More details about Deradune on the official blog, plus the team talks combat and PvP over at Reddit

When I saw that the Carbine team was planning an Ask Us (Almost) Anything session over on Reddit today, I assumed that would be their WildStar Wednesday post for this week. It's a lot of people to organize, not to mention quite a bit of work to make sure that nobody's saying anything they shouldn't and no one's giving out any incorrect information. Apparently they decided that wasn't enough work though because we've also got a new WildStar Wednesday post over on the official blog, this time giving us some more details on Deradune, the early Dominion zone that Gazimoff and I had the chance to run around earlier this year.

The official blog post is similar to what we've seen for Algoroc and Galeras in some earlier WildStar Wednesday posts: a bit of geographical information to give you a feel for the zone, some key allies you'll encounter as you run around and quest as well as a rogues gallery of all of the various flora and fauna that will try and kill you while you're there. Many of the named NPCs are ones we encountered during our hands-on, though not all were interactable. Technically I could have interacted with Metal Maw while I was out there, but seeing as I had four-digit health and he had six- or seven-digit, I opted to leave him be.

For those of you more interested in game mechanics than world lore, we've also got the Reddit AUAA today focused on combat and PvP. The team answered quite a few questions, but there were some areas that were off-limits; if you were hoping for more info on Warplots or the last two unidentified classes, you're out of luck. However there was some new information to be found in this post.

• Classes are indeed limited to one weapon type per class for launch. Some of the reasons are to allow animators to focus on higher quality weapon animations for the various attacks as well as preventing the need for further ability restrictions when the game's already built around a limited action set.
• PvP nerfs/buffs shouldn't have much effect on PvE and vice versa because of how they've designed and balanced the game.
• A PvP spectator mode is something they want, but it's unlikely to be in at launch.
• There will be a shared currency across the various forms of PvP (Warplots, Battlegrounds, Arenas). Some items will be limited based off your individual/team/Warparty ratings.
• Right now beta will allow players to have a Limited Action Set of 10 total active abilities - most class specific, but with some gained through Path or through gadgets you've equipped. This may change during beta as they're open to player feedback.
• You may level through PvP. In addition, Battlegrounds will have a Rallying system to boost your level to the maximum level of your current bracket as well as normalizing your gear so you can have a fair fight while leveling.
• For healing there will be a mix of targeted and free-form/skill-shot heals. You should be able to build your character around whichever you prefer.
• Tanking abilities will be useful in PvP: Taunts reduce damage dealt to anyone other than the tank, Tethers limit how far someone can move until it's destroyed, and Pulls can yank someone to the tank that was chasing your flagcarrier/healer/etc.
• Many kinds of heals for PvP other than "stand there and target somebody": Aimed Telegraphs (different shapes of AoEs for various spells), Healing Nodes (some are pulsed heals while others are consumed by whoever moves over it), as well as Movement-Based Heals (Heals along a telegraphed path as well as moving the player out of harm's way). These telegraphs can be seen, so there is some skill involved for the healer, his party members as well as the opposing team.
• Tanks in PvE will have to worry about keeping threat, but it shouldn't be exceptionally difficult. This is because the tank will also have to worry about moving from telegraphs, coordinating the team's CCs to break through a boss' Interrupt Armor and making sure they're using their survival cooldowns at the right moment.
• There will be some PvP servers at launch, but objective-based open world PvP is not a goal Carbine has at launch. They'd like to see where players naturally gravitate towards before making any decisions.
• One battleground type they mentioned is called Hold the Line. Two teams take turns playing offense and defense. The goal is to capture all of the control points - one is active at a time and as one is taken, the next one is open and the various team spawn points move closer/further away.
• There will be a dungeon finder at launch and it will be cross-server. For those concerned about the impact to the community, their social team is working on tools to help this such as cross-server friends lists - further changes may come during the development cycle and from player feedback during beta.

There's some other replies in the Reddit post that I've missed, so if you'd like to take a look for yourself, head on over to the AUAA post and just look for any names with a blue Carbine next to it. In addition if you'd like more information about Deradune and what to expect out there as a new Dominion player, be sure to read the rest of the post on the official blog. Personally I'm happy with what I learned today from the Reddit AUAA. While the PvP stuff doesn't do much for me as someone who generally avoids it like the plague, I am happy to see that they're keeping threat in mind for tanks in relation to the movement and coordination involved in their very mobile combat system.

In addition I'm a big fan of dungeon finders since 5-mans are my preferred form of content these days. While there is some truth to the arguments about them affecting the sense of community on a server, I'm generally in favor of reducing annoyances preventing people from playing the actual game. Hopefully the team at Carbine can come up with some sort of compromise with the tools they mentioned and those more social players can have their community, even if some of them have other servers next to their names.

Michael "Ragar" Branham