Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

nobody's prefect_sl said:

Are you serious? I only played a little in the stress test and from what I can see, it's a bunch of instant gratification dolts.

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Right, because which game doesn't have those dolts anyways? The community is pretty easy-going and fun-loving. I already play Dota 2 a shit-load, so why does my MMO have to be toxic as well?

A part of growing up is maturing and having the patience to deal with children. I think I'd rather play an MMO with those dolts than playing, let's say, Rerolled.org: The MMORPG. Utnayen could be raiding content and you could be the duckass complaining about it on forums.

For any new MMO you can basically discount the opinion of anyone who says anything like .. 'WoW kiddie', 'on rails' or 'instant gratification'. They just want to everyone to be still playing the games they were playing 15 years ago so that they have someone to feel superior to in those games. This is kind of why the MMO forum gets a bit toxic and useless, after the 15 millionth post of 'make it like EQ or UO' most people just go elsewhere to talk MMO.
The basic question about any new MMO is 'is it worth the box price and free month or not?'. Wildstar seems to have something that TESO does not. I will probably give it a whirl and if I don't like it then shrug and move on with my life. It's not as if the devs are coming round to my place and skinning my cats or something.

asfastasican_sl said:

The community is pretty easy-going and fun-loving.

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Or anti-intellectual and up for spastic, bombastic, 'humour.' I know, personal bias... Ruined by training and collaborators am I, alas.

asfastasican_sl said:

A part of growing up is maturing and having the patience to deal with children. I think I'd rather play an MMO with those dolts than playing, let's say, Rerolled.org: The MMORPG. Utnayen could be raiding content and you could be the duckass complaining about it on forums.

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Actually, I like children a lot, even other people's children. The straightforward (at first, haha!) communication of wants and don'twants, being in the moment, great imagination, shameless (up to an age), being content with fairly basic stuff (before advertising gets to them, poor bastards). I used dolt deliberately, not 'kid' or whatever. The MMORPG masses are very unlike children.

For one, they are engaged in strategic communication: they are very seldom trying to engage in a rational discourse (read up on Habermas, 'Zwischen Faktizit?t und Geltung' trans. 'Between Facts and Norms' specifically, if this isn't clear to you) to bring about the best game experience. Rather, they attempt to have things that annoy them specifically removed from the game. E.g. travel taking time, quests taking time, combat being dangerous at times etc. However, this request is dressed in the guise of an objective fault of the game: e.g. 'To avoid driving people away, my play experience should never be impacted negatively by other players in PVE.'

Being in the moment: leveling in Wildstar is, apparently, too slow. If the game is good, what difference does it make if a magic number says '26' or '27'? Well, the game isn't too good, that magic number is inserted (without any good justification I'm aware of) into the to-hit calculations and whatnot. Have you observed children playing a game they think is good? They are entirely absorbed in the moment, not complaining about it taking too long to reach level 10. Sometimes even us adults can be suckered into forgetting the all-important high score, too. I know I've been in 'the flow' playing, say, bejeweled.

You know, one could even think your reply was in bad faith and your intention was to call me immature for being tired of the same old, same old, and especially of the process of developers putting in so-called quality of life features and the gamers whining for even more quality of life. Even to the point where I don't even see the point of actually having quests in Wildstar. Just have some mobs have a strawberry over their heads and let killing 3 of those give +n xp. Also, maybe show a silver arrow pointing to where they are so no-one is lost... No, wait, wildstar does that already.

Might just call it an MMO action adventure game.

Lusiphur_sl said:

For any new MMO you can basically discount the opinion of anyone who says anything like .. 'WoW kiddie', 'on rails' or 'instant gratification'. They just want to everyone to be still playing the games they were playing 15 years ago so that they have someone to feel superior to in those games. This is kind of why the MMO forum gets a bit toxic and useless, after the 15 millionth post of 'make it like EQ or UO' most people just go elsewhere to talk MMO.
The basic question about any new MMO is 'is it worth the box price and free month or not?'. Wildstar seems to have something that TESO does not. I will probably give it a whirl and if I don't like it then shrug and move on with my life. It's not as if the devs are coming round to my place and skinning my cats or something.

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Making a lot of assumptions here, aren't we? Shortly put, you're wrong. No justifications necessary, as you offered none, eh?

All right, I'll try to give an example of how NOT having rapid-fire questing may improve a game.

How Wildstar does quests: 'A new quest hub! I see 4, no, 6 exclamation marks, that's 12 to 15 clicks without reading, because who the fuck cares why you need bear asses. Not interested in your amateur hour writing.' [Yes, I have a publications list. No, it isn't fiction.] Run around the spots indicated in the minimap, collect quest objectives. Cash in, repeat for next link for quest chains, repeat, change area, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, quit.

How you could have the player make the same loop around the area without having quest pinata: you walk through a gate/valley/something or chance upon a village. An NPC hails you with voiceover, emote animation, speech bubble, chat text, whatever. 'Yo dude, I've a hankering for bear ass, and not just any old ass, I want Mama Bear's delicious ass. Quality over quantity eh? Think you'll find her around the clear pond, to North-Northeast of here, if you don't already have her sweet, sweet, ass in your bag? Oh yeah, there's buncha right bastards between me and her arse, called Papa Bear, Boo Bear, Pooh Bear and Bipolar Bear, I'll pay you a gold coin for Mama's ass and 10 silvers each for the dicks of those dudes.'

Then you get exp for killing the nameds or camping wildlife or whatever: should be easy to tune the xp/hour rate close enough.

The thing is, it feels like the constant 'congrats! you successfully collected 10 bear asses! Here, have the xp we couldn't assign the mobs because people would miss our precious, precious writing!' takes me back to the action games we used to have in the 90's on Amiga and in the 80's on C64 and Vic20... No, actually, the older games didn't do that. You just got to another level and had to congratulate yourself.

The MUDs these games evolved from did no such thing. There were some quests that could, e.g. halve the xp you needed for next level, but they did not cheat you on the exp and loot ON the mobs. Here, I'm being purely selfish:Iprefer a different gameplay experience. It does not seem incorrect to judge that asking for ever faster cycle of congrats on boring-ass-quest completion and quicker leveling to be a preference for instant or constant gratification, however. Really, it isfineto want stuff instantly and constantly in a virtual world where there is no marginal cost to making more copies of bigger epeens. It just does not evidence a long attention span or willingness to delay gratification. No moral judgments necessary.

nobody's prefect_sl said:

All right, I'll try to give an example of how NOT having rapid-fire questing may improve a game.

'Yo dude, I've a hankering for bear ass, and not just any old ass, I want Mama Bear's delicious ass. Quality over quantity eh? Think you'll find her around the clear pond, to North-Northeast of here, if you don't already have her sweet, sweet, ass in your bag? Oh yeah, there's buncha right bastards between me and her arse, called Papa Bear, Boo Bear, Pooh Bear and Bipolar Bear, I'll pay you a gold coin for Mama's ass and 10 silvers each for the dicks of those dudes.'

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Haha, thanks man I needed that this morning.

Rogosh_sl said:

Haha, thanks man I needed that this morning.

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My pleasure. You'll find it itemized in the invoice under 'misc. humour'

nobody's prefect_sl said:

Making a lot of assumptions here, aren't we? Shortly put, you're wrong. No justifications necessary, as you offered none, eh?

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You seem new here. I refer you to oh, any fucking MMO thread on this forum, including this one. Seeing as you clearly haven't read shit we can lump you in with the safe to be ignored people.

nobody's prefect_sl said:

All right, I'll try to give an example of how NOT having rapid-fire questing may improve a game.

How Wildstar does quests: 'A new quest hub! I see 4, no, 6 exclamation marks, that's 12 to 15 clicks without reading, because who the fuck cares why you need bear asses. Not interested in your amateur hour writing.' [Yes, I have a publications list. No, it isn't fiction.] Run around the spots indicated in the minimap, collect quest objectives. Cash in, repeat for next link for quest chains, repeat, change area, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, quit.

How you could have the player make the same loop around the area without having quest pinata: you walk through a gate/valley/something or chance upon a village. An NPC hails you with voiceover, emote animation, speech bubble, chat text, whatever. 'Yo dude, I've a hankering for bear ass, and not just any old ass, I want Mama Bear's delicious ass. Quality over quantity eh? Think you'll find her around the clear pond, to North-Northeast of here, if you don't already have her sweet, sweet, ass in your bag? Oh yeah, there's buncha right bastards between me and her arse, called Papa Bear, Boo Bear, Pooh Bear and Bipolar Bear, I'll pay you a gold coin for Mama's ass and 10 silvers each for the dicks of those dudes.'

Then you get exp for killing the nameds or camping wildlife or whatever: should be easy to tune the xp/hour rate close enough.

The thing is, it feels like the constant 'congrats! you successfully collected 10 bear asses! Here, have the xp we couldn't assign the mobs because people would miss our precious, precious writing!' takes me back to the action games we used to have in the 90's on Amiga and in the 80's on C64 and Vic20... No, actually, the older games didn't do that. You just got to another level and had to congratulate yourself.

The MUDs these games evolved from did no such thing. There were some quests that could, e.g. halve the xp you needed for next level, but they did not cheat you on the exp and loot ON the mobs. Here, I'm being purely selfish:Iprefer a different gameplay experience. It does not seem incorrect to judge that asking for ever faster cycle of congrats on boring-ass-quest completion and quicker leveling to be a preference for instant or constant gratification, however. Really, it isfineto want stuff instantly and constantly in a virtual world where there is no marginal cost to making more copies of bigger epeens. It just does not evidence a long attention span or willingness to delay gratification. No moral judgments necessary.

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I read this, barfed in my mouth a little and sighed. You just made my point. It is all 'Back to the Future' with you.
At least you had the grace to say it is only your preference, the issue I was addressing was the retards that shitbomb every MMO thread with 'you will play EQ forever otherwise you are weak and unmanly'. So I should probably apologise for being a little snippy.

Lusiphur_sl said:

You seem new here. I refer you to oh, any fucking MMO thread on this forum, including this one. Seeing as you clearly haven't read shit we can lump you in with the safe to be ignored people.

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So... My writing that I prefer a different game experience means that other people ought to be disallowed their preferred mode of playing? Brilliant thinking there, mate. Should do you very well in academia.

edit: Not new here, been here before Vanguard beta 3, in fact. Or 'there', more properly put.

Listen, I know it is really very hard, but try to understand that all people everywhere on every issue imaginable do not fall neatly into two mutually exclusive camps.

asfastasican_sl said:

Right, because which game doesn't have those dolts anyways? The community is pretty easy-going and fun-loving. I already play Dota 2 a shit-load, so why does my MMO have to be toxic as well?

A part of growing up is maturing and having the patience to deal with children. I think I'd rather play an MMO with those dolts than playing, let's say, Rerolled.org: The MMORPG. Utnayen could be raiding content and you could be the duckass complaining about it on forums.

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I was wrong. There are those dudes, but there are some really cool people as well, and every second word on general or the fora is not 'gay' so that's a definite plus. Mea culpa, I was cranky, had a small sample and ran into some idgits.

Didn't like the game either. My first time playing it this weekend. Tried 3 or 4 of the classes and couldn't even be bothered to getting them past level 5. I don't know if that speaks more about me or the game itself but I need something more in my games then the boring, generic gameplay offered in this. I haven't played WoW in 4 or 5 years and I imagine that it has devolve into something similar as well.

Ryanz_sl said:

immerse myself into the world and therefor have more fun

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I don't think Wildstar is that sort of game.To me, it's a more immediate, 24/7 flashbangwhoopee -kind of game. If the design were more ambitious, they'd have NPCs phoning you about that bear you just killed 'kill a few more and call for a pickup drone' so that you didn't have to first pick up the quests, complete objectives and then walk back to cash them. Unfortunately, they copied wow a little too much and didn't go balls to the wall with the immediacy, action ... I don't know, what ever it is that is good about Wildstar I guess.

To me, in early wow (vanilla and tbc, which is when I played) that pickup-complete-cash quest structure made more sense, because there was a preconceived order to your progress through the areas, and it was still a mythic Epic zero-to-hero-in-a-virtual-world story, albeit with pop references to pepper the experience. (Although I would think having a quest item inventory tab + bear asses dropping whether you had the quest or not would be better) And thebildungsromanstyle of narrative is chock full of wise men giving cryptic advice and sending youngsters out to perform quests. And wow was fixing stuff that needed to be fixed in EverQuest, not funny actiony game. I don't think the vestigial step of picking up quests adds much to Wildstar, because itfeels likea funny actiony romp, not a Serious Motherfucking Epic. Two very different sorts of genres of narratives, if we want to go there.

Wildstar feels,to me, like it has taken the next step in changing the genre to where getting in on thefun action bitis much more akin to popping in the Bubble Bobble 3 1/2" disk than studying the motherfucking manual so you don't gimp your party while rolling for decent (aww, fuck it, I'll admit it, maximum) stats.

Btw a decent portion of the quests do use a communicator to receive and turn in quest. Few times I even miss it and notices the communicator icon on my screen showing that someone tried to contact me some time ago.

Though something a long the line of, " you are out wandering around, you kill something just to kill it and someone contacts you on the communicator saying "Hey that creature you just killed is part of my XXX, Kill a few more then call me back! You will be suitably rewarded"", would be awesome but something like that and people would bitch and complain that they missed too many quest just because they don't randomly kill mobs (which already happens with dropped items that start quest).

I feel like some of the people complaining about quest hubs and bear ass quests are still chasing that high of the original EQ. It's like trying to fuck the girl that took your virginity 15 years later, sure it may be a thrill for a while, but then you realize she's 15 years older, let herself go and is considerably more bloated. I must be getting old, because I would sure as fuck rather play a game in the quest hub format than a game that throws you into a world and expects you to just run around and grind mobs all day. At least then I know on my limited schedule that I can log in, do some quests and feel like I accomplished something.

At the end of the day, MMO's like any entertainment product are entirely subjective. You either like it or you don't. I've said it before and I will say it again, It's not particularly innovative, but I enjoyed my time this weekend. I will be buying a box and giving it a shot, whether it warrants a full time commitment remains to be seen.

Cinge_sl said:

Btw a decent portion of the quests do use a communicator to receive and turn in quest. Few times I even miss it and notices the communicator icon on my screen showing that someone tried to contact me some time ago.

Though something a long the line of, " you are out wandering around, you kill something just to kill it and someone contacts you on the communicator saying "Hey that creature you just killed is part of my XXX, Kill a few more then call me back! You will be suitably rewarded"", would be awesome but something like that and people would bitch and complain that they missed too many quest just because they don't randomly kill mobs (which already happens with dropped items that start quest).

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Since the game begins at max level anyway, why not eliminate the item that starts a quest, too? I mean... The point of the structured leveling experience is to funnel exp into the character at certain rate. Might as well make the kill x bears quests automatic, like, say, kill X zombies achievements in The Secret World? That's what I mean about the design not being ambitious enough... If the goal is to remove tedium and make sure everybody gets the same rewards, why put in random quest item drops? Hyperbole: someone will kill a thousand bears and not have the item drop. You could just as well have every character begin the game with the hidden from view quest 'kill x bears,' save dev time and avoid people whining about missing a quest, make people enjoy the game more, or at least not-enjoy missed quests less, and keep the focus on the fun button mashing telegraph-avoiding?

Intrinsic_sl said:

Can't say that I have particularly enjoyed the weekend. Someone posted earlier that it was visually cluttered and that is the description that best matches my feelings. There are no specific examples to point to, just a general feeling or impression of clutter that permeates my whole experience.

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I didn't enjoy playing Friday, but Saturday something clicked. I didn't play all that much, but it wassomewhatenjoyable. This morning, I played for 2-3 hours and I think that's it for me. The questing really fucking irritated me. And there's just too much retarded bullshit going on that I don't care about. Glad I got into the stress test though, so I don't have to play this crap again.

Crowing_sl said:

I feel like some of the people complaining about quest hubs and bear ass quests are still chasing that high of the original EQ. It's like trying to fuck the girl that took your virginity 15 years later, sure it may be a thrill for a while, but then you realize she's 15 years older, let herself go and is considerably more bloated. I must be getting old, because I would sure as fuck rather play a game in the quest hub format than a game that throws you into a world and expects you to just run around and grind mobs all day. At least then I know on my limited schedule that I can log in, do some quests and feel like I accomplished something.

At the end of the day, MMO's like any entertainment product are entirely subjective. You either like it or you don't. I've said it before and I will say it again, It's not particularly innovative, but I enjoyed my time this weekend. I will be buying a box and giving it a shot, whether it warrants a full time commitment remains to be seen.

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Wish I could find Lithose's reply to this exact assertion in the Pantheon thread. Out of mana, tho, so you get my cliff notes.

You're wrong. Some of us do not want EverQuestagain. I, for one, did not play EverQuest. Didn't get my CC early enough, and by end-2000, everybody was waiting for that new game to hit the shelves, DAOC, so no point in getting a game that was TWO years old and obsolete. I DID play an LPMUD a shitton, though. EverQuest was both more restrictive than that LPMUD and not nearly as punishing. How's losing a now-ungettable item, of which there are two existing copies to a lucky crit by a mob sound?

More generally, some of us do not want an EverQuest. Cribbing from Lithose here: we want a game where the bad mechanics are remedied but with an eye towards designing systems that allow for strategic thinking from equipping your character to building their skills to party composition. E.g. the game rewards good planning by allowing you to save health/mana/other resources for chainpulling instead of resting x seconds between pulls. For a lot of people vanilla wow would be just fine (new game on the block though it may be! :V ) but there is no game like vanilla wow on the market now, at any price.

Again speaking for myself, off the top of my head: I fucking like grinding mobs in a manner that requires situational awareness. I like patrolling adds, because I get to shine in picking them up / mezzing them / pet tanking them until the tank picks them up. I like having to save my only interrupt ability for the right ability. I even like interrupting MOBs in Guild Wars! I like not having a mini map so I canlook at the world. (And I do disable it in games where I can. Situational awareness!) What I don't like, and have never liked, is having leveling simplified to 'aoe shit down.' I'll even admit to liking frost mage kiting at lvl 22-24 in TBC. Don't need ice cube for that, baby. And it sure as fuck beats another bear ass quest for fun.

I'd give up on some of that action fun for a game that placed more importance on the strategic stuff and was less about fast or perfect reaction and more about picking the right reaction: e.g. mezz or stun, or let the tank pick it up?

From what I've seen, if you group up, the mob killing part of Wildstar is very much reduced to 'aoe shit down' because the world has been tuned to be reliably soloable to max for everybody. It is thus very easy for me to conclude that it isn't a game for me.

What I'm here for is (aside from the lols) to point out how there are places where the implementation doesn't serve the stated goals of getting everyone to elder game, stat. Actually, I'm just here for the lols. Oh and trying to pooh-pooh the game. At least Blade & Soul would be something we've not seen before.

Was reading the beta forums before I get kicked, and I think I figured out why I dislike this game. There's a post on there that basically described the combat system as "Don't Stand in the Fire - The Game." That description nails it.

The first 10 or so levels it didn't really effect me since I could just face tank stuff. I was actually playing it like an FPS and just circle strafing mobs, but eventually that stopped working. At that point, it's jump out of the red stuff with your leap ability...over and over and over. Otherwise you die. And that is fuckingtedious. It leads to a combat system where I just get exhausted from having to dodge shit, even when it's trash mobs. Actually, a better description is it's taking button mashing and putting it into overdrive. Mash skills, red circle, mash leap, mash more skills. Fuck that. It's awful.

And apparently, based on another thread, there's also "white" damage, which I take it to mean is the unavoidable stuff. So even with all your dodging, it's still meaningless. Way to take an action combat game and make the action part worthless.

Edit: 2 more complaints, which basically also equate to button mashing. Looting by having to press 'v' all the fucking time, and sprinting by holding down shift. All in all those are minor issues, but they become major annoyances when you literally have to press them hundreds of times an hour. The looting one actually becomes worse when you don't actually get to see what you're sucking up (outside of the little box at the top). Why not just implement auto-loot if I don't get to pick and choose? Why make me press a button?