Carbine spotlights WildStar's PvE raid design

WildStar's raid team has just completed a Reddit ask-me-anything about -- you guessed it -- raids in the upcoming sci-fantasy themepark. Lead Dungeon and Raid Designer Brett Scheinert (aka CRB_Timetravel) was joined by an array of Carbine Studios developers to answer player questions about the large PvE encounters in the elder game. Here are a few highlights:

• Which encounter will "cause the most tears"? That'd be Avatus, the last boss of Datascape, Scheinert says, but the elemental pairs in Datascape will be rough too. "Because [they] change every week (and there are 9 possibilities, each of which is almost an entirely new encounter), guilds will spend an entire week reaching then learning a pairing... then the instance will reset and they'll be back to ground zero."

• At least at launch, raid tools will be "in the hands of the addon developers."

• "Voice chat definitely helps but is not necessary."

• Additional post-launch raid content is "in development," so raid tiers will be flexible.

• The team won't "admit defeat that easily" should 40-man raids prove unpopular.

• Enrage timers "just feel lame," so the devs are using them sparingly.

• Casual players won't be able to extend lockout timers at launch.

• Carbine is still sorting out how latency will affect Oceanic players in raids.

There's plenty more to consume over on Reddit!