Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

as "sucky" as questing was in vanilla compared to what it is now it was 1000% percent better than the questing systems used prior to it. It let you at a glance know if somebody had quests for you and you did not have to play 1000 questions with an NPC trying to guess what the hot key words were needed to trip off a quest.

After the fun of EQ1 and fun questing stuff like trying to figure out why a quest does not seem to work when the Devs guarantee it does work only to find out there was a typo and you needed to say I am the master forrest instead of I am the master forrester. Looking back questing in wow at launch seems really remedial but you have to remember prior to that every other MMO to that point had been MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH worse in the questing department.

Honestly.. for me, it will boil down to if there is anything to do at cap. I have played pretty much all of the popular ones and the one thing Wow did that the rest have not is having a carrot worth sticking around for. I think the mechanics of Wildstar are great, the atmosphere and graphics are rich and yeah, the questing is pretty dry as are the classes, but if they give a reason to be vested in that character at level cap, they will have me (and my core group of friends as well). If not, oh well, here's hoping EQ:N or Star Citizen do a better job, but for now I like most of what I am seeing so I am staying optimistic.

Kedwyn_sl said:

Ding 1k

Wild Star wouldn't be a bad game if their questing wasn't awful and the combat (class mechanics / abilities / feel) where boring as fuck. There is certainly potential I just couldn't give a shit long enough to find any of it because its BORING.

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They're questing is pretty good for a quest driven game. But, in my opinion, all quests in a quest driven game, no matter how different are boring as fuck. But if you like the standard quest driven themepark game, then Wildstar did a great job with it, in my opinion.

Draegan_sl said:

They're questing is pretty good for a quest driven game. But, in my opinion, all quests in a quest driven game, no matter how different are boring as fuck. But if you like the standard quest driven themepark game, then Wildstar did a great job with it, in my opinion.

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This.

Also, of the 300+ (not a real number) quests you do, there's like 5 or so you'll actually be like "that was actually pretty fun." Most are high-ish level though, so a lot of people won't do them in beta.

jooka_sl said:

I like the game play but Im not sure what it is but something about the world seems off

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Yeah, no lightsabers.

It's a lot of little things adding up. Their content flow is pretty janky in spots. Some spots will give you 7+ concurrent quests, other parts will give you 2. Part of that is the state of the beta. Quests either bugging or breaking, entire zones lagging out and fucking with the content in bizzare ways. Places in the world where you can actually see the early revisions of the design (if you look and use a little imagination you can see what they were thinking about doing and either didn't or haven't yet in some areas of the world).

Now you add in that you actually have TWO character progression paths layered into each other. You have your combat player level and your non-combat path level. Juggling those two is intended to be relatively seamless. The "quest" areas overlap, but aren't entirely congruent (good call -- it would be boring as fuck if they were entirely congruent). But with the state of the UI it's hard to make that as seamless of an experience as it should/could/might be even if you actively try to.

But all of that involved hundreds of minor tweaks rather than one big fix-everything beta patch. So that's the good news about "the world seems a little bit off".

It seems a little bit off to me as well. That mess above is the conclusion that i've come to. All of it entirely fixable -- just a lot of tedious effort on their part.

Cinge_sl said:

Hmm not sure I can agree with this. I think just at the time everyone was just used to daoc/eq/ao type leveling where you just grinded mobs all day. So it was something different. Other then that it wasn't great. It wasn't until the later expansions when they started doing quest that had more depth and that were a lot more fun, plus phasing. It was also helped by a established IP where people recognized locations and persons.

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I should clarify that with "leveling experience" I mean the time spent playing the game until you hit max level. Sure, questing is usually part of that, but other aspects such as controls, class design, art/animations and a well crafted world are at least as important. Basically, my point is that if its boring to level most players will quit regardless of how potentially awesome the end game might be. Most people are not going to pay to spend days of their life doing something that's boring unless you have already managed to get them hooked. And maybe not even then.

There wasn't much to compare to as far as server stability went that I guess WoW at release/in Vanilla seemed great when compared to steaming piles of shit. I'm not saying it was terrible but some of us remember each continent going down randomly all throughout Vanilla from time to time (really was a pain when you were trying to farm the green dragons/Kazzak/Azuregoes), not to mention the loot lag, people sliding all over the place while lagged, and general de-synced issues. Was still fun enough to grind through it and keep playing but it wasn't the picture of "polish" for awhile.

Most of the time when people are comparing WoW's "polish" to other MMO's that have released in the last few years they're expecting those games to run as smooth as WoW did 5+ years after release which is a little silly. The one thing you have to give them is that their combat was always very responsive and didn't have bugs that other games had even months after release.

I really enjoyed the public quest format used in WAR, GW2 and, less prevalently, FFVI and Wildstar (they need many many more...) having a few of those per zone really helps break up the quest hub grind and are always a good source of comedy on pvp servers. That, plus instances, PVP, some actually interesting quests and some grinding is enough variety to satisfy most people as long as they are all decently engaging.

That said, it would be REALLY nice if the loot in modern MMOs was done differently. I know it has been said a million times, but EQ definitely did it best on that front. The issue with quest hub games is not only that they are effing quest hub games, but also that you are pretty pigeon holed into doing the quests because the gear they yield is a so much more viable upgrade stream than drops/player trading etc. This is largely due to the no_drop level locked mindset introduced by WoW to 'preserve' low level pvp balance and prevent twinking.. which is frankly retarded and pretty much forces you to jump through the quest hoops to upgrade.

Twitch

towliee streaming lvl 14 warrior what? nda lifted? I haven't logged on in forever.

Few streams are allowed to do up to 15 iirc.

TecKnoe_sl said:

Twitch

towliee streaming lvl 14 warrior what? nda lifted? I haven't logged on in forever.

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This is a quote from you about a month ago:

TecKnoe_sl said:

well i mean, would you watch towliee? or a member of a top tier guild that is active in current mmos? ive never seen towliee play, but even the biggest idiot can attract viewers through WoW isnt that what he mostly streams? i mean if the majority of WoW players are anything like my little cousin, and i know they are towliee is like a god to them, and to us hes awful.

its an all around thing, these people right now are probably the current mouth breathers in other mmos we hate out here giving the only in game advertisement out there, at least get some people who know what the fuck they are talking about, i was on towliees stream watching him play medic, he was telling his chat he was healing.... spec he had 1 utility skill on his bar, shield charge shit like that is awful, just actually having someone who knows what the fuck is going on and actually understands the game, someone over lvl 15.

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You were part of the discussion about level 1-15 being available to stream for certain people. You even mentioned Towliee in your post.

Maybe he has Short term memory problems.

Game looks pretty decent, i'll be trying it at release. A little disappointing that so much of the game feels like Rift, though. Animations / smoothness seems just like Rift. Also hate that your weapons disappear when you mount, wtf is this?

Can't mess with the delicate balance of the hoverboard! Does it really do that, I've never noticed, too busy hitting turbo and launching. Wonder if it does it for all the mounts, have seen that gerbil ball on streams and the warthog thing.

Toxxulian_sl said:

Game looks pretty decent, i'll be trying it at release. A little disappointing that so much of the game feels like Rift, though. Animations / smoothness seems just like Rift. Also hate that your weapons disappear when you mount, wtf is this?

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Ill be buying also. But I can't help but feel the more I see of this game the more it looks like "A_Generic_MMORPG_08" but with telegraphs and the typical reskin.

I'm back.

Voldeth_sl said:

This is a quote from you about a month ago:



You were part of the discussion about level 1-15 being available to stream for certain people. You even mentioned Towliee in your post.

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Pretty sure that's when they were giving select streamers a chance on the weekend, this was yesterday.

I do have horrible short term memory though =]