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WildStar locks you down for a look at crowd control
Whether it's made up of stuns, knockdowns, sleeps, or disarms, there's a whole part of MMO gameplay dedicated to making sure your opponents don't get to do anything. The latest WildStar Dev Speak video notes that this is an important gameplay aspect that's also very challenging to manage from a design perspective. After all, having the ability to disable others adds a lot of strategic depth... but absolutely nobody enjoys being beaten on by multiple opponents without being able to do anything. So what's the WildStar solution? Simple: Make sure that even crowd-controlled players have something to do. If you're stunned, you can mash on a key to try and break out early as in many fighting games. Knocked down? Use a roll to get back on your feet quickly. Disarmed? Run over and grab your weapon! You can see several forms of crowd control in the video below, and while the changes might not prevent you from being stunlocked by seven people, you can at least react with something other than patience. [Source: Carbine Studios press release]
Abilities I usually wish didn't exist in 5-mans
Most tanks are control freaks. As a matter of fact, you should hope that your tank is a control freak, because the ones who shrug off a mob running around loose are the ones you probably don't want tanking your run anyway. With that in mind, there are several player abilities that, while great for soloing or PvP, don't make the transition to a 5-man very well. Either they make life a real nuisance for your group members due to inherent design, or they tend to do so in the hands of a player who doesn't deploy them in a particularly helpful fashion. Not all tanks will have the same degree of irritation with all of the following skills (for example, I play a druid, and because bears don't have a ranged silence, a knockback on a caster mob is much more likely to annoy me than, say, a death knight tank), but I promise you that they've all been mentioned by my tanking colleagues as abilities with a high chance of blowing a pull.
Aion interview explores aerial combat
One of Aion's most touted features is its aerial combat, with the game's own website challenging us to abandon our limited two-dimensional thinking to make way for the future. We're not alone in wanting to know more about these flight mechanics, and when asked about them in a recent interview at Ten Ton Hammer, Associate Producer Chris Hager was able to dish out a few details. In Aion, flight time and flight speed are statistics that can be increased through gear or buffs, so players will need to choose how much they want to beef up their flight, as opposed to their other combat stats. The reason that flight statistics should be looked into comes down to the movement and positioning in the game:Aion's combat is fast paced and movement / positioning are very key. How you move effects your stats in positive and negative ways. In addition to this you will possess skills that will throw your enemy in all directions.This will certainly give an advantage to skilled players that can deftly maneuver their character, and the clumsier ones will end up harming their own stats. At the same time, aerial combat combined with knockbacks or throws sounds pretty disorienting, and it could get tiresome chasing bouncing targets (or worse, being that bouncing target) through the air. We'll have to see how it all pans out. Check out the full interview for the flight details, as well as some discussion on Aion's system specs and archetypes.
