Wildstar Launch Thread - Server: Stormtalon | Faction: Dominion

I have some weird g600 mouse bug and have not been able to play this game for over 2 months. If i use any mouse button my character spins and the camera ends up looking up under him. I was enjoying the pvp in this game until this happened.

Got a beta key for this weekend and installed it to see if'd be worth the time. Unfortunately, I was only able to get past the initial tutorial as an ESPer and on to the first planet on the Dominion side before throwing in the towel. It's just so boring and sloppy. There was absolutely nothing capturing my attention in the first 30 minutes and the gameplay is really clunky. If prospective players are getting through the tutorial asking, "Why am I still playing this crap", you've really dropped the ball. Hell, even Coldharbour wasn't even this bad.

Yes, it gets a plus for a great aesthetic, an abundance of features, and originality for it's setting. It just seems like it completely drops the ball in the fun category. Is this one of those games where the fun starts at 20, 30, 40 or am I missing something?

its probably more fun if you could pull a Momento and forget every MMO you ever played

thats what devs should be investing in, a pill that lets you forget specific things in the past. shit, i'd pay $100 for a pill that let me forget The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones so I could rewatch them every month

but what about Lost.... hmmmm

Maybe I'm just not into MMOs but I cannot get over how busy everything seems to be in Wildstar. It seems even busier now since a few months ago in closed beta. Everywhere I look objects are hard to discern whats important and what is not. I was interested in trying to get my girlfriend into it just for another thing to do casually together but I don't know if she could handle the amount of stuff going on. I suppose I could just let her decorate my house and save myself the money.

Xaxius_sl said:

Got a beta key for this weekend and installed it to see if'd be worth the time. Unfortunately, I was only able to get past the initial tutorial as an ESPer and on to the first planet on the Dominion side before throwing in the towel. It's just so boring and sloppy. There was absolutely nothing capturing my attention in the first 30 minutes and the gameplay is really clunky. If prospective players are getting through the tutorial asking, "Why am I still playing this crap", you've really dropped the ball. Hell, even Coldharbour wasn't even this bad.

Yes, it gets a plus for a great aesthetic, an abundance of features, and originality for it's setting. It just seems like it completely drops the ball in the fun category. Is this one of those games where the fun starts at 20, 30, 40 or am I missing something?

Click to expand...

Things pick up late teens / 20s. Dungeons are fun but be ready to wipe a shit ton. Mini-adventure maps are fun. You have access to a few different spec options/amps which add flavors.

I did a little pvp and wasn't impressed. I ran as a Stalker - There is so much shit going on once 3-4 people are on the screen.

I think the "business" it what appeals to me. Sure it seems like a lot is going on right now and there is quite a bit of a learning curve to be separating the newbies from the best but I also know that like any other MMO I will figure out what's going on and then it will all be routine. I can already tell that the profession game is going to be fairly deep and running around with a group composed of 1 of every type of path for maximizing PoE experience would be awesome.

Still the real place this game will fail long term for me is probably like most people, warplots. They pretty much suck now I hear but I have hope that organized groups will end up being highly effective making sense of the crazy telegraphs going off and then destroying unorganized groups.

Played a few classes during the beta weekend.
Felt like I was playing Dance Dance Revolution rather than an MMO - with more bugs than ESO and a lot less depth.

It's not a terrible game imo - just felt busy with nothing going on. Will try again when it goes live.

OK so i didn't log in the last weekend but I just tried to log in this Sunday afternoon and I get "Unhandled NC Platform error 15" and can't log in. I tried to log into the forums and it says my account has been permanently blocked? I'm not sure if this has already been talked about in this thread, but I guess I'll just send in a ticket then demand a refund if they want to block my account for absolutely no reason. I've heard some people had some account issues since last patch?

This is kinda sad. Almost feels like this is dead in the water already, seeing the number of posts in this thread. At least other triple A budget MMO's managed to keep up some hype untill a few weeks into release. I must admit that I never got past the 15 minute mark in the tutorial of this game but I figured that had much more to do with my current MMO burnout. Having said that, I spent more hours in the incredably buggy pre-alpha releases of Shroud of the Avatar(with like 5-10% of content and game-systems implemented) then Wildstar.

Also, always much more a sucker for Fantasy then Tech-MMO's so I guess that has something to do with it too.

The tutorial in this game is really really bad. I don't think anyone really like having to run around a giant empty space learning "lore" for 30 minutes before the get to really play the game.

Did they change it?

I thought that the exile tutorial was fairly well done. It didn't taketoolong (once you did it, you could do the tutorial in less than 5 minutes). It showed you some of the basic ways you were going to be using the game. The Dominion tutorial was less good just because of the flow. Having to run across that giant fucking room multiple times was bullshit.

If anything the exile tutorial was too short and didn't serve to demonstrate everything that needed to be demonstrated.

But honestly, the basic tutorial and complete lack of any sort of help files was a significant weakness. They have a codex right there. You can't convince me that taking the time to write tutorials and explanations and tossing them into a "help" tab would have been a bad use of someones time. Nothing in that game is complex, but some of it sure is confusing as fuck until you figure out exactly how they decided to do that one specific thing.

It seems like there was a general philosphy that "fansites will take care of that" when it came to help topics and UI elements.

Maybe. I don't think they will, not like carbine seems to expect. I mean look at junkiesnation. And that's not a dig, it's a compliment. There is a limit that is quickly approached concerning what how much work fansites are really willing to put into it.

Xaxius_sl said:

Got a beta key for this weekend and installed it to see if'd be worth the time. Unfortunately, I was only able to get past the initial tutorial as an ESPer and on to the first planet on the Dominion side before throwing in the towel. It's just so boring and sloppy. There was absolutely nothing capturing my attention in the first 30 minutes and the gameplay is really clunky. If prospective players are getting through the tutorial asking, "Why am I still playing this crap", you've really dropped the ball. Hell, even Coldharbour wasn't even this bad.

Yes, it gets a plus for a great aesthetic, an abundance of features, and originality for it's setting. It just seems like it completely drops the ball in the fun category. Is this one of those games where the fun starts at 20, 30, 40 or am I missing something?

Click to expand...

Well one issue probably is of all the classes you picked the most generic wow type caster that has the clunkiest combat of the bunch. I am not saying this game really is some new special diamond that everybody must play but having tried all the classes at low levels esper is the chunkiest slowest and most annoying class of the bunch. It is like a wow balance druid trapped in a game that requires movement on a very non mobile class.

That first hub you get all crafting quests makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

Iannis_sl said:

Did they change it?

I thought that the exile tutorial was fairly well done. It didn't taketoolong (once you did it, you could do the tutorial in less than 5 minutes). It showed you some of the basic ways you were going to be using the game. The Dominion tutorial was less good just because of the flow. Having to run across that giant fucking room multiple times was bullshit.

If anything the exile tutorial was too short and didn't serve to demonstrate everything that needed to be demonstrated.

But honestly, the basic tutorial and complete lack of any sort of help files was a significant weakness. They have a codex right there. You can't convince me that taking the time to write tutorials and explanations and tossing them into a "help" tab would have been a bad use of someones time. Nothing in that game is complex, but some of it sure is confusing as fuck until you figure out exactly how they decided to do that one specific thing.

It seems like there was a general philosphy that "fansites will take care of that" when it came to help topics and UI elements.

Maybe. I don't think they will, not like carbine seems to expect. I mean look at junkiesnation. And that's not a dig, it's a compliment. There is a limit that is quickly approached concerning what how much work fansites are really willing to put into it.

Click to expand...

Back in the day it didn't exist. I found the whole thing incredibly annoying and not worth the time. Maybe some people like it, but I found it dull. You run around the whole space station, listining to people, clicking on statues or shrines or whatever and getting a bunch of text tossed at you. You also have to run around and do bits of combat then more running.

Is it easy? Yes. Can you do it in 15 minutes the second time? Yes. Does it let me play the game right away? No. It's awful.

My opinion though. In the grand scheme of things is it a big deal? Not at all.

Oh, I agree with that.

It wasn't hard, but it was mostly pointless. I don't think expanding the tutorial is the way to fix that issue. If anything the bulk of what you need should be in a civlopedia (an online players manual) and the tutorial should be introducing you to that while giving you exposure to the physics of the game world.

But either way... the way that they actually implemented it (or failed to implement it) is just unexamined design.

Too much of the game is like that. There's no real depth to it. It's very surface. But it's fuckingweird, because there obviously should be and they were obviously thinking along those lines. And there almost is. But it goes right up to the edge and then falls asleep.

So I played a Dominion Warrior to 15, not interested in pushing any further. I know I'll buy the game and progressing on a character to-be-wiped is lame. I tried an Exile Engineer and holy hell is the Exile tutorial wayyyy better/faster. I feel like I was off the ship in 10 minutes and everything made sense. The Dominion tutorial takes substantially longer; they have a "clear 4 sides of this enormous room" segment that just doesn't exist on the Exile tutorial. I feel like two different teams built the respective faction tutorials and didn't compare notes or design concepts whatsoever.

I think release will go well for them assuming they chill on adding new stuff and work overtime on fixing the buggy/annoying shit. This is a great window of opportunity, no one wants to raid in WoW and Wildstar is fresh. If their group/raid content is even remotely engaging, then they'll grab a huge swath of bored MMO players who really have nothing to do. They also have a great housing system, gathering/crafting look decent (I've never been a crafter, but having a seperate crafting skill tree and discovery system seems to be a huge step forward). If they tie crafting into the housing (which they seem to have done), it really fleshes out the game for the PvE crowd who doesn't want to cut their teeth on hard group/raid content.

tldr; I like it, I'll buy and play it. Devs need to focus on optimization and bug fixing and release will go well.

Beta weekend saved me $45 on GMG.

Still loving this. I've leveled up a Stalker to 21, Spellslinger to 12, and an Esper to 14 with a buddy of mine. Having the most fun with Stalker, but Spellslinger is fun too and easy to level up with. I like the Esper, but having to stand still for his basic attack type ability kinda sucks. At least it sorta gets alleviated later on after you start getting abilities like Illusionary Blades and some others.

I was on the fence until the Beta Weekends. Then I pre-ordered after having a fun time playing for a bit. Even if I get 3 months out of it, it's worth the price of admission. It's a much better game than ESO imo. That game just felt like a trainwreck to me after playing it for a while.