Carbine Studios' "Wildstar"

[Ghambit]

Play Aurin or Chua if you dont want flotation.  Humans and Cassians being the next best non-floaters.

[Sjofn]

I feel at my float-iest when I'm simply running from place to place, it's weird.

[Signe]

The camera shakes too much, too, and I turned it off.  Since I'm still in this beta so I started a new character and I still like it okay.  It's certainly not bad, in my opinion, and it's fun enough to distract me from my wonderful real life.  I'm easy.  All I want is distraction.  And three tiny white dogs.  And a mini trampoline.  Then I could die happy when I'm 69.

[Tannhauser]

Re-rolled a Cassian and it's more stable.  Still don't understand, as an explorer-type, why I can't get into this. 

[Venkman]

My guess is it depends on whether you're an achiever/explorer or an explorer/explorer, the difference being the former feels success for finding the things the designers put in there to find while the later is exploring for different ways to achieve prescribed goals.

I think I get what Wildstar is trying to do. But I think GW2 might have done some of it better, if for no other reason than everyone could be an explorer if they wanted to be whereas here you can only be a true explorer if you chose to be one at start. Feels too contrived.

[Lantyssa]

Yeah.  A real explorer wants to be able to try out all the jobs.  They may not focus heavily on them, but they're curious about them.  We don't like artificial limitations so the more open a system is the happier we are.

[Ghambit]

Soldiering you do normally in combat.
Science you do normally when you pick shit up.
Settlering you do normally whenever you craft anything and trade it.
Exploring you do normally whenever you go off-piste and stumble onto something.

So pretty much every path is available to you see!   

[Signe]

The only profession that really appeals to me is explorer.  It's okay but I wish there were puzzles to solve and obstacles to work around and stuff like that.  Then I wouldn't mind the kind of boring combat, although it's not horrible... just not particularly interesting.  I find some of the controls to be pretty responsive, especially the double tap dodging.  In a lot of games it doesn't kick in fast enough which just makes it useless.  I don't have the explorer soft fall skill yet and I'm hoping that will help with my prolific amount of falling deaths.  I think my character is cute which, of course, is the most important thing.  I plan on playing enough to experience crafting and some of the other features I missed out on before.  I've messed about with the addons now and find some that help, especially in the UI area.  My map is now square... I hate, Hate, HATE round maps.  I'm able to resized and move everything on the screen now.... thank fucking god or I couldn't play this game.  I'll check out quest helpers and other stuff eventually.  I do get errors msgs with some of them but not quite as much since at least three of them have had updates today.  I assume, since most of these addons are very new, that the updating will continue.  I like it but I'm fickle and prone to distraction and burn out easily so if it doesn't improve and grow, I'm likely to wander off.

[tmp]

I don't have the explorer soft fall skill yet and I'm hoping that will help with my prolific amount of falling deaths.

Soft fall merely reduces the falling damage by 15% which is really, really not helpful at all.

(maybe it can be upgraded, I didn't check, and fuck if I'm going to put up with it for few dozens levels until it does anyway)

[Spiff]

You want the second explorer-path skill probably, it allows you to stop falling for a second mid air. I assume it allows you to basically fall from any height as long as you remember to use it before you go splat.

Not that I've tested it though, as I made myself give this one last try (know a few gaming buddies that already pre-ordered), but I just can't find anything good to say about it.
I got as far as level 18 this time, but I just didn't see a single thing this game does better than some other MMO I've played in the past few years and it does a lot of things worse.
It also still feels poorly optimized, I admit my system is a bit long in the tooth, but it could run fairly large WvW battles in GW2 smoothly and here I get stuttering for no apparent reason.

Maybe the warplot shenanigans is cool, I never got to see it, but the only kind of PvP I really enjoy in an MMO is open worldy realm vs realm anyway; there's better games for any other kind.

[Fabricated]

Are we all just old or getting old or are MMO devs somehow getting worse at making tutorial areas? TESO quickly changed their tutorial area crap at the end because it was bad, now Wildstar.

Ironically the one tutorial area I thought was done reasonably well recently was Neverwinter's.

[Numtini]

I'm glad this had an open beta because I'd never have tried it otherwise and I quite like it. The tutorial seemed fine, just a little long. It wasn't ridiculous though like the FFXIV one where you were running around the city for three hours. The second time through I probably spent only ten minutes or so in it.

Overall, I like the game. Seems like a reasonably full featured MMO and I'm fine with that. Eventually one of them will stick with me.

It's a little heavy on the fur. And what's going on? Between this and Hex is it year of the bunny or something?

[Ghambit]

Yah, if you want an MMO with features, you could do a lot worse than Wildstar.

Sidenote:  I guess at release they're giving like 7 friend invites (a week's play) per box or sumthin?    Very very smart move, and a clear departure from most MMOs at release, who tend to give the invites after the game has already gone /crickets.  Always was a mind-numbingly stupid dogma imo.

So if your gaming group is on-the-fence about the game just split a box price and give the game a week's time.  (if you're that strapped for cash)

Actually, most times I've ever been able to get friends/relatives to play an MMO for any length of time, have been on friend invites.  Ideally at release-time or CB.  Post-release?  Fail.  (no one wants to play with someone already leveled)

[Surlyboi]

I got a beta invite and I tried, I really tried but this one does nothing for me.

[Signe]

I play games so slow that I could play for six months and you could jump in today and out level me in three weeks.  Hah!  My sister's even slower but then she never played games until last year.  I like this game too but I don't know how long I'll play with it.  It really depends on how the paths and crafting go.  I'm obviously not playing it for the combat only because that's the bit I like the least.  I like the look of the graphics (which was also a draw for me in WoW), the extra features outside of combat and how absofuckinglutely adorable I am.  If I decide to buy and play, I'll share my freebie invites with you fence people.

[Rendakor]

I keep wanting to download and try the beta, but none of my MMO friends are excited for it so if I like it I'll have to go into cheerleader mode to get them on board. Also Hex.

[Nonentity]

If people preferred the reticle targeting in Tera, there is an addon that exists called Deadlock Extended that puts a reticle on your screen and uses 'soft targeting' if that's what you're into.

http://www.curse.com/ws-addons/wildstar/220103-deadlock-extended

[Zetor]

So uh. What's the deal with the region lock? This is the first MMO I've played since WOW-BC that doesn't allow me to play in the US region, no matter how hard I try. Do I have to import a physical copy or sommat? Because fuck that noise.

[Kageru]

WoW was cartoony but had a unified style and some depth to the world. I didn't expect to see a more modern game that went backwards into even more crude graphics. It pushes the boundary past stylised and into just being bad. And much of the map feels like the open plains of Aion with patches of clutter rather than unified world. Not helped by the randomly spread "push button for achievement" machines spread around. The combat is repetitive fodder for the console crowd, might be good for PvP or Raids if that's really where this game plans to shine.

But I'm happy to leave it sitting with TESO on the "when it goes f2p" list, and not really care if it doesn't.

[Hoax]

From what I've seen so far of large scale combat. It fucking sucks for large scale combat. There is sooooooo much shit on the ground that it just looks like a big stupid mess.

[HaemishM]

The combat is repetitive fodder for the console crowd

The "console crowd" laughs at you. Console games have much, much better combat than this Hero of the Bland.

[Signe]

I have to agree.  If I want good combat, I head for the 360.  When I'm in the mood for other stuff that's mostly fluffy, I play MMORPGs.  Recently, I've taken to gauging MMORPGs by how much fun fluff they have...  character customising, crafting, clothing, this interesting new trend towards jobs and "paths", etc.  Combat is usually just the same old, same old or a little different but not really all that good.  I haven't even looked at the large scale combat here because of what people are saying about the clutter and all.  I might be able to cope with meh combat but I really don't need to annoy myself with messy clutter.

[Ghambit]

If you guys want real truth from me, truthfully I should be playing TOR or STO... or TSW even (now that one can group in Trans), but... I just have a phobia of re-booting old games.  Dont know why.

[Ratman_tf]

Thank god for open betas. I played about 15 minutes into the tutorial area, and got bored and logged out. WoW utterly destroyed any interest I had in questgrinding.
 

[Lucas]

From what I've seen so far of large scale combat. It fucking sucks for large scale combat. There is sooooooo much shit on the ground that it just looks like a big stupid mess.

Nah...it's much worse (latest DevSpeak: Raids) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbItL4qcugk

[Nebu]

I'd try that with 5 people.  With 20?  No way.  Imagine how many times you'd have to attempt it where at least one person didn't fuck up.  I'd go insane.

[01101010]

From what I've seen so far of large scale combat. It fucking sucks for large scale combat. There is sooooooo much shit on the ground that it just looks like a big stupid mess.

Nah...it's much worse (latest DevSpeak: Raids) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbItL4qcugk

I really want to like this game, but that video - all I saw was people running for their lives and very little combat. It is almost as if there is so much shit, you spend 90% of your time avoiding crap rather than pounding on it. Different sure, but how fun is it to be constantly running and getting a single swing in every 30sec? I am still on the fence with the box cost and sub but I can now confirm raids are not even a blip on my interest-o-meter.

[HaemishM]

Nah...it's much worse (latest DevSpeak: Raids) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbItL4qcugk

Fuck that. That video gave me epilepsy.

[Azuredream]

I actually thought that looked fun. Raiding: Bullet Hell edition.

[Ghambit]

I had no problem with the raid design other then how they intend to manage the different color indicators simultaneously.  One would assume/hope that red+green = brown rather than one overriding the other.  Need more info. on that; too lazy to look.

[Scold]

I actually thought that looked fun. Raiding: Bullet Hell edition.

Actual bullet-hell raiding is awesome. One of a number of reasons why Realm of the Mad God (where your bullet-hell raiding comes with mothereffin' PERMADEATH) is one of the best MMOs of the past decade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eVCfQNdcM4

[Simond]

I actually thought that looked fun. Raiding: Bullet Hell edition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJxQtKee4gk

[Rokal]

I'd try that with 5 people.  With 20?  No way.  Imagine how many times you'd have to attempt it where at least one person didn't fuck up.  I'd go insane.

Now imagine it with 40, which is the biggest raid size in Wildstar. I don't see how it can possibly be anything other than a mess, tbh. It'll still be way less chaotic than large-scale PvP at least.

I did happen across a 20-man world boss at level 10 and helped some random folks kill it. It was pretty fun, and the telegraphs didn't get too chaotic (though it was probably much simpler than the max level stuff will be).

[Kageru]

The combat is repetitive fodder for the console crowd

The "console crowd" laughs at you. Console games have much, much better combat than this Hero of the Bland.

Sure, I didn't say they did it well. The "action combat" style is much better suited to a low latency environment totally focused on the single player experience (and possibly shorter and content rich gameplay). But that's what they are trying to mimic in an environment where it can't really work nearly as well.

... and I said that before I'd seen the raid video.

[Scold]

ISO an MMO with Dark Souls combat and full PvP.