Wayfinder Gameplay Preview - Airship Syndicate's 'Love Letter to MMOs' Should Have you Hyped for May

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Wayfinder Gameplay Preview - Airship Syndicate's 'Love Letter to MMOs' Should Have you Hyped for May | MMORPG.com

Now that the closed beta test that Airship Syndicate held for Wayfinder over the past week has come to an end, it's time to talk about the experience. Come see the gameplay in action.

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Dattelis

Eh....at least the early access/beta/whatever they are calling you, you get to choose from 3 at the start and then have to grind for the others, so it might not be for everyone if the starting 3 are ones you dont like. It would be more friendly if they let you pick the one you want from the total and then grind for the rest.

ZenJelly

After reading through this article it feels like it's missing the "Sponsored" tag.

MaxBacon

Needs more work, feels too Indie in some aspects despite the good production quality around the game's visuals.

That is the gameplay is a bit too linear as it's falling back to a hub then you travel to places to do things then back to hub again. Then dungeons on top.

But to call it a love letter to the MMO genre is a hard sell, it doesn't have the scale or variety of content of MMOs like GW2, so you may want to expect something more linear like Warframe instead.

Rockinw311

No interest in giving their attempt at Wildstar 2 a go

Angrakhan

Character collector and MMO are kinda opposites. In an MMO you create one character and invest heavily into it for weeks/months/years for some, not switching around like Pokemon trying to collect them all. That being said it combat looks fun and the animations are good. I might try it out, I'm just not convinced there's much MMO to really see here. More like an expanded mobile game I'd typically find on my phone.

elveone

Angrakhan said:

Character collector and MMO are kinda opposites. In an MMO you create one character and invest heavily into it for weeks/months/years for some, not switching around like Pokemon trying to collect them all. That being said it combat looks fun and the animations are good. I might try it out, I'm just not convinced there's much MMO to really see here. More like an expanded mobile game I'd typically find on my phone.

It is horizontal progression, nothing is saying that MMOs should be focused only on vertical one.

samvenice

Dattelis said:

Eh....at least the early access/beta/whatever they are calling you, you get to choose from 3 at the start and then have to grind for the others, so it might not be for everyone if the starting 3 are ones you dont like. It would be more friendly if they let you pick the one you want from the total and then grind for the rest.

It's the same as Warframe (same publisher, different dev, very similar systems in terms of vertical/horizontal progression and customization) - start with 1 choice out of 3, like it or not, then unlock others overtime.
As Warframe formula has been quite successful over the past 9 years (even with arguably a few hits and misses with features/content added down the line), game has potential.

k61977

Think they are going the right route with using Warframe model. If you have the cash and want to just buy characters you can, but if you don't have the cash you can play and unlock them over time. Same with using cosmetics as a pay shop to keep the funding for the game.

About the only thing that I see that worries me is the matchmaking and finding people to do the harder stuff so you can level up. Other than that can't wait to give it a spin in May.

ZenJelly

elveone said:

Angrakhan said:

Character collector and MMO are kinda opposites. In an MMO you create one character and invest heavily into it for weeks/months/years for some, not switching around like Pokemon trying to collect them all. That being said it combat looks fun and the animations are good. I might try it out, I'm just not convinced there's much MMO to really see here. More like an expanded mobile game I'd typically find on my phone.

It is horizontal progression, nothing is saying that MMOs should be focused only on vertical one.

It's silly. The game can't fail fast enough.

Alverant

Rockinw311 said:

No interest in giving their attempt at Wildstar 2 a go

Glad to know I'm not the only one who got WildStar vibes from it.
(I really tried to like WildStar, but something about the combat just didn't click with me.)

elveone

ZenJelly said:

elveone said:

Angrakhan said:

Character collector and MMO are kinda opposites. In an MMO you create one character and invest heavily into it for weeks/months/years for some, not switching around like Pokemon trying to collect them all. That being said it combat looks fun and the animations are good. I might try it out, I'm just not convinced there's much MMO to really see here. More like an expanded mobile game I'd typically find on my phone.

It is horizontal progression, nothing is saying that MMOs should be focused only on vertical one.

It's silly. The game can't fail fast enough.

That doesn't really make much sense.

Alverant said:

Rockinw311 said:

No interest in giving their attempt at Wildstar 2 a go

Glad to know I'm not the only one who got WildStar vibes from it.

(I really tried to like WildStar, but something about the combat just didn't click with me.)

The gameplay does not look anything like it. The artstyle is slightly similar although unsurprisingly it looks more like Darksiders.

jitter77

Im pretty excited to at least give it a go. Of course I also liked Wildstar so there is that. Not sure why so many want this to fail. People complain when there are no new games then want ones coming out to fail. It is no wonder companies do not want to make MMORPGs. The time / investment to make a good MMORPG is not very rewarding.

ashiru_1978

Looks like Diablo 2 in 3rd person.

TheSlipperySlope

Why is this being called an MMO again? This is just Babylon's Fall with a hero system, lol

Rockinw311

elveone said:

ZenJelly said:

elveone said:

Angrakhan said:

Character collector and MMO are kinda opposites. In an MMO you create one character and invest heavily into it for weeks/months/years for some, not switching around like Pokemon trying to collect them all. That being said it combat looks fun and the animations are good. I might try it out, I'm just not convinced there's much MMO to really see here. More like an expanded mobile game I'd typically find on my phone.

It is horizontal progression, nothing is saying that MMOs should be focused only on vertical one.

It's silly. The game can't fail fast enough.

That doesn't really make much sense.

Alverant said:

Rockinw311 said:

No interest in giving their attempt at Wildstar 2 a go

Glad to know I'm not the only one who got WildStar vibes from it.


(I really tried to like WildStar, but something about the combat just didn't click with me.)

The gameplay does not look anything like it. The artstyle is slightly similar although unsurprisingly it looks more like Darksiders.

https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/27/former-wildstar-devs-call-wayfinder-the-second-coming-of-the-sunsetted-mmorpg/

elveone

Rockinw311 said:

elveone said:

ZenJelly said:

elveone said:

Angrakhan said:

Character collector and MMO are kinda opposites. In an MMO you create one character and invest heavily into it for weeks/months/years for some, not switching around like Pokemon trying to collect them all. That being said it combat looks fun and the animations are good. I might try it out, I'm just not convinced there's much MMO to really see here. More like an expanded mobile game I'd typically find on my phone.

It is horizontal progression, nothing is saying that MMOs should be focused only on vertical one.

It's silly. The game can't fail fast enough.

That doesn't really make much sense.

Alverant said:

Rockinw311 said:

No interest in giving their attempt at Wildstar 2 a go

Glad to know I'm not the only one who got WildStar vibes from it.



(I really tried to like WildStar, but something about the combat just didn't click with me.)

The gameplay does not look anything like it. The artstyle is slightly similar although unsurprisingly it looks more like Darksiders.

https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/27/former-wildstar-devs-call-wayfinder-the-second-coming-of-the-sunsetted-mmorpg/

This is just someone inappropriately tooting his own horn. The game itself does not play like Wildstar and looks like a typical Joe Madureira game whose style has been around long before Wildstar.

Scot

TheSlipperySlope said:

Why is this being called an MMO again? This is just Babylon's Fall with a hero system, lol

Welcome to the forums!

Scot

This is another one of those games listed on Steam as single player, co-op and MMO, any ideas which of those it does best?

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

kitarad

Scot said:

This is another one of those games listed on Steam as single player, co-op and MMO, any ideas which of those it does best?

I was looking at this thread 

https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/comment/7769006/#Comment_7769006

where this was said

“In our over lands, which are our shared spaces, I believe the number is somewhere between 20 and 30. And because it's kind of MMO lightish, the overlands aren't as big as say, like, a zone in Final Fantasy 14, which might want to support 100 players or more or unlimited even, whatever the server can handle.” Ryan continued. “And because it's an action based game too, and you clear mobs pretty quickly, we have the game design challenge of figuring out how many people we should have in an area without getting respawns to be super aggressive and obnoxious versus areas being cleared out because, you know, powerful characters came in and just mowed through.”

They say whatever the server can handle but they also went on to say it was more like Destiny 2. Make of it what you will from those comments. It's a bit difficult to judge what it will be like. (sorry that was a remark with regards to FFXIV) So 20-30.

Even a game which they say can handle 300 people on the screen may be stuck with only 100 at most and they make additional instances to handle more as the lag becomes unbearable.

I have a great deal of skepticism where rubber banding, lagging and stuttering that can completely demolish performance. I remember with a little horror what Anarchy Online was and no matter what you label and claim a game can handle I'd rather have 50 people in a zone with smooth gameplay then packing 300 and destroying my ability to play.

Scot

kitarad said:

Scot said:

This is another one of those games listed on Steam as single player, co-op and MMO, any ideas which of those it does best?

I was looking at this thread 

https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/comment/7769006/#Comment_7769006

where this was said

“In our over lands, which are our shared spaces, I believe the number is somewhere between 20 and 30. And because it's kind of MMO lightish, the overlands aren't as big as say, like, a zone in Final Fantasy 14, which might want to support 100 players or more or unlimited even, whatever the server can handle.” Ryan continued. “And because it's an action based game too, and you clear mobs pretty quickly, we have the game design challenge of figuring out how many people we should have in an area without getting respawns to be super aggressive and obnoxious versus areas being cleared out because, you know, powerful characters came in and just mowed through.”

They say whatever the server can handle but they also went on to say it was more like Destiny 2. Make of it what you will from those comments. It's a bit difficult to judge what it will be like. (sorry that was a remark with regards to FFXIV) So 20-30.

Even a game which they say can handle 300 people on the screen may be stuck with only 100 at most and they make additional instances to handle more as the lag becomes unbearable.

I have a great deal of skepticism where rubber banding, lagging and stuttering that can completely demolish performance. I remember with a little horror what Anarchy Online was and no matter what you label and claim a game can handle I'd rather have 50 people in a zone with smooth gameplay then packing 300 and destroying my ability to play.

Hopefully the cap the servers, but I can't see how it can be co-op unless they allow private servers or instances?

maskedweasel

Scot said:

kitarad said:

Scot said:

This is another one of those games listed on Steam as single player, co-op and MMO, any ideas which of those it does best?

I was looking at this thread 

https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/comment/7769006/#Comment_7769006

where this was said

“In our over lands, which are our shared spaces, I believe the number is somewhere between 20 and 30. And because it's kind of MMO lightish, the overlands aren't as big as say, like, a zone in Final Fantasy 14, which might want to support 100 players or more or unlimited even, whatever the server can handle.” Ryan continued. “And because it's an action based game too, and you clear mobs pretty quickly, we have the game design challenge of figuring out how many people we should have in an area without getting respawns to be super aggressive and obnoxious versus areas being cleared out because, you know, powerful characters came in and just mowed through.”

They say whatever the server can handle but they also went on to say it was more like Destiny 2. Make of it what you will from those comments. It's a bit difficult to judge what it will be like. (sorry that was a remark with regards to FFXIV) So 20-30.

Even a game which they say can handle 300 people on the screen may be stuck with only 100 at most and they make additional instances to handle more as the lag becomes unbearable.

I have a great deal of skepticism where rubber banding, lagging and stuttering that can completely demolish performance. I remember with a little horror what Anarchy Online was and no matter what you label and claim a game can handle I'd rather have 50 people in a zone with smooth gameplay then packing 300 and destroying my ability to play.

Hopefully the cap the servers, but I can't see how it can be co-op unless they allow private servers or instances?

Well, according to some of the other info out there, they don't have "servers". It's more like they are just scaling instances, without having people create characters on specific servers, which means they probably will have one of those naming schemes like (name)#1234. I hate that. But I understand it. Not much worse than having to expand servers and then merge after launch.