Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Signe]

I really want to love the path stuff, but people here are right.  The fact that they have something cool like that could really appeal to a lot of people.  But it needs to be more interesting.  There should be a puzzle or a trick for a soldier to find or kill his path target.  Maybe there could be clues or more interesting obstacles in finding a particular place for an explorer.  That sort of thing.  That and the good housing and crafting that I haven't experienced yet, could give them the time and cash to work on the combat, which I agree needs to be made more fun.  One thing I did really enjoy about TSW was that not everything was smack in your face like most other mmos.  Some things were subtle and had to be figured out.  It makes the effort worth it and a successful result very satisfying.  It's one of the things I enjoy in single player games the most... trying to sort out how to do something, even if you have to try over and over because when you get it, you can dance and make ha ha noises.

[HaemishM]

Slow combat? Combat is not slow at all. TTK is maybe long in some spots, but speed of combat is way too spammy/fast.

TTK may not be long, but the FEEL of combat is horribly slow - something not aided by the fact that run speed is really slow compared to the size of the zones. TTK probably feels longer than it is because despite the "dodge triggers" on the ground, it still just felt like I'm pressing a button then waiting 5-10 seconds for cooldowns.

[Ghambit]

By the time you fill out your toolbar, you should not be "waiting" on anything unless you expect to have complete access to your best abilities at all times.      Maybe it's worse for some classes then others, I dunno.  I tried them all and didn't get that impression cept for maybe Esper (whom I didnt play much).  For engi. and slinger I was typically behind the timers - so not sure why anyone would want/need it quicker.  Also, tweaking the preload helps.

I dont care much about the movement problems because I recognize it's mostly a racial-animation issue along with being a class issue (to those not having a movement ability).  Also, between dodge, buffs and 'mounts' like hoverboard (mounts are also fully customizable); who cares.  Hoverboard is given at release to Deluxe pre-orders btw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fotT6iVi-cg

Speaking of mounts, flying mounts wont be in at release due to design problems (explorer being the main one).  The game is already setup for them, but it'll have to be injected later if at all.  Since you can buy gold, you can go that route if you've gotta have a mount asap and didnt want to pre-order.

Disclaimer:  not tryin to sell the game to you guys.  I'm still doubtful I can even afford the time and expense this summer anyways, but I dont see the PoS everyone else does.  I've been dubbed a broken person quite often though, so..      Speaking of TSW; TSW was a better overall game then Wildstar, yes. 

[HaemishM]

Wildstar, just like ESO, is not a piece of shit. It's just not very entertaining. If I had never played an MMOG or didn't have a huge backlog of games I want to play, I might think it was decent. But I've played MMOG's and there are better MMOG's out there. This one's combat is just... boring. It doesn't fell at all action-y.

[sam, an eggplant]

Happy the NDA is finally down.

Wildstar is much more polished than ESO, and the combat isn't annoying with autofacing on. The combat is, however, boring as hell. You don't have any "rotations" like WoW, you primarily press one button to generate resources and one to consume them. Then there are a couple situational abilities and cooldowns. It's not involving.

But that's not my main complaint with Wildstar. It's not the reason I find the game impossible to play. My problem is that there's no UI scaling on NPC text. I game at 2560x1440 and the text is just fucking unreadable. I simply cannot play the game, and I have no interest in dropping back to 1080p and losing windowed fullscreen for eash multitasking. I check back into the beta every couple of weeks to see if they fixed this, please do let me know if a recent push did it.

Anyway, beyond the boring combat and unreadable text, it's scifi WoW. Same art style, same core gameplay. If they can make it effortless to play like WoW, I can see it picking up quite a few subscriptions in the very long window Blizzard has left wide open between the last content patch and the next expansion. That's a huge opportunity.

[Ghambit]

I mean really, all I'm trying to do is large-guild organized nightly-scheduled 40-mans and have a house (the warplots being the gravy).  All the other shite is really secondary, and honestly, if the game was TOO involved combat-wise It'd be more fatiguing to play then I'd like given the /played necessary for Endgame... and the large raids would be unmanageable.

Game is cross-server and sharded so I'm not worried about dead zones like I used to be either, otherwise I wouldn't even buy the game.  We all know it'll be #crickets in a month but in this case it shouldn't be an issue.

[Sjofn]

If you like quest treadmill games, dungeons, heroics and raids. This game is pretty good.

I like all those things. I didn't like Wildstar, and I totally wanted to. Remember, I still play SWTOR, so I am all over doing quests, dungeons and heroics (not so much raids). I still got bored before hitting level 20.

That's because combat mechanics and the classes are boring as fuck. If you like the combat and the classes, you'll like the rest of the game.

That ... isn't what I was responding to. I even quoted what you said that I was responding to in that post. Saying "if you like these things, you'll like the game!" as your opening statement, even if you go on to say "but these other things suck" is ... misleading. This follow-up version is much clearer.


And yeah, Lantyssa, that's why the challenges suck so hard to finish after the first couple you run into. I mean, the ones that don't involve killing mobs still work okay, but anything that requires slaughter is best ignored.

[Draegan]

I know. I was clarifying my previous statement. Sorry for the confusion.

[Rokal]

MMORPG.com has a bunch of keys to give away this weekend if you're still interested in checking it out

Edit: Gone

[koro]

For anyone interested, GMG has Wildstar for pre-purchase, and has a 20% off code:

http://www.greenmangaming.com/wildstar/

PLOCVS-G2T5YX-DATY6M is the code.

[Rokal]

I had fun with the beta weekend but the quality of the zones seemed really inconsistent. Exile stuff seemed a bit better organized than Dominion and the story stuff wasn't as in-your-face/obnoxious. Playing through the Dominion starter ship felt like walking through a series of pop-up ads. The second Dominion zone wasn't as overwhelming, but was unremarkable for anyone that has played a themepark MMO in the last 10 years. The third dominion zone, Deradune, felt like a mess. Lots of quests as soon as you enter, none of them in the same areas, many of them broken.

The Exile stuff felt a lot better. Ship tutorial was much easier to stomach, zone after that had some cool stuff going on visually and seemed to have a decent (though pretty unremarkable) quest path. Third zone was the best, which quickly opened up with a lot of different things to do without feeling like I was walking across the entire map to collect 5 boar asses.

Overall I had fun with the game. The combat gets close to where I'm looking for the MMO genre to expand to at this point without bringing it into ARPG territory. It's still crazy that they're launching what is essentially a direct competitor to GW2, another NCSoft game, with a subscription fee. I may check it out in June if the dungeon content is fun.

[01101010]

They did clean up quite a bit of broken things compared to the last beta weekend I was in... and it looks sooooo much better without the god damn watermark background.

[Sir T]

I'm seeing a lot of ads poping up for this on a lot of websites, so they are definitely pushing this in a big way.

[01101010]

From the official forums:

Do you think waiting until next weekend to play WildStar sucks?  Do you feel like being capped at level 17 is like wearing a soggy turtleneck?  SO DO WE!
 
Starting tomorrow, Friday 3/28 at 7:00am PDT, the servers will be live and the party ain’t stopping until Sunday night!  Also, the level 17 cap is gone and is now being replaced with a level 20 cap.  My quick math skills tell me that’s an extra 3 levels!  This bonus weekend is a way to get more testing time for us, awesome, as well as more game time for all of you, double awesome!
 
This is our way of gathering the feedback we cherish and saying thank you to all of our loyal testers.  Which is why we would love it if you logged in this weekend, enjoyed the extra 3 levels and the bonus game time because it will greatly help us be that much more prepared come launch day June 3rd.
 
Stay Frosty! 

I assume this is open to all beta weekend and stress testers as well as the uber-beta people.

[Tannhauser]

I'll give it another shot, but not hopeful. 

[PalmTrees]

I got an engineer to 9 last weekend. Combat was way too easy. Though I did like the semi-action nature. Quests were standard, just couldn't get into the quest hub grind. Maybe when they go f2p I'll be in that kinda mood.

[01101010]

Rumor is only open to closed beta testers and pre-order customers. CONFIRMED: Pre-order beta weekend only.

 

edit: updated

[BoatApe]

I did not pre-order but got an email with a new weekend key today. We'll see if it works once it finishes patching.

[Morfiend]

Everyone I know who signed up for beta got in. So yeah.

[01101010]

Everyone I know who signed up for beta got in. So yeah.

Not everyone. I signed up and did not get an email. But I ain't mad.

[Miasma]

I never got in, sounds like I didn't miss much.  I heard they had a big problem being recognized as spam for a while so maybe I just deleted it without knowing.

[Morfiend]

Wow, the UI is horrid. Its so cluttered and nothing pulls the eye to important information.

[Jherad]

There's supposed to be a UI overhaul soon apparently. A big one.

Anyway, playing catchup on this thread, so apologies if I say something already said...

I'd been messing around with spelllslinger for a while - lots of long channeled casts that can be annoying to try to line up with skillshots. Then I try out a stalker. Run stealthed into groups of things and start mashing one or two buttons with big angle instant AOEs that largely make irrelevant the direction you are facing.

PvP is going to be a nightmare to balance.

Edit: UI info, not in yet:
http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/wildstar_ui_20_preview_less_is_more.php/

Also bear in mind that the game uses wow-like LUA modding, so there'll doubtless be hundreds of UI mods available.

[Tannhauser]

The new UI looks pretty good.  I like how they split it down the middle.  If that lets you zoom in on the action that will be an improvement.  Now if they can make combat fun, it might be worth considering.

[Ghambit]

I think I'm at the point where I don't even need 'fun' anymore.  I just want to zone out.  Fun is too much effort.

[calapine]

"Be the First to Nab a WildStar Beta Key from Curse for this Weekend's Testing Event!"

http://www.curse.com/news/wildstar/49466-premium-users-be-the-first-to-nab-a-wildstar-beta




Not for me, but putting it up in case anyone is interested.

[Ingmar]

I think I'm at the point where I don't even need 'fun' anymore.  I just want to zone out.  Fun is too much effort.

Sounds like you should try Goat Simulator.

[luckton]

Warplot Promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjlPddul-qw

[Signe]

That was awesome!  I fully intended to sub to this game before I became so OCD with ESO and after that it's on the top of my list.  I have to do that.  SOON!  Warplot looks like a good laugh.

[Ghambit]

Already knew everything in that vid., but still was impressive seeing the marketing shtick.  Not sure how it can possibly be balanced, but I'm not real concerned about it.  Still sounds like fun. Errrr, "fun."  But my gods, it's gonna take a helluva guild to maximize this game.

[PalmTrees]

Man, if there was anything in the game with even 1/10 that much personality, I might've made it past level nine.

[Tannhauser]

They should make videos instead of a boring-ass game.

[Sjofn]

Man, if there was anything in the game with even 1/10 that much personality, I might've made it past level nine.

Yeah, the marketing people are pretty brilliant. Were I making a game, I'd want them promoting it. 

[HaemishM]

Man, if there was anything in the game with even 1/10 that much personality, I might've made it past level nine.

You made it farther than me. The marketing had personality. The gameplay was completely bereft of it.

[Signe]

Well, darn.  I played a bit in beta and it was okay but I was having both time and computer issues and didn't get all that far.  There were bits that I really liked.  I thought the path idea was great.  When I saw that video, I sort of got that Borderlands feeling which would have made it awesome to play.  I still want to try out that warplot thingy so I'll still probably give it a go eventually.  Between ESO and EQL, however, I have too many things to pay attention to and one more thing in my head will probably cause me to forget something important.  Like my name or where I left my other shoe.