148869-first-and-probably-last-impressions

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I finally got around to trying Wildstar, and to be honest, I'm disappointed.
The visual polish on the game is fantastic. Wit is a bit down from the cinematic trailers, but everything about the actual settings has a degree of appeal, aside from perhaps the subjective issue of the Good Guys/Bad Guys split being painfully egregious.
And then things start to go downhill.
 
The UI is AMAZINGLY inconvenient.-Something as simple as making a health bar appear over your head when in combat is inaccessible; take the hideous, space-consuming portrait at your feet, instead, unless you select yourself.
-Mouse camera is somehow in beta and obstructs EVERYTHING about the game. Right now, it's meant to be another WoW clone (by no means mandatory from an MMO, despite its commonality). It could easily control like Smite without losing any functionality.
-There is no need to make us press V to collect drops. Automatically do that.
-Settings seem to change on their own if the game is turned off.
-Rebinding keys is inconvenient without a way to skip to anything you just rebound...
 
After I have no idea how long, I got at least a satisfactory layout going and played -using WASD- with no health bar.
The gameplay is where there are serious problems.
-Class restrictions on species. For no apparent reason, since if there is ANY difference between species, it's not noted anywhere or observable in-game. Why not let someone play as whichever race and class in whichever faction they want, and alter the stats for each?
-Path restrictions. There is literally no reason to not let every character pursue all 4 paths. It'd give them more to do, which the game sorely needs.--Scientist cannot scan enemies for a snippet of lore and stats.
-TOO. SLOW. Immediate mounts would help, but moving everywhere is slow, combat is slow, everything was so slow that if I do keep playing, I'll do so with a turn-based game off to the side. I don't need my brain for anything here. Which brings me to the biggest issue...
-Gameplay has no depth. Gunners don't aim, melee characters don't dodge (those gigantic, slow-spreading red zones don't count as a demand for reflexes), all combat is just pumping out skills in the correct order, maybe in a group having the whole team do it, and DPS racing it to the end. Wildstar has no reason or excuse to be as bad as World of Warcraft. Get some aiming, differentiate the ranged characters' guns and shot types, let melee classes use actual attack combinations instead of waiting for one move to finish to use the next like it's The Sims.
 
If this game DOUBLED all movespeed, made everyone a member of all paths, and added (visible) base stats to races, I'd respect it a LOT more.	
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What level did you get to approximately?
 
Because the combat does start rather slow, but at end game it's nothing near as slow as the beginning. In fact, without having quick reflexes means the game will be super challenging. Many people have complained about how quick/hard the gameplay is at level 50, but fortunately it's one of the things that has not been changed too significantly. If you're a low level, I'd strongly recommend getting to endgame cus honestly where the game properly starts in terms of the combat.
 
As for the UI, URGH I totally agree, it's messy and horrible and almost warrants having a nameplate/ui addon to fix it.
 
Scientists do scan things for lore/items but it's only select mobs/items that do this. Some scans will give buffs as well, which is pretty cool. If you check the lore section, the scanbot makes extra notes in the lore, and gosh is that little robot snarky.
 
As for the races, I disagree. I like the way that no race has any pros or cons over each other, and this truly makes it based on which you like the look of rather than which is best to min/max with. 
 
Hope you give the game a little bit longer! Good luck 	
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I'm fairly certain there's an auto-vacuum loot option. UI isn't everyone's cup of tea, that's for sure. I'm not really bothered by any of it, but that's what addons are for! There are a couple good ones - ForgeUI for example? Might be up your alley. I agree that the mouselook option is a little clunky, and I definitely hope they continue improving it and how it interacts with the environment.
 
Also agree with your complaint re: race/class restrictions. Definitely silly! I'll live with it for now, but it certainly harshes on my altaholism.
 
I'm sorry you don't like the combat. :( I'm with Syl in wondering if perhaps you were just not liking the low-level stuff. Carbine eases people in with simple stuff first. They're pretty good at keeping the learning curve smooth, gradually ramping up the difficulty with mobs and instances. You may find that later content will be satisfactorily fast-paced! I know it is for me. :)	
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I'm fairly certain there's an auto-vacuum loot option. UI isn't everyone's cup of tea, that's for sure. I'm not really bothered by any of it, but that's what addons are for! There are a couple good ones - ForgeUI for example? Might be up your alley. I agree that the mouselook option is a little clunky, and I definitely hope they continue improving it and how it interacts with the environment.
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The gameplay is where there are serious problems.
.....
-TOO. SLOW. Immediate mounts would help, but moving everywhere is slow, combat is slow, everything was so slow
....
If this game DOUBLED all movespeed, made everyone a member of all paths, and added (visible) base stats to races, I'd respect it a LOT more.
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Most of your points have been adressed so I won't repeat what everyone said.
Re: Immediate mounts - most of us who have been around for a while start new characters with a number of mounts just waiting to be claimed, actually.
If you're a new player and looking to get a free mount right away 2FA says hi (smartphone optional).	
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-Class restrictions on species. For no apparent reason, since if there is ANY difference between species, it's not noted anywhere or observable in-game. Why not let someone play as whichever race and class in whichever faction they want, and alter the stats for each?
-Path restrictions. There is literally no reason to not let every character pursue all 4 paths. It'd give them more to do, which the game sorely needs.
--Scientist cannot scan enemies for a snippet of lore and stats.
-TOO. SLOW. Immediate mounts would help, but moving everywhere is slow, combat is slow, everything was so slow that if I do keep playing, I'll do so with a turn-based game off to the side. I don't need my brain for anything here. Which brings me to the biggest issue...
-Gameplay has no depth. Gunners don't aim, melee characters don't dodge (those gigantic, slow-spreading red zones don't count as a demand for reflexes), all combat is just pumping out skills in the correct order, maybe in a group having the whole team do it, and DPS racing it to the end. Wildstar has no reason or excuse to be as bad as World of Warcraft. Get some aiming, differentiate the ranged characters' guns and shot types, let melee classes use actual attack combinations instead of waiting for one move to finish to use the next like it's The Sims.
 
If this game DOUBLED all movespeed, made everyone a member of all paths, and added (visible) base stats to races, I'd respect it a LOT more.
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I can not believe you people are seriously replying to a guy named "Captain Doomsday."
 
2/10
 
Obvious troll is obvious.	
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The UI is AMAZINGLY inconvenient.
-Something as simple as making a health bar appear over your head when in combat is inaccessible; take the hideous, space-consuming portrait at your feet, instead, unless you select yourself.
-Mouse camera is somehow in beta and obstructs EVERYTHING about the game. Right now, it's meant to be another WoW clone (by no means mandatory from an MMO, despite its commonality). It could easily control like Smite without losing any functionality.
-There is no need to make us press V to collect drops. Automatically do that.
-Settings seem to change on their own if the game is turned off.
-Rebinding keys is inconvenient without a way to skip to anything you just rebound...
 
After I have no idea how long, I got at least a satisfactory layout going and played -using WASD- with no health bar.
The gameplay is where there are serious problems.
-Class restrictions on species. For no apparent reason, since if there is ANY difference between species, it's not noted anywhere or observable in-game. Why not let someone play as whichever race and class in whichever faction they want, and alter the stats for each?
-Path restrictions. There is literally no reason to not let every character pursue all 4 paths. It'd give them more to do, which the game sorely needs.
--Scientist cannot scan enemies for a snippet of lore and stats.
-TOO. SLOW. Immediate mounts would help, but moving everywhere is slow, combat is slow, everything was so slow that if I do keep playing, I'll do so with a turn-based game off to the side. I don't need my brain for anything here. Which brings me to the biggest issue...
-Gameplay has no depth. Gunners don't aim, melee characters don't dodge (those gigantic, slow-spreading red zones don't count as a demand for reflexes), all combat is just pumping out skills in the correct order, maybe in a group having the whole team do it, and DPS racing it to the end. Wildstar has no reason or excuse to be as bad as World of Warcraft. Get some aiming, differentiate the ranged characters' guns and shot types, let melee classes use actual attack combinations instead of waiting for one move to finish to use the next like it's The Sims.
 
If this game DOUBLED all movespeed, made everyone a member of all paths, and added (visible) base stats to races, I'd respect it a LOT more.
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I disagree with this. I love WildStar and still play it. However, being a developer myself, releasing a game with a buggy UI is not optimal, but can happen. A year after launch and nothing has been done to fix/upgrade it based on feedback, absolutely unacceptable. You don't release a first rate game and expect the players to fix your poorly designed/executed UI with add ons. An add on should do just that add a feature you want that isn't there. An add on isn't and shouldn't be a fix.
 
Also, all the broken quests. :( These make me so sad.
 
Rant over.
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People seem to missing the fact that this is a first impressions. Of course Doomsday hasn't gotten very far and suggesting someone get to raiding or even endgame for that matter to see if they like a game is not a good suggestion.
 
 
Just going down the list:
- I don't get the UI hate, but like others have brought up, get an addon and the problem is fixed. Addons are highly encouraged by the devs and are easy to install.
- I was forced to used "Mouse camera" from fp2 release to December. I agree it is clunky and inconvenient when trying to close messages that popup, trying to interact with items/npcs, and using click-to-cast abilities.
- Vacuum loot complaint is just nitpicking. Giving the option to loot lets us choose to leave the trash on the ground and only take the good stuff anyways.
- Not sure what you are getting at with settings changing on their own or rebinding keys.
 
- Class restrictions of species/gender/faction in any game is dumb unless there is a true reason (which is another discussion I won't get into here) and WS does not have a true reason imo.
- I can see where you want to be able to do all the path things on one character, although honestly if you were to have that feature, you would complain about the useless junk you were picking up every 10 steps and detours you had to take while leveling. Path quests are really just something that rewards you for doing something you were going to do anyway.
- Last I checked scientists could scan enemies for lore snips. Why bother with stat snips? You can already see the opponents hp and nothing that I know of has specific resistances so there is no point.
- The starting zones have mounts for rent so there ya go.
 
Now the combat. Since f2p went live, leveling has been dumbed down significantly. You actually won't face anything remotely dangerous in the world until reaching Whitevale (roughly lvl 25). Standing in the red won't kill you, group quests are a joke, and it really is just spam until they drop. If you really want to see some difficulty before level 25 get into a dungeon (Protogames, Stormtalon, Kel Voreth). I have yet to see anyone say this game is boring/slow/easy after running through those. If you're still disappointed after that, this game will never satisfy you. I would suggest you PvP to really emphasize the importance of aiming, but it is apparently all bots at low levels (I cannot confirm) so it won't do any good.
 
Movement speed is fine (are you remembering to sprint?), paths really do become a chore I guarantee you would be annoyed by the end, and there is no reason to show base stats for the races because they are all the same.	
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I can see frustration with the UI.  In fact, it's probably the worst thing about the game right now.
 
There are class restrictions because they didn't have time to build every class animation for every race, and haven't had the manpower to go back to it.  Back before the layoffs they said on a few occasions that they'd like to fix that, but after the layoffs we got some weakass lore excuses for the omissions.
 
I'm going to chalk the combat complaints up to giving up on the game too early, because those observations don't line up with reality beyond level twentysomething.	
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There are class restrictions because they didn't have time to build every class animation for every race, and haven't had the manpower to go back to it.
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I agree with the OP about the UI bar, I wish it was more adaptable for players to choose what kind of settings they would love for their UI, I am using ForgeUI and that helps a lot but now I cannot see what level I am or how far do I have to go to the next level, maybe I am missing something in ForgeUI?
 
The rest of the stuff  meh I dont agree with you, I love the combat even do I am barely level 20, maybe when I make it to 50 I will hate combat but for now I like it.	
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I am using ForgeUI and that helps a lot but now I cannot see what level I am or how far do I have to go to the next level, maybe I am missing something in ForgeUI?
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Not convinced that excuse is really true.  If it were then Engineer should be open to every race by now (phaser tag, the various rifle tools, etc.).  When previewed all races hold all weapons correctly.  Except for resonators, all races sheathe weapons correctly.  Worse the base animations already exist and that's the hard part. 
 
Instead of wasting their contract dollars on a "paid event rewards" implementation they could have had the missing animations done for at least one class.  But sacrificing long term player satisfaction to chase short term profits is all the rage now.
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What hernCo said on reddit was something like once it was clear that all classes for all races wouldn't be ready, they had to include other factors. So they factored in what made the most sense. The example used was that Mechari can't be espers because their inorganic nature is a hinderance. (for now)
 
While they didn't state it, I'm sure another factor was balancing the classes out for the races. So while one class may have been ready for most races, others wouldn't have been.
 
Though, I do agree that this should be a higher priority, we also have to understand that new content is what brings in more dollars. Where as a fix like this would be seen as unimpressive because it's "something we should have gotten from the beginning". It seems like a no-win scenario here. But from a business sense, it does make sense to prioritize new content to make the money to stay afloat. But again, they need to make this a higher priority than it has been.	
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I've made it to level 10 so far. I do love all of the features in the game, it's just the core game that's obnoxiously slow and one-dimensional, and even with 5 skills, there's not much variety. I wish all classes had a damaging movement skill like Warrior's Leap (Esper doesn't so far.) If they added some depth to the combat, like aiming your shots, parrying, different types of basic attacks (flurry, heavy with CC, the standard we have now,) the early content could go a lot farther, but right now it just doesn't matter what the rest of the game offers if you lose players to boredom in the first 5 levels.
 
Paths should be available to everyone. There is no reason to restrict players to having only one, especially since they're supposed to be modelled after the Bartle Test. If they are, then people will naturally persue the Path that matches their archetype. I'm a Spade, so I'd end up completing a lot of Explorer missions, but also Settler missions for the XP and Travel speed buffs you can get to accelerate the game.
I've heard it used to be much slower, so I'm glad positive change HAS been made, but I know this game can be more. I was pretty harsh in my LP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVr20m97fVU) but like I said, I think there's hope here. 
 
I'll admit, wanting race balances is personal taste. If they were just lore and aesthetic differences, that would be fine, but they're RESTRICTIVE aesthetic differences. The gear is all general models, anyway, so why can't I make a catman who builds turrets or psychic robot?
 
For MMOs I play, the answer is none in a long time. I played City of Heroes long ago, and it was also way too slow. I was hoping for an MMO that plays like Smite (but with better balance; not a high bar.) I'll admit that this biased me into mouse-look, which is still very buggy. Perhaps if I switched to the regular click interface, I would subconsciously lower my expectations.
 
A lot of people are saying to make it to level 50.
If the game feels like it takes to long to get to level 10, WHY would I put up with that grind for 40 more levels? I don't play a game to have fun in several months; I play it for immediate engagement that compounds as I advance. I stand by my LP comment that if the core of the gameplay is good, everything built on it has a good standing, but if it's dull, building it into something fun is an unnecessary challenge.
 
2-D aiming on a plane where it's almost impossible to miss isn't really aiming. At the very least, you're never missing a PvE shot unless you're trying to edge three mobs at once. Speaking of which, a higher enemy density would help early levelling a lot. There IS a well of patience to work with, and if the game gets better later, getting them to the good part in here is important.
 
While I personally don't like having to get external mods for a game, I respect that the devs allow and enable it.
 
That covers just about everything. I plan to go to level 14, at least, and try making a house. If nothing else, that looks fun.	
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When you're leveling up, are you doing all the quests in a zone, or just the story ones?  The quest tracker will sort quests by categories (Regional Story, World Story, and so forth,) and if you ignore all of the quests under the Tasks header, you'll gain levels a lot faster.  Path quests don't award experience toward your class level, so if you want to gain levels faster you might also ignore those. 
 
You should be able to knock out the first ten levels in a few hours if you do both those things.  Selecting the experienced player option at character creation will also save you time by starting you off on Nexus at lv. 3.	
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 melee characters don't dodge (those gigantic, slow-spreading red zones don't count as a demand for reflexes), all combat is just pumping out skills in the correct order, maybe in a group having the whole team do it, and DPS racing it to the end.
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I remember quest mobs being harder. Curse that Deradune explorer mission where 3 mobs are waiting for you the moment you fall into a sinkhole! Or those snipers from Hycrest adventures coming from every direction (because our group have no idea what's going on :P)
 
Not sure when all these leveling mobs were nerfed to the point where there's no consequences in not interrupting or standing in red. Not talking about the 2-man primes that used to be 5-man. Is it power creep?	
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I'm going to add that I really like that buff timers stop if you log out, but am primarily frustrated by the last of ability to multi-cast. There's a lot less depth to combat if I have to wait for my basic to finish before casting anything else, and therefore have to stop throwing out basics to get that gap. As for missions, I'm trying to get everything I can, but to be honest, it's a bit vague where I need to go for some. I appear to have somehow not turned in one in another zone, since it doesn't spawn an arrow (I can't remotely cash it in, like I wish you could with all quests, from a quest menu,) and arrows often lead me to mysterious nowheres, which seem to at best loosely correlate to the location of an objective.
 
I'll still at least get to level 15 and make another gameplay assessment, including the housing components, since I want to be fair, and after trying Guild Wars 2, I realize that Wildstar is actually FAST for its genre.	
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