Hot dog! This past week’s stress test of the new fall patch for WildStar (it doesn’t have a name yet, and Carbine is getting away from the “drop” moniker) got me all worked up over the many shinies coming our way. There’s so much here that I would think that everyone would be pleased at least with something, although you never know.
From what we’re seeing so far, Carbine’s trying to get the game in as good a shape as possible to make the best first (and returning) impressions when the crowd streams in for free-to-play. So it’s a lot of everything scattered all over WildStar’s surface, from attunements to relics. But for me? There are four areas of the patch that stand out above the rest. Let’s take a look.
1. The store (and omnibits)
I probably should hand in my gamer cred (not C.R.E.D.D.) card with this one, but y’know what? I am kind of jazzed to see what the store will have to offer and how it could help the game. I know there’s a lot of fear and trepidation about this because there always is with free-to-play. Players are concerned that the cash shop will offer unfair advantages for cash, suck up the best content and put it behind a pay wall, or be too bloody expensive.
It’s hard to tell which side of the line WildStar will fall on, but after watching through the video and seeing what’s on display right now, I don’t see any huge red flags. I’m not thrilled with lockboxes and fortune telling coins, I can tell you that, but you know what is pretty cool? That everything in there is purchasable with either NCoins (cash) or omnibits (in-game currency).
That’s an approach that Trove takes with its store, and I absolutely love it. It’s very friendly to the free-to-play crowd and removes a lot of the sting of having desirable items in the shop. From my perspective, it turns the store into another in-game vendor, albeit one with harder-to-obtain currency.
As for the offerings, it’s pretty much what I expected, with lots of customization options, consumables, and F2P unlocks. Since I’ll be ditching my subscription in the fall, getting to know the store and what I’ll be wanting to unlock for good will be quite important.
2. Housing improvements
Housing continues to be one of WildStar’s crowning jewels, and the patch looks to make a good thing even better. More decor? Check. More music? Check. More dwelling types? Check. More sky and ground options? Check. Guards? I don’t know why we need them, but check. Double the housing plot size? Check.
One of my biggest requests since launch was to be able to expand our housing island to allow more than six FABkit plugs. That’s why I’m twirling around in my chair, laughing in exaltation. And we haven’t even seen yet how housing neighborhoods will function, what with five linked plots and a shared common space. The only thing I can tell you is that chances are I’ll be working on my house full-time when this patch lands for real.
3. Challenge reward track
As I talked about a few weeks ago, I’m actually pretty sweet on WildStar’s challenge system, particularly after some quality-of-life changes a while back. Well, the upcoming patch is looking to make even more changes to challenges, structuring them into a reward track similar to how contracts function.
So how it looks like now, you’ll start accruing points in a region for beating the various challenges around the zone. At certain point thresholds, you’ll unlock a tier of three rewards, out of which you can choose one. If you can push the meter all the way to the end, there is a super-awesome reward bag.
Like anyone, I’ve been occasionally frustrated by the challenge RNG in WildStar, especially when there’s that one specific reward that you want and a bunch you don’t. Then again, it’s never been so aggravating that I haven’t been willing to run challenges multiple times until I got the desired goodie.
I guess it’s good to remove the RNG from the process and encourage players to spread out and try to do as many challenges in a zone as possible. Personally, I’m only excited to see more rewards added, with the hope of logging in on patch day to find that my character has accrued a lot of them already.
4. Rapid transport
Yes, there’s a lot of other things I probably should be more excited about, but I can’t deny that rapid transport is going to make gaming in WildStar a lot more convenient. Basically, it allows you to pull up a map and select one of many waypoints to instantly teleport to all over the world in exchange for some money.
I’m all for this change because the transport system in WildStar is a bit haphazard as it stands. I mean, we’re in the future where we have teleportation technology… and yet we’re often reduced to riding taxi cabs (as entertaining as they are). Sometimes getting to a zone I wanted was more annoying than it should have been, and I know that rapid transport is going to make returning to former zones for various activities a lot more attractive an option.
So what’s got you hyped up on the patch after experiencing or reading up on the changes this week? Sound off in the comments!
