Wildstar Dev Post roundup- 7/3/2013

Topic 1, PVP stats courtesy of Jen Gordy, pvp designer

"While I'm digging in PvP logs from our first beta week, I'd like to share interesting tidbits with you. I'll update this later today when I have more info to share:

We had 589 unique characters participating in Walatiki Temple. WOOOT!

(Update) We had 117 Walatiki matches, 6 of which crashed.

Our top rated character, with 1435 rating, was RNG.

The character with the most games played, at 57 games (WOW!) was Arbacus.

General Match Stats:

Average Match Duration: 12 Minutes, 28 Seconds

Longest Match: 27 Minutes, 57 Seconds

Shortest Match: 6 Minutes, 9 Seconds

Matches were, on average, filled to capacity (20.71 players entered per match). Lots of backfilling took place, because we noted some drops.

On average, 1.73 players dropped per match. Likely due to the respawn bug and disconnects.

Combat Stats:

We recorded 595 leveling events due to experience granted through Battlegrounds sources.

231 deaths were recorded due to summoned creatures from players.

7860 deaths were recorded as killing blows from players.

Average Killing Blows Per Match: 4.58

Total Killing Blows On a Character: 505

Top 3 Deadliest Attacks by Class (Abilities with Most Killing Blows):

Spellslinger

Assassinate - 1010

Mobile Fire - 676

Ignite - 540

Stalker

Quick Slash - 466

Tactical Strike - 139

Overload - 82

Warrior

Relentless Strikes - 598

Savage Strikes - 317

Whirlwind - 312

Esper

Mind Burst - 660

Spectral Frenzy - 408

Concentrated Blade - 138

Topic 2:

Chris Lynch, Lead Combat Designer, followup to the July combat status posts.

"#1 - This should be a part of the system.

#2 - We'll definitely be listening to all of the feedback we get when this gets rolled out into CBT4. One of the reasons for us doing this early in the CBT4 prep was to allow for us to find all of these issues and hopefully address them before they reach the beta players.

#3 - With the addition of the new armor mitigation values we had to update Bob. (I need to write up a post describing Bob so I can reference it anytime I talk about Bob) With the re-balance, we used Medium Armor classes as our baseline. Since every class has access to at least Medium Damage (or better) you will find the kill times are similar to what they are now, or faster if you are a Light Armor class. When combined with the MOO (Moment of Opportunity) changes, the kill times actually come down even more for skilled players who exploit MOO's to their full potential.

You do comment on the number of varied mechanics each mob has which leads me to another update I'd like to make. We have recently booted up a new team called the "Creature Combat" team. This group of developers will be focusing exclusively on creature abilities from now until the end of time. Their job is to take each creature model we have and build a variety of creature combat kits that are then supplied to the Encounters team for placement in the game.

For example, right now we have one Dagun Kit. Anytime you see a Dagun in the world, it will do the same abilities as every other Dagun in the world. Usually the abilities are gated by difficulty, so it may seem like we have a few Dagun kits, but in reality, there is only one. This leads players and developers experiencing what we are calling "Telegraph Fatigue". This is where you get tired of seeing the same telegraph over and over. You go to a new area, see a new Dagun, but you already know what it's going to do before you fight it. This is all "Telegraph Fatigue".

The creature combat team got ahold of the Dagun and now we have a wide range of Dagun kits that the encounters team will start sprinkling throughout the world. Populating a snow filled area like Whitevale? We have a kit for that. It even has ice themed attacks and buffs! Maybe you're creating a pack of Dagun. I'd advise you to grab the Dagun Packleader kit and group it with a few of the Bloodseeker Dagun kits, they really work well together. The Packleader will do things to improve his pack's fighting capabilities such as channeling an interruptable spell called "Frenzied Howl". While the Packleader is howling, all of his cluster mates will get a very noticeable Critical Hit chance buff. Meanwhile the Bloodseekers are are trying to take chunks of your flesh and if they are successful, they will happily eat this chunk of flesh and heal themselves.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Soon, you will be experiencing mechanics that we call SRE's internally. (Special Random Event) These happen very infrequently. They are designed to keep you on your toes. We usually like to use these along with our Crowd Control system we call "Breakout Gameplay"

For example, you may be fighting a Dagun Bloodseeker kit one day, going through your normal rotation when suddenly the Dagun leaps into the air and knocks you flat on your back. The next thing you know is that Dagun is powering up a telegraph that is going to hit right where you are laying. Good thing we have Breakout Gameplay -- just roll out of the telegraph and back to your feet and get out of that telegraph decal.

Fun stuff, right?

Going forward the Creature Combat Team has several goals:

Expand the variety of abilities our creatures have to prevent Telegraph Fatigue

Example: Instead of the one Dagun kit, we now have dagun for all kinds of situations and environments. No longer will that boss Dagun have the same abilities as the field of Dagun outside. Heck, that field of dagun will probably have multiple kits now too!

Keep our overworld PVE experience fresh and exciting

Example: Special Random Events (SRE's) that create infrequent "oh crap" moments that the player has to respond to and changes up their play pattern.

Give players reasons to use the tools their chosen class gives them

Example: Bloodseeker Dagun heals itself when certain flesh eating abilities - abilities that reduce healing become really useful for fighting these.

Example: Dagun Packleader is channeling a crit buff like Frenzied Howl - abilities that reduce the amount of damage you take become useful, or you could stun the packleader and trigger a MOO.

Now, I may have gotten a bit carried away with what this team is up to, because it's going to take them some time to go through ALL of the creature models and provide tons of cool stuff, but they are definitely working hard on doing this. The one thing that can help us is for all of you to tell us which creatures you feel you are seeing a TON. Which ones are you getting that "Telegraph Fatigue" feeling from? This will help us in prioritizing which creature models this team tackles first."

Topic 3: Scooter on people saying, 'game is too hard', 'game is too easy'

"We've been working on some new system designs in reaction to the feedback we've been seeing across the board. I'm going to leave the major reveals up to DapperDonatelli, who'll be writing up a nice big post about all the stuff we're working on sometime in the near future, but one thing we're looking at specifically addressing are the two distinct points of view that "all mobs should be extremely difficult to kill" and "all mobs should be really easy to kill".

One of the system's we're considering is to correlate your quest progression directly with the difficulty of the mobs you choose to kill. For example, instead of "Kill 10 vinds", a tougher vind would grant more quest credit than an easier vind. Spend more time on a bigger mob, and you'll be rewarded more. Want to rip through a ton of easy mobs quickly? You'll be rewarded less quest credit per kill, but you'll also kill more mobs faster.