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Confessions of a WildStar Convert [Fixed!]
ixproval
Member UncommonPosts: 9
Hello all,
I figured I'd throw my hat in the ring with all the "impressions of WildStar" threads as I think I have a somewhat unique view at this point.
DISCLAIMER: I'm only a level 15 engineer. These views are not meant to suppose or presume any ideas regarding content past level 15. I'm only talking about what I have experienced and know so far. Also, I'm an old-school MMOer. (EQ, AC1, Anarchy Online, WoW vanilla, etc.) So please realize my views are skewed because of that, at least to some extent.
So I bought WildStar. I thought, "Hey, it looks fun, it's different." I needed something different and W* just seemed to fit. I watched many YouTube gameplay videos of WildStar, read many reviews and forums, and I felt like I still wanted to try it.
Wow! It was interesting to be in a huge starship and feel like I was truly a part of the Dominion. The comedic stuff was a little out of place in the intro IMO, but all in all it was pretty cool. So I did some run around quests on the ship and eagerly awaited the trip down to Nexus. I think the tutorial on the ship is just about the perfect length. It familiarized me with the way quests worked, gave me some beginner combat skills, and introduced me to the numerous advancement systems in the game. Overall the tutorial was not a tad longer or shorter than it needed to be.
NEXUS
So once I got down to Nexus, I was pretty impressed with the areas and the overall look and feel. But I must admit at this point I just wasn't feeling it yet. It was cool, and I wanted to give W* a fair shake, so I ran around, killed x of this or that and interacted with some plants and flares to finish a couple other quests. It was here that I was introduced to what I call "find-your-own-quest" where instead of just running back and forth to town, you discover area-triggered quests and challenges. Neat! I then headed to Lightreach Mission, the first (somewhat) major city. Lightreach Mission was a quest hub for several levels. I received a number of quests from the Lightreach Church folk and some interesting quests from these bunny people with REALLY long ears. Then I proceeded to run out to all corners of the zone to deal with the water-worshipping biped rat people. There were some fun run-and-jump challenges that netted me some decent loot, and it was a nice change of pace from the traditional yo-yo do x and come back quests. I ran into my first mini boss, took part in my first world boss challenge, and got myself to level 12 or so. I moved on to the next areas and this is where the challenge of the game in general, specifically mobs, increased pretty significantly. My gear wasn't all on the level, but I think at first my failures (I died a LOT) were not being active and strategic in combat. My lack of decent gear was my downfall from 14-15 I think.
At this point I have to mention that the quests and tasks are so numerous it's nearly overwhelming. Plus their map markers and the progression radiating outward from your current home base seems just...disorganized. That became a point of frustration for me right at the end of level 14.
I just hit 15 and got my first mount last night. I also unlocked my 7th skill slot and of course more AMP points. It didn't hit me until I hopped on my mount - something had been building through all my frustrations between levels 13 and 15. I felt like the game was actually challenging me to think more than to just run out, stand still, spam, spam again. I realized that frustration is not a BAD thing. Frustration leads us to make changes and find out what works best. Failure can either make you quit and give up or it can make you think more deeply about what went wrong, what I did wrong to cause it, and how I can change my skills and tactics to win next time, or to at least get a little bit closer to winning. This epiphany was brewing in those early teen levels and it hit me last night that I miss the challenge, the frustration. Some people might say "That's stupid! It shouldn't be so difficult!" But I say bring it on. The easier something is to overcome, the less gratifying the success is. When you die 5 or more times trying to beat a mob and you finally get it, that makes for a much more satisfying feeling of accomplishment.
So what now? I'm gonna find out what other awful, terrible creatures lie in wait for me on Nexus. Now that I have awakened to my desire for a challenge, I embrace the difficulty of the game. All the cosmetic stuff works for me just fine. I don't compare it to WoW because I don't think it should be. Once you spend a little bit of time in W*, you'll realize it's not just "another WoW clone". That's my opinion anyway.
Things will change past my very early level of 15, but don't they in every MMO? I'm not saying that 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, won't be the point that I get off the W* boat and find something else. But for right now I'm hooked. And that's all I need to keep playing.
-ix
Comments
The game is a lot fun, I played the closed beta for several months and then bought it at release. Possibly just burn out, but I just couldn't bear leveling again in WildStar. It's just not fun. The dungeons aren't bad, and I do like the class quest system which is kind of unique, it just didn't have enough of...anything really to hold me long term.
I hope you have a different experience than I did and enjoy the game for a lot longer
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Thanks for the insight Aeonblades!
Y'know, these days I just play a game until I get tired of it. I can't imagine it being an easy task to keep content full and engaging through so many levels. I may play it to 25 and be done. It's like life in general. Enjoy the enjoyable stuff as long as you can, then move on. Everything goes in cycles, it seems. Maybe WoD will be awesome and draw me in, though it sounds like from the previews that won't be the case. Maybe the next big thing is just around the corner and we haven't heard of it yet. Of course Lord British's new game Shroud of the Avatar looks pretty sweet, and Star Citizen too.
-ix
The questing is very overwhelming. I almost got to level 30 on both sides.
Not only that but I chose settler, which gets very old, very fast.
Originally posted by Arskaaa
"when players learned tacticks in dungeon/raids, its bread".
It's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks that.
-ix
Late 20's, early 30's, would be the Whitevale days... Whitevale is alright, it feels a bit bland after Galeras which has a lot of interesting story, world bosses, and lots of fun jumping puzzle stuff with the focus of air quests. When you get to Farside though the game really takes an interesting turn (and you will forever miss low-gravity afterwards), and then in the mid 30's Wilderrun, which has a lot of very in-depth story telling regarding the Torine and it's ties to the old Cassian Republic, as well as just being an amazingly beautiful and detailed jungle.
At level 35 you get your first "The Secrets of Nexus" world quest... and that's when the story goes into hyper drive mode with some real Final Fantasy-esque story telling... it was very cool and they keep the pace going pretty steady afterwards.
I'd say for me the game really hits it's stride in the 30's, even though the early game is alright and pretty fun as you are learning a new and complex system of combat and being introduced to a lot of new systems. Whitevale is a pretty big let-down though in the 20's till early 30's, as it comes at a time when the player could use a big change of pace, and that doesn't happen till after Whitevale in Farside.
I heard from a few people that Whitevale is shit but the game is better either side of it. The thing is I wasn't enjoying Whitevale, and it was becoming clear I didn't have the time to do the endgame as it has been designed, so I was unlikely to be there for the long haul anyway.
The very best thing about this game in my opinion is the fluidity of the combat, I love just fighting mobs! The rest of the game is pretty much the same as all the rest! I would give it a 7.8 on the fun scale.
My son talked me into getting it because I didn't care for the looks and animation. I'm glad he did, it is way better than I thought it would be.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
That's a fair point really... Wildstar's endgame is pretty robust and requires a lot of time, well the raiding aspect anyway. Casual raiders should look to WoW or some other alternative, where there is an easier mode for raiding (lfr, flex, etc.) and will probably find a good deal of satisfaction there. Wildstar's attunement and high difficulty of encounters would put off people without the time and energy for something very hard.
There is other options for endgame, as much as you would expect from a themepark really... housing, dailies, cool costume's, pvp (which is getting better in the next patch), market playing, completionism... but if you're like me, raiding is where it really is at and for Wildstar you do require time.
It's really a shame though that Whitevale burns so many people out, as it really is an exception to the rest of the game. I didn't think Whitevale was horrible, just bland and repetitive. It's better on a pvp server as the whole zone becomes a pvp warzone due to it being the first zone where Exile and Dom get to quest together.
Well, I'm back with an update.
I've been playing WildStar off and on for a couple of weeks now and finally found my way to Illium.
I don't want to end up typing a small book here, so here's the quick and dirty.
I uninstalled it.
The performance issues ended up being the death of my W* run. The client performance is so inconsistent and more often than not, very low, that I just can't enjoy it the way I want to.
My laptop has an i7-4700MQ and a GeForce GT 755M 2GB GDDR5. I can run other new games with ease at 1080p, but W* runs terrible most of the time.
My patience ran out and I just don't see the point in paying for a game I can barely play.
-ix
If you enjoyed Wildstar. Just take a break till they improve the performance. It will happen, so at least you will be able to go back to the game.
Woo! Wildstar is fixed, at least for me.
I had uninstalled (I did not have the beta files, only the release, so I know it wasn't that) and decided to reinstall a couple of days later. I was pretty frustrated with the graphical performance and thought maybe I was just overreacting. the issue from the first day I installed W* was that it would crash in DX11 mode - a fairly common problem. I could only get it to run in DX9 mode. When I reinstalled this last time, it worked in DX11 and my FPS is anywhere from 25 (lots going on) to 50+.
I'm happy with it now! Still not 100% sure if I'll subscribe, but at least I can play it smoothly.
-ix