Interview with Carbine Studios: Free-to-Play and the Future of WildStar

Carbine Studios and NCSoft's sci-fi MMORPG WildStar recently went free to play in a new update that added a host of changes and improvements to the game. Before the game went F2P, I had the opportunity to speak with Carbine's Chad Moore about the new system and what the studio's plans are for the game heading forward.

WildStar is now free-to-play, and it's a model that usually caters heavily to newcomers. What plans do you have to reward long-time subscribers, and will they have any reason to keep paying for the game instead of simply buying stuff off the in-game store?

We have an excellent program called Cosmic Rewards, designed specifically to reward our loyal WildStar players who have been with us before the free-to-play transition. Basically if you’ve ever spent money in WildStar, be that from subscribing, buying the boxed copy, redeeming C.R.E.D.D., purchasing NCoin – you have earned reward points that can be spent on perks and items. The rewards are retroactive, so even if you’ve spent money in the game and then stopped playing for a while, you’ll have points waiting for you when you return. You can learn more about our robust Cosmic Rewards system here. 



Players will also be able to purchase signature accounts status, which provide several perks and bonuses as part of membership. Signature status can be purchased in various monthly increments, or can be accessed by redeeming C.R.E.D.D., which means that players can get signature status without having to spend any money at all. The full rundown of differences between free and signature accounts can be found here.

Is WildStar's cash shop pay-to-win? Does it provide any advantages, gameplay-wise, to players who buy stuff?

When making the choice to switch to a free-to-play model with WildStar, there was one view that was universally shared among our entire studio, and that was that we would not ever make our game pay-to-win. With our free-to-play transition, we are not gating any content behind a paywall – free players have access to all of the same game content as paying players. Our philosophy for our MTX shop was that we would only sell cosmetic and convenience items, nothing that would give a paying player any kind of competitive advantage over players who don’t want to pay. So the things you’ll see in our cash shop are things that will alter your appearance (like costumes, pets, mounts) or convenience items like fast travel tokens, rez (resurrect) here options, things like that.

How is Carbine planning to tackle problems that the Cash Shop may potentially introduce into the game's economy?

We have a great team in charge of the game’s economy that has been monitoring trends since launch last year. The team will continue keeping a close eye on the economy post free-to-play, observing trends and making sure things are working smoothly for all types of players.

For those of us who didn't participate in the beta test for WildStar's free-to-play update, can you tell us how the game's inventory and other basic systems are changing?

We have added a lot of new systems to WildStar's free-to-play model. Along with all of the unique rewards that we are giving both old and new players, we have also added a currency called OmniBits which can be earned just by playing the game. OmniBits are cool because they can be used to buy most of the items in our in-game store, allowing players the choice to spend their time instead of their money to obtain the same things as our paying players. Players can also use Service Tokens to access convenience systems like instant rez and teleportation - and these can either be purchased in the store or earned, like OmniBits, by just playing the game itself.



From a content standpoint, we've made lots of changes to the game. We've completely revamped our dungeon experience, making them fun and accessible to more of our players. The game's World Story has been enhanced with a new level 15 instance called Alpha Sanctum, which gets players into the epic story of planet Nexus much earlier in their game experience. Along with some of these major changes, we've added tons of quality of life improvements like a sprint revamp and a NavPoints system. This is our biggest update yet, and players will feel it once they get in and start playing the game.

Primary and secondary stats are getting a complete overhaul. Can you describe the philosophy behind these changes and what you intend for players to experience?

One major point of feedback we received from players, as far back as launch, was that our stats system was obtuse and difficult to grasp. For example we had a stat called Moxie, which not only is something you’ve never seen in any other type of MMO or RPG, but could mean completely different things depending on what class you were playing. Needless to say, this wasn’t easy for new or even veteran players to understand at a glance.



What we’ve done now is simplified core stats into easily understood buckets like assault power, support power, health and armor.  This is to help the primary stats be easily understood by anyone as they’re now self-explanatory. Secondary stats are now combat stats that allow advanced players to really customize their playstyles at higher levels. With stats like Lifesteal and Intensity, players can make their characters truly unique and more fitting to the role they want to play.

Crafting was always a combination of RNG and a whole lot of patience—and always done with the aid of user-made UI mods. What's being done to simplify or improve the way players craft items?

We simplified the tech trees across the board, sped up crafting all around and added new, easier to understand talents for our crafters to spec in. We also removed the need for Eldan data fragments and prototype recipes (except for Technologist and architect until the next update).



Our focus was to make crafting more accessible while preserving its depth. And as I've said before, don't take my word for it, jump into the game and try it for yourself.

Old timers who create new characters will be happy to know that they can now skip the tutorial section of the game. Is there anything—such as achievements and other meta unlocks—that they'll be missing out on for doing so?

There are no achievements that players will miss out on by opting to not play the tutorials, but we’d suggest they try them anyway! The tutorials have been redone, streamlined, and offer a deeper look at the conflict between the Exiles and the Dominion so it’s a new experience even for veteran players.

Many complaints about WildStar, during its initial release, were about the challenge and difficulty in the game's PvE instances. What changes have you implemented to deal with these complaints?

The team took a good look at various pain points in the game, where players where dying often or having difficulty, and why these things were happening. The result was months of work in streamlining the game experience, improving the pacing, and smoothing out areas like dungeons to improve the experience not only for new players, but returning and current players as well. 



We have made a ton of changes, but a few we can call out are the world bosses and the game’s dungeons. Originally in the game, major world bosses were positioned in zones in such a way that players were rolling into mobs while trying to fight the boss, or accidentally engaging the boss while fighting weaker enemies. This was creating a greater challenge than they were able to deal with. We remedied this by giving world bosses their own areas within zones, so players need to seek them out and won’t end up accidentally engaging with them when they just want to explore the world.



For dungeons, we introduced a training dungeon, Protogames Academy, which shows players the ropes of dungeons at level 10. We also moved our existing dungeons around so that there is a better cadence from level to level, and players are encountering new dungeons at levels where they are better prepared to face these challenges.

In a recent Reddit AMA, Jen Ortiz suggested that players might be able to add new paths to their character, and it opened up a lot of speculation about what's coming to WildStar. What plans do you have for the path system?

We have been discussing the path system, and are looking at ways to expand and enhance it in upcoming releases. At this point, we're not ready to talk about specifics, but stay tuned for more information as we look to the future.

Beyond the free-to-play update, what are your plans for the future of WildStar?

In the immediate future, we have some awesome in-game events coming up that fans should love. Shade’s Eve, a Halloween event celebrating Nexus’ legendary Jack Shade, will give fans a ton of new stuff to check out in October. Following that, we have another pretty big holiday event that happens at the end of the year that should get fans pretty excited.



Long term, expect more great content coming to the game. Unique in-game events, new zones, new group content and more. We have a ton of great stuff coming down the pipe for players, now’s a great time to be getting into WildStar!