Wildstar - why haven't I heard of this before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rtK-8sUazUs

Looks pretty great thus far. I like the positional combat system and their "telegraph" mechanic a lot.

You can almost hear him pronounce it as "wowstar".

I'm not impressed. There needs to be more than just action and gimmicks. That "4 path" thing appears to be just a glorified list of objectives. While it's nice to see housing at release, it doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than hey, a house.

The reason why you haven't heard of this before was because they made a cg trailer back in '11 and everyone was hyped about it but because it's a mmo they have to wait 2 more years to poop out actual gameplay footage.

New trailer out:

Beta Signup

http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/beta/

I signed up for the beta back in 2011. Is there recent news about it or something?

Not sure I just ran across it on http://www.polygon.com/ this morning.

The somethingaweful forums mentioned that beta invites were being sent out. So, there's that.

Paths:

http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/the-game/paths/

Seems like a nice bit of extra character customization.

Every other mmo has stupid jumping puzzles already, now you can build a character around it? Ugh.

Also

Failure.

While I agree not being able to respec your path is probably a dumb idea, I don't see the issue with the explorer path. If you don't like jumping puzzles ... don't pick that path? That's certainly gonna be MY solution, since I am terrible at them.

Honestly my big worry about the game is the combat. "Action" combat just annoys me half the time.

What's wrong with action combat, I actually really like how the combat in MMO evolved from EQ -> WoW -> Guild War -> Tera -> Neverwinter -> soon Blade & Soul..

I think it's actually the trend now, fairly sure the old "select a target and push button" combat is going the way of dodo birds.

I heard this game is bringing back 40-man raids.

Why would they want to do this?

Who didn't love essentially 30 manning 40 man raid bosses because 10 of your guildies who showed up have the attention span and motor skills of a three month old?

On the topic of the actual game, It surprisingly looks pretty good. I say this as someone who spent far too much time on World of Warcraft and Everquest, but hasn't played a real MMO in years. The only thing I don't like is the copy-paste graphics from World of Warcraft. I wish they had gone for their own look.

Looks interesting but I don't know if Wow in space would really hold my attention though I do love the graphical style they've adopted.

The buxom space fox chick was a lame move though.

The only thing it has in common with WoW is the relatively simplistic textures and such. The art style doesn't look similar at all to me otherwise. I like the overall look of the game, I'm just not sure I'm digging the Saturday morning cartoon brand of edginess they've got going on.

TRUE ACTION COMBAT

That was a special high-heel-homing arrow.

Because it's work for work's sake, mostly. I'm OK with getting out of fire, but I am not so fond of having to run around like an idiot constantly. Sometimes I want to just turn my brain off and beat up on stupid mobs that don't involve me having to take three steps to the left every four seconds. The Secret World's version is about as much as I want to put into it (GW2 was annoying because it was goddamn impossible to tell most of the time when you were supposed to move), but even that I have to be in the mood for.

Basically, I'm cool with having to pay attention and care about positioning and such in dungeons or raids, but the day-to-day mobs I am killing for random leveling up quests? It gets boring in its own way for me, and has this side effect of making the dungeons and raids feel more boring, because ho hum, same ol' roll around to get out of fire crap.

As for its art, aside from it being "cartoony," which is a style I usually prefer over "realistic," I feel it has enough of its own style. There are males in the game that aren't three times as wide as they are tall, for example!

don't blame client side lag on the game.

Ah, but see, that's one of the issues with "action combat." If there is lag - for whatever reason - it starts to get extra shitty.

I prefer measured, lots-of-abilities-on-the-task-bar slower paced MMO combat to the 'action' style that's popular in more recent games. Things can get a little more actiony than WoW and I'm still happy - loved City of Heroes and SWTOR combat, for example, where you lose autoattack and there's a bit more movement - but Neverwinter and Guild Wars and Secret World all left me cold. Not enough choices to make in combat, not enough utility powers, etc. Maybe TERA is robot Jesus, I will never know, because I won't play a game that makes the visual choices they've made.

So, the combat is what worries me the most about this game as well (well, other than the possibility that I end up picking the unofficial furry RP server.)

I'd say instead that's an issue with action combat as an after thought. A game that intends to be action first and foremost can (mostly) deal with it, unlike that image with the redhead.

MWO is a good example of both ends of this, as they started off with horrible lag issues because they basically didn't address it at all but now it's only rarely noticeable.

Why not? The game is responsible for both the client and the server and how they communicate. Sure, a bad connection is going to make things harder, but the lag problem in most MMOs stems from simplistic client/server design.

Basically, there are ways to account for lag and you know there is going to be lag, but MMORPGs are typically programmed as if everyone were on a LAN.

Fixed that for you. <3

mostly Korean MMOs, because they have a much better connection over there than in the West.

no matter how optimize their network code is, it only take 1 dude on a 1mb connection, with 10 torrents running and a video capture device to make silly GIF to make your game looks stupid.

Yeah, sure. That's an extreme outlier though, and you don't need to go nearly that far to show the flaws in most MMO networking.

Besides, a good archtitecture is actually fairly robust with respect to low connection speed and even (though to a lesser extent) packet loss.

Also you can be sure that all of us have experienced crappy lag situations in action games, while nothing else was going on on our networks. I don't need to see a gif to know that it is a problem.

Action games often have multiplayer tacked on as an afterthought too. State re-winding algorithms and so forth are actually quite effective, when they're used.

To give a few somewhat recent examples I basically have no problem with lag play MWO or SF4 online, both of which are very sensitive to lag. Planetside 2 perhaps as well, though I haven't played that enough to really get a feel for it.

I understand you have your preferences, but I'm not sure "work for work's sake" makes sense. The reason for going the more action-oriented route is because a lot of people prefer a more active combat system vs one that just requires you to queue abilities in a specific sequence. I don't think one is inherently better or worse than the other, though I would agree that being more actiony is probably tougher to pull off in an MMO setting. GW2, for instance, is pretty brilliantly done, but it does require a much different mindset in order to do well compared to a game like WoW. I greatly enjoy the combat in both, but for wildly different reasons.

Work-for-work's-sake is just how it feels to me. "Whelp, it's a fight, better have a telegraphed thing they need to step out of every X seconds." I find it more boring, believe it or not, because it always means there are less abilities to use (which is fine, really, I also don't like having 234907238945623678 abilities to keep track of), and the fights always seem to boil down to "hit attack, hit attack, hit attack, dodge, hit attack, hit attack, hit attack, loot corpse." It gets incredibly dull, because I don't find it any more interesting than WoW-style quickbar combat, mobs are one-trick ponies (it doesn't matter what I am dodging, all I am doing is dodging), and I can't even eat a sandwich while I do it.


edit: I mean shit, at least in SWTOR I have choices like "do I interrupt THIS ability or THAT ability." Generally in "action combat" my choice is "do I dodge this, or do I dodge this?"

How long did you play GW2? Because you generally have quite a few more abilities to avoid damage than just dodging. It's not as simple "press dodge or press attack" for pretty much every class in the game. I get the impression you just don't like combat in general, so you'd prefer the kind that allows sandwich eating. Which is fine if that's what you like, it's just wrong and you should feel ashamed for it.

I played a rogue to ... I don't remember. I was in the last zone, which was shitty, so I stopped bothering. I do like combat, actually, if I didn't I wouldn't play MMOs. I just find action combat surprisingly shallow for all the fapping people do over it.

Some people like more direct control over every aspect of what their character is doing during combat vs queued attacks and dice rolls and such. The only reason I said I don't think you like combat was because of your comment about being able to turn off your brain during fights.

I really prefer the most action-y combat simply because I enjoy games like Monster Hunter. Where player twitch skills actually matter, in a same fight, a skilled player can come out unscathed while another might not. the only class I liked in EQ was the bard because of the twisting and mass aoe kiting, where one misstep = dead, but if you are good, your reward = you level so insanely fast.

people might put it down because they don't consider it real skills, but there are also times you still have to think on your feet. a good example in Neverwinter, Rogue level 59 solo instance, last boss fight has 6 adds 1 elite and 1 boss(all mind flayers, love those huge aoe cone stun rays), a lot of rogue complains how impossible it is for soloing. Beat it by lining up all my encounter and daily for pure stealth, I ended up killing the boss and all 6 adds in stealth and finish off the elite without him touching me.

So talk some more about the Path things, please. How's it going to work when a hundred explorers are searching for the same underground pass, or a hundred builders park campfires at the same dungeon entrance? How's that going to work a month after release, when the everyone has already leveled on? I'm confused how they're going to handle all this without a lot of phasing. How many secrets can there be for all the scientists to each discover?

Melee Thief combat is the opposite of shallow, it's just very much focused on movement skills, and diving in and out of range. You have a lot of tools at your disposal, particularly if you've built your Traits to supplement your style of play.

This is the thing about GW2 - there's a class (sorry, "profession") for most styles. I found the Guardian offered exactly what it was you were looking for, the ability to sit in front of a mob and use the occasional ability to disable/block an enemy but mostly just churn through mobs. To me it wasn't all that exciting although it did let me seek bigger challenges than I could on my Thief.

Rogue wasn't the only one I played, rogue was just the only one interesting enough to carry me as far as it did. I tried them all.

I imagine that the "secrets" in most of the areas will be clicky items in the middle of mobs. You will do some research motions, or maybe play a mini-game, and will have discovered the science. The paths will probably be instanced, and the campfires will be "maintained" by each person after the first. This will probably work as well as the whole dynamic rifts things in Rifts after people have leveled through, which is to say, not well.