Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Nebu]

The problem with avoiding tasks is that you fall behind quest level.  Trying to do quests that are one level higher is a significant challenge.  You pretty much have to do every quest to stay with your level unless you are willing to pvp or do random pug dungeons to augment xp.

[Rokal]

I don't think people that are doing this are over-leveling quest content. If you are doing tasks, you're often going to over-level the quests you are doing by 1-2 levels as you progress through a zone. You won't overlevel them more than that because exp gain drops off a cliff after you are 1+ levels above content.

[Nebu]

I don't think people that are doing this are over-leveling quest content. If you are doing tasks, you're often going to over-level the quests you are doing by 1-2 levels as you progress through a zone. You won't overlevel them more than that because exp gain drops off a cliff after you are 1+ levels above content.

Not in my case.  After level 20, I did every quest I could solo in each zone and it would often happen that I'd arrive at the next zone 0.5 level lower than I should be.  Not every class can solo the 2 person quests. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

When I went from the first big zone to the second(After doing every single task/quest)  I was level 21 and the starting level for mobs was 22-23 so yeah, you are expected to do it all or to dungeon.

[Flood]

Not in my case.  After level 20, I did every quest I could solo in each zone and it would often happen that I'd arrive at the next zone 0.5 level lower than I should be.  Not every class can solo the 2 person quests. 

Same here.  I'm level 27 now, but there has been a couple of times I walked into a zone -1 the indicated quest level and had to either back track or struggle through a few mob kills to level because I was a couple of bubbles short.  As others have mentioned, fighting mobs above your level is not easy and my impression in playing has been that they want you to be in certain zones at a specific level or else it gets ugly.  Caveat I'm a Medic and not exaclty a DPS machine compared to the other classes.     

[Hoax]

Medic really sounds like the least fun class from reading this thread.

[Goldenmean]

Medic really sounds like the least fun class from reading this thread.

I don't agree. It's the class I was planning on playing after testing all of them in beta, except I realized that of all the people I was planning on playing with we had like one million other healers, and only one person who could tank, so opted to go for a potential tanking class instead.

I think the problem is that from the healing perspective they're the class that's most affected by the telegraph system (considering theirs are all so close range), so they're the largest learning curve. From a dps perspective, I don't think they really have less sustained DPS than any of  the other classes. Stalker probably has a lead in soloing content just because they're so front loaded, and they can kill an overworld mob before their resource pool bottoms out.

On the plus side, medics can heal shields. Knowing that the tank was hovering at 80%ish overall "health" and there was nothing I could do about it drove me absolutely up the wall when playing the other healing classes. It doesn't help that this is something the default UI presents abominably...

[Flood]

Medic really sounds like the least fun class from reading this thread.

For just day to day playing?  No, it's actually quite fun.  The spells are cool, the weapon design is neat.  Just killing regular mobs is very engaging because of the range requirement and movement aspect.  I shelved my level 12 Engineer for my Medic and have really been enjoying it. 

My DPS isn't strong comparatively it seems to me just out in the world as I see other classes playing and questing.  Mainly it seems like my TTK is longer than other classes.  My AOE though, is unmatched.  However, that's mostly anecdotal, as I'm not a raider or serious group content guy by any means.  There's plenty of threads on the forums that may have hard numbers but I'm just talking about "feel".  Having said all that, I've still solo'ed my way to almost 28 pretty easily.  And part of my difficulties probably stem from WildStar being a tad bit harder as a general rule than the MMO standard (i.e. WoW).

I don't plan on any serious raiding, and I'm a pretty lame healer, because I haven't done it 5 years or something, so as long as I'm having fun levelling and questing I'm happy.  In both those regards I'm pleased with my choice of Medic.  In fact I'd recommend at least giving one a try.  Plus, if past MMO experience is any indicator - if Medics really are underpowered DPS or healing-wise, there will probably be a rebalancing buff in the future anyway.  (Which will probably make them too powerful them get nerfed again...lulz)

[Zetor]

The main issue is that medics were way too strong in beta and ate a severe damage nerf just before release. On a design level, the problem (if you consider it a problem) with medic DPS is that it's so cleave/aoe reliant. Medic AOE damage is actually decent-ish middle-of-the-road stuff, while single-target damage is way below other classes (up to 30% in endgame parses, allegedly). One of the devs acknowledged this and said they'll do something about it, but I think it's going to be lower priority than bugfixing.

Healing medics are fine, but the ability progression is questionable. Do other healers not get reliable burst healing until 25?

[Nebu]

Healing medics are fine, but the ability progression is questionable. Do other healers not get reliable burst healing until 25?

None of the healers get the kind of healing your used to in other MMO's.  This game expects your teammates to stay out of the red shit.  You'll never be able to save them from their own stupidity.

Having said that, my Esper healing is pretty solid.  I'm nowhere near as good as a medic at AE healing, but I'm much better single target.  It's all about trade-offs (i.e. balance).

[Zetor]

Healing medics are fine, but the ability progression is questionable. Do other healers not get reliable burst healing until 25?

None of the healers get the kind of healing your used to in other MMO's.  This game expects your teammates to stay out of the red shit.  You'll never be able to save them from their own stupidity.

Having said that, my Esper healing is pretty solid.  I'm nowhere near as good as a medic at AE healing, but I'm much better single target.  It's all about trade-offs (i.e. balance).

Well, like I posted before, at that early level all I had were an instant AOE HOT, an AOE instant heal, a [weak] cone channeled heal, and an instant ST smart heal (there's also another AOE heal with a cast time, but eh), all with 10-sec cooldowns. I'm fine with not being able to save everyone from standing in bad, but I'd like to at least keep the tank up during heavy incoming burst (even if it's from telegraphs).

About the general concept of healing in wildstar: I'm ok with DPS getting some responsibility in instances (though imo interrupting the right abilities is much more important than dancing out of the telegraphs, and yet stuns/interrupts seem to be a foreign concept... but that's a different rant). It's just that if a healer is not able to save people from mistakes or recover the group from really bad situations, most of the fun why I'm playing one in the first place disappears. Yeah, I can make sure I'm standing at the right spot using the right abilities at the right time while maximizing healing output / minimizing damage input on the group, but that's basically playing a DPS role with green-colored bars that go from right to left.

[Sjofn]

It does really sort of downgrade that feeling of "I'm really good at this."

[Venkman]

Heh. I've been feeling that on my Spellslinger lately. I am managing ok with dodges, but woe be when I can't do one. The gear I have is all quest based because the tradeskills seem priced for higher level players.

The leveling also seems slow, like launch-WoW rather than launch-GW2. For the hours I've played, I'd be in the mid 30s in GW2 whereas I just hit 14 last night. I don't mind per se, but it does mean I'm shelving crafting for a bit until I figure out the groove on coin.

[Samprimary]

 in another mmo, a dps standing in the shit becomes a burden to the healer and only learns about their folly indirectly when the healer literally can't compensate hard enough with their resources for their shit-standing.

in wildstar, your shit standing just results in you dead and the healer going "sorry brah, can't be done"

[rk47]

so why do you need a healer? why can't you just remove tanking and hp?
replace all with 10 hearts.
the moment you take 10 hits, you're dead 

[Draegan]

so why do you need a healer? why can't you just remove tanking and hp?
replace all with 10 hearts.
the moment you take 10 hits, you're dead 

You still have hps though... heartpoints

[Lakov_Sanite]

Fucking fairy was too slow refilling my hearts.

[Nebu]

My impression of the game now that I've been level 50 for a week:  Wildstar is a well-crafted and fun game designed for a Brad McQuaid-light niche audience.  Any failure will be due to that.  Some of the more serious problems:

1) Group finder will be a lottery filled with frustration.  You can't create demanding adventures and expect 5 people without cohesion and voice chat to navigate it.

2) Making PvE gear the go-to for PvP is self-defeating.

3) People are sick of rep grinds.  Crimson Badlands fills me with WoW-endgame levels of hate. 

4) Crafting seems like a slapped-together time sink.  Cooking is far tougher than it should be.

5) Many of the interfaces are not intuitive.  Using the AH or commodities broker takes some getting used to. 

6) Poorly defined goals.  There are times in game where it's tough to know where you should be or what you should be doing.  While I enjoy the learn-by-doing nature of games, the learning curve shouldn't be so punishing.

7) Balance is a serious issue.  Some classes level easily while not worrying about mob telegraphs while others must work.  Watching an engineer handle group mobs with ease is a bit much.

8) Travel is a bit of a nuisance in some areas.  Mob density and zone connectivity becomes problematic later in the game.

[Draegan]

Unless they cave, I think people will eventually learn how to play the game. DPS will learn they have to move into healing telegraphs near the tank if they want to be healed. They will learn to dodge the red.

It should be interesting to see how things go.

[Pennilenko]

...impressions and list of some serious flaws...

I agree with what you said except for one point. The commodities broker and action house are features that I really like. Especially the buy orders portion of the commodities broker, I put what ever price I feel like buying stuff at and then order gets filled by gold farmers after they exhaust all the other more expensive buy orders. I've been getting crafting mats on the dirt cheap if I just wait 12 to 24 hours.

[Nebu]

I agree with what you said except for one point. The commodities broker and action house are features that I really like. Especially the buy orders portion of the commodities broker, I put what ever price I feel like buying stuff at and then order gets filled by gold farmers after they exhaust all the other more expensive buy orders. I've been getting crafting mats on the dirt cheap if I just wait 12 to 24 hours.

Don't get me wrong, I love the commodities broker NOW THAT I KNOW HOW TO USE IT.  I just lost a bit of money learning.  Now I'm up to 3 plat and climbing steadily exploiting the level 50 mats market. 

I forgot to add #9

9) 2 dungeons and 2 battlegrounds from level 20 - 49.  TWO.  A bit shy on the content there. 

[Draegan]

How many adventure things are there?

[Nebu]

How many adventure things are there?

I think 6 with 4 that have veteran modes. 

[Draegan]

That's still content, no?

[Nebu]

That's still content, no?

It is.  I guess after so many MMO's released since 2004 that someone would release a game with more content rather than the minimum.   When you have to do just about every quest in a zone just to stay on the level track, that seems a bit sparce.  

Keep in mind that the odds of completing an Adventure with a PUG from the group finder are about 1 in 5.  It's a lottery. 

[Zetor]

Based on what I've seen so far, Adventures are also overly long slogs consisting of 3-4 fun segments with tons of hp-bloat trash inbetween that presents no challenge at all (except boredom).

[Azuredream]

Malgrave Trail is Oregon Trail, sort of. War of the Wilds is a moba, sort of. Tempest Refuge is tower defense, sort of. And Crimelords.. uh.. it's kinda like a choose-your-own-adventure book except everybody does Redmoon Marauders so I don't even know what happens if you pick the other choices. Those are the four veterans. I think dungeons are far worse in terms of copious amounts of obnoxious trash.

[Nebu]

I don't think the trash is so much the issue as everyone wanting to rush through for the gold achievement and bailing on the adventure when they fail.  It's a mess in implementation for anyone without a dedicated 5-man.

[Draegan]

That's still content, no?

It is.  I guess after so many MMO's released since 2004 that someone would release a game with more content rather than the minimum.   When you have to do just about every quest in a zone just to stay on the level track, that seems a bit sparce.  

Keep in mind that the odds of completing an Adventure with a PUG from the group finder are about 1 in 5.  It's a lottery. 

The one thing you can't complain about is Wildstar having minimum content. Even doing the PVP thing a few times you're already ahead of questing.

[Nebu]

The one thing you can't complain about is Wildstar having minimum content. Even doing the PVP thing a few times you're already ahead of questing.

What level are you?  Because that changes after 35.  As a solo, you really have to do every quest/task to stay on track or lose money on the groupfinder to stay on pace without pvp.  I don't mind pvp, so it's a non-issue for me.  I'm just thinking that many (like several of my personal friends) don't like pvp in mmos. 

[Goldenmean]

I've been loving the game, but I'm running into exactly the problem I thought I would, except even more so. I expected my interest to fizzle out once I finished the 5 man content and couldn't find a raiding group, but as is, it feels like you need a static group even to do the 5 man stuff.

Doing PUG veteran mode adventures is a nightmare. They're not actually very difficult to complete as long as you don't care what your medal standing is. The problem is, *everyone* cares what their medal standing is. Which means you'll wait in queue, start an adventure, get maybe 20 minutes in, and then something will go wrong, which will mean you can't get a gold model and everyone will leave the instance instead of finishing it to get a silver, or bronze because gold means epics.

This is really frustrating because I've still got greens in slots, so even the boobie prize blues for finishing the adventure would probably be upgrades, and it feels like people are unrealistically trying to leapfrog the learning/gearing process. As a result, I've wasted a lot of time getting essentially no chance to roll on loot at all out of my time investment. My experiences with the community thus far have been highly negative. Honestly, at this point, I've pretty much just been logging onto my 50 to do dailies, and then going to play an alt until some other friends hit 50 and we can run guild groups through the adventures.

Oh, and another thing. Branching adventure paths are an awesome idea in concept, but in practice, the obvious thing is happening. The Malgrave trail adventure consists of more than a dozen different areas you can pass through on the way across the zone. The problem is, you will only ever see the same 4 over and over again because people have figured out that's the route you're most likely to be able to get gold. They need to incentivize the other paths more, or else they've basically wasted a ton of design time. Hopefully they penalize people dropping group also so you don't have the problem of people bailing as soon as they can't get gold, as well.

[Rasix]

While I'm having fun playing through the leveling content, I don't see me really hanging around much once I'm done with it unless I end up enjoying the PVP more than I anticipate.

Here's my overall impressions at level 27:

Good.
1)  The game runs fine and looks great.  I haven't noticed any slow down or frame rate issues.
2)  The sound and music (once I fixed the sound issue with my headphones) are really quite good. I love the music in parts where it syncs well with the gameplay. 
3)  The humor is well done in parts.
4)  There are a lot of QOL already baked into this game. 
5)  Thematically it's pretty consistent.
6)  There's a wide variety of content and a variety to the quests.  However, kill 100% of the rabbits and collect 100% of the shit-on-the-ground are staples.
7)  Housing is great.

Meh. 
1)  The combat is good in parts and frustrating in others. It's really, really busy and somewhat out of place in a DIKU flavored quest grind.  I have never had to hit this many buttons this constant in a MMO ever.  However, it's more engaging and skill based than just another WoW clone.  I'd almost rather have this than Rift, SWTOR or any other style, but perhaps just not in this overall game framework.
2)  One of the stock voice actors Exile side sounds like Chris Parnell.  It's just weird any time you hear it.
3)  Crafting is so underwhelming.  I don't see a point.  You never have enough mats.
4)  This is one of the slower leveling arcs I've seen in a while.  I estimate it as TBC era WoW speed for me.  I am, however, smelling the roses a bit.

Bad.
1)  Some of the features are pretty terribly introduced.  Mounts are pretty much just a line item when you level.  That is a feature that needs to be thrown in your face a bit better. 
2)  I don't think I will ever really love their quest system with the stock voice lines and small text.  Sometimes I don't know what the hell I'm doing or why I'm doing it.
3)  Telegraphs fucking suck when there's more than one mob or it's sitting on a ground texture that makes it impossible for me to see.  I had to get rid of the red, because, well, I can't fucking see it next to most anything.  The yellow substitution is almost worse next to some textures.  Also, in any sort of chaotic fight requiring more than 2 people and I can't see a damn thing.  I have just flat out died to telegraphs and never even known I was standing in one.
3a) This will make any group PVE pretty impossible for me. I don't even think I could raid at all.  Not that I want to, but it's just impossible.
3b) I'm guessing this is going to be a somewhat big issue in PVP, but less so.  Medic fields at least have the moving parts, although figuring out the good from bad will be an issue.
4)  Travel is really awful and there's no reason for this given how many other QOL improvements are already in. 

I'll keep playing as I'm still enjoying my evenings.  I just don't see me getting much more than free month + one sub month.  Totally reasonable and I'll get my money's worth, but it's another MMO that will fail to hook me for the long term.  I'm not even sure that's possible anymore. 

[amiable]

I picked this up last night after I finally bailed on TESO.  I rolled on dominion Avatus, a medic named Amiable.  F13 has a guild there right?

[Goldenmean]

There's a circle, which isn't exactly a guild. More like a chat channel.

I've been tossing invites out to my guild to anyone who wants them though, but we're small and will probably stay that way, so no real perks yet. I'll look you up tonight, or you could try looking for Bann or Pavlov. They've got invite rights to the circle also.

[Signe]

Me too, please.  I'm playing Stabbitha right now.