Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Ghambit]

I'm just gonna grind me arse to max lxl and just raid till the guild I'm in inevitably rips itself apart;  social meta and all that - half the fun.

[Draegan]

Unless you're in a PVP guild, I don't think you'll be doing Warplots. Or did they change stuff?

[Nonentity]

There's a Mercenary option to offer yourself up for war parties that are missing people.

http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/game/features/warplots/

[Ghambit]

Unless you're in a PVP guild, I don't think you'll be doing Warplots. Or did they change stuff?

No point not doing warplots as the mobs you kill in the raids go right into your base.

[Fabricated]

Got into this beta weekend...made a character, and uh, just kinda sitting loading forever now. Meh.

[Abelian75]

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

Seriously!  I came here to say exactly this.  I somehow felt overwhelmed by the amount of information on the screen before I even had a goddamn action bar!  That takes effort to be that bad.

And man, the text is super annoying to read.  Painfully so.  (This is actually probably the "real" problem that's making me hate every other flaw even more, if I had to guess)

Also, looks like apparently this UI overhaul just happened, so perhaps my comments are about a different UI than you were seeing.  Well, it's apparently still terrible if so.  Oh well.

Edit: Dat kerning:

[Ghambit]

I used to have a standing rule of not ever playing games with raw font in the UI (e.g. most translated games, korean grinders, etc).  I kinda made an exception with WS, but that was also assuming it'd be fixed by release.
One would think a studio with vanilla WoW roots would be particularly mindful of the font, but I guess not.

[Rendakor]

What's wrong with that font?

[koro]

The "je" and "ty" in "majesty" are smooshed into each other from kerning, and it looks gross. Imagine that spread across a whole game's worth of text.

[Ghambit]

What's wrong with that font?

You're one of those people who refuses to use a GUI to code aren't you.  It's notepad or bust with you guys.

[Abelian75]

You're one of those people who refuses to use a GUI to code aren't you.  It's notepad or bust with you guys.

Hell, I'M one of those people, and it still looks like crap to me.

[Rendakor]

You're one of those people who refuses to use a GUI to code aren't you.  It's notepad or bust with you guys.

That's actually true although I haven't coded anything in years. But yea I guess I have a high tolerance for ugly fonts. I don't get the hate for Comic Sans either.

[HaemishM]

The font is one of my main problems with Wildstar's UI as well. It just looks so much like a placeholder font, or amateur hour. There's no font-smoothing and on large blocks of text, it just hurts the eye to read.

And Comic Sans is just a goddamn crime against humanity.

[Fabricated]

I wanna say the game looks good but I feel like I'm literally going blind when I play it. The UI and everything seems to smush together into this blurry color mess and I find myself reaching for my eyedrops every 10 minutes.

[Bzalthek]

I didn't mind the test.  The totally uninspiring gameplay got to me.  Maybe because I chose settler spellslinger, I can pot plants and repair banners, which break in a couple minutes, or create mini buff stations that disband in a few minutes.  Admittedly I'm only level 6, but absolutely nothing interesting has happened yet other than I got a pouch to expand my inventory by two!  woo.  I do not feel any sort of hook making me want to stay logged in.

[Fabricated]

I've been trying to get into the beta for a while and I could only muster the energy for like 4-5 hours of play. I like some of the minor iterations on the old systems but the UI is a goddamn mess and I didn't really know how to do anything despite the tutorials. Combat was...meh. It was less interesting than TSW and I didn't really like TSW's combat.

[Megrim]

I've been trying to get into the beta for a while and I could only muster the energy for like 4-5 hours of play. I like some of the minor iterations on the old systems but the UI is a goddamn mess and I didn't really know how to do anything despite the tutorials. Combat was...meh. It was less interesting than TSW and I didn't really like TSW's combat.

I got into the beta ages ago. Managed to get to level seven or something, haven't logged in since. Uninstalled it a couple of days ago. =3

[Morfiend]

the UI is a goddamn mess and I didn't really know how to do anything despite the tutorials.

I found this also. There is something about the UI that just makes my brain not understand the information it is giving to me. Not to mention that the NPC text and names partly overlapping is driving me crazy also.

[Venkman]

Yea it's hideous. I don't know if they designed it last or redesigned it late in dev, doesn't really matter. It's bad with no real excuse for it. The game runs smoothly enough, and it's got an interesting look. But the thing you look at the most is also the worst looking.

[Ghambit]

I've been looking for news of a potential re-design or even a supportable 3rd-party addon, but I havent had luck.

[Rokal]

the UI is a goddamn mess and I didn't really know how to do anything despite the tutorials.

I found this also. There is something about the UI that just makes my brain not understand the information it is giving to me. Not to mention that the NPC text and names partly overlapping is driving me crazy also.

This was actually my impression with the old UI too. I think the UI problems are exaggerated by two things: a bad tutorial that throws too much at you too fast and looks very busy even with no UI and lots of bugs causing UI elements to stay up longer than they should or be unresponsive. Once I had gotten a character to level 6 or so the UI stopped bugging me and I didn't notice any problems with it in subsequent weekends on new characters (besides the bugs).

[Riggswolfe]

I gave it a try last weekend and went ahead and grabbed a code for this upcoming weekend from IGN. It was...ok.

I liked the art style for the most part. It reminded me of a Saturday morning cartoon. I thought the arms on the human characters were too long, they looked a bit like apes.
I liked the humor, most of the time. Sometimes it made me groan.

Combat was meh but it was also early and early combat in many MMOs is boring as hell because you only have 1 or 2 abilities.

I tried out the explorer path and was a bit underwhelmed. I may try soldier which I suspect will be more fun in someways.

The biggest issue was that the game world is quite imaginative but the quests felt like they were just...bland. I went down to the world and chose the "optional" path which for the Exiles dropped me into a forest. I got...bored. Very, very bored.

[Scold]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQr6lU4RsTg

Wildstar's PvP looks boring as sin.

[veredus]

At least they are being consistent.

[Senses]

Big Beta Patch

https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/38706-build-6658-patch-notes-5114/#entry378082

[Outlawedprod]

The Wildstar Community Lead has left
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/38414-a-message-from-scooter/

[Pennilenko]

I have zero will to play more of the beta. The UI is so bad, game play is so bad, and the class design is so uninteresting that I will not be making a purchase when it releases.

[Simond]

It's basically Rift 2.0 - now with added dullness.

[Ghambit]

Perfect.

[kaid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQr6lU4RsTg

Wildstar's PvP looks boring as sin.

Honestly at least at low levels its on par with GW2 for PVP. Most classes are pretty mobile so makes for a reasonably fluid pvp experience. I have tried most of the classes and at least in the teens most seem pretty fun in pvp.

The only semi complaint I have is with all the telegraphs going off it gets a bit busy effect wise. Well the other gripe is over head name plates are a bit sporadic on if they chose to work or not for friend or foe so can be sometimes a bit hard in mid range to tell friend from foe for the human types. The other are different enough they are pretty easy to tell at a glance.

[Venkman]

So I tried again this weekend and had a much better time. UI is much more usable. Still not great, but shit, I played WoW for years and that stupid thing ended up looking like Excel.

What's a good site for layman's terms of the classes? I don't want marketing wank, and don't want forum theorycrafting. Probably won't play again until the wipe, and don't want to go through the Arkship on all six classes since you barely get a taste of them until Grove/Northwind.

[Ghambit]

No site can really prepare you for each class.  They're not your garden-variety diku noids.  I'd say ask yourself how 'involved' you want to be during combat, because some of them are quite busy.  Esper may seem slow, but it's fairly strategic; the 'controller' of the bunch.  Slinger makes your fingers turn into pretzels.  Medic is more like a damned short range aoe-nuke mage 'cept with heals.  Engi. is slow pet huntard that can tank, especially inside the mech suit (yes, a damned mech suit).  Stalker is pure ninja; thing stays stealth in combat.  Warrior is tank but has a ranged feel sometimes; and more quicker (gratifying) attacks then youd think - bigSwords!

Some have flipmodes that turn them into something else and decks can be reshuffled too.  Not an easy game to choose a class, but I'd say I'm definitely not doing Engineer; though originally my first choice.  It's a mobility issue.  I think it's between Esper and Slinger. 

[Draegan]

Warrior is a Warrior
A Stalker is a Rogue
An Engineer is a Hunter with extra pets.
A Medic is a AOE healer/nuker thing.
The Spellslinger is a mage
The Esper is Warlockish/Mage thing.

They are all basic, the class mechanics are pretty simple and development is pretty simple.

[Rokal]

Probably easiest to split them by ranged vs melee and roles. They may have some thematic similarities to other MMO classes, but they play pretty different due to the combat system. You should probably pick a class based on the roles you want to have available and then by how much action you want in your action combat.

Melee:
Warrior - DPS/Tank - The most twitchy of the melee classes. Rage decays in combat so you need to continue using abilities to not lose rage. This means you'll be pressing buttons and moving around constantly.
Stalker - DPS/Tank - The stealth class, though with the twist of being able to enter/leave stealth at will in combat. This plays into tanking too as leaving stealth grants a defense buff. Wildstar's evasion/debuff tank.
Medic - DPS/Healer - I'm counting them as a melee class because most of their attacks/heals have a small hitbox, encouraging you to fight close to the enemy. This is the positional healer for Wildstar: you can land heals on your entire group, but you need to actually aim the heal cones just like you would aim a cone attack.


Ranged:
Esper - DPS/Healer - The most static DPS class in the game. Discourages movement, has long cast times. The heal spec is very traditional: mostly single target heals that you select a target for rather than manually aiming boxes/cones. If the Wildstar combat system seems to hectic or twitchy for you, you may enjoy this class.
Spellslinger - DPS/Healer - The most twitchy of the ranged classes. Needs to stay moving to kite enemies, lots of movement-based abilities. The healing is very similar to medic healing.
Engineer - DPS/Tank - This is Wildstar's pet class. It is also the closest Wildstar has to a ranged tank, similar to Trooper/BH if you played SWTOR. This is the only class I haven't tried since I usually dislike pet classes.

[Venkman]

As usual, the info here is better than any I could find. Thanks all. I started as Spellslinger ans then tried Esper and Engy but none to get to any level of depth. I like what Spellslinger sounds like. For my brief play, I enjoyed moving around. Felt not entirely unliked dagger/dagger Mage in GW2 with the constantly mobilities.

What is this flipmodes thing though? Is this the Assault/Support/Utility choices you can make? Seems like I can only have 8 abilities. Can I have more than 8 and flip between two sets or something?