Wildstar

[xRECKONERx]

What... the hell... are you saying

[Kcdaspot]

The players set the price they are will to PAY for the Credd rather the players setting the price they are willing to SELL at?

[xRECKONERx]

It's both. Players can set buy prices, sellers can set sell prices, if there's a match, the transaction is completed (from what I understand).

[Kcdaspot]

ehhhhhh.... that... that is iffy...

[xRECKONERx]

Can you explain to me why it's any more iffy than WoW's model? If you want to pay $15/month, you can pay a subscription like literally every other successful MMO. The C.R.E.D.D. is an option for players who have more time than they have money, and the C.R.E.D.D. market will be self-policing. Like, I cannot fathom why people would have a problem with a niche, optional, tertiary market in the game.

[xRECKONERx]

I'll be completely honest - I don't understand why people mistake this game for being classic WoW. When Carbine talks about difficulty and old MMO'ers fantasize about vanilla WoW's difficulty, they're not talking about the same thing. In fact, the only things similar about vanilla WoW and Wildstar is raids requiring 40 people.
But how are they different? Don't get me wrong; WoW was $@%!ing hard, cupcake. Money was a b!tch to come by, mounts were expensive, professions took effort to level, and leveling was long and grindy. However, the challenge was more that there was a grind that was time consuming.

Wildstar is different. Carbine has created a game that is challenging. Mobs actually have unique and powerful telegraphs through Wildstar's telegraph system that, if not dodged or interrupted, will, quote, "Melt your face off." In Beta, the dungeons I've experienced aren't hard because of rotation memorization or number crunching, they're challenging because they have real mechanics. No boss fight is the same in any of the dungeons I've played through - This is a good sign. It shows that Carbine plans to make unique and interesting fights throughout Wildstar's lifespan (which I hope will be a very long time.)

I guess what I'm getting at is that some people are going into this game with the wrong mindset. You won't find yourself checking your ammo pouch on your spellslinger or going to your trainer to rank up skills you've already learned. Instead, I believe you'll find a MMORPG that truly understands what it means to be a challenging experience due to mechanics and designs meant to make you think.

Saw this post on Reddit, thought it hit the nail on the head.

[xRECKONERx]

http://www.pcgamesn.com/wildstar-hands

Basically, all of this.

[xRECKONERx]

UGH. I worked so hard to hit 17 so I could run Stormtalon's Lair but they upped the autoqueue for it to 20 I think

[xRECKONERx]

SALE SALE SALE.

If you wanna pick up Wildstar you have until 12PM EST tomorrow (May 6) to use this code on Green Man Gaming at checkout and get 25% off: 9HZ09L-D4RYEU-FIW8BE

[Kcdaspot]

Wildstar is in open beta for ten days

/beat reck to the punch

[Oman]

Reck, you seem like the wildstar rep here:
Whats the hook?

[Kcdaspot]

[Oman]

Reck, you seem like the wildstar rep here:
Whats the hook?

I think I found the hook: It's FLOW MMO. It's Peak Perfomance: The Game. It's like a perfect round of DDR or directing a fourship into eight with no comm space to space. It's satisfying.

I think that's what this game looks like to me. Just pure satisfaction.

EDIT: I'm sold. Engineer or Warrior, Exile. Rawr.



Okay secondary point, am I the only one who thought that the coolest thing about Horde/Alliance was that they were both ambiguously good/evil. I'm really disappointed that the Dominion is antagonistically evil. I mean they had the whole good of the galaxy angle they could have run with, but in the introduction, the whole side just looks spiteful. Looks like I'm playing a gypsy.

[Kcdaspot]

same here about the dominion... what attracted me to the horde in WoW is that a good case was made for them.

dominion are just... evil fucks.

[xRECKONERx]

AUGH FUCKING SERVERS WENT DOWN FOR A HOTFIX RIGHT AFTER I GOT INTO A DUNGEON AND BEAT THE FIRST BOSS

[xRECKONERx]

Reck, you seem like the wildstar rep here:
Whats the hook?

It's visceral. You feel like combat matters. No more alt-tabbing while you cast an infinite round of 1-2-2-3-4-1-2-2-3-4-oh time to blow my defensive cooldown. You can dodge abilities, you can take on ten mobs at once if you're good enough, and the game is

brutal

. No more sissy hand-holding or dumbing down of the game like what has happened with WoW. People are upset that the "intro" dungeons at level 20 are very fucking difficult (I literally wiped ten times on the first boss. I'd compare the difficulty level to Cata Heroic dungeons in WoW... at level 20). Devs went to Twitter and basically said, "Sorry, we're not toning down the difficulty. If it's not your type of game, don't play it."

The devs are committed to their vision of the game and if it's not for everyone, they're fine with that. They expect only about ONE PERCENT of the launch playerbase to actually raid because it'll be too difficult. That's bold. They've told members of the press, "You're right, some content in the game won't be able to be experienced by everyone. If that's not your thing, don't play it."

It's refreshing. The Saturday Morning Cartoon aesthetic lends a lot of endearment to the game, and I have to admit the LAS skill system is perfectly done to keep the game interesting. I have spent an hour toying around with various skills and dropping them in and out of my action bar to see what "feels" right to me, and when I finally found that sweet spot that fit my playstyle, it was pure enjoyment. I even find the lore of the game to be incredibly interesting.

I think people are being too hard on the Dominion. I've played through a good amount of Dominion quests/stories (I'm level 22 on my Mechari Engi right now), and they're not just moustache-twirling villains. I find them to be painted with shades of grey... they want to keep their empire safe and secure to provide education, housing, and shelter to their citizens. Their state religion preaches empathy and honor and justice. And a lot of the big figures within the Dominion are working towards change. Just off the top of my head, there was a quest I did today or yesterday I think in Auroria that has a highborn family killing lowborn plebs for sport just because they're a higher social class. They go kidnap some lowborns to murder them and, well, the Dominion gets

fucking pissed

at what they're doing so you go free the lowborns and slaughter the asshole highborns. The races in the Dominion aren't "evil" either... the Humans were given the divine right to rule by the Eldan, so... they're going to rule! Draken are all about honor and value family bonds above all else (like a more honorable version of the Orcs from WoW). Chua are scientists, plain and simple, and there is no right and wrong, there is only science... sometimes it means getting your hands dirty, but it's all to evolve as a society. Mechari were created by the Eldan to help the Dominion Humans. Like, from this faction's perspective, God literally created them to maintain order and rule & save the galaxy.

The Dominion are certainly more likely to be evil because they reign by tyranny to establish order, but it's not moustache-twirling evil... they do what they do to protect their empire and keep their people safe/happy, and while sometimes that means torturing people, it also sometimes means protect the weak/innocent. (As a counterpoint, the Exile faction essentially engages in terrorism and destroys ancient Eldan temples in order to try and defeat the Dominion. Their chief researcher is a genocidal maniacal mass murderer. etc) The Exiles basically disagree with the Eldan (you know, the ancient, omniscient race that created the Dominion to protect the galaxy?) and said "Fuck you, we want to be hippie tree people" and went off to live in the forest and carry out planned attacks against the Dominion.

I think that's part of the interesting thing about playing the game... the first few missions are pretty red-herring-ish. Dominion: Oh, go ahead and torture these lowborns and let us fry them in a cell because they might be dissenters! Exile: Oh, go save these cute little anthropomorphic vegetables, SQUEEEEEE~! But the more you play through each storyline, the more you realize each faction has a lot of grey to them.

[xRECKONERx]

EDIT: I'm sold. Engineer or Warrior, Exile. Rawr.

I keep going from hating my engineer to loving it. Like, I did not like it at all up until my most recent action bar change, and now I'm in love. I'm still torn on whether or not to play engineer in the full game... I don't THINK I will, because I basically leveled this one up since I wouldn't be leveling one at launch.

I play a DPS engineer, which basically means a really fun 3-4 abilities to build up volatility and weaken the enemy, then massive dump on the enemy at 100% volatility with my electrocute. It feels pretty satisfying. I hated it when I was trying to just use my robots to play... too boring.

Warrior, from the little I've played, feels REALLY fun to play. You're just this fucking BEAST that can run out and fuck.shit.up. RAWR RAWR RAWR SMASH SMASH, they NAILED the feel of that class.

Spellslinger, I haven't played much... it feels a little wispy, and supposedly right now they're BROKEN at endgame with their damage output. If I made one at launch, it'd probably be for lore reasons.

Medic, I did not like at all but I only played a couple of levels. Medic felt too... I dunno, nonresponsive? Like, the abilities I was using, I didn't feel that good, visceral feedback when I used them that let me know I was kicking ass.

Esper, I loved. Typical mage-type class, stand back, cast abilities from afar, watch them go pop. Supposedly there's a couple of really cool melee Esper builds in the later levels that basically have you playing like a cracked up suicide bomber. That sounds appealing.

Stalker, I have not played yet. I will probably be trying one out here very shortly. Grimm has been playing stalker, though, and it looks pretty badass.

[xRECKONERx]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/01/06 ... -wildstar/

[Kcdaspot]

Stalker = YOU ARE FUCKING WOLVERINE

[Oman]

I was not sold on the Stalker at all until the comment in the dev video about "You are Batman-Wolverine-Predator".

Thanks for your time on that Reck Truly appreciate it, downloading beta now but don't know what I'll get through before I go overseas.

That link...as a lore junky, THAT is what I wanted!

[Oman]

I've just played about 4-5 hours of Esper. Played on the dominion side out of a desire to not replay the same content on release. In playing the class I thought I'd be least likely to roll, I'm loving the shit out of it. It's a blast, and I find the LAS really interesting.

Tradeskills seem cool, will obviously have to wait for release to see how they function in the economy but there looks to be a lot more specialisation.

Dominion really gets interesting

Spoiler: up to level 10 Dominion

Lightsreach Mission is incredibly characterising. The religious side of the Dominion gives them a lot of depth and most of the quests are honourable or at least understandable (considering you've just arrived in this new place and decided to kill everything that isn't your own dudes. It's funny how some of these "evil" reasons would have fit in just fine in the good of some other MMO. Like thining numbers and stuff? That's something you'd see the good guys doing in High Fantasy. The water-speaker Pell quests are interesting and even though there are these ruthless evil people on the side, the character actually roots them out, dobs them in, and has a conscience. It's very interesting.

I think the mustache-twirling evil of the dominion is part of the joke, or at least the setup. I'm keen to see the rest of the punchline.


For anyone that's a lorebunny like me: Plenty of it. Not all quality, but a lot of it funny and (more importantly) fun. I haven't quite found anything that grabbed me like some parts of the WoW story, but it all feels...fresher? I don't feel like I've heard this story before, but I like that. When a joke does pop up, I really enjoy them. I'll try to keep up with it to field questions or talk to people about it if anyone else gets interested in it.

Combat is great, it actually makes the farming/grinding aspects really interesting. The fact that keep your LAS buttons a few short of the number of skills you have from level 6 or so onwards is an excellent design decision. You essentially get to start designing your character and playstyle that early. I find the Esper a bit annoying that my primary builder spell (telekinetic strike) is static with a cast time of 1.25 seconds. It makes it hard to solo content too high above me if I need to keep canceling my primary source of psi points to move out of the way. Both of the other casters have channels rather than cast times as their primary attack allowing them to break it off mid-cast and still get some damage out of it, and I think that would be a huge Quality of Life improvement for the Esper. Maybe this is something that goes away with later spells, or maybe it's a skill-cap thing, but it's what I'm experiencing now. I do not feel as mobile as I need to be as a squishy caster.

Epsers running two different resource systems looks great too. I can't wait to see that in min/max play.

I've got one or two more day's play in me before I head OS for the rest of the beta, so I might start one of the tank/melee classes (prob stalker) tomorrow on the Exile side and see what I think.



I'm now not settled on what exactly I want to play. It'll probably still be a tank of some sort, but it'm excited to see how different they play. Solid game, I'm keen.

[xRECKONERx]

All healers have two different resources: their primary resource, and then "focus", which is basically their healing pool.

I had the same thought as you about Lightreach Mission. I loved the area and the characters and the struggle between the "religious" righteousness and the desire to help out the lower/poor/defenseless.

I haven't really played with tradeskills much... did some cooking and honestly had NO clue what I was doing. They're like massive minigames that I do not even want to think about yet.

When I was leveling Esper, I think my build was something like:
- Haunt (for debuff)
- Bolster (self-heal over time) & Concentrated Blade (wind up nuke) to build Psi Points OFF the global cooldown
- Telekinetic Strike for filler
- TK Storm to dump Psi Points

Then obviously put your CC/utility spells on the end (the AoE knockback, I forget the name... and the Phantasm Armor)

It lets you mow through mobs and build Psi points like surprisingly fast

[xRECKONERx]

what fucking class am i going to play

Esper

: I've always enjoyed mages in games and Esper is about as magey as it gets. I like that aspect of it but I also don't know how much enjoyment I'd get out of the whole "build build build finisher" system. Possibility.

Engineer

: Okay, I leveled this asshole all the way up to 25-30 because I knew I wouldn't play Engi in the main game. Now that I've experienced it though all I want to do is play Engi but I don't want to level one all over again D:

Warrior

: Very fun class but I've never done well with melee roles simply because I tend to lose track of my character in the "Ooooh, shiny!" aspect of it all.

Stalker

: Haven't played, but see Warrior.

Medic

: I apparently need to give Medic another shot because it's apparently very awesome but my limited experience with it left me feeling rather "meh". I did not like the "weak" feedback/feel of the primary weapon (oooh, I'm going to scan you! Watch out!)

Spellslinger

: I personally cannot STAND the SS resource management and the fact that their innate ability is a heavy, key part of their rotation/cooldowns. I think I'll pass on this one for now.

So right now I think I'm leaning Esper > Engineer = Medic > Warrior > Stalker > Spellslinger.

[xRECKONERx]

Btw what faction do you want to play? I'm rather ambivalent but will likely "main" whatever most of the people here/friends IRL are doing

[AGar]

Assuming I can get it to work (the whole "Invalid Login Token" error is REALLY annoying because their 'solution' is "Lol wired connection d00d"), I'll roll with whatever majority rule is if I end up getting it. I'd really like to give the beta a whirl though, it sounds and looks fun and challenging.