Carbine on F2P: "a limited experience"

Here's a flash from the past as one-time Gamereactor UK contributor Petter Mårtensson picks up the mic as he meet with Carbine Studios' development director Matt Mocarski at Nordic Game recently to talk about the game that is just days away from its long awaited launch.

"It feels exciting and nerve wracking all at the same time," says Mocarski. "It's been a long journey so to get to the end of that journey and then we have a whole other journey starting with post-launch and being a live game."

Carbine Studios have promised monthly updates following launch, and Mocarski spoke about what the thoughts were announcing that.

"If we weren't confident that we couldn't [sic] deliver every month, thenn we wouldn't be talking about it," says Mocarski. "We worked very early on, Guild Wars - Arenanet is a sister studio of Carbine, and we got a lot of insight into their process of how they do their updates. And we have a whole team, we have over 200 people that are working on post-launch and then we have a whole other team working on the live game. Making sure that all the balance updates and everything get into the game. So we have this kind of two pronged approach, but the entire Carbine development team is focussed on post-launch and supporting the game."

Wildstar is one of few games to launch these days with a subscription model, but Mocarski was adament this was the right way to go with Wildstar:

"We're a full featured MMO. We have tons of content, right. So off the bat you are getting everything included in that subscription. Everything," says Mocarski. "And then post-launch with a subscription base we feel like we can keep a full development team on providing customer support, fixing all the issues, improving balance, and creating completely new content. I don't feel like we could have a whole team if we weren't a subscription based game. Now, on top of that it's very important that Wildstar also has C.R.E.D.D. (an in-game item that extends your subscription by 30 days) so there's an option for players that if they play enough and they make enough gold they can actually purchase C.R.E.D.D. from other players in the auction house and not have to pay the subscription fee."

"Honestly, we like subscription based games. Because what you pay for, you pay for the whole game. All of our post-launch content, not just stuff like zones, dungeons, raids, everything, but the customisations and stuff, we're giving new items, new outfits, new mount customisation, new hoverboard types, all this stuff is included in that stuff. We don't want to nickle and dime our customers."

Mocarski also went on to say that looking at the free-to-play market that's out there prior to choosing business model they found that most free-to-play games were more expensive for the player if you wanted a full MMO experience.

"I guess if somebody wants a limited experience and they don't want to pay," says Mocarski when asked if free-to-play can offer something that the subscription model cannot. "From what I understand most free-to-play games they're limiting the content in some fashion in order to, you know, have people pay for extra things, right. And I just feel like that changes the playing field. It means that people that have more money are going to get a different experience than the players that aren't paying money."

Mocarski also spent some time talking about how the player housing had evolved largely thanks to it being a dev favourite feature. The discussion then focussed on the various mechanics and control schemes that were tested during development, eventually landing with a highly reactive system that was inspired by League of Legends.

Wildstar is set to launch on June 6, with the headstart kicking off this weekend.