WildStar Wrap-up

Welcome to the first of a weekly column recapping all the WildStar news that’s fit to print for the last week!  The game is still in beta (I’m not in it), and is covered by NDA, so I will not be posting any leaks.. if you are in the beta.. respect the NDA man!

 

This week continued the “Class Ultra Drop” by giving us a look at some space cowboy action!

Screen Shot 2013-11-24 at 5.32.20 PM

Errr… not that space cowboy, though.  We get the low down on this no good, rotten, totally cute space cowboy:

Screen Shot 2013-11-24 at 5.36.05 PM

 

The first drop came in the form of WildStar Wednesday’s Dev Speak that was all about the Spellslinger!

Highlights of playing a Spellslinger include (but are not limited to):

  • Shooting your friends in the face to heal them!
  • Cool Hats!
  • Interdimensional portals!
  • Long range attacks!

No long, difficult disclaimer to decipher this week, which means no secret hoverboard like reveal either.

Spellslinger week continued on Thursday with the reddit AMA.  Here’s a few highlights from the AMA:

Hey Carbine peeps! Thanks for taking time to do this. My Questions:

  1. I understand Spellsingers can step into the “Void”. Does this serve as somekind of temporary Stealth? Will we be able to see the enemies we’re fighting in through the Void?
  2. Watching earlier Spellslinger footage, I see you guys have changed the resource mechanic of the SS. Is there any reason for this? The earlier resource mechanic seemed cooler and more fun imho.
  3. Can we get an estimate of how many skills the SS has?
  4. How bursty is the SS? Given that he’s an assassin type class, but I recall reading that the esper is more bursty?
  5. We’ve seen that place-switching skill. Would I be able to switch places with someone, if I’m falling mid-air?
  6. This is a general class question: All classes are able to go DPS in WS. I’m concerned about this because you have a dungeon finder implemented. To me that logically means insane waiting times for DPS classes. Will there be like a renown system that combats this? Like where good, friendly, and skilled players get a group faster as opposed to slackers, leechers, and.. douches? Or something to help combat the que time.
  7. Would you consider putting the pistol holsters on the character’s backs, instead of the waists? Possibly their lower backs? From past experiences from other MMO’s (SWTOR gunslinger, GW2 dualpistol thief) I know how people never look at characters waists, only waists up, so putting it on their back would be a better way to show off your epic pistols!

CRB_Hugh’s Answers:

  1. The Void is an entirely different “plane” if you will. While inside the Void you can’t see outside of it, but you can see other players that are in the Void.
  2. The old resource mechanic had very little management associated with it, instead you used your Spell Power as soon as you cast abilities. We now give players control over the Spell Power, allowing them to do spike damage/healing on demand.
  3. Every class is able to choose 30 abilities for their Action Set (8 of which can be equipped at once).
  4. Unlike the Esper, none of the Spellslinger’s abilities are gated by resource. This, combined with their new Innate ability, allows them to choose when to do their burst damage/healing (instead of the Esper which always has their burst after they have built up Psi Points). The burst might not be as high as the Esper, but it is still significant.
  5. Currently no, we will keep experimenting with that though ;D.
  6. Most of the MMOs I have ever played allow all classes to go DPS. We try to help queue times by also letting all of our classes spec as either a Healer or Tank in addition to DPS.
  7. That’s up to the art and animation teams, but it is something they have experimented with ;D
 

My questions are two: Will Spellslingers get a cool gunspinning animation before they put their mag pistols away? That or trick shots with coins would be sweet too.

And: Will our space cowboys have any abilities that allow you to line up a shot that DPSs enemies within the telegraph while healing allies?

CRB_Merkal’s answer:

  1. Yes they do spin their guns before holstering them!
  2. Spellslingers do have an ability called Dual Fire that does damage and healing at the same time but this is more something that the Redacted focuses on.

And it sounds like healing as a Spellslinger will be interesting:

My question is on Freeform healing abilities.
For abilities that don’t call out a specific number of healing targets, will there be output capping as the number of people in the area increase? For example, the Esper ability Soothe (and I assume many Spellslinger abilities) heals all allies in the area for (lets pick a number as an example) 1000 HP at full charge. If there are 5 allies in he area, they each get 1000 HP? If there are 25 allies in the area, they each get 1000 HP?

CRB_Clynch’s Answers:

We have the tech to do this either way! This will actually be determined on an ability by ability basis and the tooltip should inform you on how it will work.

With out tech we can do a variety of things such as:

  • Spread the total amount of heal between ALL targets
  • Heal the X amount of CLOSEST targets to you in the freeform area
  • Heal the X amount of LOWEST HEALTH targets in the freeform area
  • Heal the X amount of FURTHEST targets to you in the freeform area
  • and a large variety of other target requirements

We are still feeling out which of these feel best for each class and our raid/pvp content.

 

Make sure you head over and give the whole AMA a read, there is a ton of good information in there.

 

The icing on this week’s Spellslinger cake, was the live stream Saturday (During the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Episode! Bad timing!).  There, we got to see David Bass, Hugh Shelton, and Marc Matzenbacher give us a brief glimpse into the life of a Spellslinger:

Watch live video from WildStar on TwitchTV

 

Couple of highlights:

  • Damage is done when the animation ‘hits’ the target.  So there is travel time involved.  Carbine did mention that the travel time is tweakable, so it’s possible we’ll see that as a balancing measure going forward (i.e, increase travel time to reduce DPS, decrease it to increase DPS).
  • You’ll be able to have dual specs.
  • Spellslingers have the longest ranged attack in the game.

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  • Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday here in the US..no live stream for the Stalker next week, it’ll be delayed.

 

Looks like the main issue a Spellslinger will have to overcome, besides picking which cool hat to wear, is keeping your target at range, and avoiding melee.  The whole teleport/swap places with your opponent thing, will help with that a bit though.

 

Looking forward to the next of the Ultra Drops, I believe the Stalker is up next!

Quick reminder.. the only place to get a beta key from currently, is Carbine.  If you haven’t already done so.. head on over to the WildStar site and get signed up now!