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Wildstar - Next NCSoft MMORPG

Cromwell

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2013
Messages
5,443
The fuck? They said they wanted to make a game like classic wow only slightly better, and it is a good game. Dont cry because it is a mmo or because it is not sandboxy enough or whatever. What it wanted to do, provide a experience for people who liked vanilla wow, it did very well. I would Understand if one doesnt like MMOs in general or this Theme Park type in particular, but for a themepark mmo its a very good one, its far more entertaining then guild wars or rift and I think aside from maybe the "refindeness" for lack of a beter word, of wow its also a better game than wow, if you arent one of the crying "its far too hard" masses.

So why do you think its a shit game?

I was left with a completely different impression from their marketing campaign before release, but that's not really the problem. The problem is that I found the setting, the quests and most of all the gameplay utterly generic and boring. To be honest I got more enjoyment out of swtor than this. I expected it to be something more like coh or at least to provide a pinch of creativty. Im not the biggest fan of theme park mmos, but I can certainly enjoy a good one for what it is and I found wildstar to be subpar at most.


I also played T0r and found it severly lacking, So I guess its a matter of taste. Wildstar could have toned down the "whacky" humour for my taste and I stil shudder when I think about the cabby, or the death anouncer and so on which just got on my nerves after a while but aside from that I foudnd it good. Dungeons were Hard, you could be killed in normal eveling zones if you werent careful (or skilled/played badly).

The Problem I had was time, and I always hated people who demanded games like wow to be nerfed to casual abyss because they have three wives four jobs and fifty children to juggle, and always told them to either bear with it or quit the game. So I quit myself because I dont have the time anymore which I hink I would need to play it like I wanted to. sp games are better to play, if you have only small chunks of time.

I wold still play wildstar and TSW otherwise, and look up tsw from time to time since it has the beter soloplay.

From a gameplay standpoint I would understand if one doesn't like themepark mmo combat like wow, but liking tor better then wildstar? At least wildstar has movement requirements were tor played extremly clunky for me, I found the animations shit and the gameplay felt always very slow and wooden (compared to wow). What wildstar lacks in that department imho is some "oomph" something which feels like you impact your enemies instead of just tickling them down.

I cant speak for late game Tor since I dropped out of that boring shit after level 25 or so but from what I have sen its "stand there, wait until your or enemie dies" just like wow only in worse. I think Wildstar is what GW2 failed to be combat wise and you only could do mmo combat better if you walked away completly from the theme park formula like they do in games like mortal.

Of course Wildstar had its weaknesses even if you don't count artstyle humour and other "depending on taste" things, like the fact that they had to rename stats to moxxi or whatever shit that was called which confused me even after playing more then one character over 20, it was poorly optimized, some regions made my fps drop from 60 to 19, even after putting graphics from high end to low end. Some sounds were annoying, I remember that the Bike drove me (no pun intended) crazy with it, sounding always like a bike which stood still even when driving it around. The UI also was shit. I also didnt lik the idea of shields because they made the ui even more shit.

What the game had going for it were dungeons ou could not sleepwalk, that joy to have beaten a dungeon or a boss or a some big monster in the world after trying so many times, knowing that you did it because you (and or your team) improved, you killed it with skill. Or the realization that you just died because you did something wrong. Beeing able to suck because you use the wrong skills. Its just awesome to be actually allowed to be bad at something.
 

SuicideBunny

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Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Torment: Tides of Numenera
That wolfseyes person has a point tho - why are people cheering over a failing mmo, especially one that doesn't have a horrible mobile like p2w model or something?
because they made it out to be something that it absolutely is not back in the hype phase and all its "soldier plays drastically different from explorer from scientist" and "advance through doing explorer tasks" stuff.
 

Night Goat

The Immovable Autism
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That wolfseyes person has a point tho - why are people cheering over a failing mmo, especially one that doesn't have a horrible mobile like p2w model or something?
This happens with every MMO. They all have insufferable fantards who treat their game of choice as the One True MMO God, and incessantly bash any game they perceive as a competitor. Some of the people cheering over Wildstar's failure are fantards of other games, while others are glad to see Wildstar's fantards get their just desserts. Still others are people who bought into the hype, and are now feeling betrayed since the game didn't live up to their expectations. They will continue to be butthurt until the Next Big Thing comes along, they get on the hype train again, and the cycle repeats itself.
 

Greatness

Cipher
Joined
Mar 17, 2007
Messages
288
Just seeing a shitty game get recognized as shitty makes me cheerful. My hope is that eventually so many MMO's will have failed that developers finally wake up and rethink the obviously flawed fundamentals of modern MMO design.

Despite there not being a decent MMO in ages, I still the think genre itself has huge potential. It just needs these cash-grabs and wow-clones to be eradicated by the pressures of failure.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
So tell me more about this: Are people here playing it? Is it still shit? Opinions here seem rather negative at the moment, and I am not sure if they are negative in the right way. I looked at this game, it appears the thing I want to acquire is "Platinum". How does one acquire this? What does playing this cost? It appears the game is fractured into two, possibly completely non-interactable factions, and multiple different shards (I consider this last part a major turn-off), but that this shard fracturing may be eliminated soon. Tell me more.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,929
Can anyone quickly summarize what happened to this? I lost track somewhere before release. It looked cool on video. What has happened and why the outrage?
This week's revelation that WildStar Design Producer Stephen Frost is quitting his role is not the first and likely won't be the last blow to the beleaguered game. Carbine lost several high-profile developers before and after launch, and with raiding guilds abandoning the title, server merges on the way, endgame grind being scaled back, updates being heavily delayed, and Christmas being canceled, even more players are losing faith in the title.

Quote from Massively article - looks like another mmo project that didn't get the expected amount of subscribers so they're slowing down the development/restructuring. I doubt that it's "dying" as in "servers shut down early 2015" but it's not a hit in the market.
B-B-BUT MUH SUPERIOR SUBSCRIPTION MODEL
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,105
There's nothing really wrong with subscription model by itself, you just have to be aware you're willingly stepping into a ring with an 800 pound gorilla.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,929
There is plenty wrong with the subscription model, especially if you have to pay for the fucking game itself as well (and possible expansions) and/or have fucking microtransactions in it as well.
 

Wilian

Arcane
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Messages
2,820
Divinity: Original Sin
Subscription model only is the only proper way to handle MMORPG. Microtransactions of any kind sting and ruin the very essence of them!
 

Vaarna_Aarne

Notorious Internet Vandal
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MCA Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
That wolfseyes person has a point tho - why are people cheering over a failing mmo, especially one that doesn't have a horrible mobile like p2w model or something?
This happens with every MMO. They all have insufferable fantards who treat their game of choice as the One True MMO God, and incessantly bash any game they perceive as a competitor. Some of the people cheering over Wildstar's failure are fantards of other games, while others are glad to see Wildstar's fantards get their just desserts. Still others are people who bought into the hype, and are now feeling betrayed since the game didn't live up to their expectations. They will continue to be butthurt until the Next Big Thing comes along, they get on the hype train again, and the cycle repeats itself.
 

Direwolf

Arcane
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Messages
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Pōneke
So why do you think its a shit game?

This is not mine, but describes the problems with the game very well:

I played Wildstar since launch until until a week ago, so 4 months? I was part of the player base that hit level cap in a week, fulled geared myself out in a week, then hopped into and cleared the 20 man raid asap. Basically, Wildstar happened to Wildstar. It was a game that was both the best of things and the worst of things simultaneously, which resulted in a hot mess that satisfied almost no one.

This post could be a 10+ page thesis if I was to cover every facet of the game, but no one wants to read that, so I'll just hit the core concepts. Game launch was a buggy mess, like most MMO launches. What was unlike most MMO launches was the fact some pre-beta bugs still exist in the game even now. The average life of any bug in Wildstar is 2 months; most MMOs can at least remove them after 2 weeks or less. Most of the spells, Auction House, dyeing system, UI, and core systems still have bugs current day, some being extremely rough on game functionality. All of their patches and drops started off on a 1-month cycle, and now have shifted to a 2-3 month cycle. Carbine simply takes entirely too long to address basic player functionality, and it's unacceptable.

The combat is amazing... It's fluid, constant, and evolving. You know what's not amazing? When that combat is extrapolated into 6-10 minute installments, where any 1 mistake wipes the raid instantly. Wildstar's combat is initially extremely fun, but over time reveals itself to be extremely stressful, physically exhausting to your hands, and extremely repetitive. A few classes have 2-3 button 'rotations', where you can use 1-button macros to dps. The most complicated DPS and tank class is the Stalker, which in the end still only uses a 5-button rotation.

The itemization in Wildstar is truly the worst I have seen in my 20 year gaming history. On the surface there seems to be a lot there, but after spreadsheeting it, the only thing that matters is Assault Power for DPS. You just stack AP as hard as you can, and that's it. Crit, crit severity, strike-through, etc. is all garbage compared to AP. So itemization is just brokenly bad. What's hilarious is that your 'main stat' just translates into flat AP, which means they use 2 separate stats to mean the same exact thing. Talk about redundant design. Next you go into the rarity behind each items rolling both random rune elements and random rune slots. Which means you hope with a 1-5% chance at the item you want, then hope with a 5-10% chance the item has the max number of rune slots it can have, then hope for a 3rd time with a 3-5% chance the item rolls all the perfect rune elements you need for your class/spec. To say this game is a grind is an understatement. Yes, they are fixing it, but it's 5 months too late.

The gold sinks in the game are in all the wrong places. Repairs, dying, and respecing hold the bulk of all gold-sink costs. That means casual and semi-casual players, who typically have the least gold, pay the highest costs. The hardcore raiders, with a ton of gold, have almost no where to dump their gold except on cosmetic BS no one cares about. The in-game currencies of Reknown, Presteige, and crafting vouchers basically have 0 value after a handful upgrades that you get in a week. Now you have nothing to do and nothing to buy.

This leads into the end-game for Wildstar which doesn't exist, except for the intentionally over-tuned raids. The Elder Gem system requires you to play the game every week to EG cap and acts as an artificial time-gate to keep you playing infinitely. They overpriced all the most important, basic things like AMP/Ability points, skill bars, and basic raiding gear to take 3-5 weeks to buy each. Speaking of over-tuned raids, each raid encounter is basically 3-4 mechanics spammed every 30-45s, and any 1-mistake kills everyone. It's not remotely hard, it just takes perfect execution for 20/40 people over a 5-10m encounter.

This leads to the most frustrating raid experience imaginable, as you hope the other 19 people can keep their shit together for the whole fight (which rarely happens). And no, joining a different guild isn't much better, as multiple guilds in Datascape (the 40 man raid), have quit the game the last 2 months because Carbine has gone out of their way to troll the elite player base with repeated buffs to raid encounters, and repeated class nerfs to lower raid damage output. Carbine actively does this DURING raid progression, and gives NO WARNING on their class or design decisions. It clearly is aimed towards stopping anyone from clearing their ridiculous, 12-boss raid. Why is a single 40m raid home to 12 bosses, of which can't be cleared in a single week before the weekly lockout, even assuming a guild with 40 perfect players starts it Tuesday night? Only Carbine's dev team could tell us.

The people still playing Wildstar are either delusional raiders thinking they will see 'end-game', or the people playing with the Housing system as if it was the Sims (but it's much worse TBH, and costs you monthly). I played the game 4 months and wish I quit after the first 2 like I had the gut reaction to. This post is already far too long, and longer than most people are keen to read, and I barely scratched the surface on why the game is a hot mess.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,929
The combat is amazing
Wildstar's combat is initially extremely fun,

but over time reveals itself to be extremely stressful, physically exhausting to your hands, and extremely repetitive. A few classes have 2-3 button 'rotations', where you can use 1-button macros to dps. The most complicated DPS and tank class is the Stalker, which in the end still only uses a 5-button rotation.
"It's shit". 10/10
 

Zed

Codex Staff
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Messages
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Codex USB, 2014
http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/23/7050545/wildstar-carbine-studios-layoffs
Today we announced a restructuring of key operations within NC West. As a result of this restructuring, we are implementing staff reductions across our Western operations with the exclusion of ArenaNet. While decisions like this are always hard, they are necessary as we begin the implementation of a new strategy designed to strengthen our footing as a leader in global entertainment.

Moving forward, we will continue to focus on our core development capabilities and the intellectual properties (WildStar, Aion, Lineage, and Guild Wars franchises) that have made NCSOFT what it is today. However, we are looking to move into new business segments like mobile and tablet games as well as explore emerging technologies.

Again, the decision to reduce staff was not an easy one, and we sincerely wish everyone well in their next endeavors.
60 people booted from Carbine, and some more from NCSoft.
Not surprising at all. It's pretty brutal but I guess that's a risk you take working as a MMORPG developer.
Also, NCSoft moving into "mobile and tablets." They'll get more of what they deserve.

As a 10 year WoW veteran going into Wildstar, there simple wasn't enough good shit to keep me going. I quit during leveling because it was too boring. That hasn't happened to me in any western MMORPG before, only Asian ones.

While leveling, dungeons were not rewarding enough. They were challenging and that's good, but once you actually overcome obstacles, the rewards weren't there.

The equipment was boring. No-one cares about cybergizmo trinkets. They want weapons and armor. Tangible upgrades and items that make sense.

Itemization seemed to suck hard. Direwolf's quote confirms what I thought the game would be at end-game.

The lore was lacking. WoW builds on a series of RTS and has established many storylines over the years affecting classes, zones, villains, mobs, items- everything. Wildstar has nothing in comparison. Zones were just random planets and whatever who the fuck cared. Quests were about whothefuckcares and dungeons were set in whogivesashit.

There's no blood or gore. Even WoW has some blood here and there to show that shit bleeds. Overall, Wildstar felt very PG. Not in a "classy" way. More like a "bland shit" kind of way.

The game costs too much. It's a high barrier of entry for people who don't know anybody playing the game. I gladly pay monthly for WoW, but only because I know people playing it.

And while I get the "must be like WoW to kill WoW" mindset, the game really wasn't innovative in the slightest. One expansion pack of WoW holds more fresh features than Wildstar does.
 
Last edited:

Avellion

Erudite
Joined
Jan 9, 2014
Messages
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This forum
There's no blood or gore. Even WoW has some blood here and there to show that shit bleeds. Overall, Wildstar felt very PG. Not in a "classy" way. More like a "bland shit" kind of way.

Pretty darn sure there is gore, unless my memory is terrible. But the gore was so lame, kind of like the brutalities in mortal combat, as in gory, but not in a satisfying way.
 

Cyberarmy

Love fool
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Divinity: Original Sin 2
There is gor but in a really childish manner. You can gib enemies with cirts/heavy strikes and they explode into cartoony meat pieces.
No blood though, only some quests have blood pools.
 

Avellion

Erudite
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Jan 9, 2014
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So, I got a code for returning to the game for 7 days for free as a response to the latest update.

What surprises me here is that they haven't gone f2p yet. I think I will stick to playing World of Warcraft to playing this uninspired, soulless mmo even if they did give me 7 free days.
 

Talby

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Codex USB, 2014
Has anyone been able to make it to the level cap and raid? I've heard some old school WoW raiding guilds migrated to Wildstar when it launched, (since WoW is a Facebook game now) dunno if it would be worth grinding out 50 levels to get there, though. Plus attunements.
 

Cyberarmy

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We did some back then and I don't really recommend unless you are desparete.
Getting to level 50 is not really hard/long, only boring thanks to shallow standart MMO quest design. However attunement quest for raid dungeons however was "harcore". You need a good group/guild, need a lot of time and a bit of skill. You have to finish all dungeons in a time limit for silver medal which becomes quite a drag if you try it with pugs. Coordination and determination need for silver rewards.
There were lots of bugs in that dungeons at first but I'm pretty sure that they are mostly OK now. I remember failing because of bosses that reset agro randomly.
Raids were a bit standart actually, not that hard since everybody inside was hardened thanks to silver/gold dungeons. And they don't have silver/gold medals like dungeons. AFAIK there weren't many real raiding guild left in game though, most of them either gave up or got bored and returned to WoW.

I'd say either play Rift for dungeon/raids or play Secret World for questing. Don't play them alone :)
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Q: How do we clear stock of box sets that clearly aren't selling before our move towards F2P?
A: The Mystery Box Promotion! For a limited time, when you buy a standard-edition copy of WildStar in the physical box, you also get one of these three awesome items. Got duplicate items? No problem! You can trade them with your friends, sell them on the auction house, or just keep them to yourself.

Want to get in on this action? Then just visit one of our participating retailers and grab a boxed copy! After redeeming the key—which, of course, adds 30 days to your account—you’ll also get a Mystery Box delivered via your in-game mail which randomly contains one of these items:

Snarfelynx Mount
WSB_Snarfle_003.jpg


Glitter Kitty Cruiser Hoverboard
WSB_Glitter-Kitty_002.jpg


Marauder Costume Set
WSB_Marauder-Cost_001.jpg


Bonus: Collect all three items above for an exclusive Title!
WSB_Glitter-Kitty_003.jpg


WSB_Marauder-Cost_003.jpg


WSB_Snarfle_006.jpg




Q: What if I’ve already bought WildStar?

A: This is only for boxes sold from today forward, so go out and get a box today! Even if you already own and subbed to the game. Aren't we such a nice company?!
 

Night Goat

The Immovable Autism
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Wow, I wasn't going to buy that shitty game but now that I have a 1 in 3 chance to get a snarfelynx mount that changes everything

:dead:
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,929
It's still not worth playing though.
 

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