Future MMO Prospects

[synaesthetic]

Seconding Naunet's suggestion for more original MMOs. Cribbing from existing IPs is one of the "safe" tactics that limit the potential of the genre.

[Ignacius]

Seconding Naunet's suggestion for more original MMOs. Cribbing from existing IPs is one of the "safe" tactics that limit the potential of the genre.

 

Considering all the original IP MMORPGs have been pretty derivative, I would hazard to say that the limit to game potential isn't based on the use of existing IPs, but more on developers' inability to produce original gameplay.

 

Hence the question.  What IP do people think would make a good MMORPG that we haven't been discussing?  The fact is that there's a lot of intellectual property out there that would make an incredibly original MMORPG, especially considering the market.  Would it be more original for someone to make another sword-and-sorcery fantasy MMORPG with an original title or for Capcom to make a Mega Man MMORPG?  I know which one of those we've seen a lot more of and which would be more exciting.

[Naunet]

It depends on the lore of the sword-and-sorcery fantasy. Just because something fits into the fantasy genre doesn't mean it has to reuse the same tropes over and over again. Marrying someone who makes his living (meager as it is) writing science fiction and fantasy has confirmed that to me.

 

But a Mega Man MMORPG? How is that original? It would just take existing characters and story and stick them in an MMORPG.

[Ignacius]

It depends on the lore of the sword-and-sorcery fantasy. Just because something fits into the fantasy genre doesn't mean it has to reuse the same tropes over and over again. Marrying someone who makes his living (meager as it is) writing science fiction and fantasy has confirmed that to me.

 

But a Mega Man MMORPG? How is that original? It would just take existing characters and story and stick them in an MMORPG.

 

Well, a few things we'd have to consider.  First being setting, that the universe that the Mega Man games takes place in is not only in the less-heavily used sci-fi genre for MMORPGs, but isn't really in the morally ambiguous setting that all sci-fi games are set in.  There are definitely evil scientists, people living peaceful and joyous lives in the future, and decent individuals trying to help them out.  That doesn't exist that I've seen in any current MMORPGs, so it would be nice to have at least one game that doesn't think the future is going to be a sloppy grey mess.  It's like people tripped over Neuromancer and never got up again.

 

Second, as opposed to pretty much every other game I've ever played, Mega Man's growth is almost entirely lateral.  In the RPG, you actually get little bits that change the way your buster operates, but most often you're fine tuning the beam into something that feels comfortable, as opposed to always upgrading it.  Even in the original games, the entire nature of progression is that you can go through the levels in any order and none of the weapons are "keys" to unlock progression.  I remember that being weird as a kid, since you get so used to doing levels in order.

 

If you've ever played the series, it features all kinds of things you'd probably never see in a game meant for our aging male demographic and the sorts of things more "mature" studio games turn their noses up at.  Things like dogs turning into springboards, futuristic cities that aren't vile corporate cesspits, and Gemini Man (seriously, Gemini man!)

 

The games industry simply doesn't have anything like this now.  Hell, Capcom can't even seem to get it's feet out from behind its ears to make use of their IPs.  My brother in law has a theory that Capcom execs hate Mega Man because it's too far out of line with their Street Fighter, Resident Evil, and Monster Hunter series.  I kind of disagreed, but after seeing what they did to the Mega Man Legends franchise lately, it doesn't seem that far out of the ballpark.

 

I mean, you can say it's unoriginal, but it's radically different than any MMORPGs we have out there (I'd say the closest thing to it would be Sega's Phantasy Star series, if you'd call any of those MMORPGs).  That's why I picked everything on the list that I picked; they're existing IPs that don't have a direct corollary.  What do we have that's really original in games design?  They may not have to use the same tropes, but they do.  Every fantasy MMORPG seems to have a fetish for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (if there's one genre that is stuck in a rut more than anything, it's probably the fantasy genre's inability to think outside Tolkein's box) and if I see one more castle siege CGI trailer again I feel like I'm going to put my head through a wall.  It's almost mind-numbing.  One of the reasons I felt bored with ESO was it seemed to drain all the fun out of the fantasy genre and one of my major complaints about EVE is that it spends so much time mired in moral ambiguity that I absolutely lose all drive to complete anything.

 

So why not suggest IPs that exist but that we don't have.  If someone can make a game like Mega Man into an MMORPG and make it completely original, then fine, I'd be happy to see it.  But considering you'd be playing a robot you design yourself and the game isn't already set in a very dedicated universe where you'll see a lot of recurring characters, I wouldn't see why the original IP wouldn't be fresh here.  It isn't like we've had a Mega Man RPG in over a decade, so it isn't like we're being swamped with Mega Man games and all its hundreds of clones.

[Naunet]

To be clear, I was talking from a purely story perspective.

 

And okay, if you're going to insist on mentioning some existing IPs... maybe a Jak & Daxter one. Because <3. Not sure what time that would take place in... while the past would be nice, I did have an awful lot of fun wandering the deserts in Jak 3...

 

Aaaaaaaaand I think it could be fun to see one set in Charles Stross's Merchant Wars universe, complete with world hopping and political intrigue. Let me introduce knowledge/technology from one parallel world into another and watch what happens. :3

[Ignacius]

To be clear, I was talking from a purely story perspective.

 

And okay, if you're going to insist on mentioning some existing IPs... maybe a Jak & Daxter one. Because <3. Not sure what time that would take place in... while the past would be nice, I did have an awful lot of fun wandering the deserts in Jak 3...

 

Aaaaaaaaand I think it could be fun to see one set in Charles Stross's Merchant Wars universe, complete with world hopping and political intrigue. Let me introduce knowledge/technology from one parallel world into another and watch what happens. :3

 

Yeah, I guess it would be different if Mega Man was like a modern game and we were continuing a story, like if Blizzard made another WoW.  Then again, Mega Man's always been a little light on story.  Either it was a one-off story with no continuity, like Legends or the Battle Network games, or it was... well... look old Nintendo games had a "plot", but you could write it on a post-it note.  I definitely know where you're coming from if, say, they made a Diablo MMORPG.  While it might be good, even great, it might also definitely feel derivative.

 

Jak and Daxter would be great, though, or even something Jak and Daxter-ish.  I really loved the sort of tinkering you did in those games, and it might be a lot more fun to, instead of upgrading the same sword over and over again, to make crafting a lot more prominent as a method of attaining gear and/or skills.  That way, you don't need to gather 100 Seals of Everythingness to get a mount, though you might need to travel around the world gathering bits to make a dune buggy.  I think games sort of inch in that direction, but it would be great to have a game that made your "profession" into your character class.  Imagine if everyone got to custom make and tune their own weapons, armor, and items instead of having an auction house for those weapons, armor, and items.  Just ingredients.

[synaesthetic]

I don't like the use of established IPs because it diminishes the potential for innovation. It's "safe." It's "proven."

 

When nearly every goddamned game you own has a number at the end, you know there's a problem. Now, I'm not saying that sequels are necessarily a bad thing, but when everything is a sequel/reboot/remake, you have some industry-wide creative bankruptcy going on.

 

I would like to see more than the typical sword-and-sorcery MMO, sure, but before we can get to that point, we have to get away from constantly raising IPs from the dead. Right now, that's all the entertainment industry can do... make sequels and reboots and remakes.

 

The older I get, the more I'm convinced indie game developers are the only source of actual creativity and outside-the-box thinking in the industry. I don't care if this makes me sound like a hipster; I don't play games for anyone else's benefit but my own.

 

Wildstar has being an original IP going for it and that's fantastic. It's unfortunate that I don't really care for the art style and focus on humor.

[Ignacius]

I don't like the use of established IPs because it diminishes the potential for innovation. It's "safe." It's "proven."

 

When nearly every goddamned game you own has a number at the end, you know there's a problem. Now, I'm not saying that sequels are necessarily a bad thing, but when everything is a sequel/reboot/remake, you have some industry-wide creative bankruptcy going on.

 

I would like to see more than the typical sword-and-sorcery MMO, sure, but before we can get to that point, we have to get away from constantly raising IPs from the dead. Right now, that's all the entertainment industry can do... make sequels and reboots and remakes.

 

The older I get, the more I'm convinced indie game developers are the only source of actual creativity and outside-the-box thinking in the industry. I don't care if this makes me sound like a hipster; I don't play games for anyone else's benefit but my own.

 

Wildstar has being an original IP going for it and that's fantastic. It's unfortunate that I don't really care for the art style and focus on humor.

 

Wildstar might be an original IP, but it's not an original game.  That's the problem.  I don't mind them reusing old IPs especially in new applications.  Nobody said Dr. Mario was just some retread of the old Mario series because it was a completely different application of their IP.

 

They're just slapping glossy paint jobs on old products.  Dark and Demon Souls seem very original as games, but you hear a lot about how retro they are.  In reality, they are retro; they're a giant step backwards from where we went to a more pure gaming concept.  In fact, most indie developers aren't being original, they're using concepts for gaming that have gone wildly out of style.  Very few people have developed concepts that are, literally, the first of their kind.  The reason they seem so original is because so many people didn't grow up on NES and never went to a real quarter arcade.  RTS games that stretch your brain and planning seem like brand new concepts if you weren't around to remember the Blizzard v Westwood games.

 

Case in point, we don't have any MMORPGs like Crimson Skies.  It might not be an original IP, but we don't have a Crimson Skies MMORPG or anything really like it.  At this point, Wildstar is the closest thing we have to a Jak and Daxter IP.  But those games might be wildly divergent from what we're used to in an MMORPG.  It wouldn't make sense to say, "Oh, Capcom's just making another Mega Man game" when it's been over a decade since we got a Mega Man Legends game, almost a decade since we got a Battle Network game, and the rest are all old-school 2d scrolling shooters.  To make that IP into an MMO wouldn't just be completely different than the other MMORPGs, it would be completely different from what the IP is used to.

 

I mean, we take it for granted now, but WoW isn't like the rest of the Warcraft franchise unless you count their book RPG.  Now that it's the biggest MMORPG on the planet, we kind of forget how weird that was at the time.  I remember wondering WTF they were doing converting a realtime strategy game into EverQuest and how that was even going to work.  It was less of a jump when Square developed FFXI, at least that was originally an RPG.

 

I guarantee that if From Software used one of their existing IPs to make an MMORPG, it would be a lot less derivative than what your average indie kickstarter developer could do with an original IP.  Indie developers just don't have the juice to pull off what they promise.  It's one of the saddest things about Star Citizen.  It sounded like it was going to be an original-style of MMORPG.  It's been depressing to watch them backtracking from all of their ideas and ending up with a slurry of Wing Commander crossed with EVE Online.  They were supposed to make space interesting to explore and to give us a challenge.  They can't offer us anything.

 

I would say our best bet for something that actually plays as an original RPG is going to come from one of the larger studios that's still in the business of innovating.  Hell, if From Software made a Tenchu MMORPG, it might be from an original IP, but it would be very different from anything we have on the market.  Hell, for all we know, Titan is going to be a very different kind of game from what we have, since Blizzard has a tendency to develop very well despite their size.

 

I think, in the end, the games industry has suffered ever since we started viewing it as a visual and narrative, rather than spacial, medium.  We're trying to model games on films and books, two forms of art that severely restrict and limit the growth of the industry.  People just forget that video games aren't a series of related vignettes and stories, they're inhabited spaces.  That mindset has hit MMORPGs, the most spatial of genres in games, the hardest.  There isn't a story in video games that I haven't seen before done better somewhere else.  The point is that you are supposed to be "in" these worlds; they are inhabited rather than observed.  Even indie developers don't really get what that means, so they keep gutting the same settings and refinishing them for new tenants over and over.  It looks brand new, but it's the same game with new paint and new shrubs.

[Ildur]

You need to stablish yourself on familiar grounds before building a ship and setting sail to the horizon, hoping to discover a brand new continent or a new route to the Indias.

[TheLastCandle]

Great, now I'm all nostalgic for playing Crimson Skies on Xbox Live back in the day. Multiplayer was so good and now the closest thing we have is Snoopy Flying Ace, which sadly nobody seems to play anymore.

 

At any rate, taking an existing IP and turning it into an MMO doesn't necessarily HAVE to cripple creativity. One of the best examples I can think of (besides World of Warcraft) is Lord of the Rings Online. The classes fit pretty neatly into the Middle Earth mythos and make perfect sense.

 

For example, instead of HP you have Morale, and when your Morale is depleted to 0 you are not dead but "defeated." As a result, you have support/healer classes like the Captain, who wields a sword or halberd and fights in the frontlines while "healing" (lifting your Morale) with their banner and rallying cries and daring feats. I don't think I've ever had as much fun playing a support class. To boot, the main quest's story manages to be interesting and mostly true to lore, despite only sometimes intersecting with that of the trilogy's heroic Fellowship.

 

And then you have games like Star Wars: The Old Republic that has a good narrative (at least for some classes) but sort of brute-forces some well-known archetypes into traditional MMO roles. As a result, you have Jedi Sages/Sith Sorcerers who have lightsabers but never get to use them, as they effectively function as the Star Wars equivalent of a wizard's staff in World of Warcraft. That's just plain LAME.

 

On the topic of properties I'd like to see as an MMO, as much as I know it's only a pipe dream, I think the Legend of Five Rings world of Rokugan would be perfect, especially if they can find a way to make the RPG's system of diplomacy work somehow. Diplomacy, shugenja, and iaijutsu - yes, please.

[Ignacius]

Great, now I'm all nostalgic for playing Crimson Skies on Xbox Live back in the day. Multiplayer was so good and now the closest thing we have is Snoopy Flying Ace, which sadly nobody seems to play anymore.

 

At any rate, taking an existing IP and turning it into an MMO doesn't necessarily HAVE to cripple creativity. One of the best examples I can think of (besides World of Warcraft) is Lord of the Rings Online. The classes fit pretty neatly into the Middle Earth mythos and make perfect sense.

 

For example, instead of HP you have Morale, and when your Morale is depleted to 0 you are not dead but "defeated." As a result, you have support/healer classes like the Captain, who wields a sword or halberd and fights in the frontlines while "healing" (lifting your Morale) with their banner and rallying cries and daring feats. I don't think I've ever had as much fun playing a support class. To boot, the main quest's story manages to be interesting and mostly true to lore, despite only sometimes intersecting with that of the trilogy's heroic Fellowship.

 

And then you have games like Star Wars: The Old Republic that has a good narrative (at least for some classes) but sort of brute-forces some well-known archetypes into traditional MMO roles. As a result, you have Jedi Sages/Sith Sorcerers who have lightsabers but never get to use them, as they effectively function as the Star Wars equivalent of a wizard's staff in World of Warcraft. That's just plain LAME.

 

On the topic of properties I'd like to see as an MMO, as much as I know it's only a pipe dream, I think the Legend of Five Rings world of Rokugan would be perfect, especially if they can find a way to make the RPG's system of diplomacy work somehow. Diplomacy, shugenja, and iaijutsu - yes, please.

 

I loved Crimson Skies.  I remember tearing people up with a Dust Devil.  I actually have a lot of experience in stick-flight games.  That's the most horrific PVP learning curve on the planet, having to learn to dogfight with a joystick.  It's so hard to learn on your own, especially.

[Zyrusticae]

I decided to just try out Wildstar since it's OB and I was curious.

 

The art style is actually easier on the eyes than I expected when you're actually in the game. I still don't like certain aspects of it (stick-thin arms and wasp waists especially) but it's not bad. The running animations for female characters, like someone mentioned before, are really, really weird. Especially when you stop running mid-stride, the transition is nonexistent. That's something, say, GW2 really gets right - while FFXIV is just as bad here, the running animations are less absurd, so I don't notice it as much.

 

My concerns about the character creation remain completely unchanged. This is particularly exemplified by how the body type that gives the character the smallest breast-to-chest ratio ALSO gives the character an enormous butt:

 

Sliders, or at least a bigger variety of body types, would help to mitigate this. There's also some notable omissions in the facial sliders (like no control over forehead or cheek shape, or any control over the lips whatsoever).

 

So what about the rest of the game?

 

The combat's alright. The animations are pretty nice. Obviously, since I'm nowhere near the level cap I can't really speak to how it all pans out when you have all your abilities, but even at low levels it's pretty entertaining, which is more than I can say for FFXIV or Tera.

The questing... well, there's not really much to say here. Same as your usual WoW-like, with the addition of the radio that lets you talk to your questgivers remotely. I found my eyes glazing over partway through the tutorial and just clicking through stuff, which isn't a good sign.

I kind of like the setting (space fantasy pretty much always gets me going), but, well, either character creation needs to be more robust or they just need to freakin' add female Chua already (and btw - the Chua as they are now are way too obvious an example of 'male is the default'), 'cause I wasn't able to find anything I was really happy with. I just settled with Aurin because they're the closest thing I could find to 'short + cute' out of all the racial options. I did enjoy the sight of hydroponic gardens in the tutorial ship. Living, mobile vegetables, not so much. I know it's space fantasy, but at least try to keep things a little bit grounded, yeah?

The music is actually pretty nice. Feels like a film soundtrack, which is fine in its own way. Doesn't really compare to FFXIV's or even Blade & Soul's though, but then, that is an extremely high bar to cross. Certainly more catchy than GW2's soundtrack (which I can't remember a single track from, it was that forgettable).

 

That's about all I can comment on at this point in the game. Will I explore further? Eh. If I can't get attached to my character (like I mentioned before, #1 priority for me), I can't really bring myself to play past the tutorial stages. They didn't manage to fulfill that basic requirement so I'm just going to have to pass it over. From what I've seen, it has potential, and I'm sure plenty of folks will find lots of entertainment from it, but it's just not for me.

[Ignacius]

I'm also in the Wildstar beta.  I was going to keep it to myself until the end of the beta, but I guess I can throw in my thoughts.

 

I guess I'm a bit more impressed with the character creation than I thought I'd be.  With all the complaints about bodies and sliders, they've got a bunch for the face so you can get some customization there.  Honestly, I think they'll end up with body sliders eventually since they already have them in the less important face area.  I can't say I was completely disappointed, though.  Maybe it's because of how low everyone made my expectations.

 

Warrior combat is fun as Hell, though I haven't tried another class yet so that's up in the air.  It's a bit like FFXIV, but a lot faster paced.  You don't autolock when you run, so you have to make sure you're turned the right way.  It takes a while getting the sensitivity right so that you don't overcompensate.  They went the Diablo 3 route with customization where you can add different abilities to a set action bar.  That also means you can't use all your abilities you unlock.  We'll see if that gets annoying later.  Combat's great though, already.  I will say it's beta rough, though, so I hope it's a little more polished by release.

 

You'd be amazed how that game taxes your system.  I'm running a 9590 processor on a pretty much brand new component machine with 32 gigs of RAM.  My video card is the oldest component, though it's still a gigabit card with a decent bus.  I'm running on 1280 resolution on medium settings and the animations still aren't smooth.  Which is mindblowing, because it's so stylized and you know they aren't so worried about realism.  It's a lot more resource-heavy than I imagined.

 

We're definitely, almost 100% guaranteed (they said so in an interview) going to have designated RP-PVE and RP-PVP servers.  That's exciting especially for me, since I will know where to find the RPers.  Also, I know sitting on chair and interactive environments was kind of up in the air for a while, but it's definitely in the beta.  I don't know anything about player housing, so if anyone has some experience in it, let me know.

 

I went explorer, so I've had some fun 3d platforming that REALLY reminds me of games like Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie.  Actually, a lot of the game reminds me of a high-end, heavily graphically improved N64 game.  If you ever wished you could have an N64 MMORPG, seriously try it out.

 

The UI needs a LOT of polish.  Things you need to see don't stand out on the map very well, things that do stand out on the map completely obscure where you're going. You get small icons on your screen, like the one telling you that you have tutorials you haven't read.  Yes, I didn't read the tutorial about how to run.  But you can't get rid of it and clicking the icon doesn't do anything; you have to open the menu to read it for it to go away.  There's an icon reminding you to hit the V key to vacuum up your loot (which is good in concept) but it's not as easy as you'd think to see your loot when your enemies explode.  If you happen to get too far to vacuum loot, though, that icon will NOT go away unless you go back or the loot despawns.  That means you will usually miss something, then have to deal with that icon telling you that you have loot when you don't.  So the UI can use serious polish.

 

That's what I've got to report right now.

[Naunet]

The music is actually pretty nice. Feels like a film soundtrack, which is fine in its own way. Doesn't really compare to FFXIV's or even Blade & Soul's though, but then, that is an extremely high bar to cross.

 

Watwat.

 

FFXIV's soundtrack is heinously annoying. @.@ Different tastes, I guess...

 

re the UI in Ignacius's comment: A couple weekends ago, they launched a new build with a completely redesigned UI. They haven't yet transferred beta to the build that will include all the tweaks and bug fixes done since then. I agree it still needs a lot of work and is perhaps its weakest component at the moment. I do think it's safe to say improvements are coming, though. ^^

 

At this point, my greatest annoyance with WS is their bungling of the name reservation process. >_< It is so messed up.

[Zyrusticae]

FFXIV's soundtrack is heinously annoying. @.@ Different tastes, I guess...

Different tastes, indeed. To my knowledge the general consensus is that the FFXIV soundtrack is at least on par if not better than previous Final Fantasy games, though if you're just not a fan of Final Fantasy music in general then I can see how it would annoy you.

 

Well, since I'm curious, how do you feel about this track?

 

And since I'm posting music anyway, here's a reminder that PSO2 may never actually see a Western release in its lifetime:

[video=youtube]

Hey, it's a potential "future MMO", so it's relevant.

[Naunet]

Well, since I'm curious, how do you feel about this track?

 

PS theme is fine (as is the Lost City theme). I hate the combat music with every fibre of my being, though, and most of the zone and city music is just utterly bland to me. I also hate the primal themes with their ridiculous electric guitar... urgh. So much of FFXIV's music is overly treble-balanced or "noisy".

 

WildStar and ArcheAge are currently my favorite MMO soundtracks. ^^;

[Ignacius]

Well, since I'm curious, how do you feel about this track?

 

PS theme is fine (as is the Lost City theme). I hate the combat music with every fibre of my being, though, and most of the zone and city music is just utterly bland to me. I also hate the primal themes with their ridiculous electric guitar... urgh. So much of FFXIV's music is overly treble-balanced or "noisy".

 

WildStar and ArcheAge are currently my favorite MMO soundtracks. ^^;

Oh yeah?  How do you feel about.... THIS TRACK!

 

_no4p6hhyDo

[TheLastCandle]

Well, since I'm curious, how do you feel about this track?

 

PS theme is fine (as is the Lost City theme). I hate the combat music with every fibre of my being, though, and most of the zone and city music is just utterly bland to me. I also hate the primal themes with their ridiculous electric guitar... urgh. So much of FFXIV's music is overly treble-balanced or "noisy".

 

WildStar and ArcheAge are currently my favorite MMO soundtracks. ^^;

Oh yeah?  How do you feel about.... THIS TRACK!

 

_no4p6hhyDo

 

ALL OF MY YES.

 

And it is baffling to me that FFXIV's soundtrack, of all things, would get hate. o_O

[Ildur]

Pft! Best music for videogames is in Bstion.

 

I guess I'm a bit more impressed with the character creation than I thought I'd be.  With all the complaints about bodies and sliders, they've got a bunch for the face so you can get some customization there.  Honestly, I think they'll end up with body sliders eventually since they already have them in the less important face area.  I can't say I was completely disappointed, though.  Maybe it's because of how low everyone made my expectations.

 

The sliders actually don't do much. You can crank them all the way to the minimum or the maximum and some parts will barely move. And then you have only one slider for the mouth, mouth size, that also changes the size of your jaw along with it.

And once you consider that most faces are pretty unique looking (it's not so noticeable on humans and aurin, but on everyone else it kind of is), you end up with a lot of very easily recognizable clones with slightly different features. And maybe wider noses.

 

And yes, the game is terribly optimized. I thought they'd optimize before open beta, but apparently they want the first impressions of the game to be "This game is not very well optimized".

 

Housing in Wildstar is pretty neat. You get a FREE plot of land at level 14, and then you can dump money on it to personalize it. Each plot has a designated area for the house proper and then a bunch of 'slots' where you can place other, non-housy things. Like a garden, or a mine, or a crashed meteorite because it's cool. I think building the smallest house costs like 1 gold (which isn't much) while the biggest costs 3 platinum (and you need level 30ish or something). But most of the expenses come from furnishing the place and filling the slots. You can get furniture via quest rewards, random drops, buying them directly from your house, other players or one of the crafting professions (architecture).

You can place things pretty much wherever you want, even floating in the air. Though the UI for moving furniture is pretty bad and fills your screen with a big window (the 'crate' where all your furniture is stored at) that you can't hide nor close because that spits you out of the edit mode.

Overall it's pretty neat, but it's a huge gold sink. I don't think you can furnish it like you want until you are at least at cap. Unless you don't mind going bankrupt.

 

One thing that bother me a lot in Wildstar is...actually, there's two things: repair bills, which seem way too expensive, specially if you run dungeons a lot for gear; and mobs with instant knockdowns/stuns. Though the last one has been tweaked greatly by making those mobs weaker...or at least the ones that used to wreck me over and over again.

[Naunet]

Oh yeah?  How do you feel about.... THIS TRACK!

 

Meh, not really feeling it.

 

This on the other hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB8YqPjckIY

 

And pretty much all of this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vqi1EuaiSo&list=PLB4C108EB21B891B3

[Ignacius]

Pft! Best music for videogames is in Bstion.

 

I guess I'm a bit more impressed with the character creation than I thought I'd be.  With all the complaints about bodies and sliders, they've got a bunch for the face so you can get some customization there.  Honestly, I think they'll end up with body sliders eventually since they already have them in the less important face area.  I can't say I was completely disappointed, though.  Maybe it's because of how low everyone made my expectations.

 

The sliders actually don't do much. You can crank them all the way to the minimum or the maximum and some parts will barely move. And then you have only one slider for the mouth, mouth size, that also changes the size of your jaw along with it.

And once you consider that most faces are pretty unique looking (it's not so noticeable on humans and aurin, but on everyone else it kind of is), you end up with a lot of very easily recognizable clones with slightly different features. And maybe wider noses.

 

And yes, the game is terribly optimized. I thought they'd optimize before open beta, but apparently they want the first impressions of the game to be "This game is not very well optimized".

 

Housing in Wildstar is pretty neat. You get a FREE plot of land at level 14, and then you can dump money on it to personalize it. Each plot has a designated area for the house proper and then a bunch of 'slots' where you can place other, non-housy things. Like a garden, or a mine, or a crashed meteorite because it's cool. I think building the smallest house costs like 1 gold (which isn't much) while the biggest costs 3 platinum (and you need level 30ish or something). But most of the expenses come from furnishing the place and filling the slots. You can get furniture via quest rewards, random drops, buying them directly from your house, other players or one of the crafting professions (architecture).

You can place things pretty much wherever you want, even floating in the air. Though the UI for moving furniture is pretty bad and fills your screen with a big window (the 'crate' where all your furniture is stored at) that you can't hide nor close because that spits you out of the edit mode.

Overall it's pretty neat, but it's a huge gold sink. I don't think you can furnish it like you want until you are at least at cap. Unless you don't mind going bankrupt.

 

One thing that bother me a lot in Wildstar is...actually, there's two things: repair bills, which seem way too expensive, specially if you run dungeons a lot for gear; and mobs with instant knockdowns/stuns. Though the last one has been tweaked greatly by making those mobs weaker...or at least the ones that used to wreck me over and over again.

Really?  I thought the sliders did too much.  Hell, the chin length slider on humans can turn you into Natasha Fatale.  So it's definitely more than I was expecting.  In fact, I thought it was a bit much.  Eye spacing slider is a little rich; I really don't need to turn my character into a chameleon.  One thing I am disappointed about is the color palette choice.  Of all the things, that and body sliders would be my complaints.  I wanted to have neon colored hair (my reasons are my own).  I can't knock the game's customization that much, though.  Considering people made it sound like it had WoW-level character customization, I was pleasantly surprised.  It's not the best I've ever seen, but it's definitely more than adequate, especially given their art direction.

 

I'm also wondering about faulting their optimization; I use a custom rig.  Still, you'd think things would be working a little smoother by this point.  But who knows?  Maybe open beta is when they decided to start measuring hardware rates so they knew how short to draw the distance.  Since money's too tight to afford a new video card to go with the rest of my computer, I guess I'll have to hope they optimize really well.  Crossfiring a pair of new cards in my rig would set me back a pretty decent chunk of change.

 

Housing sounds good.  Nice to have something to sink money into that doesn't cost a lot to get off the ground.  We'll see how it turns out.  I'm getting close to 14 on my warrior.  Any word on whether you can invite people into your house or if it's FFXI level (just for you)?

 

I haven't noticed a repair bill problem; I'm not hard up for money yet.  I haven't run across a lot of instant stuns or knockbacks yet, though I can't imagine knockbacks would be too much of an issue considering the pace of the game.  PVP might make that a different beast, but I've had a lot of fun rolling around in PVE making sure the peoples are in the blue cones and that I'm not in the red cones.  Then again, we'll see what the later game brings.  Stacking interrupts sounds like hell.

[Ignacius]

Oh yeah?  How do you feel about.... THIS TRACK!

 

Meh, not really feeling it.

 

This on the other hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB8YqPjckIY

 

And pretty much all of this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vqi1EuaiSo&list=PLB4C108EB21B891B3

I guess tastes differ.  Your fantasy music isn't like my fantasy music.  This is what gets my blood going for a fantasy game!  ArcheAge music makes me sleepy.

 

0L_iOnLNt9M

[Zyrusticae]

Music is just one of those things that's ridiculously subject to taste, like most kinds of art. Just like how some folks can't stand anything even remotely influenced by traditional Japanese animation while others (like myself) are actively repulsed by a lot of traditional American animation.

 

Speaking of music, listening to more of Wildstar's stuff, it's actually kind of weird how incongruous it is with the game's more comedic tone. I mean, if you listen to the track that plays at 9:24:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyW1oABtnew#t=564

 

It really sounds like it belongs to an entirely different game. Very odd. Cool, but odd. Hmmm.

[Clover]

Forget about Black Desert and any other upcoming game. You want something truly different? Don't miss AZERA.

 

 

(This video is a must watch).

qcuNBwJ0NvY

[Ignacius]

Music is just one of those things that's ridiculously subject to taste, like most kinds of art. Just like how some folks can't stand anything even remotely influenced by traditional Japanese animation while others (like myself) are actively repulsed by a lot of traditional American animation.

 

Speaking of music, listening to more of Wildstar's stuff, it's actually kind of weird how incongruous it is with the game's more comedic tone. I mean, if you listen to the track that plays at 9:24:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyW1oABtnew#t=564

 

It really sounds like it belongs to an entirely different game. Very odd. Cool, but odd. Hmmm.

 

I think, to be fair, the game isn't really a comedy.  It's an action game that doesn't take itself too seriously.  I'd almost describe the tone as very much like one of the older PS1 or N64 3d platformers from back in the day, or an early afternoon cartoon from the heyday of Cartoon Network.  Or maybe one of those action movies in the 80s or 90s.  It's not a comedic story or a parody; playing the exiles story...

 

 

The main questgiver in the first few areas, Deadeye Brightland, has a pregnant wife you help save.  The appears to have died in an explosion (although we never see the body, so maybe she'll show up later).  It's played straighforward.

 

 

 

Things like that give the game an overall serious tone.  It's just that it isn't quite so serious as most games, so the story as I've understood it is played a lot like an action movie.  Serious things happen, but people can still drop one-liners and there are moments of comic effect that take the piss out of itself.  If there's one thing that really attracts me to the game, it's that tone.  I was kind of worried that there'd be a lot of zany comic action.  Instead, I'm literally exploding things with a sword sometimes.

 

Which is HILARIOUS, but not necessarily comedy.