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Post by
Izichial
Speaking of multiplayer friendliness, at least quest mobs, are shared tags, THANK GOD. I'm not sure about normal mobs, I wasn't able to try, there weren't that many people on my zone, there were hundreds on the arkenship but mobs there die with 1 hit.
I've played mostly solo but heard from a friend that tried it with some others where they all played together that it was pretty random whether or not quest objectives in a squad were shared or not. Said a significant enough amount to annoy him weren't.
Speaking of annoyances, someone on the quest team has a raging obsession with mini games. Open a door via a console? MINIGAME. Arm an entirely mechanical bear trap? MINIGAME. Free some random guy stuck in a cage? MINIGAME.
There also seems to be a whole bunch of minigame element to crafting and it adds ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to it but annoyance. Drives me up the wall.
here at least is the engineer raid armor
That looks p. amazing.
Edit: As for the story I agree it starts out fairly weak. The
overall
story hasn't really changed or developed where I'm at (~80% through Celestalon which is the second zone planet-side if you start at the Aurin place but you seem to be significantly involved in the stories of recurring characters which do develop even though a lot of it is basically excuses to move you through the zone (as you'd expect).
There have been some hints which may or may not prove important / lead to something later on.
Post by
Thror
What I really don't like about the Dominion, and maybe that is just something that the game's introduction is lacking in, is that it really seems like they are just plain elitist jerks. If there was some really good reason for why they would drive other races from their homeworlds and harass them all the time (like they would inevitably go extinct if they didn't do it), then I might be able to sympathize with them, but as I see them now, they are just the villain faction.
The armor suit for engineers... looks pretty cool.
Also, I really like the Soldier path. I tried scientist, but that clearly wasn't for me. Every single second I had to wait for the drone dude to scan something felt like death. My gameplay style is very... murderous. If I could level just by grinding mobs, I would probably give it a shot (leveling through Adventures comes pretty close). The only thing I don't like is that sometimes in the SWAT missions (where I have to test out new gizmos on enemies), it can be very fiddly to figure out how to use the given items.
By the way, what are the mounts like? I saw some people on mounts already, and of course I saw the awesome Hoverboard video that was revealed a long time ago (and the hoverboards in the actual game feel much less awesome than the one on the video, but oh well). So how hard is it to obtain a mount, and what are the level/skill requirements?
I've played mostly solo but heard from a friend that tried it with some others where they all played together that it was pretty random whether or not quest objectives in a squad were shared or not. Said a significant enough amount to annoy him weren't.
Speaking of annoyances, someone on the quest team has a raging obsession with mini games. Open a door via a console? MINIGAME. Arm an entirely mechanical bear trap? MINIGAME. Free some random guy stuck in a cage? MINIGAME.
By the way, if you fail your first attempt on the minigames, the second attempt doesn't give you the same minigame. You can just press F and you will do the normal "wait a while for a loading bar to fill up and its done". So even if you are absolutely incapable of pressing the F button at correct intervals, you will not get permanently stuck on quests.
I haven't had a chance to try crafting, because I chose Armorsmithing, and all the armorsmithing entry quests are broken (as in, the quest text
literally
says: Craft me a single ERROR 206 SCHEMATIC MISSING plase.) and I do not seem to be able to craft anything, even if I have the mats.
Post by
Skithus
I like the minigames. Adds a little diversity to what you're doing. I like that at one point i had to actually read a lore book i found to find the code for a door I wanted to open. I like that crafting isn't just queue up 5 of an item and walk away from my computer while they craft.
You can get mounts at level 15, they cost 10gold.
The Dominion are absolutely Elitest jerks. Despite busting Ranks balls over it he's right in that the Cassians are very much of the Warhammer40K Imperium mentality that they are entitled to the galaxy by divine right. The Eldin picked them to establish an empire, and their MO seems to be either you join them (Draken/Chua) or they kill you. They're kinda hard to sympathize with, although once you start dealing with the lowborn cassians they become more like normal people.
Post by
Thror
10 gold huh. Nice, that's very affordable. I have already been at 3 gold a few times. (Skill costs cut pretty deep into my gold reserves though.)
Glad it isn't the Elder Scrolls way around.
I am actually considering a pre-order. :-/ My wallet is gonna cry.
By the way, multiplayer interactions... I definitely did get credit for shooting mobs that someone else has already been shooting. Even normal mobs. Even when it comes to credit for a challenge. What may have been the case is that you get less % of completion for killing a mob that was already started by someone else (lets say if you kill a quest mob solo you would get 20% quest completion, and if you kill a quest mob someone else is killing already, you would get, say, 7% completion. I didn't actually test this though.)
Post by
Skithus
The Grouping stuff is a little hit or miss. anytime you need to pick up an item or something it doesn't give credit to your whole group. Interacting with an object usually requires everyone in the group to do it themselves and for some reason the group loot wasn't working very well, we'd all choose need or greed, and it would just sit on the ground not letting any of us loot so eventually we changed it to round robin and just watched out for loot someone wanted.
When I ran an adventure the rolling mechanic worked fine, so not sure what that was about.
Post by
asakawa
As far as kill credit is concerned, everything is XP based. If you attack a mob that someone already tagged, you'll get a portion of the XP from the kill based on the amount of the mob's health you damaged. Since quests have an XP bar rather than "kill 10 rats" the quest credit you get for that works itself out.
Hoverboards are awesome! Their reaction to momentum and inertia is really impressive and really fun (i.e. ramps!)
Post by
Izichial
I tried scientist, but that clearly wasn't for me. Every single second I had to wait for the drone dude to scan something felt like death.
Same here. I think I got halfway through the very first scientist task onboard the ship for Exiles before I went "Nope.", logged out and deleted the character so I could remake it as explorer.
By the way, if you fail your first attempt on the minigames, the second attempt doesn't give you the same minigame. You can just press F and you will do the normal "wait a while for a loading bar to fill up and its done". So even if you are absolutely incapable of pressing the F button at correct intervals, you will not get permanently stuck on quests.
I've literally never failed a minigame but I assumed there was something like that. My issue with minigames is that they're EVERYWHERE and (with the possible exception of crafting where it can save you an insignificant amount of money depending mostly on chance when crafting "advanced" schematics) don't add ANYTHING unless you just like playing minigames for their own sake. Hell, even if you leveled purely by grinding mobs and never did a quest and never learnt a profession you would STILL be forced to play minigames because some mob abilities makes you do one to break out of roots.
Because they're so easy and don't actually add anything meaningful they should be optional. Give me an option to turn them off completely and have a standard cast bar replace them wherever necessary and I'd be perfectly happy to leave them in for people who do like minigames.
Post by
Adamsm
Downloading the Beta now, figured I'd give it a shot, see what it's like.
Post by
Thror
Oh, one thing I remembered about grouping... I read a tutorial that said that when you complete quests in groups, you earn some "renown" currency, that can be used to purchase items? Isn't that a good incentive for sticking with others? Even if it would take a bit longer due to everyone having to use quest objects individually, the extra rewards might be worth it.
Post by
Adamsm
The Mechari male faces...I'm not the only one who is seeing a large number of Transformer references there right?
Post by
Izichial
The Mechari male faces...I'm not the only one who is seeing a large number of Transformer references there right?
If they wanted to be a sci-fi version of WoW, they sure don't seem to have forgotten the references. ^_^ One of the guys in the departure area for the Dominion prologue talks about Illium, heh... I don't know about Transformers, but it looked like it when I went to take a peek.
And speaking of the Dominion prologue, it was so much better than the Exile one. Some plot twist at the end, and it fits perfectly. The Dominion might be the bad guys, but their story seems to be more interesting.
Post by
Rankkor
The Mechari male faces...I'm not the only one who is seeing a large number of Transformer references there right?
If they wanted to be a sci-fi version of WoW, they sure don't seem to have forgotten the references. ^_^ One of the guys in the departure area for the Dominion prologue talks about Illium, heh... I don't know about Transformers, but it looked like it when I went to take a peek.
Its not the only reference they've made. The Aurin have a greeting that goes "may the force guide you". Sounds familiar?
And speaking of the Dominion prologue, it was so much better than the Exile one. Some plot twist at the end, and it fits perfectly. The Dominion might be the bad guys, but their story seems to be more interesting.
Bleh, seriously? because for me it was the other way around. I have played a Draken Warrior Soldier from 1 to 10 and I came this close on giving up on the game altogether, because I was so bored out of my mind.
There's zero motivation for me to care about anything, not only there's a lack of plot, there's a lack of characters I can relate to. And it has nothing to do with being the "dark" or "Evil" faction, because I've done quests for the forsaken in Silverpine Forest on wow, and quests for the Sith in SWTOR, for characters that were the epitome of evil, but were still compelling quests, with an interesting narrative.
In the dominion side, there's absolutely zero interesting characters, the emperor is boring, that mechari SS lady is boring, the draken general is boring. The plot is boring. By the time I got to the third zone (The one with the draken village) it just got worse with the quests. They were repetitive, lacking anything of interest, and many of them had really annoying mechanics. It got so boring that at one point I just stopped caring, and ceased to read the quest texts, I just accepted the quest, and then carefully looked at the map to see where to go and what to do.
Its never good when an MMO gets to that point. I eventually got this feeling of deja vu, like I was back in vanilla Barrens again. Doing fetch chore after fetch chore without being given any reason to care. All with a repetitive and frankly annoying soundtrack on my head, and unlikable and unremarkable characters that are so forgetful I can't bother to remember at all.
Then I played the exiles.
Holy mother of god, what a MASSIVE difference they make.
Their starting zone was a lot better for me, their soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous and really helps sell the atmosphere, their characters draw me into the story, their quests are a lot more fun, and provide me with motivation to actually do them, their 2 zones I've seen so far (A snowy mountain, and a grassland) have been pure eye candy, and I've met already 3 likable and memorable characters so far at lvl 9 (Deadeye, his wife, and Commander Durak).
Their story is more atmospheric. It drew me in, it made me wonder "wow, I wanna see what happens next" whereas in the dominion I already knew what would happen next trice "We'll go to a new zone, we kill a lot of people, hur hur we R badass, then we move to the next"
I was this close to just call it quits with wildstar while playing dominion, but then playing the exiles has left me with a taste for more. So yeah, I think this is the one faction I'll be playing when (if) I'm able to join this game on live.
However, I'm done with paths. They're not worth the effort IMO. They're either painfully average and unremarkable at best, or downright frustrating, annoying, and time-consuming at worst. They don't have any story to them, don't give any exp, don't give any money, and as far as I can tell don't give any loot either, except maybe transmog items. If they give none of those, then they at least "should" be fun, to justify doing them, but they're not.
They remind me a lot of the "questing" in guild wars 2. I'm talking about the "renown hearts" where you're just given a list of objectives with no context and no lore or story attached and you do them just because. Tried scientist since I'm a huge lore buff, and omg, I couldn't stand it. They couldn't had possibly hidden the scannable options better if they could. Its time consuming to no end, and the lore they provide is not interesting to read at all. Tried soldier but all they gave was just "defend this spot from zerg wave after zerg wave" or "kill this specific NPC just because" or test this gizmo on X mob.
And settler/explorer were little better. IMO; unless carbine provides any real incentive to do those, I think I'm gonna pass on them altogether. They are a waste of time given that they contribute nothing to your character in terms of exp, money, loot, fun, or lore.
Post by
Izichial
In the dominion side, there's absolutely zero interesting characters, the emperor is boring, that mechari SS lady is boring, the draken general is boring. The plot is boring. By the time I got to the third zone (The one with the draken village) it just got worse with the quests. They were repetitive, lacking anything of interest, and many of them had really annoying mechanics. It got so boring that at one point I just stopped caring, and ceased to read the quest texts, I just accepted the quest, and then carefully looked at the map to see where to go and what to do.
Their starting zone was a lot better for me, their soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous and really helps sell the atmosphere, their characters draw me into the story, their quests are a lot more fun, and provide me with motivation to actually do them, their 2 zones I've seen so far (A snowy mountain, and a grassland) have been pure eye candy, and I've met already 3 likable and memorable characters so far at lvl 9 (Deadeye, his wife, and Commander Durak).
Really? I had the exact opposite impression of characters. I found the Mechari lady (head of ICI or whatever she is) a bit too much "stereotypical spymaster" but interesting nonetheless. The Draken General I thought fit very well with his race and position in the Dominion - if you talk to him some extra during the prologue you can find out that he respects Durak because he's a worthy foe, f.e. As for the Emperor... well, I won't spoil the plot twist there but all of that points to a potentially interesting story.
To sum up, the Dominion might have a very simple pattern for the overall story but it makes me want to know what happens with the whole internal political situation. Beating up the Exiles felt secondary, but then again I didn't play as far as you did.
I want to punch Deadeye in the face everytime I see him. I'm having a hard time deciding which is the most shallow of the major characters on the Exile side so far, him or Durak. Deadeye consists of 95% dour cowboy stereotype and 5% of "I care for my wife!". His wife? I wouldn't even deign her with the title of character. She says, what, two lines? She's a prop, a reason for us to help Deadeye, not a character in her own right.
Durak seems like he could be a sympathetic character in the long run, but he does literally nothing as far as I've seen besides stand there and wear his Commander title without doing anything with it.
That isn't to say the Exiles don't have any good characters - I started in the Aurin zone and I like both Queen Myala and Victor Lazarin and the characters related to them (literally in the case of Victor's daughter). There are some really cool moments in the latter half of Celestalon that comes out of the co-operation / contrast between the radically different Aurin and Mordesh.
As for the quests I regularly found / find quests on
both
sides which are "repetitive, lacking anything of interest, and many of them had really annoying mechanics". I've already ranted enough about minigames but I get the feeling that quests in general sometimes needlessly complicate simple objectives in desperation to get away from the "MMO quests are always boring" stereotype and end up making it worse. As long as the major stuff is interesting I'd rather the mindless fetch X / kill Y be forgettable than actively annoying.
Post by
Skithus
In the dominion side, there's absolutely zero interesting characters, the emperor is boring, that mechari SS lady is boring, the draken general is boring. The plot is boring. By the time I got to the third zone (The one with the draken village) it just got worse with the quests. They were repetitive, lacking anything of interest, and many of them had really annoying mechanics. It got so boring that at one point I just stopped caring, and ceased to read the quest texts, I just accepted the quest, and then carefully looked at the map to see where to go and what to do.
Their starting zone was a lot better for me, their soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous and really helps sell the atmosphere, their characters draw me into the story, their quests are a lot more fun, and provide me with motivation to actually do them, their 2 zones I've seen so far (A snowy mountain, and a grassland) have been pure eye candy, and I've met already 3 likable and memorable characters so far at lvl 9 (Deadeye, his wife, and Commander Durak).
Really? I had the exact opposite impression of characters. I found the Mechari lady (head of ICI or whatever she is) a bit too much "stereotypical spymaster" but interesting nonetheless. The Draken General I thought fit very well with his race and position in the Dominion - if you talk to him some extra during the prologue you can find out that he respects Durak because he's a worthy foe, f.e. As for the Emperor... well, I won't spoil the plot twist there but all of that points to a potentially interesting story.
To sum up, the Dominion might have a very simple pattern for the overall story but it makes me want to know what happens with the whole internal political situation. Beating up the Exiles felt secondary, but then again I didn't play as far as you did.
I want to punch Deadeye in the face everytime I see him. I'm having a hard time deciding which is the most shallow of the major characters on the Exile side so far, him or Durak. Deadeye consists of 95% dour cowboy stereotype and 5% of "I care for my wife!". His wife? I wouldn't even deign her with the title of character. She says, what, two lines? She's a prop, a reason for us to help Deadeye, not a character in her own right.
Durak seems like he could be a sympathetic character in the long run, but he does literally nothing as far as I've seen besides stand there and wear his Commander title without doing anything with it.
That isn't to say the Exiles don't have any good characters - I started in the Aurin zone and I like both Queen Myala and Victor Lazarin and the characters related to them (literally in the case of Victor's daughter). There are some really cool moments in the latter half of Celestalon that comes out of the co-operation / contrast between the radically different Aurin and Mordesh.
As for the quests I regularly found / find quests on
both
sides which are "repetitive, lacking anything of interest, and many of them had really annoying mechanics". I've already ranted enough about minigames but I get the feeling that quests in general sometimes needlessly complicate simple objectives in desperation to get away from the "MMO quests are always boring" stereotype and end up making it worse. As long as the major stuff is interesting I'd rather the mindless fetch X / kill Y be forgettable than actively annoying.
I like the dominion better, however I found some of the stuff they did with deadeye more impactful.
His Pregnant wife is blown up by the dominion as they try to evacuate at the end of one of the exile starting zones, the snow one, I forget the name.
Post by
asakawa
Subjective differences in opinion of competing factions in an MMO? Must be broken!
Post by
Izichial
Subjective differences in opinion of competing factions in an MMO? Must be broken!
I'm not surprised about people having different opinions in general, but I find it fascinating that me and Rank should have such radically different impressions. Especially as I've tended to agree with him on similar things (Horde / Alliance storylines and characters primarily) in the past. :9
His Pregnant wife is blown up by the dominion as they try to evacuate at the end of one of the exile starting zones, the snow one, I forget the name.
Literally the first thing I thought when I saw Deadeye in the beginning of the Exiles' prologue was "let me guess, this is the would-be Wild West tough guy who lost his family to the Dominion and is in it for revenge".
And that was
knowing from the dialogue that his wife was presumably still alive
.
Oh, and Asa, you should like my latest house decoration:
is this tea mug large enough?
Post by
lankybrit
Hi,
Yep, having a blast in Open Beta now. GW2 taking a back seat. This might actually be my next MMO. Got to see what it's like trying to make enough Gold to buy a CREDD so I can do without a subscription.
I'm level 12 and having a blast. Currently playing a cute pink Aurin. I didn't realize they were bunnies LOL.
Post by
Rankkor
Subjective differences in opinion of competing factions in an MMO? Must be broken!
I must say this is a first for me. I've played MMOs with different factions (Wow, SWTOR, Aion) and I found usually that both sides have compelling stories, but I tend to lean to one or the other due to aesthetic or thematic reasons, rather than story-quality. (or in the case of Aion, both sides just plain simply suck)
But in Wildstar, I had a horrible time playing dominion. I dunno if its perhaps that the zone I chose was bad (it was that reddish zone with the Draken village) but I had almost no fun at all. Meanwhile with the exiles, I've had quite a blast and I've wanted to know what happens next.
I suppose it could be less due to the faction and more due to the zone, I mean, even now in wow, try to play horde on the barrens and prepare to fall out of your chair due to boredom (that's really an awful zone) but play on Silverpine or Ashenvale, and the quality is miles higher. Ditto for the difference in quality in the alliance when you try to compare the compelling and fascinating stories told in westfall and redridge vs the boring and stale stories (or lack thereof) told in Darkshore and Loch Modan.
I would give the dominion zones another try, but I don't have enough days left on the beta and I want to see content on the higher levels, this is also why I haven't tried more classes, just 8 lvls on a warrior, and from there on, purely engineer.
I'm not surprised about people having different opinions in general, but I find it fascinating that me and Rank should have such radically different impressions. Especially as I've tended to agree with him on similar things (Horde / Alliance storylines and characters primarily) in the past. :9
There's a first time for everything my friend :P
I'll admit that every character I've met on both sides is a clishe, I just happen to like the exile clishes far more since they remind me so much of Firefly. A show that I have a really soft spot for. And really, the zone I'm in truly reminds me a ton of Firefly and the "Space Western" genre completely.
There's prospectors, farmers, settles, cowboys, bounty hunters, marauders, tribals, ranchers, etc.
Literally the first thing I thought when I saw Deadeye in the beginning of the Exiles' prologue was "let me guess, this is the would-be Wild West tough guy who lost his family to the Dominion and is in it for revenge".
And that was knowing from the dialogue that his wife was presumably still alive.
That's funny :P because the first thing that went to my head when I saw the emperor was:
Yeah, I bet my left shoe nobody has seen him in god knows how long, and in reality he's either an AI or an outright lie.
I mean really, I completely saw that coming a mile away, and I'll be more amazed if later on this hunch I have is subverted, rather than confirmed.
Post by
Rankkor
If there's one thing that's seriously pissing me off, is how the rock dudes can't seem to stop making horrible stone puns.
I swear to god, if I hear one more rock pun I'm gonna explode. They're worse than Mister Freeze on Batman & Robin. I get it, they're dudes made of rock. That doesn't mean they should keep making puns and references to stone. You don't see the tauren making cow/bull references all the time do you? or worgens making wolf-related puns all the damed time right?
Post by
asakawa
It's "cliché" - blame the French.
Oh, and Asa, you should like my latest house decoration:
is this tea mug large enough?
I approve old chap!
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