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Ok, my quick few points on Wildstar, from my few times playing. I have mixed feelings on the game. Some classes are just flat out fun, others not so much, like Spellslinger. It sounds good on paper but in play was atrocious. At least at low levels.
Some races and questing zones are just bleh, and had me wanting a different feel. Fortunately, there are a lot of leveling paths to take and they all feel fairly different. So variety in this aspect is good. However, there is a ton of pain in the arse jumping puzzle type quests that just pissed me off and made me want to skip them. So quests are also a mixed bag.
Music and sound are pretty good but this too can be mixed as some areas are fantastic and others just make me want to peel my eyes and ears off.
Combat...in PVE I hated it. I always felt underpowered and just kept having to jump around and dodge, which I've never liked much in PVE play, a la Tera and GW2. However, and just like those 2 games, in PVP it's a BLAST. Had a ton of fun just PVPing at low level in Wildstar, it surprised me.
Housing is odd at best but I didn't really delve into it much and when I did, it was many months ago on a much earlier build.
Lastly and my biggest pet peeve. The Path system. Complete waste of what could have been an awesome feature. It's basically just an extra way to "quest" and isn't really that rewarding nor innovative and felt more tedious and in the way of leveling than anything else. Especially Scientist which I was really hoping would be a fun collectable type of side game, but noooo, it's boring wait for a stupid droid to scan to bring a small piece of lore with no real rewards.
Explorer is disappointing too because people who choose this will already want to explore anyway and it doesn't really give them that much of a leg up into this gameplay that they don't already have originally.
So...TLDR, Wildstar is a mix of good and bad ideas implemented in good and bad ways and I find it very unlikely that I will resub for alt purposes or after I hit endgame. However, it has potential and I hope they can add tons of post launch fixes and content to make it worth subbing to.
Comments
i don't have time right now to read everything but ill comment on what i was able to read as of now XD um i agree about the classes my main is a chua esper and i love him but i was switching between ss and esper for quite a bit there but i feel they just need to buff the ss damage and the ss would be set,ss get rolled over in higher end-game pve and in pvp takes just that much more to be good at because of the lack of damage i think they are fun utility wise though .
Witty & Wicked
Nda lifted?
I'm not gonna beat a dead horse.
Appears so.
WildStar NDA lift.
"As of today, the NDA for WildStar has officially lifted! Anyone in the beta is free to talk about their experiences, share screenshots, video, livestream, blog, tweet, vine, haiku, and more!"
Copy/pasta my thoughts.
These are my thoughts after playing two beta weekends. One weekend solo. One weekend. playing with friends.
Played all classes. On both the Exile and Dominion sides. Reaching to level 15 on my highest character.
Pros:
Cons:
Summary:
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
Agree with the OP, there are a bunch of great ideas in Wildstar and a solid core game, but some of it is poorly implemented, broken or unbalanced.
Paths would perhaps be the worst thing, I couldn't find any good points to it really, beyond the actual concept of the idea.
My biggest gripe, and perhaps what will keep me from playing for any serious length of time is the combat. When you have a mobility skill set, one designed to work with the telegraphs and fluid combat, it is great, almost as good as TERA and definitely better than GW2 or anything more traditional. HOWEVER, when you have skills that require you to be stationary, it just totally breaks the whole flow and feel of the combat, making it annoying, frustrating and tedious.
Some classes can't really avoid using stationary skills, which makes them weaker in many situations (especially PvP) and even if you can live with that annoyance, there isn't really any balance between the classes either, in PvE or PvP. Some have recently been nerfed into the ground and I think Carbine are going to struggle with balancing if their current performance is anything to go on (taking a hammer to the job instead of a scalpel).
They've also done a lot of PvE balancing and the difficulty varies greatly from one area to the next, when they increased the frequency of telegraph skills for mobs, they broke a fair bit of the content, or rather, made it much harder than it should be.
We'll see how things go, but whilst I like the game, Carbine's performance in implementation, balancing and fixing, leaves me with little faith in the developer. Long term, I think that is going to be Wildstar's biggest problem, Carbine appear to be a little incompetent.
I really liked the aesthetics and feel of the game. I liked the art direction, I thought the humor included was actually kind of funny, especially on the Dom side of things. Some of the quests were fun and engaging. The housing system was pretty dang cool as well, and that's coming from someone who generally doesn't mess with housing ever.
The combat system killed it for me. As the OP mentioned, in PvP it was fairly fun. In PvE, it was a nightmare to deal with. The combat was sluggish and felt like you were moving through molasses, and movement felt like you would slide 2-3 feet every time you moved. It drove me crazy.
Warrior was the first character I played, and warriors in WildStar as of now are not even worth playing. I spent half my time dead, and couldn't play my Warrior the way I wanted to play it (Tanky damage dealer).
Stalker however, was much better. It felt like Warrior on steroids with stealth. I did 2x the damage, had 2x the survivability, and was much tankier than a Warrior could hope to be. So class balance isn't that great right now.
The path system was awesome for the Soldier path. I feel like they nailed this playstyle perfect. Explorer, the other one I tried, felt like a chore more than a path. Jumping puzzles =/= exploring, someone missed that memo apparently.
Overall, I think the game will do ok as is now. If they manage to make some major improvements in class balance, path specialization, and the combat system especially, it will be a highly successful game imo. The only other comment I have is that the game in certain areas had such bright areas of coloring/pixels that it literally gave me a headache after 30 minutes to 1 hour of play. If you have any sort of problem with photo sensitive issues, I would recommend staying away from the game until they can figure out what exactly is causing it. The game gave me the worst headache of my life the first night I really got into it for more than a few minutes.
Look forward to seeing where they go and what they can do with it
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Yeah as I thought it would turn out.. will be giving it a miss.
I share your opinion on pretty much every thing. Special note on the following:
1. Paths - This was a total let down. What got me interested in the game years ago was their introduction on this system. Back then I thought it was a great idea - it gave the player an option for a more unique play style outside classes and (crafting/gathering) professions. That was what I read and saw as they further elaborated on the system. The end result was nothing short of boring and half-baked.
2. Combat - I disliked having no trinity in GW2, so I welcomed Wildstar's more traditional approach. Still, combat felt underwhelming to me. I usually play as a Tank and Healer as a secondary option, so I felt a little let down from what I played. I only tried Warrior and Engineer since they were at least closer to being "tanky" (I'm a shield guy) than the Stalker, but the play style felt somehow spammy. Customization was a plus, but no comment on that yet. Overall I enjoyed the combat (even in PVE) - it just didn't feel special. It's okay.
3. Sound - Mixed feeling on music. Sound effects felt messy and not overall distinct. Voice-over from regular NPCs felt disjointed when they say (voice) something while their chat box says something else.
4. Writing - This was a total let down for me. I think a lot of people expecting witty dialogue and funny scenarios in-game will feel disappointed. Whatever charm their video adverts had stayed there. The world felt boring and flat.
They're just minor gripes, but I simply expected more. Just to note, I've been in beta since December and received 2 extra keys which allowed me to play with my friends.
its fine to really i beat on ESO all the time lol
Witty & Wicked
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
I am exactly the opposite of you when it comes to how I feel about the game in its different aspects.
PVE/Questing
As far as themeparks go, I enjoyed the questing in the game for its variety. Sure it has some kill X amount of mobs or pick up x amount of items to finish a quest but it also had exploration ones where you have to beat a timer to get to a certain location along with "simon says" type puzzles and even some items that you have to "click" have reaction type triggers to them.
I also like the fact that you can't blindly just kill mobs w/o reacting to what they do even if they are "trash" mobs. Maybe it was because I was a light armor Esper but when you get to the end game, getting hit by telegraphs is a one way ticket to the closest rez location... and I love that. Sure you don't feel like a super hero.. but are you really supposed to? You aren't the savior of your whole faction.. you're just a part of it.
Housing
Really enjoyed housing but I ran out things to place due to the low limit on items that you can place... on a smaller house, you are limited to about 300 pieces, 20 lighting, and that includes indoor and outdoor and your building blocks. I asked them to change it and nothing has been done about it.
EDIT: New Patch today removed buildilng blocks from the item list! All is good in the world!
Dungeons
Dungeons are pretty easy. They only got semi-challenging when you redo them on vets and after a run through or two, it becomes just as easy as the normal versions. Going for medals to get better gear is pretty cool though and everyone needs to be on point in order to achieve some of the gold medals.
Raiding
The 20 man is kinda fun but I have yet to see the 40 man. I like the whole idea that the raids change per week so its a semi-new experience.
PVP
To me.. open world PVP is only fun when there are objectives tied to it. There are zero in Wildstar. They said they might change this post launch but im not holding my breath.
Arenas are tons of fun and are ranked and unranked and have PVP gear tied to your ELO. Really excited about being competitive in this.
Battlegrounds are fun but as of now.. its a 6-14, 15-29, 30-49 ( not sure why there is this giant gap for this bracket ) and 50. Premades are king and as of now, there isn't a separate queue for premades vs pugs. Wiki Temple and Halls were both fun but I find Wiki to be much more manageable with a pug. I really wish there were more than two of them because as much as I love Temple.. every match type gets stale after doing it for months.
Warplots
Hopefully there are some major changes to warplots. The lag itself is unbearable putting mid performance systems to a haltering 5 FPS. It has a lot to deal with optimization so hopefully it gets fixed at launch. The only warplots that we got to experience were an early build of it and it is nothing but zerg versus zerg. There is no need to do any objectives other than kill the other team. Going for any objectives is a pure waste of time due the large health pools of each generator. Hopefully, the difference in the new one is much better.
Overall Experience
Im having a great time in the beta. It has been a real pleasure to test this game and I can't wait to play at launch. There is a lot of good mixed in with the bad and I overall enjoy the whole experience the game offers. I haven't had this much fun since Age of Conan or Vanilla WoW and I can't wait to play with the friends I have made in the community.
Boy you are copy and pasting this all over the internet today aren't you, Bryan Cole..
Lol, no just once. I like Massively, but trying to follow topic threads over there can be a pain after 100 posts. Here, it's nice and easy. Plus, both communities are similar so why say something different?
Fair enough. Perhaps I just need to find the right class and take it further into the game as you seem to have. I didn't get very far as I found it tedious to level PVE in this game so I see it taking me quite a long time come launch to get to endgame with the game in it's current state. See, me, I like to feel like a Superhero when leveling and have the challenge come for dungeons, raids, pvp, etc when I'm with other people. For leveling, I want that to be "me" time to just explore, zone out and not think about life. I save the challenge content for after that and when I choose, not the game. To each their own I suppose.
Maybe, 6 months ago if you had asked me about Wildstar and ESO I would have said for sure I"m buying Wildstar and I'm not sure about ESO now I'm sure about ESO and probably passing at least at launch on Wildstar. The game isn't horrible but I found the reliance on quest hubs and overall feel of combat just didn't click with me.
I wish the game well as with FF XIV as this market needs strong healthy sub based games I just don't think it's going to click with me personally.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Just a few questions..
1) How much a quest grinder WS is? Do you grind quests that reward you with gear and lots of exp?
2) The leveling curve? Slower or faster than in WoW?
3) Is gear hard to come by or do you have to struggle (read: play the game) to stay competitive in PvE?
4) Compared to WoW, how easy are the dungeons?
5) They say WS is like a modern version of vanilla WoW. True or false?
I just couldnt get into it, I tried to force myself to play it, but it just didnt take. Maybe because I just have a hard time playing betas. Also I was getting fairly bad performance, granted my system isnt great, but compared to ESO playing like silk, Wildstar just seemed very poorly optimized.
Ill wait to see how im feeling playing ESO before I consider this game again.
1) Quests offer decent gear but you can min/max craft gear as well because the reward choices may not have the exact stats you want. They have "group" quests that are on bounty boards that offer blue rarity gear that doesn't have level requirements on them though you need to be at least three levels below the recommended level to obtain the quest.
2) You level slower in Wildstar than you would in WoW.
3) Gear is obtained in quests but you can also do challenges every 30 minutes and "roll" via a RNG system for a reward that are a range from green to blue quality gear. The only difference between this and quest obtained gear is that the stats on the gear is randomly generated.
4) I haven't played WoW since vanilla but the dungeons seemed harder than they are in WoW. I keep hearing how they made the dungeons in WoW very easy now so I would guess that they are harder. Some pugs I have been in fail to even obtain silver medals in dungeons. You get blue rarity gear from boss drops and BoE blues and purples from mobs in the dungeon and getting a gold in a dungeon gives you a better chance at purples from what I remember but that requires you to do all the optional objectives and challenges, beat it in a decent time, and have zero deaths in your whole party.
5) I feel that Wildstar is the closest thing to vanilla WoW in a long time.
Why do you think a Beta version of the game will launch with the same 4fps and 10 fps? especially when they have said they will not do optimization until right before release.
Thank you! This really helped a lot.
You haven't played WoW since vanilla and you're answering the guy's questions about how it plays compared to WoW...uhh what?
Wildstar is for vanilla WoW and TBC WoW fans. Supposedly!
I m not a big fan of raiding like I was in vanilla wow and TBC, it was pretty hardcore, time consuming but an epic experience nonetheless. Something that disappeared from the MMO genre at the scale that WoW provided initially.
At the end of TBC they just started nerfing everything and ruined the experience for people who actually made serious efforts to progress in that game, WoW died right there for me. Wildstar from what I've read of the game so far is bringing that epicness back where high end raids is for high end raiders, the rest just won't experience that. Or so they said, no proofs yet but i believe them.
I ll probably won t be raiding and I ll be missing that high end raiding content but its good to know that if some day I decide to take a step further in my commitment to the game, that content is there waiting for me. If I don't, there's always a lot of content to go through anyways.
That's where WoW failed, its all about raiding at high level. Later came the arenas but grinding rating in uninteresting arenas with unbalanced classes over and over got old fast. Besides that, there was nothing meaningful to do aside of idling in Ironforge and playing the AH.
Now that the NDA is lifted just watch some twitch streams where we ll see level 50 content. See if it matches your wishes for the longterm. I say longterm because people don't buy MMO's to play one or two months, they buy it to stick with it for years even if on and off.
From my beta gameplay I loved the early on experience, specially pvp. It's time to see how the game is at max level before pre-ordering.
Questing: About as meh as questing usually is in an MMO.
PvP: Pretty darn fun.
Housing: Sold me on the game. I think I missed my calling in life. I should have been an interior decorator.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein