more than hyper-intelligent children tinkering with the building blocks of the cosmos - and even THEY harness technology that THEY don't (or barely) understand.Mordesh are Undead Elves. Aurin are Elves. Granok are just big Dwarves. Chua are insane Goblins. Draken are reptilian Orcs.Mechari are about as close to "totally on genre" in terms of pure sci-fi.

I agree with some of OP's findings. Crafting, for sure. I have lots of alts and I tried to give them all different professions. So, I've dabbled in all of them. The only one that I found I like enough to stick with, and actually has a purpose, is architect. The rest are pretty much garbage, to me at least. They can be fixed though! Some things that should be able to be crafted, that could be added to the various professions: costumes (including weapons), dyes (technologist?), weapon attachments (weaponsmith?), implants (feels technologisty, but maybe the armor professions could do it), pets, mounts (ground and hoverboard), etc., etc.I'm half and half on the oversexualized thing. I think the humans in the game are, for sure, with their comically gravity-defying big boobs and the vapid, airhead voice they gave them. But most of the other races have a pretty wide range of body options and don't sound like idiots. But, I can see where the complaint comes from and I won't disagree with it.The quests for sure have issues. I don't really know why there has to be a difference between like quests and tasks and what have you. Honestly, I still don't know the difference. I assume one type progresses the story and the other are optional. But, I dunno. It seems unnecessary. But, it's not something that would make me leave.I did leave the game for awhile and came back for F2P. My own reasons for leaving were:I didn't know anyone in the game and none of my friends would play.Crafting was awful.Population fell too low on my server.New WoW expansion, which I wasn't actually interested in, but a friend game me six months of game time out of the blue and I didn't have time for two games.

BigFish Games is a mobile game publisher aka plagiarizing other games and reskinning them as their own; like what most other mobile-focused publishers tend to do. They've also got a healthy variety of browser-based games and most of their newer stuff seems to be on both browser and mobile. They're strictly a casual-focused publisher and thus their data should be interpreted as such. For the purposes of MMOs like WildStar their data is completely useless. It is apples and oranges.There are plenty of women playing games like WildStar, Aion, and so on. However we need some actual data on games like that rather than data from a strictly casual-games publisher.Your 'users telenet be' chart has no date on it and is therefore out of context and useless for your argument. If you can provide a date on when it was created/released and what date-range the data was taken from then we can use it easier.

The overwhelmingly fantastic success of Sci-Fi games is not to be underestimated. On mobile/browser platforms, the sci fi RTS scene is quite lively (even though they're all basically the poor-man's Total Annihilation without any bit of the polish/fun). And even outside of RTS you have the e-sport of Korea called StarCraft. You have Eve Online being the most successful and longest-running full sandbox MMORPG on the market. Then there is Star Trek Online that got a huge boost from the F2P conversion and actually makes more than enough money to hire the original voice actors from their respective Star Trek series to help generate new and unique content for the game.Yes, fantasy will appeal to many players that are used to that aesthetic and enjoy it, but sci-fi as a genre is quite flexible.Some variations include steampunk (Final Fantasy 6), cyberpunk (Shadowrun), medievalfuturistic stuff with airships & mechs (Final Fantasy 12), and even more extreme future-tech like Otherworld being already in Early Access on Steam.WildStar does a lot of awesome things with their sci-fi aesthetic and it might be interesting to incorporate a few more steampunk or other elements of fantasy. Hell the Espers are Psionic Mages with a different name. Psionists from D&D to be precise. I used to play a fantasy MUD called MoonGate back in my day and Psionics are absolutely a fantasy thing.Considering how sensibly-dressed most of the NPCs and characters are (by default), I would say WildStar is the most non-sexual MMORPG I've ever played in recent memory. It sure as hell beats the pants off of B&S and other Korean fetishistic games that focus more on bouncy parts and less on other things.I remember the launch trailers and heard about 'boobgate' with WildStar so I am glad they toned it down a bit, but we should realize that people come in all shapes and sizes. I'd love more customization but that is something that'll have to be done over time (provided the game engine can handle it).WoW has female blood elves and female night elves. Non-sexual? Yeah try doing a /dance on either.I have zero problem with sexualization of adult females (of whatever race) so long as it is done in an artistic way.I have every problem with the 'little loli furry sexualized things' that infest every Korean-import MMO in recent memory. So I'm glad WildStar gives me something better than that. MUCH better.EDIT: At the lower-right of that MMO graph is thehttp://mmodata.net/domain; but going there is some page in a foreign language related to eyelash extensions (according to Google Translate). I lol'd.

Edited January 13, 2016 by FantasticCupcake

This. I wouldn't really call this game 'sexualised' much, sure you can make a character with actual boobs :o (or small boobs if you like) but the characters are too goofy to be anything close to erotic. Compare this to GW/Tera/BnS/Archeage/BDO where the characters can have huge breasts and wear skimpy outfits and calling WildStar sexualised is a pretty lame excuse to hate on it.The UI is a mess though, played briefly during f2p with friends and they all complained about the UI, the quest log in particular. There's too much crap being tracked at the same time in the same place. IMO the tracker should track ~6 quests to keep the screen less cluttered and encourage people to manage their quest log. Challenges should be made into little star icons and moved to the top of the screen where the challenge UI is, clicking them would start the challenge.

The sexualization thing held some water back in the early closed betas. Oh I gave Carbine some rather loud feedback on those original human and aurin female models, yes I did. xD But the different body types - plus, as others have noted - the otherwise cartoonish nature of the models, and the distinct equality in terms of gear appearances, makes this game possibly the least sexualized of any I've played.I've heard other complaints about the quest log, and I can understand them. Though personally the UI has never really bothered me. I find the tracker pretty intuitive. The quest log itself is annoying, but I literally never use it so... I dunno. I know there are several UI addons that reskin the general UI and lots of people seem to like them, though.

Couldn't have said it better myself..We still need more skimpy though 3 of my costumes are variations of the same items.. :D

I was also displeased with early betas and thanks to the commotion you and others made, I can now play a flat-chested Draken who still likes to show off some skin because you can be sexy whether you have big boobs or not! That being said, it's very easy to make a modest character in this game. Though there's a few gear pieces that have unequal appearance such as short's on ladies and pants on dudes, and this one shirt that gives a Male Mechari a horrible undershirt while females have none.Now if they can get to working on more feminine customization options for Chua . . .

Big moustache, sign of what human call feminine Chua, yes?

Seriously every time I hear people "discuss" issues about the over or under sexualization of game characters, I automatically assume they must live very sad lives.This type of discussion doesn't belong in games. It's a damn game ffs. It's make belief. It's an imagination world. There could be a race of pink blobs that fight with their *cupcake*, there could be a race of ONLY Women, or ONLY men, or A-sexual Chinchilla's. Maybe one race is only black skin, maybe only white.It's a fantasy world, nothing should be construed and constrained to people's bigotry. smh

No No NoYou got it all wrong.This is serious business, it has to be absolutely correct to compensate for real world short-commings.You're not allowed to use make-belief stuff.

I write in color because my opinion is more important than others', you must read it!

For me, it would mean more hairstyles that were similar to those the females of other races in the game have. Also more cute face options, but I can't really describe what I find cute aside from the fact I feel like most of the ones I saw weren't cute enough. More fur colors would also be nice but not needed.Mustaches, I don't really care for but I can see how fun it could be to make a super cute looking Chua and add a big mustache to.

Edited January 13, 2016 by Spider Bro Jenkins

Opens the whole bloody discussion again though :PYou're projecting human gender/sexual features on a race that has none:)

I'm just gonna pick on two points. If you have moral issues deciding on afaction let me remind you that it's a video game and you WILL BE KILLING THINGS whether they're monsters or not YOU WILL KILL things maybe you should think about that first. Over sexualisation? How high would the FLAMES rise if you could make truly ugly human females? Cause no one has an issue with fat male toons....

Or super muscular dudes, cause that's how we all run around, right?

It's not about dismissing or feeling endangered.It's about double standards being used as arguments

I underlined it before, and now I say it again: By giving more options, it doesn't take the option of making a sexy character away. And there's nothing wrong about making sexy characters. Ergo, to those who likes the characters they've made, it doesn't change a thing - your characters will remain the same- so it's not important for you.The request for the extra options would never be taken in use by you, but by those who likes it.I find it very peculiar that out of all the listed feedback, what makes most reply to this, is a protest against some women't request for less sexualized character design. It's just a matter of a different opinion, but the way it's responded to is as if their request is a threat against people who likes sexualized character designs. As if by saying they would like to have this option somehow is another way of saying that making a sexy character is wrong and that they are less worthy human beings. It is not: It's just a request for some options you'd never use a or care about.This option would simply mean that some players would have the option to choose, which would mean they'd have more fun playing the game with their friends.

And these worlds are created by people in the real world reflecting real world ideologies. Things aren't created in a vaccum,And yeah, compared to all the other mmos, WS is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than a lot. I'll always have my complaints about draken looking like two diff. species, but it's hardly enough to make me quit or really even get up in a tizzy. But saying that people shouldn't be uncomfortable or upset over it because "other games are worse" is kinda dumb. I've had a few friends not play over it, so it's always something to keep in mind as a dev.

Can you elaborate on this point? I'm being a bit slow today and don't know what you're trying to say lol.

As someone who plays GW2 mostly because they've got Asuras (darn cute and hilarious ones too!), I wouldn't say 'no' to being able to create a pink, cute and fluffy Chua; complete with ribbons and bows.Naturally 'she' would dress up like this only to take them silly and sentimental humans off guard, in order to gain an advantage... or something....I'd have to agree that the UI is very literally the worst UI of any game I've ever played. Ended up having to write down a big list of 'How the heck do you..?' questions in my pad, log out and Google, just to perform the most basic, elementary functions of most games/MMOs. Plus the quest tracker thing.About the whole sexualisation thing (yawn...), the problem is that it's OK to have opinions based on feelings, but feelings are subjective. In the OP, a comparison was made between WS and WoW, about which is the more sexualised. From there, objective quantification can happen, which apperently [never played WoW] showed that the feelings-based opinion (about which game was the more sexualised) was actually incorrect... so therefore less valid as useful feedback that could potentially be acted upon.Suppose the Devs took this feedback on board and were to immediately leap at fixing this 'problem'. They look at an apparently more sexualised game than WS as the stated example of a less sexualised game... where do/can they practically go from there?

I don't think anyone here is asking them to change/ think that they should devote time to it. It's simply a complaint some people can have with the game (I've had a few friends not be able to stomach it for long b/c of how the female models looked).But say - in the future they add more body options/customizations, then people would want to see some more varied types of bodies.And at this point changing say, female draken to look more like the men (hunched over, more beast-like) would cause a LOT of issues for people who like how their draken are now (I love my lady SS, even if she looks nothing like my warrior lol).It's important to be critical and point out issues with the game (and all media you consume), but that doesn't mean you expect a change, or can't still fully enjoy the product.

I kind of like it, because I read a lot on my phone - and colored text is totally illegible there. So I get to miss out on the color-coded snark. :lol:;)

I don't think I was in Beta for "boobgate", what did those original female models look like, and are they still available in the game?

No one is saying that the options shouldn't be there or added(though they are there, there's 9 body types and they do have a few that are less assetted). I'm just taking issue with people condemning this game for something it doesn't do as bad as they are making it out to be, and now making my opinion of it to be something I never said. You can make female toons in this game that aren't sexualized, a hell of a lot more options for that than to make ones that are, and still a lot less than what's in other games.This issue is getting more responses because the other issues(besides the sci-fi thing) don't need to be discussed because the majority agree with them, plus they're less dramatic :P And again with the making the opinions to be what they never were about. I don't care if they want more options, that's fine, add them. I'm just saying wut???? to the insistence that this game is oversexualized, and that the comparisons given are to games that actually do have more sexualization than here.

Yeah, they are all still in-game. They are usually the first or second choice on the top row, if I recall correctly.Big bust, thin waist, bodacious badonkadonk.

Really? Those are the ones that had people worked up? They seem small and skinnier to me than some of the other choices, like 4, 5(my go-to choice), 6(top), and 9(bottom). Well, at least they didn't take the choice away from us, and actually gave us more lolHow I'm numbering them :P

Edited January 13, 2016 by beattlebilly

I'm more offended by the yellow Mechari undies incident, just saying.

I think "people" might be too strong a word here.Mostly it was Franny. :lol:

Well this game was marketed towards Humans and not a single gendered race like the Chua (not intentionally at least) so I'm okay with projecting my human gender/sexual features when deciding what additional character customization options I want for this particular race. People complained about the lack of body types in beta and we got more body types later.I got super-excited about the Angel's Locks costume piece simply because I could make my own Chua more girly. There's a guy who uses it on his manly-looking Chua with a goatee and I have no problem with that.

Edited January 13, 2016 by Spider Bro Jenkins

Just to chime in, I think one reason that this got the most heated response is that people don't see Wildstar as being particularly 'oversexualized'. Certainly I don't generally think so (with the passing exception of the female Mechari's integrated heels), and so when that is brought up as a complaint it seems unreasonable.Certainly no one would complain about more options, but realistically, what would those look like? How many people would actually pick these new looks, and how much would it take to develop them?Granted, my experience may not be representative, but in previous MMOs, all the women I knew wanted to play 'cute' characters, if not necessarily sexy ones. The problem, of course, being that the line between 'cute' and 'sexy' is largely subjective.

Yes, they added the original model back in with the implementation of body type choices. It's the one with the torpedo boobs.Lemme dig into my old screenshots... I didn't actually take very many in the early closed betas, because Carbine had the graphics resolution turned down super low (everything looked kind of "fuzzy" - it actually hurt my eyes at the time xD).Here it is!

They were definitely, uh, boobtastic. xD ALSO LEMME POINT OUT that's a CASSIAN with EXILE hair! *flails*And here's a shot of the super early UI for extra lols.[edit] I'm not gonna get in trouble for posting watermarked screenshots anymore, am I?????

Edited January 13, 2016 by Naunet

As soon as the NDA was lifted you were free to post them, I got clarification on this a long time ago. Just let people know when they were taken for extra clarification (as you already did).

This is interesting to me. My thought is:A) the UI IS annoying. This is why i don't (never have and never will) use base UI. I just hate it.B) The professions system does kind of suck. I'm not complaining about it though, because that's why I make some plat with it :DC) I always felt wildstar was a bit undersexxed. I want some damn dresses already.

Belle Walker Must Die.She's supposed to be this genius scientist?She looks like a super-horny 17 year old girl from a trailer park and talks like she has an i.q. of 70 with a middle school education. I really want to smash her face.

WTB model for Aurin

KK - so UI is a PITA for everyone it seems, NO ONE LIKES IT. I would say i know of one guildie who is still using default UI.Basically everyone else uses forge, kurona, or potato.My UI looks like this:<a href="http://imgur.com/UY4OYwc"><imgsrc="http://i.imgur.com/UY4OYwc.png" title="source: imgur.com" /></a> I also will shrink that ginormous quest log for raids. I would run Better Quest Log, but it was causing crashes and login issues.

They have it, too.

THANK GOODNESS I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE.Though my thing was I got tired to rescuing her all the time. At least Artemis has a bodyguard and she is rarely directly in danger. Everyone else around her is usually in danger. :lol:

Or beefcakes like male draken.

• cough*

Sorry, male drakens are at best lean beef. :lol:

Its an MMO thats why people don't stick around.

What on earth is that supposed to mean? XD

There was a time (and might still be the case, for all I know) when a big chunk of the MMO players were nomads: they play a game for the first free month, or until they reach the endgame, or until the next shiny MMO calls their attention.At least that's what I'm assuming he's referencing there.

I just find it a tad interesting that a FEMALE is defending this and being level-headed about something, rarity on these forums I say.I mean just look at GW2, or BnS, or Skyforge. All of which I have played, WS is nowhere close. Heck it even went on in the SWG days (yes you read it right SWG)....anyone remember the vest trick on women models?People always have to get worked up over pixels and make inferences on people's maturity levels when they create said things....../rant over. If you can even call it one but I'll go back to my hole now.

Edited January 14, 2016 by SickToubib

moderator edit format

LMAO Thanks for the laugh Bacon_21(and I mean that sincerely:) ), I felt so crappy today that having a little giggle can go a long way :D

Alright, since you ask for more clear evidence and a date:http://www.pcgamer.com/researchers-find-that-female-pc-gamers-outnumber-males/https://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/why-all-gamers-matter/http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-percent-people-playing-games-women-industry-doesnt-knowhttps://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/224hsj/if_we_exclude_people_who_are_exclusively_mobile/These are all from 2014, and it's pretty doubtful that it's changed to be less now in 2016.

The 2 faction model with the whole "Us vs. Them" mentality that only accomplishes dividing the player base is just old and tired. Yeah, it worked for WoW, but they got into this genre at the perfect time and had an IP that gamers the world over were familiar with from previous blockbuster titles. Couple that with the fact that they released a super polished product that could run on a toaster with a good framerate and it was like capturing lightning in a bottle. Personally, I prefer the EQ model where "good and evil" can work together versus a common threat. We don't agree on everything, and I'm not even welcome in your city (unless I earn the respect of your people), but we can group, dungeon, and raid together. PvP being a side game that doesn't make or break PvE balance with every patch resulting in never ending uproar.Too many MMO developers jumped on the WoW bandwagon trying to copy their formula for success only to fail. Carbine made that mistake, and on top of that they had not one, but 2 god awful launches full of bugs, hacking, bots, and unplayable servers. Sadly, it turned a lot of people off before they even got the chance to see the potential that this game does have.For me, soloing in an MMO is incredibly boring and pointless. I don't play multiplayer online games to solo. Why would you? There is no reason to group outside of an instance, but until you reach max level there are no instances because there isn't enough of a player base to support them. When you do solo your way to max level you are a complete noob in the group game because you have no experience playing with other people in a massively multiplayer online game. That sounds awesome. Most people would rather just quit, and they do.

Edited January 18, 2016 by Codedude

I remember when I was a kid my mom would play Sims for hours, little to no interest in my own games though. She was a hardcore gamer all along and I never realized!

Dust 514 got slammed because the female walk animation was "too sexual". People will *cupcake* and complain about anything, especially in the name of "social justice".That terminology is how they get away with doing it. It is absurd.

I almost want Wildstar to be /more/ sci-fi:$In my head, I think they could go full on space opera, but right now it's space western and western is my least favorite genre of anything ever because of how heavy specific the tone is.There are elements about this sci-fi that bug me. This is especially true for housing. Like no internet, no large screen televisions, no phones??? It's not very modern sci-fi, which I guess is the disconnect for me. It's like sci-fi that skipped all significant consumer technology of the 2000s if that makes any sense...Honestly, the designs of the female characters bother me to a certain extent. The fact that mechari women can't have flat chests and constantly wear heels and short shorts is frustrating when we don't even get dresses or other feminine costume items to pair with that. Seems very redundant... And the running animations, jeez. This can honestly be solved if they just gave us body sliders like they do with the faces. Or adding more body types. I think GW2 is excellent at highlighting the difference of gender with races without holding onto the human interpretation of female beauty/sexuality (Especially the female Charr, those are amazing) Side note: I wish the female Cassians looked more like the concept art!Wildsta'rs UI is one of the worse ones I have encountered. I get that there are add-ons but Wildstar is the first mmorpg I've played where I felt that bothered that I even had to consider add-ons. I wish there was a way to streamline it more than it is now.When it comes to the Dominion's marketing, I have no idea why they painted Dominion as a hyper evil empire with pretentious guy yelling at you compared to the Exile's chipper hick girl hahah. When you play Dominion, you start entering great moral grey areas that I don't think got put into the marketing at all.

There's internet (holo-net). There are definitely televisions. And everyone has a super-powered "smartphone" - the datachron!

Have you read the Dominion questgiver text? A lot of the side-quests comes out and is delivered exactly like that.

I noticedtwo wordsmissing from the post I made yesterday, I see it could lead to people misunderstanding so I'll rephrase.I remember when I was a kid my mom would play Sims for hours, *she had* little to nointerest in my own games through.Point was, those surveys are nonsense.

Every survey or study done to gamers and gaming is pointless.Best example is a study done on how people did not want to have a small, simple game that utilised basic graphics.People were looking for story, content, immersion and a solid well known established IP.And then came along flappy bird.

I don't even understand how anyone can call the human female body models sexualized. They're so *cupcake* awful there's just nothing sexy about them. Really bad choppy run and sprint animations to boot as well.Totally regret making a human female. I guess I was thinking I could cover up the bad model with some good outfit somehow but nope, stuck with that rediculous waist and legs. I've actually been finding my draken female has more realistic human looking legs than my human.

"Super Polished" is not a term that I've heard from people who played WoW at launch. More like "a buggy hot mess". But instead of flipping the bird at its playerbase it comped them time and item loss due to bugs were handled with an apology instead of so-sad-too-bad.There's a reason that WoW has a lot of loyal players.

Ah yes, the massive blockbuster mobile game flappy bird completely makes moot any kind of study you would ever want to perform for a game, or game audience. Holy sh*t what a post.

Really? Can you fill me in on the names of those items? I've been using oversized tablets as television screens :P

I have so I get that some of them are hyper zealous and pretentious but I think Dominion has a lot of quests that make you realize how /equally/ messed up the Exiles are (intentional plagues, poisoning the wildlife, torture, etcetcetc) but that's not illustrated in the advertising for Exile the same way it is for the Dominion for new people who approach Wildstar, they may automatically register Exiles as the "good" side and Dominion as the "evil" side.

You're missing the point.

Yasfan 2.0, that's why I consider MOST (not all) studies useless since they go every which way. But I do agree on your previous point Olivar, main thing to be garnered from that is that the majority have short attention spans so games that are simple (and hard in their own way) tend to get popular really fast in this day and age, heck we only need to see bejewled or fruit ninja to see that as well.There's also the problem of what one encompasses to be a "gamer."

Edited January 19, 2016 by Bacon_21

I didn't so lose interest in playing Wildstar, the game performance has just become so bad now that it is a waste of time logging in.My tolerance is pretty high but I draw the line at rubber banding

Lemme guess AMD or skylake?....not that those cause rubber-banding a lot though.....

I define it as simply one who likes playing games, no matter what kind of games. Some mobile games are pretty hardcore. Like they have mini-raids and guild vs guild stuff. I think it's silly that some people get all elitist over it.

Edited January 20, 2016 by Spider Bro Jenkins

No they aren't. That's my whole point. These worlds are NOT created to reflect real world ideologies. Saying things aren't created in a vacuum is nonsense. Just because YOU cannot imagine worlds unlike the one you exist in, does not mean others can't. Some of the best music, art, stories, universes made had no reflection on reality at all.Pierre Culliford created smurfs a race of mental blue in which there were hundreds of males and one female. Does that make him sexist? No, its the world he imagined, not his opinion of how society IS or should be.Jeeeez..

As a new player I have to agree with the OP in some items:UI sucksQuest log sucks, I dont know how many times I have quests appear and disappear when you move from one zone to the other, I know that the devs thought to have the quests only active when you are in the particular zone, but that sucks because you have to go to zones to see if you have any quest pending, I like to see all my quests active so I know what I am missing or I need to do.Crafting oh well I already posted my opinion, it sucks to have to pay for crafting, after you pay for items needed for crafting, after paying for the recipe. It sucks specially for newer players trying to make a living in the game.The rest well I disagree but these 3 topics is really something the devs need to look into it.

The whole point of art (which includes games like Wildstar) is to both go beyond, and reflect upon the human experience. So yes, the characters, stories, lore, and material in game is absolutely influenced by events, phenomena, people, places, ideas, and experiences that are fundamentally human at all levels.Invoking sexism and the smurfs is silly. Scholars and people who aren't ignorant to language use sexism (and racism) to refer not to prejudice, but to power structures created to negatively impact the targets of that prejudice. With out that power to negatively impact the target, sex prejudice is just a thought that can't impact anyone. Only with power behind it does it become sexism.The story of Nexus has many influences, easter eggs, and direct parallels from our own society and social experiences. But like all art, it's here to inform and invoke introspection, not tell us what to do or how to be.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Nazryn

Yes and this world was made up by, created, and populated by people who live in the real world, have their own prejudices and their own views on things and society. Like I said, nexus didn't get pooped out of a hole in the sky and the devs just make models for it lmao.And yeah only having a single female character with steryotypical female looks and personality is p sexist when the rest of the cast hosts a large array of male characters. Not that I even care or that im talking about the smurf which is about and old guy who wants to eat them so...(also how f-d up is it that there is one lady in that entire society what do they all do....)Again - WS is tame compared to Blade and boob, tera etc, and they have made some changes to make a wider diversity, which is great! My only point that I made (like a month ago? ffs how long has this been) is that there is some sexulization and it CAN make some people not want to play the game. Should carbine change for those few people? Nah, they have their style. Are the opinions of those that quit wrong or should be ignored? Also no, but nothing carbine can do NOW about it, but something other game companies can look at, or carbine can look back on if/when they add new races to the pile.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Xiun