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PTR
10.2.5
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10.2.6
Wildstar
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Post by
Rankkor
It's "cliché" - blame the French.
Les français maudits
Post by
Izichial
I reckon I need some more loot.
Edit: Also, holy crap what a difference it made to get an
addon to change FoV
and to turn
down
anti-aliasing to low / medium. Drastically improved how the game looks for me - with high anti-aliasing everything in the distance sort of blends together and makes the game appear really "flat". Also changed gamma to reduce the brightness of the game somewhat.
Post by
Rankkor
Holy.mother.of.god.
If there's one feature that may actually win me over entirely is housing. Sweet merciful christ, this game has awesome housing. I loved mah house, its tiny, cramped, barely has 6 items as decor, AND I LOVE IT.
Now I'm sad that once the beta is over I wont be able to log back in for god knows how long.
But mark my words, one day, when I'm in the US (And therefore can afford it) I AM subscribing to this game. If nothing else, to fully sink myself on the housing.
Post by
asakawa
http://wildstar.curseforge.com/ws-addons/220482-housingdecorsetmanager
This addon (made by the Carbine housing dev) lets people save their décor from beta and load it once they're on live.
The housing system really is cool. With different décor items giving increased rested XP buffs it has a purpose for people who are min/maxing and there's a ridiculous number of items in the game already to really make it feel personal.
This video (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvq_LHLBsE
) shows what the system is really capable of! (
forums link
)(##RESPBREAK##)16##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##
Post by
lankybrit
Here's a question.
Is ZAM going to do a wshead?
Post by
Rankkor
Who knows. There are some games for which they make one and others for which they dont.
And now my final impressions on Wildstar now that the beta is over.
First off, I put off trying to speak about combat for quite a while because I wanted to see it at a higher level. Combat at lvl 2 or 5 isn't really representative of how its gonna be like at later levels.
Its a mixed bag for me. One the good side, it feels very meaty, visceral, and raw. Not even guild wars 2 managed to make it "feel" this organic and freeform.
Combat in wow is sorta automated. You press a key your character swings, monsters automatically face you, ranged attacks have homing beacons on them making them impossible to dodge. To be honest its kinda boring these days (Though the class mechanics, I adore)
In here, if you are aiming a shot and your target gets out of the way, the shot misses, if you are making a swing but your enemy side-rolls it misses. The sound effects also make the hits feel powerful, and the animations were a sight to behold. Seriously, as a DK in wow, its really sad how all of my physical strike abilities share the exact same animation. It was refreshing to play a warrior here and see each of my buttons make my character do a different animation for each.
Now here's the downside of combat for me. First off, the telegraphs. They were a mixed blessing, yes they make the game more skill-based and reactive, but it also forced my sight on the ground. I spend 99% of the fights looking at the floor, missing the visual candy of the combat. Those gorgeous animations? most of the time I'm too busy dodging and aiming to look at them. Other enemies nearby that I could aggro? Too busy dodging and aiming to notice them. Excellent boss attack animations? too busy looking at the telegraph to notice them
Its sorta like that Glow-dust trail in fable 3 that pointed the way you had to go during a quest. Sure it was handy but it kept your eyes fixed on the floor, making you miss everything else that's going on around you. That's how the excessive use of telegraphs felt like to me. Its not that bad 1-on-1 but when there's 5 of you and 10 enemies, its a clusterfrick of a mess that I have to be very careful to not step on, and in doing that I'm missing everything else that's going on. It makes situational awareness of other things in the environment a pain in the ass.
Second: the resource decay. This one was pretty sore for me. Before I go on, I must clarify that I was only able to play a warrior until lvl 8 and an engineer to lvl 17. Maybe this problem isn't present on the other classes, and I sure hope so.
But your resources decay way too fast. Lemme use wow as an example: In wow, as a warrior, you gain rage by dealing damage and taking damage, and as long as you're in combat, this rage never decays unless you spend it. Out of combat, it slowly decays back to 0.
In Wildstar, a warrior uses kinetic Energy, it starts at 0, you build it up through attacks, and spend it. But it decays WAY too fast. As soon as combat is over, it goes down to 0 in like 2 seconds. But wait, it gets better:
it decays even in combat
. What.the.hell? Every single fight I have to start at 0 resources, and build them up, I can't just pool resources on this pack, then unload on the next.
The engineer has the same problem with their volatility resource. This leads to a big big chunk of the combat consisting of me spamming 1 to build resources, blow them away in 2 seconds, then back to spamming 1 over and over to build resources. One could argue that this is how a lot of classes work in wow. Hunters have to make extensive use of Steady-Shot/Cobra-shot to generate focus, but at least they always start their fights at 100 focus.
Warlocks have to generate Demonic Fury/Burning Embers, otherwise they spam shadowbolt/incinerate to do so, but at least their resource lasts quite a while, and each mob kill grants a chunk of it too.
I dunno if at later levels there's more effective ways to build up resources, but it definitely was annoying as hell to have to start at 0 all the time, and have to spam 1 so very frikking much.
My final complaint about combat is how every class is restricted to one very specific weapon. I didn't liked it in SWTOR, I didn't liked it in Lineage II, and I don't like it here. Variety is the name of the game, but sadly, Warriors are stuck with 2handed swords, spellslingers are stuck with guns, engineers are stuck with rifles, stalkers are stuck with claws, medics are stuck with those defibrillators, and espers with those giant shurinken thingies.
Overall, combat was a mixed bag for me, I enjoyed parts of it, and disliked other parts of it as well. Oddly........ not that different from how I feel from the combat in wow, which I also hate parts of it, but love others as well.
Ultimately, despite an initial lukewarm reception to the game, I liked it. I really do. The aesthetics are gorgeous, the humor is spectacular, the combat may have its ups and downs but its ultimately FUN which is what matters in the end, the art style is pretty good (Minor gripe about the pencil-thin women aside), the race design is cool as hell and very different from each other, and the housing system blew me away.
I'm sad I wasn't able to try out battlegrounds, dungeons, raids, or warplots. I'm sadder that I'm not gonna be able to return to this game for a long long long time. I think one of the reasons this game started to grab me at the later levels is that it borrows a lot of elements from almost every known sci-fi franchise out there.
There's a lot of star wars in here (The aurin say "may the force be with you", there's a region called Illium, you get information out of "Datachrons"..... seriously just remove the H and called them Datacrons, save yourself some time :P) a lot of Firefly in there (particularly if you play exile) and surprisingly a lot of common elements of Warhammer 40k.
Granted, wildstar is not even remotely as dark and as grim as WH40K, but there are a surprisingly large elements of it on there. Specially on the dominion side. Frankly, I'm not gonna be surprised in the least if the Cassian Emperor has more elements in common with the God-Emperor of Warhammer. Its intriguing to say the least.
This is definitely a game I can recommend to others, and a game I wish I could play side-by-side with wow. Ohh well, God willing, I'll be in the US in a couple of years, when that happens, I'm gonna be more than glad to dive right into this one.
Post by
asakawa
Regarding telegraphs, you're basically describing a skill issue and we want games to have a reasonably high skill cap. It's not supposed to be easy to dodge everything you need to dodge while also being aware of everything around you. If you're really talking about an aesthetic issue then you can change the opacity and colours used for telegraphs (default settings, no addon required) to balance how much they grab your attention.
Regarding decay, it's specifically a Warrior issue. Essentially, starting combat at 0 resource is working as intended for warrior just as starting at full energy is how Stalkers work. Most Warrior abilities don't spend their resource though, it is built by certain abilities and constantly decays while most other abilities do not build the resource but can be used freely until the resource has decayed. Pooling and unloading can be done, just on a rather shorter time frame.
Engineer abilities don't all interact with Volatility. There's certainly a builder>spender cycle at the base of the rotation but above that there's the majority of the play experience. Other classes work similarly in their builder/spender cycles and for each class it plays a greater or lesser role in the class's overall combat. Espers and Stalkers interact an awful lot with their resource system while Slingers work off colldowns and are, generally, far less concerned with resource management.
Stalkers can burst because they start at full energy (and on their own terms from stealth) while Warriors and Engineers (heavy classes as they are) start more slowly but have sustained, less erratic damage. This is how class diversity works.
"Data
chron
s"..... seriously just remove the H and called them Datacrons, save yourself some
time
Doubt that was an intended pun but I liked it anyway.(##RESPBREAK##)16##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##
Post by
lankybrit
You know, they just announced OPs Week. You may be able to play again from time to time, if you really want to.
I've bought the game and will be playing on the 31st. I'll try to split my time between GW2 and Wildstar, but I'll have trouble taking my fingers off Wildstar because I'll be grinding gold to buy a CREDD during the first month.
Totally agree that it's a game to recommend to others.
Post by
asakawa
Yeah, it will be intermittent service but, Rank mentioned regretting not seeing battlegrounds and they can be entered from level 6 and are very easily dropped in to. Worth a look during Ops week perhaps.
As for me, I've been following this game for a long time now, have been in beta since last November and bought the preorder the day preorders became available. I'm in a raiding guild and, needless to say, I'll be playing heavily from day one... I'll also (if my fibre connection gets installed on time) be
streaming
basically all my activity in the game from levelling and dungeoning (as a Chua Medic healer) into 20 and 40 man raids.
My epiphany, since the demise of ToR, was that MMOs reward investment. The only way to get out everything that I want from one of these games is to get deeply involved in a community. Having done that, all I needed was for the basic game to be solid and for the developers to keep up their end (regarding continued development of end-game and so on). Carbine are saying all the right things and the game from launch is going to be more polished and fully-featured than anything we've seen in years (probably ever). Overall, I'm very positive about the game and looking forward to launch.
Post by
Rankkor
Regarding telegraphs, you're basically describing a skill issue and we want games to have a reasonably high skill cap. It's not supposed to be easy to dodge everything you need to dodge while also being aware of everything around you.
Not really. I had no problem holding my own in the game, even when a griefer basically threw a train of 6 mobs on me, I still lived. Being a hardcore gamer, who's played several skill-based games before (God of War, Prince of Persia, the Arkham Series, and several others). My issue wasn't with dodging or aiming being hard. My issue was with being such a constant necessity that I can't really appreciate in detail what's going on.
I can't just oogle the animations of my character or the bosses I'm fighting, or admire the fight itself, because I'm busy not getting my ass kicked.
I can be aware of stuff around me, but only at a glance, the majority of my attention has to be focused on the telegraphs, or else I die. Its a blessing/curse. On the one hand it makes the combat more skill-based, on the other hand, it really forces my eyes to be fixated on the floor.
I've played several skill-based games before, where you have to block, parry, counter, or dodge enemy attacks (the Arkham series is a great example) but they didn't do that through telegraphs that force me to look down. If anything, the prompts I had to watch out and react for were on the enemies themselves, allowing me to use skill to fight with finesse, while still appreciating the fight itself.
Regarding decay, it's specifically a Warrior issue.
Good. When I'm able to join I'll play something else then. Maybe stalker.
"Data
chron
s"..... seriously just remove the H and called them Datacrons, save yourself some
time
Doubt that was an intended pun but I liked it anyway.
lol, good eye man.
You know, they just announced OPs Week.
What's that?
You may be able to play again from time to time, if you really want to.
How? First I'd need to get the game (can't do it while I'm on this country) and a steady way to pay the sub (can't while I'm in this country). There's CREDD, but I'm not entirely convinced that's a way for me to play the game. It looks like there's A LOT of money-sinks in the game like the housing system ,and if I have to spend all my money on CREDD, I wont have any left to be able to buy other things in the game. I suppose it depends on how cheap they are, which is impossible to predict since supply and demand can make a lot of difference on price-ranges.
Totally agree that it's a game to recommend to others.
Ohh yes, totally. I had a few issues with it, but the good overwhelmingly surpasses the bad. And most of the bad can be easily fixed or improved on.
Yeah, it will be intermittent service but, Rank mentioned regretting not seeing battlegrounds and they can be entered from level 6 and are very easily dropped in to. Worth a look during Ops week perhaps.
I didn't know you could do BGs that early, but still, I wanted to focus on questing mostly because that's the element of MMORPGs that I love the most. Lore, story, a good sweeping tale. Its the main reason I play RPGs. An RPG with a boring story, is an RPG I don't bother to play. Its why I didn't bothered to come back to GW2.
Carbine are saying all the right things
Man I hope they're honest about it. I've heard so many developers making big promises and flashy talk only to turn out to be hot air I'm more wary than I should regarding game developers lately. Specially blizzard.
I mean, look at the ambitious manifesto of GW2. Roughly 80% of that video is pure hot air that didn't came to pass, or downright lies.
Post by
asakawa
Ops week is sort of an extended open beta... only it's all about the Operations team at carbine being able to test the kinds of unstable stuff that they couldn't do during Open Beta. It will be less stable than OB and will be only up during PDT work hours but servers will be up for another week.
My talk of skill wasn't in relation to
your
skill level (you sounded needlessly defensive there) but rather the level of skill required by the game and the "easy to learn, hard to master" factor. Personally though, I don't share your experience of telegraphs. I don't remotely pay attention to the floor when there aren't telegraphs there and when there are I move to a safe area then back to the game. I dunno, perhaps it's just something you get used to with time. Reacting to telegraphs becomes second nature and I don't really see them any more. You also learn boss fights so that you know what telegraphs to expect and at that point you're playing the fight, not the telegraphs.
Man I hope they're honest about it. I've heard so many developers making big promises and flashy talk only to turn out to be hot air I'm more wary than I should regarding game developers lately. Specially blizzard.
I mean, look at the ambitious manifesto of GW2. Roughly 80% of that video is pure hot air that didn't came to pass, or downright lies.
I'm buoyed by the fact that they're still (even during OB) willing to tell people what they don't want to hear. Most recently it's been their vision for raids being 40person and hardcore. They've actually said to people "this might not be for you". that willingness to stick to their design principles over making a quick sale suggests integrity. I, too, just hope they can maintain it.(##RESPBREAK##)16##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##
Post by
Rankkor
Personally though, I don't share your experience of telegraphs. I don't remotely pay attention to the floor when there aren't telegraphs there and when there are I move to a safe area then back to the game. I dunno, perhaps it's just something you get used to with time. Reacting to telegraphs becomes second nature and I don't really see them any more.
Fair enough. I'll admit my overall gametime spent in the game is very small, 1 week is nowhere near enough to get used to a new combat system.
I'm buoyed by the fact that they're still (even during OB) willing to tell people what they don't want to hear. Most recently it's been their vision for raids being 40person and hardcore. They've actually said to people "this might not be for you". that willingness to stick to their design principles over making a quick sale suggests integrity. I, too, just hope they can maintain it.
Aye. Well, best of luck to you on that game man, hopefully, I'll be able to join it in a couple of years. I get the feeling this one aint going anywhere during that time :P
Post by
Skithus
I just can't decide on a class. Everything except spellslinger was a ton of fun. Leaning Warrior or Engineer or Esper.
Post by
Pwntiff
I'm going to probably rolls as and Engineer first, with an Esper or Warrior as a solo leveler.
Post by
asakawa
Chua, Medic, Healer. Leaning toward a build like
this
.
I'm aiming to get to 50 in less than 10 days (headstart + a week) and get some elder gems before the weekly cap rest.(##RESPBREAK##)16##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##
Post by
Rankkor
Out of curiosity, what Path are you aiming for? Soldier, settler, explorer or scientist?
Post by
asakawa
Settler.
Paths are a fantastic idea; giving people more of the content they want based on their own preference, genius! However, in my opinion, they're really badly integrated into the game. they each have a couple of abilities that can be situationally useful but they give no character XP or reputation, they're basically separated from the rest of the game.
On my first character at least I want to get to max level quickly and efficiently. Settler is the only Path that actually contributes to that goal by providing buffs throughout the levelling process (this is increasingly useful with more group members questing together) and giving a VendorBot to sell trash and repair on the move.
The other Paths may well give some pretty cool, fun content but they'll only slow you down if your goal is efficiency. Obviously, what I'm deciding is important to me is totally subjective and I'm not suggesting that the fun of Path content couldn't be important for others.
Post by
Pwntiff
asakawa, thanks for that little write-up. I jumped in the beta late, so I wasn't able to try too many options.
I think I'll choose settler for my group leveler, and explorer for my solo leveler (whose job is to let my group leveler remain the same level as my friend)
I still haven't decided on classes. Probably rolling with Engineer first, maybe a Stalker second.
Post by
lankybrit
I think I'll be rolling a Cassian Spellslinger Scientist on Saturday.
Can't wait.
Post by
Skithus
Think I'll be a Draken warrior soldier. Going to take my time.
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