We spoke to Carbine's Lead Designer about the upcoming stat refactoring.

Previously discussed following E3 last month, WildStar will be getting a stat overhaul with this fall's F2P update. The refactoring will simplify things, leaving clear primary and secondary stats for players to customize their gameplay experience with.

This morning Carbine released its latest Deep Dive covering the stat revamp, and we took the opportunity to pose a few questions about it to Lead Designer Steven Engle.

ZAM: With the new stat system, what exactly can we expect to see on a given piece of equipment? Previously it was Armor Value, two Primary stats and some rune sockets. What's the new layout? AP/SP, two secondary stats, sockets?

Steven: For armor, players will now see an Assault Rating/Support Rating, Armor, Health, PvP Power and Defense (if the gear is a PvP item) and one to three role-oriented rating-based stats. For weapons, weapon attachments, support systems and implants, players will see an Assault Rating/Support Rating, PvP Power and Defense (if it is a PvP item), and one to three role-oriented rating-based stats. For shields, players will see Max Shield, Shield Mitigation %, Shield Reboot Time and Shield Regen Rate. Gadgets will only have on-use specials.

ZAM: How are you converting existing gear to the new system? Weapons should be an easier fix since those are primarily AP or SP anyway, but how will the old primary stats get converted? Will they just get an equivalent amount of Crit/Deflect/etc from what used to be there?

Steven: You may not get a value that is exactly point for point with each stat you had previously because we’ve adjusted the items to use the new stats as well. What we’ve done instead is make sure we have kept player power relatively the same, so while some of the names of stats may have changed, the power of your gear will be on par with the existing system.

ZAM: The old primary system had milestones for each stat to give you more incentive to maintain a distribution rather than simply going all in for one stat or another. Will you be trying something similar with secondary stats, or is the goal more to balance the secondary stats enough (potentially with diminishing returns) to discourage that behavior?

Steven: Our goal is to balance it in a fair way that will incentivize increasing a few stats instead of one. We hope this will create a system where players want to try out and build up different skills to really create their own unique character, rather than focus on maxing out just one area.

ZAM: Shield Max will obviously be on our Shield slot, but where else will it show up? It's shown as a core stat, so will it be more common that before? Will this be something for all classes to see or will this primarily be relegated to tanking equipment?

Steven: Shields are changing in this drop to only have the stats Shield Max, Shield Mitigation %, Shield Reboot Time, and Shield Regen Rate. It will be relevant to all class and player types, not just Tank builds.

Thanks to Steven Engle for taking the time to answer our questions! Check out the stat revamp Deep Dive in the team's latest blog post.

Michael "Ragar" Branham, Contributing Writer
Ann "Cyliena" Hosler, Managing Editor