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Wildstar Weekend Beta is over
11 years ago
General
So yeah, I had some time with Wildstar this weekend and last and I got a bit more experience with the title.
Here's some more stuff I liked:
The Crafting System
The way Wildstar does this is really neat. You don't learn specific recipes like in other MMOs. Rather you learn a base one and can modify it during crafting.
Here's how it works in a nutshell.
Nelen the Spellslinger is a weaponsmith. Spellslingers are heavy damage dealers who use three major stats for their gear:
Finesse, a measure of how accurate attacks are (and for Spellslingers it directly affects weapon damage).
Moxie, the ability to aim for vitals in a fight and hit them accurately (read: critical hit chance).
Brutality, simply put it's brute force. For spellslingers this is how likely their shots and spells are to penitrate armor and other defenses.
Now, Finesse is the big one for Spellslingers. They need to be able to shoot accurately and rapidly in a heated fight.
Nelen wants to make a gun. He's got all the materials and is at a crafting table. Rather than just going through a list, picking the pattern that has Finesse as it's heavy stat, and hitting go for me to sit back and watch a bar fill until its done however, crafting is much more hands on.
When you go into it the crafting grid shows a circuit board, and you need to choose two things:
1. A power core to act as the base of a weapon, which determines how powerful it can be.
2. Chips, which determine what stats you can give it.
Chip slots are color coded Red, Green, and Blue.
Red Slots are for the three main offensive stats I listed above. Finesse, Brutality, and Moxie.
Green slots are for Insight, which determines how likely a character is to read the nuances of an enemy's attacks and dodge or block them (basically defense rating), and Grit, which is how thick skinned a character is and how long they can soak up punishment before dropping (Max HP).
Blue slots are for Tech, which is kind of a weird stat. Tech determines how powerful support abilities are (basically how good one is at TECHnical things). Its a main stat for Medics, but not for any other class. Tanks use it for attacks that generate threat though... but I digress.
Early recipies go like this:
You get one slot on top for the power core and one or two slots for chips (some plans have slots already locked with a specific chipset). You first give it a power core. The more powerful the core the more energy you can have going through a weapon to power the chips.
Then you put in the chips. Slot them in for the stats you want, then start setting how much power goes to them from the core. As you do a bar at the bottom will fill to show how much stress is being put on the core. Once it fills you've used the core to it's maximum... however, you CAN go past this if you want to risk it.
Lets say I can put ten Finesse on a gun without going over, but my current gun gives me twelve. I COULD put more in, but for every bit further I push it the power core has a chance of overloading when I close up the gun and turn it on. If I push it too far the power core will overload and the gun gets wrecked before it ever fires a shot, turning it into a worthless pile of scrap (and consuming all the parts I used to make it).
If you're lucky you can overclock a weapon, but its a gamble and with rarer materials its often not worth it.
Another profession I got to try was one of the 'hobbies' they had, namely cooking. This one is a lot different too.
When you start it up you pick a recipe that uses a specific type of foodstuffs (meat, veggies, fruits, or even weird things like bug bits) and it shows a crafting grid in a circular shape like a compass.
At the four compass points are four types of flavors. Sweet, Spicy, Sour, and Savory. While you can just make normal foodstuffs, you can experiment with spices and other additives to make better and tastier recipes that give you buffs!
Here's an example.
One of the first recipes you learn is Tough Jerky, which is just what it sounds like. Tough, chewy, but hell it's edible.
However, in the crafting grid you'll see that the area between Savory and Spicy is lit up. What this means is that you can use ingredients to tweak the flavor. I added a bit of this and a bit of that and lo and behold I made Spicy Jerky, which gives me a buff to insight for half an hour if I chow down on it.
You have to experiment with spices to do this, get it too far and it'll just come out plain as always, but once you find the sweet spot (or spicy, or whatever), that part will be revealed. Next time you cook it'll tell you what ingredients to use and then remaking the food is a snap.
How it works is that each ingredient adds a little targeting marker somewhere within the glowy area. Get it juuuuuuuuust right and it'll come out the way you want it. Get it too much one way or the other and it'll hint at what you did wrong (it'll say more spicy or less sweet or so on) and it'll tell you how close you were. It takes some work, but it's quite satisfying to make Tangy Bug Bites, even if I wind up selling them to a vendor because... bug bites, seriously.
Lastly, for the main professions (not cooking) you don't buy new plans for gear. You can get specific rare ones by earning points doing crafting missions, but otherwise you get a tech tree that lets you learn new schematics simply by making the ones you already know. Make enough pistols and your character learns enough to make an improved model, get good enough with novice-level schematics and a whole tier of apprentice ones are unlocked.
Cooks however still have to buy cookbooks. Oh well...
The Mounts
I haven't gotten a chance to try them yet... but I did poke around the Wiki and I liked what I saw VERY much.
At level 25 you can get a hoverboard, which in itself is friggin awesome. It goes across water, lets you double jump even while mounted (oh yeah, you can double jump in this game and there's lots of platforming elements in it), and its a freaking hoverboard!
There's four other mounts for each faction, but here's the neat part... you can CUSTOMIZE these mounts! Give 'em a flag on the back, a floating holo-globe for a GPS device, or whatever else you can find. Here's an example: http://wildstar.mmorpg-life.com/gui.....zation_window/
The Taxi Service
Nothing specific, but I laughed the first time I tried it.
Lots of MMOs have a taxi service. WoW and it's gryphons/wind riders, Rift and it's portal service, etc... Wildstar has taxis. As in actual hover-taxis with a holographic driver who plays elevator music and makes bad jokes the entire ride.
I just found it funny, and it really fits the theme of the game.
Crafting Resource Gathering
Sounds silly huh? Well, Wildstar managed to find a way to put a new spin on some of it.
I can't speak for the others as Nelen was the only one I got high enough to start making things, but here's how it goes for Miners.
Nelen is a miner. He uses a laser-pickaxe to harvest ore, crystals, and other minerals from around the planet Nexus to be made into guns and other weapons. It's pretty similar to how other MMOs do it. Find node -> Right click node -> gather ore when the node spits it out like a pinata.
That's where it ends though. A couple times I was digging out some ore when the vein suddenly hopped up and tried to run away! It was some kind of alien bug with an ore vein on it's back! I had to chase it down and keep zapping it with the laser pickaxe to get the ore off it.
Another time I dug up some ore only to have a gigantic worm covered with iron ore burst out of the ground infront of me! After I got done wiping the poop out of my pants I pulled out my pistols and gave him a high-caliber hello between the eyes... He dropped a bit more ore when he died, but thats when I noticed that the hole he burst out of was still there... I shrugged and hopped in to find myself in the worm's tunnel with more iron ore veins than I'd seen in the entire map! However, I also saw a timer counting down from two minutes. Basically it was a run and grab all you can before you get spit out (I'd assume the worm tunnel collapses after two minutes). Nice little bonus stage.
Path-specific bonuses
Nelen is a Scientist (the other choices being Soldier, Explorer, and Settler). He's got a little science probe-bot I named T0RB3RA (after Lunar's dwarf because I couldn't make Lunar sound more tech-y). During quests and such I'll notice some objects, characters, and such with a blue Science symbol floating near them that my bot can scan. Usually this gives me little bits of lore and such, but there's two specific benefits I've found otherwise.
1. Your path levels up. Each level gives you new bonuses (gear, inventory extenders, etc)... but you can learn three path specific abilities as a character that you can use to great effect in a variety of situations.
The scientist ones are:
- Holographic Decoy: Basically I summon a little hologram of myself that taunts (literally, he points and laughs) enemies into attacking it while I sneak up behind to give 'em two in the head.
- Group summon: Basically I can make a little device that summons group members right to me. Doubt I'll use that one a whole lot...
- City Portal: Out of combat I can make a portal right back to my faction's capital city! Super-useful for getting around after a ore run out of town.
There's others too. I know Explorers learn a trick that lets them stop in mid-fall, but I can't think of the others offhand.
Also, different paths can use different things they find around Nexus to help them out in different ways.
Nelen, being a scientist, can have his scanbot scan things that cause different effects. For example:
- In the Northern Wilds I found a peculiar crystal formation that got dubbed Regenium. When scanned it releases a radiation that accelerates healing.
- I came across some fuel tanks that, when scanned, explode violently. Good to keep in mind if I can lure enemies near them before sending in the bot to set them off.
- On another character I toyed with for a bit I found deactivated security droids. My own scanbot was able to hack their CPU, causing them to go rogue and attack their allies.
Killing Chua
Seriously, fuck those things. They'd make Gallywix nervous... or aroused. Not sure which is worse.
But yeah, I preordered and come the end of May I probably won't be uploading art for a while... possibly sooner than that as I heard that Open Beta will start up midway through the month. ^_^;;;
Here's some more stuff I liked:
The Crafting System
The way Wildstar does this is really neat. You don't learn specific recipes like in other MMOs. Rather you learn a base one and can modify it during crafting.
Here's how it works in a nutshell.
Nelen the Spellslinger is a weaponsmith. Spellslingers are heavy damage dealers who use three major stats for their gear:
Finesse, a measure of how accurate attacks are (and for Spellslingers it directly affects weapon damage).
Moxie, the ability to aim for vitals in a fight and hit them accurately (read: critical hit chance).
Brutality, simply put it's brute force. For spellslingers this is how likely their shots and spells are to penitrate armor and other defenses.
Now, Finesse is the big one for Spellslingers. They need to be able to shoot accurately and rapidly in a heated fight.
Nelen wants to make a gun. He's got all the materials and is at a crafting table. Rather than just going through a list, picking the pattern that has Finesse as it's heavy stat, and hitting go for me to sit back and watch a bar fill until its done however, crafting is much more hands on.
When you go into it the crafting grid shows a circuit board, and you need to choose two things:
1. A power core to act as the base of a weapon, which determines how powerful it can be.
2. Chips, which determine what stats you can give it.
Chip slots are color coded Red, Green, and Blue.
Red Slots are for the three main offensive stats I listed above. Finesse, Brutality, and Moxie.
Green slots are for Insight, which determines how likely a character is to read the nuances of an enemy's attacks and dodge or block them (basically defense rating), and Grit, which is how thick skinned a character is and how long they can soak up punishment before dropping (Max HP).
Blue slots are for Tech, which is kind of a weird stat. Tech determines how powerful support abilities are (basically how good one is at TECHnical things). Its a main stat for Medics, but not for any other class. Tanks use it for attacks that generate threat though... but I digress.
Early recipies go like this:
You get one slot on top for the power core and one or two slots for chips (some plans have slots already locked with a specific chipset). You first give it a power core. The more powerful the core the more energy you can have going through a weapon to power the chips.
Then you put in the chips. Slot them in for the stats you want, then start setting how much power goes to them from the core. As you do a bar at the bottom will fill to show how much stress is being put on the core. Once it fills you've used the core to it's maximum... however, you CAN go past this if you want to risk it.
Lets say I can put ten Finesse on a gun without going over, but my current gun gives me twelve. I COULD put more in, but for every bit further I push it the power core has a chance of overloading when I close up the gun and turn it on. If I push it too far the power core will overload and the gun gets wrecked before it ever fires a shot, turning it into a worthless pile of scrap (and consuming all the parts I used to make it).
If you're lucky you can overclock a weapon, but its a gamble and with rarer materials its often not worth it.
Another profession I got to try was one of the 'hobbies' they had, namely cooking. This one is a lot different too.
When you start it up you pick a recipe that uses a specific type of foodstuffs (meat, veggies, fruits, or even weird things like bug bits) and it shows a crafting grid in a circular shape like a compass.
At the four compass points are four types of flavors. Sweet, Spicy, Sour, and Savory. While you can just make normal foodstuffs, you can experiment with spices and other additives to make better and tastier recipes that give you buffs!
Here's an example.
One of the first recipes you learn is Tough Jerky, which is just what it sounds like. Tough, chewy, but hell it's edible.
However, in the crafting grid you'll see that the area between Savory and Spicy is lit up. What this means is that you can use ingredients to tweak the flavor. I added a bit of this and a bit of that and lo and behold I made Spicy Jerky, which gives me a buff to insight for half an hour if I chow down on it.
You have to experiment with spices to do this, get it too far and it'll just come out plain as always, but once you find the sweet spot (or spicy, or whatever), that part will be revealed. Next time you cook it'll tell you what ingredients to use and then remaking the food is a snap.
How it works is that each ingredient adds a little targeting marker somewhere within the glowy area. Get it juuuuuuuuust right and it'll come out the way you want it. Get it too much one way or the other and it'll hint at what you did wrong (it'll say more spicy or less sweet or so on) and it'll tell you how close you were. It takes some work, but it's quite satisfying to make Tangy Bug Bites, even if I wind up selling them to a vendor because... bug bites, seriously.
Lastly, for the main professions (not cooking) you don't buy new plans for gear. You can get specific rare ones by earning points doing crafting missions, but otherwise you get a tech tree that lets you learn new schematics simply by making the ones you already know. Make enough pistols and your character learns enough to make an improved model, get good enough with novice-level schematics and a whole tier of apprentice ones are unlocked.
Cooks however still have to buy cookbooks. Oh well...
The Mounts
I haven't gotten a chance to try them yet... but I did poke around the Wiki and I liked what I saw VERY much.
At level 25 you can get a hoverboard, which in itself is friggin awesome. It goes across water, lets you double jump even while mounted (oh yeah, you can double jump in this game and there's lots of platforming elements in it), and its a freaking hoverboard!
There's four other mounts for each faction, but here's the neat part... you can CUSTOMIZE these mounts! Give 'em a flag on the back, a floating holo-globe for a GPS device, or whatever else you can find. Here's an example: http://wildstar.mmorpg-life.com/gui.....zation_window/
The Taxi Service
Nothing specific, but I laughed the first time I tried it.
Lots of MMOs have a taxi service. WoW and it's gryphons/wind riders, Rift and it's portal service, etc... Wildstar has taxis. As in actual hover-taxis with a holographic driver who plays elevator music and makes bad jokes the entire ride.
I just found it funny, and it really fits the theme of the game.
Crafting Resource Gathering
Sounds silly huh? Well, Wildstar managed to find a way to put a new spin on some of it.
I can't speak for the others as Nelen was the only one I got high enough to start making things, but here's how it goes for Miners.
Nelen is a miner. He uses a laser-pickaxe to harvest ore, crystals, and other minerals from around the planet Nexus to be made into guns and other weapons. It's pretty similar to how other MMOs do it. Find node -> Right click node -> gather ore when the node spits it out like a pinata.
That's where it ends though. A couple times I was digging out some ore when the vein suddenly hopped up and tried to run away! It was some kind of alien bug with an ore vein on it's back! I had to chase it down and keep zapping it with the laser pickaxe to get the ore off it.
Another time I dug up some ore only to have a gigantic worm covered with iron ore burst out of the ground infront of me! After I got done wiping the poop out of my pants I pulled out my pistols and gave him a high-caliber hello between the eyes... He dropped a bit more ore when he died, but thats when I noticed that the hole he burst out of was still there... I shrugged and hopped in to find myself in the worm's tunnel with more iron ore veins than I'd seen in the entire map! However, I also saw a timer counting down from two minutes. Basically it was a run and grab all you can before you get spit out (I'd assume the worm tunnel collapses after two minutes). Nice little bonus stage.
Path-specific bonuses
Nelen is a Scientist (the other choices being Soldier, Explorer, and Settler). He's got a little science probe-bot I named T0RB3RA (after Lunar's dwarf because I couldn't make Lunar sound more tech-y). During quests and such I'll notice some objects, characters, and such with a blue Science symbol floating near them that my bot can scan. Usually this gives me little bits of lore and such, but there's two specific benefits I've found otherwise.
1. Your path levels up. Each level gives you new bonuses (gear, inventory extenders, etc)... but you can learn three path specific abilities as a character that you can use to great effect in a variety of situations.
The scientist ones are:
- Holographic Decoy: Basically I summon a little hologram of myself that taunts (literally, he points and laughs) enemies into attacking it while I sneak up behind to give 'em two in the head.
- Group summon: Basically I can make a little device that summons group members right to me. Doubt I'll use that one a whole lot...
- City Portal: Out of combat I can make a portal right back to my faction's capital city! Super-useful for getting around after a ore run out of town.
There's others too. I know Explorers learn a trick that lets them stop in mid-fall, but I can't think of the others offhand.
Also, different paths can use different things they find around Nexus to help them out in different ways.
Nelen, being a scientist, can have his scanbot scan things that cause different effects. For example:
- In the Northern Wilds I found a peculiar crystal formation that got dubbed Regenium. When scanned it releases a radiation that accelerates healing.
- I came across some fuel tanks that, when scanned, explode violently. Good to keep in mind if I can lure enemies near them before sending in the bot to set them off.
- On another character I toyed with for a bit I found deactivated security droids. My own scanbot was able to hack their CPU, causing them to go rogue and attack their allies.
Killing Chua
Seriously, fuck those things. They'd make Gallywix nervous... or aroused. Not sure which is worse.
But yeah, I preordered and come the end of May I probably won't be uploading art for a while... possibly sooner than that as I heard that Open Beta will start up midway through the month. ^_^;;;
