The goblin starting zone from cataclysm had much more sensible roads for racing.
Setting up races through all this dense goblin clutter is just disastrous. The player’s camera is also not respected or considered at all by the track design or placement of doodads.
The FPS has been the biggest problem for me. Set my graphics all to 1 and I still get massive spikes when loading into the busier areas, but it’s still playable at the absolute minimum speed and no boosts. Really hard to get a feel for anything when pressing the boost button dynamically changes the game’s speed in the other direction lol.
I’m definitely worried that it’s this bad even on the PTR with like 10 other people in the zone. Can’t imagine how bad it’ll be on live with so many other players.
My other issue is the controls. Why is space bar both jump and drift? The game seems to have a hard time determining whether or not I’m “turning” if I’m using my mouse to steer, so there are a lot of times where I jump instead of drifting, especially when I’m trying to snake around. Not sure if the other ability slots on the vehicle UI end up getting used for anything else, but it’d be nice to have a drift button and a jump button independent of the space bar, like how Skyriding doesn’t require you to press space to use Skyward Ascent if you’d rather put it on a key.
I have had a similar problem all day today with jump and drift. Then on top of it my camera seemed to self-adjust while turned off. Then also getting stuck in objects from time to time and the camera just going crazy forcing me to dismount just so I can get out of the object I seem to be stuck in.
This is the first PTR build. I really hope they improve this. It might even feel better and be more enjoyable with sound and music. All I keep hearing about are World Quests. Had to do them just to shut them up.
Some issues I’m encountering:
If you hold right click and then try to turn with the keyboard, the vehicle seems to fight with which direction you’re trying to go and locks up for a moment. This is unlike normal movement on the ground, where you can add a keyboard input to influence the direction you are running. I’ve found that using only one input device for movement specifically is the way to go for now.
When you exit the drift, it feels like the car IMMEDIATELY converts all of the motion into forward momentum. This makes it slightly easier to control in a way, but it’s so counterintuitive that I think it will throw a lot of players off. It probably is a good idea to leave this in the game for now because it helps counterbalance some of the jank in the rest of the controls once you get used to it.
I’m afraid to hit turbo because of the other factors I’m listing here. It would be a great button to hit in very open maps, like Westfall/Redridge/etc., but it feels punishing to use here. The idea of going this fast is appealing, but we need the right map layout for it.
Too many small obstacles, especially on the race courses. If the game had collision physics where you could bounce over objects, or the ability to clear them (by hovering or vaulting over them), then this would be much easier to deal with.
The game stutters when driving at high speeds, I’m guessing due to loading/rendering assets as you travel around. This is on a fairly high-specced computer (3950x, rtx 3090, nvme ssd for the game install). When this happens, it’s an almost guaranteed crash.
In some cases it feels like the game doesn’t load in obstacles until you are on top of them, either due to the server or client trying to render them. I’ve had instances where I crash into something that was invisible until I was on top of it.
In addition to point #2, momentum is really wonky at times. A prime example is when trying to do a U-shaped loop when drifting. When you enter the drift, you continue to gain forward momentum even when the wheels are pointed perpendicular to the direction of travel. It’s easiest to see this in the mid range of speed when you are still accelerating because it feels like you continue accelerating (often into something you were trying to turn away from) rather than slowing down (what I’d expect).
Collision is sometimes off. The car can get partially embedded in other objects, including walls. I can always unstuck myself with some effort but it can ruin a race or the general feel of cruising around.
I just upgraded my entire system except the graphics card and while I am not getting the FPS I am hoping for I do feel like some assets are being rendered late. That might just be first build and the servers having to be adjusted for this speed of travel.
I am running an AMD Ryzen 7700x at 4.5 ghz, with 32GB of DDR5 at 6000mhz. My operating system is on a M.2 drive. While I have yet to move WoW to it after my upgrade I do intend to. Sits on one of my SSDs right now that I just reconnected after the clean install of Windows on the new Samsung 990 Pro 2TB M.2.
Now I will be upgrading the graphics card but not until the new stuff rolls out and I see what is what. Even the Intel Arc has my attention right now. Still, I am an AMD Radeon supporter but who is going to give the best $ for FPS this generation? We will soon find out once everything settles.
Only just found where to get this tonight. Initial quest was kinda awkward that it told you to go get a job from the goblin lady, but didn’t mention using the action button on the car to get job, so I kep trying to talk to her over and over hoping an option would pop up. Didn’t see the job button until I gave up an started to drive away.
The car itself is fun, though as others have said, there’s not much room to really let the speed shine in Undermine. Is also a bit odd that jumping and drifting are on the same key. I often found myself drifting into an obstacle instead of jumping over it as intended. Would be nice if it could be bound to a different key.
Boy, who would have ever thought that Blizz would take an interesting concept, make the area for it too small to be fun or really effective, and make it overly complicated and full of interrupts to the potential fun, to the point that it’s irritating.
No track record of this, at. all. lol.
The D.R.I.V.E system is a good idea. Implementation in an environment not built for the speed is the problem but I already find myself wanting to use this system in other areas of WoW. But we can’t.
So, it is really a positive that I find myself wanting to use it. Just something more needs to be done to the area we are limited to using it in for the system to shine and be successful. I did try a racetrack. Where we are going; we don’t need roads… Seriously it felt more like an offroad obstacle course. Is that their intension? I hope not.
I think it stems from that old D&D thing where if it’s just smooth and fun it’s not intended. Much like how we constantly used to get dazed while running through low level mobs, for some reason lots of interrupted play and annoyance seems to be the intended target. I don’t get it.
Dont enjoy DRIVE very much. One very annoying thing is that as far as I can tell, you cant change directions during a drift without releasing the brake for a second.
The drifting does feel a bit odd compared to Mario Kart where you can adjust your drift mid turn by waggling the control stick. This feels a lot more set on a specific trajectory that’s much harder to influence without canceling the drift entirely, and then if you try to drift again it’s a crap shoot if you’ll jump or not. I thought I’d like the tightest drifting controls, but I ended up going with the loosest ones because it actually feels like you have time to react to your turn, whereas the sharper ones don’t even really let you see what you’re turning into and you just hit a lamp post if you try to turn even a second too early.
There is a brake. You found a brake? I mean other than smashing into a wall or obstacle?
Going to have to agree. The car is WAY too fast for the size of the space you can use it in. Controls feel wonky, constantly stuck in things… boost makes everything worse.
I spend as much time getting unstuck as I do going to places. The area is small so I often don’t need to move that fast.
For comparison Skyriding took me all of 3 minutes to be fully in love with. It just feels natural. DRIVE does not feel right.
I personally and in my opinion, both agree and disagree. I think it feels good and their direction with the system is good. It isn’t perfect and does need work. This was just not the correct size and scale zone for this type of feature. Zone isn’t built for speed IMO.
I said it before, here I will say it again.
It is utterly utterly stupid.
Which part or parts?
If this system was released without a zone restriction and we got to test this in the rest of Azeroth I think and believe the feedback would be more positive. The Goblin city (Undermine) isn’t even close to large enough to utilize this kind of speed properly. If I want to drive fast in a city and smash into things I got different game for that experience. I am sure many of you know what game I am referring to.
This is wow not mario cart.
To seduce the neat masses, they are “proudly” introducing this biblically nonsense thing as it is going to be the hit of the year. They talked about the car for like 10+ mins in the undermine intro vid.
Many rpg did it, and usually it was a failure.
Plus, we have seen the race quests in game before, they were all garbo, buggy and all.
Yet, here we are again, they are spending their resources to create this devilish thing instead of fixing the core mechanics of raiding/m+/itemization/class balancing/tiersets.
inb4 personally attacking me just because I don’t like it, do you like it? good, keep liking it, embrace it. I don’t care about your experience. I am just stating how I feel about drive.
There is a brake. You found a brake? I mean other than smashing into a wall or obstacle?
What’s funny is every time I’m thinking about how to word my feedback, I chuckle because the thing I’m complaining about is 100% something a goblin would just say is part of the package lol
“Wait, you guys don’t just crash from wall to wall when you’re driving around?”
Some updated thoughts -
Having a bit more luck after experimenting with DRIVE settings. I like the high acceleration engine (because limiting top speed actually makes it easier to get around), and the low drift grip, because you can do some fun tricks and it seems easier to drift in circles. Definitely a learning curve.
I also crashed into an object and was disconnected, and unable to log in for about 30 minutes afterwards because my character was bisecting some geometry… but that resolved itself.
Other issues still stand like performance problems and small obstacles tripping up the car. Still, it’s getting better the more I play with it.
It has me wondering if we will need to unlock many of those options for the DRIVE system or if they will all be available on release. Not sure if they ever commented on it. Right now, I am assuming everything is unlocked for testing while that voice in the back of my mind keeps telling me this is Blizzard. We are going to have to work to unlock all these options. Yes, probably even color options wouldn’t surprise me and maybe even a few extra things they are keeping hidden for surprise.