WildStar Combat Q&A
Corey Jenkins got the chance to attend a Q&A with Lead Combat Systems Designer, Chris Lynch and Lead Class Designer, Hugh Shelton, about WildStar's combat.
The Eye of the Tiger
Diving into the specifics of abilities a bit, the group talked about WildStar’s limited action set and what this means for players who are deciding which abilities to choose. I asked the two if there were any systems in place to incentivize players to try out new abilities as they progressed through the game, instead of solely sticking with their handful of favorites, which tends to happen in MMOs with limited action sets.
Hugh answered:
“We tried to build options to the abilities that the players are going to choose. Take Espers for example. You have finisher abilities that will use up all the remaining 5 points that you have for the Esper (class resource). We have one finisher that’s an instant damage cone that will hit multiple targets in front of you. Then we have another ability, “Telekinetic Storm”, that is also a finisher ability and will use up your class points. But Telekinetic Storm is a bit different in that it shoots out a missile and attaches itself to a target and does a large Area of Effect around that target over time.
In situations where you want to do more burst damage you might take “Mind Burst” and where you might want to do more overall damage to more targets you might take Telekinetic Storm. So we’re just trying to build up choices and, depending on the situation, you might switch out your action set.”
Chris also took a stab at this question and replied with:
“It’s really going to depend on the play-style and situation that the players are put into. Like what is it that they like to do, and how they like to handle those situations. There might be certain builds that are better for tanking lots of creatures, and there might be certain builds better for handing a single creature. The abilities themselves, especially on the utility side, are definitely geared toward helping you through different situations.”
Chris gave us an example of how swapping out abilities might be important in a dungeon situation. He explained that In Kel’Voreth—one of the early dungeons in the game—there’s a boss that will throw out “drones” that select a player and then attempt to explode on them; dealing massive amounts of damage. He said that most Warriors that he’s seen seem to start with standard damage or Tank-oriented abilities, depending on their role. However, when they get to this fight in the dungeon, they tend to switch abilities out in order to make room for more Crowd Control such as "Tether", or "Plasma Whip"—an ability that pulls enemies to the warrior—so that they can help keep the drones from exploding on other members of the party.
Moving on to specifics about how abilities are activated, Chris and Hugh talked with us about the philosophies behind this system and how the different types of abilities are activated in game.
“The first one we’ll talk about is “rapid” tap or “multi tap”, as we call it internally. Initially the idea behind rapid tap is that you activate an ability, then you have a small window of time to activate the subsequent components of that ability. So the one we show in the video was an ability where the stalker hits the ability once, and then they tap it multiple times to hit really fast after that.”
The second is charge and release. It’s pretty simple. It’s like a cast time ability, but you’re basically charging the power of the ability. So you’re going to start holding the button down, your abilities going to start casting. I could just tap the ability and it’ll shoot off the least powerful version of this ability. But if I hold the button down you’re going to see a bar start charging up on your screen with little dots below it. And as I fill the bar, a single dot will fill up. And that’s saying you’ve reached the first tier or the first threshold of this spell, and it’s more powerful. The goal is, if you keep charging up to the maximum charge power you’re going to have the most powerful spell you can cast of that precursor spell. And it really lends itself to our movement mechanics and our action combat. Let’s say a creature is casting a telegraph at you or someone's charging you in PvP. You have a decision to make. That is do I finish charging this spell for the maximum tier or do I fire off what I have now and then move to dodge the attack?
The next ability we have is press and hold. And it’s very similar to your standard channeled spell, except we feel that is makes a more of a connection with your character. Let’s say I'm going to cast a whirlwind on the warrior. If it was just a channel, that’s just a simple character interaction with your character where you just go “tap”. And you don’t really feel like there’s a connection with your character and what the action is on the screen any more. You’re just pressing that button once, and he’s doing an action for the next however many seconds afterwards. So we really like the feel that this press and hold mechanics adds into it. As long as I’m holding this button down I feel like I'm connected to the action that’s occurring in game. My character is going to keep whirl-winding as long as I keep holding this button down. While it’s similar to the standard channel spell we feel it creates a connection to the action that is occurring in the game.
The final mechanics are abilities with charges. Abilities that have charges of use. One of the cool things this mechanic does is allow us to create resources individual to that ability. And it kind of lets the player choose, “Hey do I want to use all of these charges up front and then have a long period of time before I can do that instant front-load of damage. Or do I want to space these out in my combat and use them every now and then so I always have some charges to use in case the moment arises”. The nice things for the class designers is that they can create a resource that isn’t tied with the overall class resource”
“One of the reasons we really like the ability mechanic is because, as the dev speak says, most MMOs have your standard things, instant, cast time, channel. It’s pretty much the mechanic they use in most MMOs to date. We wanted to introduce a couple of new play-styles with our MMO. So we tried to investigate a variety of different methods of cast time”
Chris and Hugh were also asked about targeted abilities and if they still played a role in the game; with healers having arguably one of the most important roles. It sounds like they took it a bit easier on some of them and gave them a few additional options other than all free-form heals.
Chris responded:
“We still have a few remaining tab target abilities in the game. We’ve retained a couple of the heal spells as a single target heal that you target via the UI or group panel, or even in the game space. But for the most part, we’ve been leaning toward having free-form targeting where possible.”
Hugh added that most of the DPS and Tanking spells are completely free-form targeted. With that, he also gave us a small hint at how the new unannounced healing class will play.
“It’s really just the heal-side of the spells that we’ve got a few targeted spells, but that’s also on a class by class basis. One of the classes that I can’t talk about has almost no targeted spells on the healing side, so if you like free-form healing. That might be the class for you.”
In before all the “pro” healers change their main class.