119834-micro-vs-macro-movement-the-one-reason-id-leave-wildstar

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			To defuse my own trollbait title, I'll say up front that I'm not demanding Wildstar does more. I'd love to see it but I don't expect it. All I mean is if another game manages to deliver on a lot of the things we're missing here, I'd consider leaving.What I mean by MicroWildstar excels at this. Close quarters movement is not my problem. I like so many others am spoiled for other games when it comes to telegraphs, avoidance, double jumps, dashes, and the near death of Tab targeting. The flow and pace of the close quarters game is near perfect. Any other game has a lot of work ahead of them to meet or exceed this game.What I mean by MacroAt first glance I'm sure a lot of you think I mean Travel. In a technical sense I do, but that isn't my focus. In truth what I want is a serious look at the middle ground. My prime example here will be City of Heroes, but also a couple non MMOs like Marvel Heroes or XCOM. Wildstar makes a start in this respect, but overall there's a lack in tactical movement and AI behavior that makes combat feel "flat" Here are three ways other games pushed my happy buttons in this regard.1) City of Heroes wasn't afraid of fighting on multiple levels of terrain. Unfortunately their cover mechanics coding was weak (more on that later) but platforms, jumping and creative use of corners, as well as combat range versions of Movement powers that created a solid sense of combat in 3d space, even if it was a Tab target game. I don't expect WS to implement Flight, Hovering, or Superjumping game wide, but there are times and places in the world where it would work really well. Fighting Falkrin on the ground, when the zones they show up make regular use of whirlwinds (Deradune) or floating pollen (Galeras) that allows big jumps seems flawed. Some creatures burrow, but nothing we can do matches that, and it doesn't really take advantage of terrain, as another example. It would be cool to have some attacks that hit burrowed creatures. Even without these more extreme examples, a solid upgrade would be to have more places to jump to and from, and foes that could jump up and down more intentionally I bring that up because in a game like XCOM, terrain height makes differences in accuracy and damage, and while it can be extreme, a more moderate approach and some AI tweaking would go a long way (foes that are smart enough to seek that advantage when they can, or avoid the disadvantage when a player uses it, as well as foes with varying ability to move).2) Cover and reactive terrain- Wildstar has solid cover mechanics, but the terrain often feels "big" and in comparison to the leash ranges and how much usable stuff there is in the areas it doesn't pay off to move around and drag foes toward or away from objects, or take advantage of cover. Marvel heroes has at least one encounter where the boss buffs himself and then loves to charge players, and if you space and align in the area, they crash into the wall and stun themselves. In City of Heroes, higher levels made use of Snipers, units with huge sight range that came solo or in packs along with regular troops. If you weren't careful you could aggro groups a huge distance away, and had to take advantage of walls in order to hide while they ran toward you so you wouldn't aggro intervening foes. In XCOM cover could be full and more than adequate, but splash AoE or destructive blasts could still hit a player or remove the cover entirely. In Wildstar, I realize the open world can't be fully destructible, but you could pretty easily create Eldan areas with Force walls that appear and disappear, or are disabled by damage temporarily. Reactive terrain attacks would also be a cool way to help players solo Primes, if I could convince a prime to charge into a boulder and stun itself, knocking off a layer of IA, then time my own Interrupt and stun it, I'd really enjoy that. In a perfect world it would also be cool to complete the game's Water combat, which right now is a bit lacking and incomplete feeling.3) I've touched about possible AI improvements, but my last point is to specifically address how basic and limited the core PvE AI feels at times. Again, in the micro sense it is pretty solid, most mobs are making good choices in terms of what abilities to use, and there's not many NPCs with abusively broken attack schemes. However there's a marked lack of tactical moves. They run up to you as close as they need to, then they start attacking until they are dead. This, to be perfectly blunt is boring. City of Heroes had one small portion in their AI scripts that often made combat far more organic. This was called the Runner. When fighting 'intelligent' enemies (humanoids as opposed to animals or drones) if the fight went badly and one of the minions got to low health, they would try to run away. If they made it to another group nearby, this would alert them and could draw them into the fight even if they were out of normal range or sight. In tough fights that could mean the difference between winning and losing. There were even times when the Runner could mean mission failure (or at least a delay of success). If they ran off into a corner and hid before you noticed, but your job was to eliminate everyone, you'd have to go hunting for them throughout the mission instance. That could be annoying but it also changed the way you played, making you more observant and attentive even in fights you knew you would win. In XCOM there are units that when you come upon them instead of charging ahead and engaging directly, they will execute a rocket jump and either get to high ground or try to get behind your group to negate your cover. Coupled with the height advantage I mentioned earlier, a group of Wildstar foes could be a lot more interesting to fight if they snuck around the edges of the battle to gain advantage, or tried to go get help when they were losing.I'm not suggesting any of these things to flat out make the game harder, or just to be #hardcore. I sincerely feel the variety and quality of even basic PvE could be improved by some relatively small changes so I wanted to illustrate that. Hope it helps.	
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I'm too tired to come up with an eloquent response, but, I love your ideas. Adding a bit of variety to the combat would push this game into a real "groundbreaking" status, where it's not just a copy-paste MMO with a new aiming system. With the way combat is, having only 8 buttons and all, we definitely need something else to do / think about. I'd like a combo system like in GW2, and I like the idea of terrain advantages and "smart" AI for enemies. Also, water combat! Yes! Ikthia! Vashj'ir! Rawr! xD
 
Anyway, I give this a two thumbs up, and a definite signature. ^^	
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Thanks for the kind words, I look forward to any more thoughts you may have when you're more awake. :)
 
I realized after I posted that I wanted to emphasize one point more than I had: 
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If they made it to another group nearby, this would alert them and could draw them into the fight even if they were out of normal range or sight.
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