With Carbine releasing a new Movement DevSpeak video, we interview Lead Combat Systems Designer Chris Lynch, and Lead Class Designer Hugh Shelton about this key aspect.

How important are class specific movement abilities, such as the Spellslinger being able to trade places?

Shelton: It’s pretty important, because I think the movement abilities are one of the big things that help for our "class-feel". The Spellslinger having that ability - they also have an ability called Gate where they blink forward - it feels really different from a Warrior’s Leap or an Esper’s Projected Spirit ability, which transforms them into a different thing and dashes them across the screen. It gives the player more tools to evade telegraphs or to close distance on enemies, or just move around on the gameplay space, but I think it’s definitely important.

Lynch: There’s a lot of immersive gameplay that’s actually occurred toward the end, with our raid and our dungeon content, where there’s a lot of movement based encounter stuff in there as well. Like there’s one in Stormtalon’s Lair, we just released this in beta and had people play it in Arkship EU.

So if you’re familiar with the air elemental boss Aethros, there’s a particular phase in that fight where he’s casting the big spell, and you’re trying to get through the gauntlet, that’s where movement abilities come in play again. You can actually traverse this gauntlet easier with movement abilities if you put them on your bar.

So they actually lend themselves to how we design dungeon fights and raid fights later in the game. It’s kind of immersive, it feels like the players are figuring this out on their own, and it makes it feel better to them.

Will we start seeing combos with class movement abilities like double-jump – gate?

Shelton: Those things have already come up. They’re not explicit combos, so you’re not going to see something pop up on your screen like a movement combo or anything like that, they just work well together. If you want to close the distance quickly you’re going to sprint until your endurance is out, then you’re going to dash, then then you’re going to gate if you need to. You can cover a huge amount of ground really quickly if you need to chase somebody down, or if you need to get away from somebody.

Why call it Dash rather than Dodge?

Lynch: We actually started calling it a dash because the original animation and feel of it was that you would dash to the left, or the right, or the back - there was no actual roll to it. So I think that term just stuck over time, but the animation clearly used to be a dash where you would literally dash and slide across the ground and avoid that attack or just cover the ground.

There used to be a hold at the beginning of the dash, and the hold didn’t feel that good, so we shortened the distance the dash would go, and made it to a seamless thing where there’s no hold:  you can dash, roll back to your feet and keep moving. That goes back to our movement thing, over time we just made it feel smoother and more polished. Back when it first came out it was a little bit rigid, and we’ve moved away from that.

Shelton: Since the animation wasn’t spot on, we have got a new animation and we’ve got player feedback that the name doesn’t quite fit. It might not be called dash at launch; it might be called dodge or roll.

How important is it to mix things up with low-gravity areas such as Halon ring?

Shelton: Jeremy Gaffney, in a lot of interviews he does, he always talks about how he wants to keep things interesting for players. So adjusting gravity is just one of those ways of making things more interesting, because it just changes things on you - it makes you have to think about your environment in a different way.

We’re not exposed as much to the open world content as some of the other teams, and so it’s interesting when we find other teams taking stuff and applying the combat that we’ve worked on into those new environments like the low gravity.

I’ve already experienced falling damage in Deradune. Will there be cunning ways to avoid it?

Lynch: I already exploit the falling damage personally on my Spellslinger – I’m playing a Spellslinger currently in beta – I will cast gate at the last second. It’s almost like skydiving and pulling your parachute at the last second. If I cast gate at the last second, I’ll actually gate, eliminate all that falling momentum, and then I’ll fall safely to the ground with no falling damage. So there are clever ways to do it. I can’t promise they’ll be there at launch, but right now I haven’t found any exploits due to this, so it’s fun to do and I do it all the time.

Shelton: But then you have other abilities that give you absorption effects, so you can prevent taking too much damage when you land. There are instant casts so you can cast them when you’re falling - things like Phantasmal Armor on the Esper. Besides that, we might add some slow-fall type abilities that you’ll see throughout the game. They might not be on the classes specifically, but you might get them as buffs here or there. Also, when you’re doing some of those super jump puzzles, while you’re playing through content, you usually won’t take any fall damage.

Lynch: We’ll usually give you a buff that protects you.

Does this mean nightmarish jumping puzzles?

Lynch: I’ve seen some elaborate ones in Closed Beta 2, they’d be in Deradune.

Shelton: I have fallen in lava a number of times playing through dungeons where there are jumping puzzles. I don’t think I’m a bad gamer, but I have been punished on jumping puzzles.

How do you feel about mounts (and possibly flying mounts) circumventing movement?

Lynch: I can’t really go into details on the flying mounts - that’s really an internal discussion right now, but we definitely are going to have regular mounts. I personally have no problems with people getting to their destination faster.

Our mounts are going to be different from what you’d experience in other games – I can’t go into details as to why yet because we’re saving that for a reveal later on, but I think people are going to be very pleased with what we’re presenting.

And finally, before we wrap up: who is Disclaimer Guy?

Lynch: Actually, I don’t know…

I’d like to thank both Chris Lynch and Hugh Shelton for taking the time to share their knowledge of movement in Carbine’s upcoming MMO. WildStar is currently in Closed Beta, with launch currently planned for later this year. And Disclaimer Guy, whoever you are: keep up the good work.

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Senior Contributing Editor