Dontain tossed up a video today showing off some data mined features from the Wildstar beta client. The class selection shows off 9 possible classes in the game, but I'm not sure about some of them personally. One of the options is for an Elementalist, which doesn't seem to fit the game theme at all with that name at least. At any rate, I'm hoping for a lot more classes than currently announced and plan to be announced according to the official site. One of my pet peeves is a small selection of distinctive classes.
I also like how he points out and gets excited about a "last online" option, which was desperately missing from GW2. I smiled a little knowing how simple a feature this is yet how important it can be for any guild leader trying to maintain an active roster. It becomes invaluable when it's time to purge your roster of inactives so you can begin recruiting.
The option that caught my eye was a costume selection on the character sheet. Here's hoping it's an appearance tab and not some useless town clothes or out of combat clothes option that GW2 had. I firmly believe players would rather have armor skins options that they can wear in combat. I know i would. I'll spend ridiculous amounts of time going for armor skins of any kind as long as i can where them when and where i like.
I was on a serious nostalgia trip the past week, much like i always am, and it got me thinking back to camping this little bastard. So many sleepless nights lost and so many days of being a complete zombie at work because of a silly little crab. King Arthro was one of, if not the, most camped world spawns in FFXI.
Due to the game mechanics, haste was the most important stat of any min/maxer. This little crab dropped, at the time, the highest valued haste item in the game called a Speed Belt. Not only did this belt have the highest haste value on any item but it was mid level and on a freaking belt! The alternatives to this item were poor to say the least so everyone and their mother was after it.
10 Knight Crabs would pop between 21 hours 5 minutes and 24 hours 5 minutes after King Arthro was last defeated. After all 10 of these Knight Crabs are defeated, King Arthro would spawn 5-10 seconds later. The fight itself was a joke but the waiting around for 3 hours and having to compete for claims with hundreds of other players and claiming bots made this difficult.
No belt this time but i eventually got one
This was the only decent video i could find showing off the entire fight. I'm assuming this was after something better was introduced because I've never seen King Arthro unclaimed for so long.
The spawn conditions, drop rate (about 7%), and competition (about 1 claim per week if lucky) contributed to not only much drama but also much excitement if you were lucky enough to get a chance at even fighting this crab. As annoying as it's circumstances were, i miss having really rare items dropping off mobs in the open world.
Take 2, Square Enix. Despite my total disappointment with 1.0, which i considered the worst MMO I'd ever played, I plan on giving ARR a solid chance to redeem the franchise for me. So far, I've seen lots of positives from beta footage to feedback from friends in the beta itself. It appears as if SE has finally caught up to MMO's of a few years ago. While that's a good start, it also means they're a few years behind their competitors.
What am i saying! FF fans are a different breed. They don't care about other MMO's and will stick with almost any junk tossed at them wrapped within a shiny moogle package. This of course is a huge problem and one that will only stagnate the attempted resurrection if the player base allows it. I used to be one of these people until i smacked myself back to reality so lets hope the zealots can get a grip with reality.
This isn't about my opinion of course, since i haven't had a chance to test the game since 1.0 beta, so lets get back to the announcement! Since I've never been one that was interested in all the extra bells and whistles with CE's, the price for the SE is fantastic.
This is a hot topic, top level, DEFCON 1 issue for me when it comes to MMO's. The most recent FFXIV blog post got me thinking more into why character customization is usually so overlooked in the grand scheme of all that is MMO development. Is it a time and resource issue or do devs actually think it's not that important a feature to focus on?
Well I'm here to tell you that it's damn well important. It ranks right up there with content and combat in my opinion. I suppose out of the 3, it's the least important, but it's still important enough for me to base whether or not I'll even try an MMO. I mean who wants to look like everyone else once you enter the game for the first time and see yourself surrounded by dozens of clones? It definitely does a number on my immersion.
I'm happy to see FFXIV 2.0 take a step in the right direction when it comes to it's characters. I mean it couldn't be any worse than the limited options the 1.0 abomination had going. It's still to be determined if it's enough for my tastes until i get my hands on it but it's looking good so far.
GW2 did a pretty good job with it's character creator. The amount of options was a vast improvement over Rift, which was the previous MMO i played. I still would like to see more options when it comes to hair though. More while remaining tasteful and within it's own art style is all i can ask for.
Human Female Height
Human Male Height
Human Female Physique
Human Male Physique
Human Female Hair
Human Female Faces
Human Male Hair
Human Male Faces
I always thought Aion had the best overall character creator and I've always said anything short of it is a step backwards. It's been 4 years since it's release and yet we keep getting fewer and fewer options when it comes to customization. Just look at the amount of different hair styles for both sexes. I will admit there are some extreme options i wouldn't mind eliminating when it comes to proportions, but i think we should be building and adding to everything it has to offer. Let's get it done folks. Allow me to make a character that looks like no one else. Give me the tools to let my imagination roam free.
I can't say I'm surprised that it's happening but i am shocked it took this long. I was sure Rift would be heading down this path prior to GW2's launch, which never happened. This announcement strikes me as a bit odd at the timing though. Perhaps they've reached do or die status or perhaps it's just time.
I am happy that Trion isn't gating any actual content behind a cash shop, other than the Storm Legion souls and the normal inventory space that every game does. This will absolutely help in getting more players trying and possibly engaging in Rift down the line. This, however, doesn't solve the problem that i felt Rift had when i stopped playing.
The game was a ton of fun and what really set it apart was the soul class system. It was the closest thing to FFXI, which i always said had the best class system ever in any MMO. The ability to swap to whatever your group or raid needs on a whim is amazing flexibility. I loved swapping between a tank or dps or even a bard on my rogue. It made grouping so much easier.
The problem with the game was it's extreme focus on the "raid or die" mentality. I recall as if it were yesterday what Hammerknell did to the player-base. Personally, i loved the difficulty and the focus on only the best groups being able to complete certain bosses. Unfortunately this new raid eventually broke and destroyed 50% of the raiding guilds listed on the now defunct raiding progress website that the players created. The only way to recruit players to your guild was from dead or dying guilds. This is just unhealthy for the future of your game.
There was a pretty good post on the official forums at the time outlining this and the path the game was headed down. How there would only be 1 or maybe 2 guilds per server that would even be able to fill or compete in the raiding game. I also recall how this post was looked down upon by the players, to which some even stated how consolidation of raiders was a good thing. My mind was blown how short sighted some people can actually be.
Now, i haven't been involved in the game for about a year now so maybe things have changed. Hell, the fact that there's housing now is a huge step forward into giving players more to do other than raid. I can only hope that the news of FTP helps Trion build a player-base back to what it once was, but it's up to them to provide more options for players to participate in.
It's no secret how much i absolutely love housing in my MMO's. It's a game feature that can not only add hours upon hours of replayability but can also drive an economy. This is one of the main features often overlooked or tossed aside as simply "fluff" in today's MMO's. This is a huge mistake and one i think game devs are starting to realize.
Rift realized this and eventually implemented dimensions not too long ago. GW2, on the other hand, missed a golden opportunity to launch with housing in place. They had the perfect platform for it as well. Our personal story area would have been the perfect location to include housing, farming, or even some sort of horse or mount breeding. I'm more than positive that this is coming in some form or another, perhaps in the first expansion which should be sometime around the corner.
This is also why I'm so excited about Wildstar and the possibilities it seems to be bringing to housing. A new MMO, launching with housing from the start? What world are we living in?! It's obviously still early and we really don't have any idea of the overall scope of their housing, but it's nice to see another studio taking this feature seriously.
My first experience with housing was FFXI. Everyone had an instanced room that we could not only decorate but also served as a storage hub and a crafting location. I spent hours upon hours just moving furniture around, though my options were limited items wise. Doing more with less isn't always possible.
My mog house in FFXI
EQ2, on the other hand, is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to it's housing. The sheer amount of options and possibilities is mind boggling. Just by the amount of items in the game, which exceeds thousands on the auction house, you're only limited by your creativity. EQ2 has by far the best instanced housing system I've ever seen and it's not even close. I'm talking about actual books that are player made, and lots of them. I can only hope that another studio takes this and somehow expands on it.
Here's my standard Neriak 7 room house. It's nothing special since i haven't been playing that long but i have managed to acquire some nice quest items such as pets that wander around. Good thing i don't have to clean up after them! Although my little whirly-gig likes to fly around and shoot some of them. My recreation of Stonehenge on my balcony would have made Nigel Tufnel proud.
Prestige housing is in another league way above my capabilities currently, but they show what's possible. Housing leaderboards allow anyone to visit and walk around others players creations. I ran across one that i was blown away by called Avi's Iceshard Keep. Amazing if you ask me.
Hopefully we see more and more studios not only embrace housing in the future, but take it to the next level. Give us something we're totally blown away with. Give us creation and building tools. Give us more non-combat options to entertain ourselves. More options are always better when it comes to MMO's.
One of the aspects of Neverwinter that i surprisingly enjoy is the short solo instances. They're essentially all the same with a bunch of rooms with trash packs to defeat of your way to a story related boss. Despite that fact, i enjoy them a lot more than the normal run of the mill fetch quests. At some point i hope all MMO's get away from those blasted kill quests.
At the same time, I'm not a fan of the over-instancing of so much content in an MMO. I get that Old Republic feeling again, which isn't good overall. Destroying any sense of grandness by splitting up the playerbase into small chunks is just bad. It works though for this game simply because i looked at it as a dungeon crawler first with co-op thrown in. As an MMO, it's not really my cup of tea.
Open beta, which is essentially a soft launch of sorts, is upon us. While I'm still not sure i even enjoy the game, i thought I'd get a head start in leveling in hopes to avoid the crowd. Oh how i underestimated players willingness to jump all over anything new. After a 2 hour queue, which should have been expected honestly, i jumped in and got going.
Simply by accident, i swear, i managed to create a rogue that has an uncanny resemblance to a 40-year old Cloud mixed with a little bit of Wolverine. I know it sounds silly, but tell me he doesn't!
A quick glimpse into the starter area from a trickster rogue point of view. Let's see just how terrible i am!
The process to create a guild is rather annoying with it's requirements. I'd have preferred a simpler solution to get players together faster and going on their merry ways. The absolute worst aspect of the game by far is it's lack of any mentoring or level sync option. You'd think a game based on dungeon crawling would make this feature a top priority considering it's already there in a form of mob scaling inside foundry quests. Very disappointed so far.