WildStar has a major stat rebalancing patch on the way — in fact, it’s so major that it needs a whole new term: stat refactoring. In a new dev blog published this morning, Carbine Lead Combat Designer Steven “Meerkat” Engle explains that primary stats and stats that derive into secondary stats, including Brutality, Finesse, Insight, Tech, Grit, and Moxie, are all set for execution; the studio further plans to run all stats though a balance pass and and adjust the ilevel power curve. The revamped system is intended to add clarity, interest, and consistency to the stat system.
Massively OP’s Justin Olivetti spoke to Meerkat about some of the impending changes; read on for the interview and some new screenshots too.
Massively Overpowered:Â Will there be extensive tooltips or other in-game references to help further understand how the new stats function?
Carbine’s Steven Engle: There will be tooltips in the character panel to explain all of the new stats. We’ve worked on making them short and concise, because accessibility was a key driving factor in the decision to revamp the stats in the first place. But like everything, it’s also something we want to look toward player feedback with so we can improve the feature if needed.
Why wasn’t the confusing nature of stat names identified and dealt with back in the development/beta period?
Originally, stat names were chosen that way to add to the uniqueness of WildStar. Honestly, there weren’t any other games out there with stats like Finesse and Moxie, that was uniquely ours. What we didn’t anticipate, and what we eventually learned once the game was out in the wild and being touched by so many players, is that those cute names were really confusing to players. So now, based on player comments and feedback from some of our internal team members, we’re reworking the stats in WildStar to be more understandable by just about any type of player.
Will players log in after these changes to find that their hard-earned gear and runes have depreciated in power?
We’ve tried very hard to keep it all relatively the same; balancing the experience so that players will feel familiar with how their characters play but still feel that the system has improved overall was a key goal of ours during this process. Although, we no longer support the former 40 man versions of Datascape gear.
What will happen to currently socketed assault power runes?
All runes will be un-socketed from items, and then replacement tokens will be mailed to the player. We’ve set up vendors with all the new runes and you’ll be able to get whichever runes you’d like.
Thank you for your time.
