Holy crap. I thought everyone would be bitching about the required linear quest hubs down a corridor world. Linear quest hubs are the devil.
Edit: I could deal with everything else if they put even the slightest bit of freedom in the game...but they didn't. Also the optimization at launch was laughable.
Grave misjudgement of the MMO market and yes, there were plenty of people who knew it would tank beforehand for exactly that reason.
Pretty much all the "oldschool" and "hardcore" games failed miserably and it is just a bad idea to listen to grumpy vets e.g. on this forum for a business idea. The vast majority of the playerbase does not want 40 men raids and certainly not Wildstar style ones.
Unfortunately for Carbine the game had little else to offer.
They took a combat mechanic, used sparingly for boss fights in other games ( telegraphing ), which is good in moderation, and built their entire combat system around it....
And the whole game is just over the top with its delivery, like endlessly watching one of those wacky old Budweiser commercials with the guy with the deep voice. It just got anoying.
Also the dynamic quest thing where every 50 feet someone would pop in my screen and start yapping at me in some annoying cartoon voice to give me a quest. I just felt pestered all the time by the game.
i did the key attunement at original launch i did GA 20 man at original launch.. one of the first 5 guilds in the world to complete it... 3rd or maybe 4th, i don't really remember that was a while back.
it was hard and thats what was good about it, it was in your face and kept things fresh although questing was fairly redundant after the first time through.. i still managed to level 5 toons to cap 1 of which was just recently so that probably doesn't count. i enjoyed the combat system i like action combat games... i dunno, maybe i'm weird... but i still see the value in the game.
I just can't stand the combat in this game. It's all about avoiding telegraphs and trying to get as many enemies into your own telegraphs. It's so boring and literally every class feels the same.
It's a shame though because the world, the quests and all the function in this game are cool. It has the foundation of a really nice mmorpg. But the combat man. The combat is so crucial and wildstars combat is just messy, has no real direction and no soul.
It boils down to graphics, mechanics, classes. Perhaps, all was just...lacking. For the most part, all of these were not horrible, but combined it made it hard to stick with the game. For me personally, the telegraphing stuff wasn't horrible, but it would get really annoying. It was challenging though. When playing a medic or esper (Man I wanted more from esper than I got!), trying to buff and heal by aiming your telegraph layout and avoiding the large scale one from a boss made dungeons a bit chaotic at times. I actually love dungeons and stop playing them on WS. So people are counting on you to keep them alive and buff them, but you're getting your bum kicked despite there being tanks or big damage dealers. I found that strange. The graphics though. YIKES!! I just couldn't get past them or my toon running a silly Looney Toons character. The idea was very clever, but then it just fell apart.
It was an eyesore to start off with. I don't mind a sytlized sort of cartoony graphics, but this was the most generic cartoony stuff I ever saw.
Then the humor was just... off. It was as if they were going for borderlands style zaniness, which works well for borderlands because it's twisted and dark humor. The Wildstar humor was just childish and infantile and played to the basest of joke hooks and preconceptions.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I could name many of the issues from the list, but if i had to name only one it would be combat. That's what you will do most of the time in this game anyway. Every class having aoe skills only to aoe down multiple mobs at once gets old very quickly. Add in very limited set of skills and flashing lights on the ground (telegraphs) and you begin to want to look for the uninstall icon sooner rather than later.
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Edit: I could deal with everything else if they put even the slightest bit of freedom in the game...but they didn't. Also the optimization at launch was laughable.
What I absolutely could not stand was the combat.
Pretty much all the "oldschool" and "hardcore" games failed miserably and it is just a bad idea to listen to grumpy vets e.g. on this forum for a business idea. The vast majority of the playerbase does not want 40 men raids and certainly not Wildstar style ones.
Unfortunately for Carbine the game had little else to offer.
Too many of the options to tick. Combat with everything being telegraphed, linear quest hubs, focus on hardcore, bland classes, I didn't last long.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/"Hardcore" players used to WoW would not enjoy the combat.
Casual players found the dungeon difficulty too challenging.
This was especially true for pre-release marketing. Trailers were screaming "hardcore" on one slide, then showing cuddly pink unicorns on the next.
And the whole game is just over the top with its delivery, like endlessly watching one of those wacky old Budweiser commercials with the guy with the deep voice. It just got anoying.
Also the dynamic quest thing where every 50 feet someone would pop in my screen and start yapping at me in some annoying cartoon voice to give me a quest. I just felt pestered all the time by the game.
i did the key attunement at original launch
i did GA 20 man at original launch.. one of the first 5 guilds in the world to complete it... 3rd or maybe 4th, i don't really remember that was a while back.
it was hard and thats what was good about it, it was in your face and kept things fresh although questing was fairly redundant after the first time through.. i still managed to level 5 toons to cap 1 of which was just recently so that probably doesn't count. i enjoyed the combat system i like action combat games... i dunno, maybe i'm weird... but i still see the value in the game.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
It's a shame though because the world, the quests and all the function in this game are cool. It has the foundation of a really nice mmorpg. But the combat man. The combat is so crucial and wildstars combat is just messy, has no real direction and no soul.
Then the humor was just... off. It was as if they were going for borderlands style zaniness, which works well for borderlands because it's twisted and dark humor. The Wildstar humor was just childish and infantile and played to the basest of joke hooks and preconceptions.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey