Gamescom 2013 – Wildstar Exclusive Presentation

August 30, 2013 14:24 ( F2P News ) 0

 

We were invited into a behind closed doors presentation with Lead Combat Designer for WildStar; Chris Lynch. The video presentation walked us through the game showing what we can expect from PvE as players advance in rank and how they are taught fundamental basics of combat tactics in preparation for the challenges they face in later levels.

The video focused on a level 20 dungeon, which in general takes about thirty minutes to an hour to run through, called the Ruins of Kel Voreth, a huge strange SciFi/industrial dungeon. Lynch spoke how the pacing of the of the dungeon was important, where players don’t go ten or fifteen minutes without having an epic boss fight; the dungeons are difficult, require a team to complete, but they are reward greatly for it.



The “Telegraphs” are a key feature of combat in WildStar, coloured reticules that appear on the floor showing where a creature, or player, is about to hit with their area attack. Previously these telegraphs came in three colours: Blue which showed your general aiming and what you are doing, Green which meant a player was casting something that would benefit you and Red that meant an enemy was casting something bad for you. However, two new colours have been introduced, Purple shows an enemies’ beneficial cast (their greens) so you’ll want to keep the enemy out of these, and Orange which is an allies damage casts, so you want to try and stun enemies or pull them into these areas.

The telegraphs might seem complicated, and in the later game they become incredibly sophisticated, but Lynch says “We’ve been training this into you since level 1, red is bad.. get out of the red. When it starts getting tougher it’s almost second nature on how to react.”

With other intriguing combat manoeuvres such as disarms attacks, where the players or enemies weapon will actually be thrown out of their hand and land as an item on the battlefield that they have to get to and pick their weapon back up. Also, stun attacks are a big feature, but is not always as simple as it seems, often the team will all have to hit a powerful enemy with their stun attacks one after the other before it will actually hit, often a necessity to stop bossed casting powerful charge up spells.

Check out the video and watch some of the boss fights and see these late game telegraph attacks in action!

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