WildStar's Legacy: The Telegraph-based Combat System

Giving it some thought and a quick search I realized something. It seems that Wildstar has not only revolutionized but created the telegraph-based combat system. Since other games that are similar in combat and gameplay start to implement it slowly over time I figure I should write about it on my blog.

What Is a Telegraph-based Combat System?

Simply put a telegraph is a system sending messages. Which pretty much matches the purpose of this combat system. The goal is to inform players where they can stand to avoid getting hit by enemy attacks, but also to inform them where it is good to stand. While you might think that this makes your game easier it's a helpful system that improves the quality of your game to fix certain issues. These issues appear when players try to beat a challenge but fail and don't know why. One of the things that makes video games fun to play is that there' a clear indication of what the player did wrong. Avoiding telegraphs in a game that requires and relies on the player position may result in the player not knowing where the damage they take comes from, breaking this idea and leading to complain and discomfort of the player.

WildStar's Creation of a new Combat System

In the following, I'm going to talk about where the telegraph system comes into play, how the game WildStar implemented the telegraph-based combat system. Therefore I'm going to focus on what telegraphs there are and the meaning they convey. After that, I'm gonna talk about the accessibility it provides and lastly I'm gonna mention all the downsides it still has or created. While this system is an improvement for movement and position heavy games - like all things - it's not perfect.

Where Does the System Come Into Play?

Back in the old days, tap-targeting was the goto style for combat systems as it was the easiest to implement from a collision detection point of view. For tap-target, we make an animation towards the current target and deal with the respective damage. Nowadays games went away from tap-targeting and have switched to more dynamic systems. Some games use a mix of different styles, such as Guild Wars 2 for example. Anyways with a collision-based approach, it is harder to tell when you are hit by an attack or when you hit an enemy. This is where the Telegraph-based Combat System comes into play. The idea is to mark with telegraphs where an ability hits and allows for simple collision detection of "is a hittable object in the telegraphs area". This means that telegraphs can be used for all abilities that are not single target and tap-target.

WildStar's Implementation

Illustration 1: Illustr. of the
components of a telegraph in WildStar

WildStar uses a total of two different types of telegraphs that, however, come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. These can be found most often in rectangular, cone-shape or circle form. Additionally telegraphs consist of three components. The border, the background and the fill (see illustr. 1). One aspect that is not clear from the illustration is that all three elements have an alpha component. This means that the background is visible as well as that overlaying telegraphs will represent more clear and vivid marks. In the following three paragraphs I will describe the implementation of the three types of telegraphs and how they behave, each having an explanatory illustration giving a visual idea to further help to bring it across. Overall the telegraphs can be identified by their pattern.

Full-Pattern

Illustration 2: A screenshot of a
full-pattern AoE

Full-pattern AoE's (Area of Effect) have full background and fill up with their fill. The way this work is that they can be ignored as long as they do not fill up completely. Standing in one of these AoE's when will result in getting it once it has filled up. After this procedure, they will disappear. This means these types of telegraphs only deal damage once. The border cuts off the dangerous area from the non-dangerous one. The background helps further marking the area in case the border drowns in visual noise and the fill is the warning on when the AoE will affect anything in it. This gives the player enough visual cues to get an idea about the positioning (where should I stand?) and the time (when should I?).

Striped-Pattern

Illustration 3: A screenshot of a
striped-pattern AoE

Striped pattern AoE's have a striped pattern in their background and fill up with their fill. Notice that the fill does not use a pattern but the alpha value to emphasize on the striped pattern of the background. These work differently from the full-pattern AoE's as they deal damage constantly to the target in it. The idea behind the fill, in this case, is similar to the full-pattern fill. With the full-pattern fill, the AoE disappears after it has been filled completely. This is the same idea for the striped-pattern. This is important so that the player can conclude that the filling of AoE's has something to do with time. In game design, it is important to try to let the same instance or happening have the same behavior. The stripes are also animated giving a sort of a dangerous vibe from them and helping to be able to see or detect them under visual noise. The player will know not to stand in these and get out of them immediately. The filling tells the player when they can consider moving to that area if the current position is getting dangerous. Again the "where?" and "when?".

Accessibility of the Telegraph System

One of the biggest issues of marking telegraphs is that not everyone sees colors the same way. A week's red outline will not help on green grass if the player can not differentiate between green and red. Even if the AoE is animated under visual noise it might drown especially for those players. WildStar solved this issue by allowing the player to fully customize the color and alpha of the telegraphs and it's components. This means it is potentially possible for the player to modify the border, background and fill with the types of AoE's so that he can determine the perfect settings where the AoE's are visible under all the circumstances in the game. Or disable them if wanted (e.g. alpha = 0).

Disadvantages and Issues

As I already mentioned this is not perfect. So, there are still some issues. One of the biggest issues I've seen is that the collision of the player or enemies is not quite clear. This means whether you are in the AoE or outside of the AoE when standing near the border is not always clearly indicated resulting in the player getting hit even though they thought they weren't inside the AoE. A plus point of the telegraph system here, however, is that the player knows why he was hit, even though they will feel cheated and see it as unfair. A solution for this could be to give the players and enemies a telegraph for their hitbox that is unique from the others and can be modified respectively. I would advise making it's border bigger to make up for the inaccuracy of tiny pixels. A mechanic that is similar to the coyote time. At this point, I'd advise to always indicate AoE's bigger than they are in this regard.

The other issue is that AoE's still may drown in too much visual noise. If we assume that multiple AoE's overlap each other it is hard to tell which telegraph means which and where AoE's or support is. A priority list may solve this which can potentially be fixed by the alpha values but requires more research, I would say.

Conclusion

So, if you plan to make a dynamic combat system game that requires player position or have one as a game as a service (GaaS which comes from SaaS) then I'd advise you to implement a telegraph-based combat system. If the players don't like it they can disable it by setting all alphas to zero. Believe me, it will improve the player experience.

Also thanks WildStar for creating this. R.I.P. until the private servers are runnable.

Goodbye, WildStar!

"Greetings Sapient beings."

~Caretaker from WildStar

is a quote that I took from WildStar. It's one of many quotes that I enjoyed in WildStar.

Good Bye, WildStar

Since today, November the 28th 2018, the WildStar servers were stopped. They've been running since the 3rd of June 2014.^[1] That's a total of 26 days 5 months and 4 years. I've been playing it since the head starts with only one big pause and I don't want it to be nothing. WildStar might not have been a perfect game, no game is perfected. There also might have been a lot of mistakes Carbine did, but WildStar did things right too and I want to tell you the reason I played it, why I think it has some aspects that are really great and what we can learn from it.

Why Did I Play WildStar? 

At first, I didn't want to play WildStar. I'm not a fan of Sci-fi or Science fiction games in comparison to medieval games. That's the reason why I play Guild Wars 2 instead of WildStar, why I play Terraria instead of Starbound or why I play Minecraft instead of Space Engineers, etc.. Well, I don't hate Sci-fi or science fiction. Empire Earth is a game that starts in the medieval and goes through the epochs into the future. I enjoy that, but space itself... meh. Yet, WildStar plays almost completely on a planet with a few space missions here and there. With this barrier removed there was nothing in the way for me. "But you're playing Guild Wars 2. Why switch?", is a good question. Something was missing in Guild Wars 2. At the time I was playing triple trouble was the second hardcore boss they added. Fractals of the Mists has gotten boring over time and raids didn't exist. I am one of the players who yearn for difficulty. Even now I might complain and get angry at my fails, still, the reward is greater than the anger if the difficulty is implemented correctly. This is exactly what WildStar promised. It promised to be a difficult game for hardcore raiders. I'm not a raider, but I get the basic idea behind it and difficult? Yeah, I'm in!

WildStar's Approach to Difficulty

I'm fascinated at the idea of this and at the same time a little disappointed they didn't go through more with it to the end. WildStar uses a telegraph system. This means each and every attack that is not target based uses a telegraph. This allows you to mark the area in which enemies or bosses attack. You know exactly - before - where the damage or area of effect will be. This allows you to perfectly avoid damage as long as you don't have the enemies aggro since the auto attacks can't necessarily be avoided. Furthermore, the first boss of the first dungeon I've seen makes me notice something. The number of telegraphs, the number of safe spots, most of the arena was covered. This really reminded me of bullet hell games. That's actually really awesome. How many 3D games actually implement the idea of bullet hells? Even though WildStar's punishment was hard. You either stand right or you're as good as dead, but you know what you died on. "Don't stand in the red!", is a famous quote you might hear very often in games that use telegraph systems - completely or partially.

So Where Did It Fail?

There are probably many reasons why WildStar ultimately failed, which was revealed over time. Promises that weren't kept from the game developer, complete rework before release, mistakes in the stat system and complete reworks after release, weekly server maintenances, requiring high amount of players for raiding (starting with 40 decreased to 20 everywhere), organizational issues of Carbine and the publish NCSoft, etc.. One of the issues I wanna talk about is something that could be a negative precedent case. 

Difficult Can Work Though

WildStar had its goal to be a difficult hardcore game. Over multiple years, especially triple-A companies avoided developing difficult games. The reason for this is that difficult games don't sell as well as games that work kinda like "everyone wins". Additionally, for an MMORPG, the hardcore community may not be big enough to keep an MMORPG running. Especially since you can't suit every taste there is out there. Does that mean there will never be a difficult or hardcore MMORPG? Yes and no. While I don't think an MMORPG that only focuses on hard and difficult content works, I do believe that it's possible to create an MMORPG that has a casual base and expands with difficult content on top of that. Even better when they implement a difficulty curve that raises the player bases skill level.

WildStar Is No Example For MMORPGs Not Being Worth It

You might, or might not have realized it. The amount of released MMORPGs is rather scarce in the past years. The giant World of Warcraft is still alive and many MMORPGs were stopped. Resulting in a decrease in published MMORPGs. However, WildStar is not an example of there not being the possibility of having a successful MMORPG. As I already mentioned, there were a lot of mistakes done in WildStar that ultimately resulted in its death. That has nothing to do with it being an MMORPG aside from the MMO part. That's similar to making a Dark Souls MMO. It doesn't work as the community is not big enough. MMOs are one of the games that actually need to cater to different audiences and speak to as many people as possible.

With this being said. If you plan to make an MMORPG, don't make another World of Warcraft clone and don't repeat the mistakes that were done. Learn from the mistakes and build on top of them. 

Remember WildStar

I want people to remember WildStar as an example of the good and bad points it had so that we as game developers can learn from the mistakes and apply the improvements or good aspects. I don't know about you but my goal is to improve MMORPGs for players to have an even better experience.

Also, don't forget that WildStar is one of the games that didn't go with the "Ranger" and "Mage" classes. Breaking from the standard.

With all that being said. Thanks to Carbine and NCSoft for making this experience possible despite the bad things that happened. I really enjoyed all the years and it was an awesome experience. Now I can only hope for another MMORPG that learns from the mistakes and improves on it or that Guild Wars 2 expands their content into the direction of more difficult content further. We'll see what the future holds. 

Goodbye, WildStar! May your work be found as an inspiration for further games!

^[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=wildstar%20release%20date

WildStar: Spellslinger Bug Rotation - The Ins & Out

Alright, since there are no more Redmoon Terror or Genetic Archives Prime 1 runs inside of our guild I pretty much closed up with WildStar for the time being. Thus it doesn't bother me too much if this gets me banned but I wanted to talk about this topic for quite a while since it's really interesting from a game design perspective.

I'm not going to explain every little detail but I try to tell you the most important things if you're not a Wildstar player.

Spellslinger & Redmoon Terror Set

The Spellslinger is one of a variety of classes that can be played. As weapons they use guns and their skills focus on guns and magic. Redmoon Terror is the last raid that was released in Wildstar. In this raid, every class can get a rune set referred to as RMT Set or risen class set. Each class has its own set.

The Spellslinger's risen class set basically works like this:

Every second you can get a stack when you use an auto-attack. Once you reach six of these stacks you can use an ability called assassinate that will deal 300% more damage and remove all the stacks upon hit replacing them with a buff that increases critical hit chance and critical hit severity.

Where's The Bug?

If you have played WildStar then you know that it is possible to remove a buff from your buff bar or from the stacks in your buff bar by right-clicking them. If you gather six stacks from the class set's buff you can use assassinate and the six stacks are not gone yet. Remember they are only removed when Assassinate hits. This means if you right click your six stacks before assassinate hits the enemy.

The next thing that happens now is that you have removed one stack and you have only five. Since you don't have six stacks they won't be removed you keep your five. The assassinate however still deals it's 300% more damage since this is checked when the skill is activated and not while the skill is in animation or assassinate is traveling.

With five stacks you only need one more auto-attack to shoot out another assassinate that will have the damage bonus and you can remove one buff from the class stack before it hits, just to find yourself in an infinite loop. An infinite loop of pain and damage.

Why Is the Bug Rotation Considered Difficult?

The biggest difficulty in this rotation comes from the fact that your distance from the boss defines how much time you have to remove the stack additionally the stack may not always be in the same position. Some add-ons place this buff to a fixed position in the buff bar or let you customize the position size and much more. Unfortunately, the buff bar changes its position when you gain or lose an absorb and the helper add-on throws all the buffs together in one spot and then filters all others out. So there's a chance to always click at the "wrong" moment resulting in not taking away one stack and losing all six gaining the other buff for multiple seconds. Seconds of damage loss. From experience failing this can lead to a DPS loss of around 25k. When I tried this rotation I got between 40k and 70k damage numbers in the raid.

The other issue is to balance your Spellsurge between assassinates and your auto attacks while still rotating between rapid fire and quick draw respective to the cooldowns. Each and every assassinate should be Spellsurged if possible.

How to Fix the Bug?

To fix the bug you need to know where the issue lies exactly. Luckily my explanation should have pointed you exactly to where we're searching for. So, one easy way to fix this bug is for Assassinate to instantly remove the six stacks and replace them with the other buff once it has been cast. This allows the player to have no chance to remove one stack before something could go wrong.

This would be the easiest way to fix it and quite simple.

Another way to fix it would be to prevent the player from dispelling or removing buffs on their buff bar. However, this could prevent the player from getting rid of certain buffs they don't want to have any more or that they don't want to have during damage tests. This does fix any related bugs in the future though.

Opinion

If Wildstar wouldn't be in such a bad shape as it is this issue would probably get fixed in just a few days. To be honest though, even if the DPS meter mentions one skill dealing 80% of the damage or so, actually performing the rotation is not an easy feat. As such the resulting damage is worth the work put in. Thus I would deem this to be a bug but not an exploit. Especially since the Spellslinger pretty much stays on par with the other classes damage numbers. Yet, still fixing this bug and buffing the Spellslinger damage would be the best option.

WildStar: The Value of Pure Soulfrost

I know I'm about two years late but I finally finished my reputation in Arcterra. Now I can finally spend my soulfrost on anything! But what comes afterward? How do I spend soulfrost from contracts after I've bought everything?

Arcterra What's That?

Arcterra is the last daily area that has been added to WildStar. Map-wise it's a completely new area that is placed deep in the arctic continent of Nexus. As such it's a huge snow landscape, obviously containing ancient eldan constructs but old osun constructs as well. This area is famous for rewarding you the famous item level 85 and upgraded item level 90 gear but also for the first class-set which was previously only available in the genetic archives. It's also very

Where Do I Get Pure Soulfrost?

Pure soulfrost is rewarded for almost anything you do in Arcterra. Killing mobs, doing dynamic events, killing bosses, participating in events and even from doing the challenges. So basically, just play the map. It stacks up to 1000 per inventory slot and cannot be sold or traded. It is soul bound.

Once you got the pure soulfrost you can use this to buy different items such as costumes, toys, pets, mounts, mount fashion, rune foci and class sets, rune bags, housing decor, housing unlocks such as music and skies, equip and more.

Determining the Value of Pure Soulfrost

Now let's get to the actual interesting part for those who are through with Arcterra. If you happen to get soulfrost or maybe you're even interested in farming it as this area is more fun you might want to use these for something interesting. Now, of course, trading post may make certain items better than others the EU trading post is nearly dead. So I'm gonna go with the vendor prices. Additionally, the soulfrost bags contain 10 gold items in it but their drops need to be researched.  Thus I'm going to skip this bag as well.

So, we'll look through all the items that are sold and we're gonna categorize them by their soulfrost buy price and gold, silver, copper sell price.

Here's a table copying my spreadsheet listing how I've categorized the items. It contains the name of the item or category, the pure soulfrost you have to spend on it, the sale price or the amount of copper you gain for selling the item and the rate that determines the worth of the soulfrost by dividing the amount of copper you gain divided by the amount of soulfrost you have.

On a side note: I will list the Spellslinger and light armor items as this is my main. The prices don't change between classes and armor types so you just need to find the respective one for your class and armor type.

Example: Soulstorm Pistols cost 325 soulsfrost and give us 5 gold 68 silver 96 copper. That's a rate of 56896 / 325 = 175.06 or about 1 silver 75 copper for each soulfrost.

Item	Cost	Value	Rate
Soulstorm Pistols	325	56896	175.06
Soulweave Chestpiece	300	50800	169.33
Soulrange Generator	250	40640	162.56
Soulweave Leggings	300	45720	152.4
Soulweave Coif	275	40640	147.78
Soulweave Boots	250	35560	142.24
Frozen Echo	300	40640	135.47
Soulblown Coil	250	32512	130.05
Soulblown Booster	250	32512	130.05
Soulweave Mantle	275	35560	129.31
Soulweave Gloves	250	30480	121.92
Soulblown Energizer	250	24384	97.54
Imbuement 500	500	45562	91.12
Imbuement 550	550	45562	82.84
Imbuement 600	600	45562	75.94
Tier 2 Mount	200	419	2.09
Tier 3 Mount	200	419	2.09
Tier 4 Mount	200	419	2.09
Tier 1 Decor	1	1	1
Pure Class Focus - Minor	350	112	0.32
Decor	5	1	0.2
Pure Class focus - Major	875	135	0.15
Tier 3 Decor	15	2	0.13
Tier 2 Decor	10	1	0.1
Tier 4 pet	125	4	0.03
Housing biome	100	3	0.03
Tier 4 Music	100	2	0.02
Tier 4 Housing	150	2	0.01
Tier 3 Color	150	1	0.01
Tier 5 mount	750	5	0.01

Turns out I can directly copy this from my spreadsheet. I feel amazed.

Conclusion

Good thing I already sorted the list using spreadsheet magic. So the result is obvious. The best item to gain the most from soulfrost and that also defines the value of pure soulfrost is the item level 85 weapon you can buy from the soulfrost vendor.

WildStar: Most Advanced Housing I've Seen

As I already hinted at it in my previous post. WildStars housing is its own thing.

Other Games

I've seen and heard about housing in several games. Though I must admit I'm not such a housing freak as other people may be. Yet I still enjoy one or two projects doing some remakes. So back when people heard about housing being customization in Guild Wars 2 the hype was great. Equally great - at least in amount - was the disappointment when the customization provided consisted of fixed nodes you get resources from as well as chests and some special non-playable-characters.

Of course, if you hear customization you imagine being able to place things wherever you want. Well, at least their guild halls implemented that feature. It's like Minecraft, but without snapping. You can do enough with it. Though you're stuck with the size and the rotation of the objects, which really limits one in their capability to let their creativity flow.

This is the same in Minecraft, though even worse. Of course, you can combine different blocks to make them look like something and there are mods out there to allow you to do much more you're yet still limited heavily. The blocks snap and building something huge would require a lot of time setting miniature blocks via an add on. I guess there's copy and paste for that?

Kudos, Carbine, Kudos

WildStar did it. I don't know how many games implement such an item but WildStar gives you enough tools to do your thing. You're fully able to change the x, y, z coordinates of the position, rotation and size. This allows you to freely customize your housing without restrictions like snapping or only being capable of placing objects next to a solid object. The funny part is it's not even limited to the UI objects you have. Entering your own numbers gives you even more options like making objects smaller than one or greater than whatever the cap was which I forgot. Of course, it's still limited as you can't place many animated or objects to interact with and yet it's enough for nearly anything.

It's amazing what people have made. From mosaic-like 3D statues to actual adventure like housings, jumping puzzles, labyrinths, etc. etc.. Or maybe the obligatory level remake from another game like Whomp King's Fortress from Super Mario 64 (yup, that's one of my projects check out my twink Whomp King to see it).

Next Level Housing

So if you ever come across an engine like housing system or.. let's call it housing engine you know what's coming upon you housing freaks. Besides a level editor in an MMORPG? I think that's something totally new and innovative no one has come up yet. Though how much work must it be?

But honestly.. it might just be worth it. 

WildStar: Expedition Prime Scaling Data

Knowing how items scale is helpful, but you need to get the items from somewhere. One place you can get items from are the expeditions. However to get items with high item levels you will need to run high prime content. Thus it's interesting to know how this content scales.

How To Go About This

So, for now, I'm gonna ignore the influence of hero into this by expecting you to have at least the amount or more hero than the prime level of choice. So what we want to know now is how the prime levels scale. For this, we just go into the prime levels at different difficulties and look for changes. I think many people already know that you'll notice two big changes.

• The enemies take longer to defeat
• You die faster

These two aspects should instantly bring up a few questions in our minds. The simplest of all those questions is the why. If the enemies take longer to defeat it means one or several things. For example, they could have more health or we do less damage. It could also be both. For the second aspect, it's most likely because the enemies deal more damage.

So let's compare the health and damage of the enemies on the different prime levels starting with prime level zero. Once we got our data we start to compare it to prime level zero and additionally we could also look at the steps between each prime level.

Collecting Data

Okay, so no joke. I literally went into the infestation expedition on prime level zero to 15 and checked the health of the same mob over and over again and let myself getting hit by the same attack of this enemy over and over. The enemy of my choice was the Lashing Terror. I noted down all the values in a spreadsheet. So you get two tables, one of the

Enemy Health

Prime Level	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Health	36533	41648	45302	49320	56627	61742	67222	73433	84024	91700	100102
Prime Level	11	12	13	14	15
Health	109236	124946	136271	148693	162210

and one of the

Enemy Damage

Prime Lvl	Avg. Dmg	Damage...
0	1231.4	1298	1212	1284	1270	1278	1196	1206	1170	1143	1257
1	1430.8	1388	1443	1369	1370	1456	1488	1440	1447	1427	1480
2	1531.5	1623	1561	1552	1563	1542	1528	1455	1428
3	1652.82	1715	1622	1722	1652	1614	1716	1652	1694	1589	1599	1606
4	1910.92	2002	1955	1884	1997	1911	1977	1902	1917	1815	1873	1852	1846

A bit weird that I only collected data on the damage from prime 0 to prime 4. Well, it's not just random but more on that later.

Evaluation of Data

So the next step is to evaluate our data. So we want to know how the prime levels scale. To figure this out we assume prime level zero is our base health and damage. So 100%. To determine how prime level 1 scaled we divide its health through the base health. We do the same with the damage.

This means in prime level 1 the enemies have 41648 / 36533 = 1.1400 or 114.00% the health.

Doing the same with the average damage we get 1430.8 / 1231.4 = 1.1619 or 116.19% damage.

So let's do this for every case we divide its health and average damage through the health and average damage on prime level zero. Now we get the following table.

Prime Level	Health	Percentage	Average Damage	Percentage
0	36533	100%	1231.4	100%
1	41648	114.00%	1430.8	116.19%
2	45302	124.00%	1531.5	124.37%
3	49320	135.00%	1652.82	134.22%
4	56627	155.00%	1910.92	155.18%
5	61742	169.00%
6	67222	184.00%
7	73433	201.00%
8	84024	229.99%
9	91700	251.01%
10	100102	274.00%
11	109236	299.01%
12	124946	342.01%
13	136271	373.01%
14	148693	407.01%
15	162210	444.01%

You may notice that I realized after prime level four that the damage most likely scales just like the health of the enemies do. It's too similar to be a coincidence. Even though to be certain one should've done it through this is enough evidence to me. Aside from knowing now that on prime level 13 the enemies do almost 4 times the damage and have almost 4 times the health.

Next, let's see if it scales linearly. We can do this by dividing the current enemy's health on the prime level through the previous one. So for prime level 2, it would be 45302 / 41648 = 1.0877 or 108.77%. We want the increase between the first and the second unrelated to the previous one. So we need to get 100% out of it. We can simply do this by subtracting one. Which means we get 1.0877 - 1 = 0.0877 or 8.77%

Prime Level	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Health	36533	41648	45302	49320	56627	61742	67222	73433	84024	91700	100102
%	-	14.00%	8.77%	8.89%	14.82%	9.03%	8.88%	9.24%	14.42%	9.14%	9.16%
Prime Level	11	12	13	14	15
Health	109236	124946	136271	148693	162210
%	9.12%	14.38%	9.06%	9.12%	9.09%

As you can see the increase is not linear. Now the question is raised whether or not this is fixed percentages set by the developers or if they use a non-linear function. To figure this out we need to find a pattern. Though that's not something I'm gonna do today, because I have to get ready for the flight to Paris and stuff.

"So hope you enjoy the data, GreenyNeko out!"

~GreenyNeko 

WildStar: Calculation of the Maximum Shield Stat

Note: There are low, mid and high maximum shield capacity shields. This calculation only applies to one of those.

Another post about WildStar stats and how they scale! At some point, we're through all of the stats available on items. You could technically use this for a building creator or something. Reminds me that I made such a web-app for WildStar builds. I don't think I have the resource though been over a year.

Steps to Determining the Calculation

So let's think this all through. We want to know how the maximum shield is calculated. For this, we need to determine all the related factors that could play in. To figure these out we compare items that exist with each other changing certain parameters. If we look at two different instances of the same item we will see the stat to be equal. However, if certain parameters differ the stats differ. Seeing this we can determine which factors affect the stat.

Looking at two different shields we see that the shield can be the same. So this plays no role. If we compare two equally named shields with a different quality we can see the maximum shield being equal. Keep in mind we want two shields with different qualities but everything else should stay the same. Next, if we compare two shields with different item levels we notice that the maximum shield changes.

So doing these tests and comparisons we now know that the maximum shield is dependent on the item level. So what do we do next? We're going to get as many shield items with different item levels as possible. Then we're going to compare each value with the others. We're gonna determine the increase between them and use it to calculate the increase for each item level. Next, we'll check whether or not it starts at zero and after that, we're able to calculate the shield stat with any item level by ourselves.

Collecting Samples

I've already collected a few samples via the infestation expedition. So here's a table with the item names, prime level, quality, item levels, and the maximum shield.

Item Name	Prime Level	Quality	Item Level	Maximum Shield
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Prime	Blue	65	14625
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Eldan Prime	Purple	70	15750
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Prime Tier 2	Blue	75	16875
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Prime Tier 3	Blue	80	18000
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Prime Tier 4	Blue	85	19125
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Eldan Prime Tier 4	Purple	90	20250
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Eldan Prime Tier 5	Purple	95	21375
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Eldan Prime Tier 6	Purple	100	22500
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Ancient Eldan Prime Tier 5	Orange	110	24750
Three-Sixty 0G Aegis	Eldan Prime	Purple	135	30375

Analyzing

So looking at the increase we start off with 14625 and have a step of 1125 with each example except from 22500 to 24750 but that's an increase of 10 item levels and the last jump from 24750 to 30375 but that's 25 item levels. Even if we subtract the older one from the newer one we will always get the same step. Going through our samples:

15750 - 14625 = 1125		16875 - 15750 = 1125
18000 - 16875 = 1125		19125 - 18000 = 1125
20250 - 19125 = 1125		21375 - 20250 = 1125
22500 - 21375 = 1125

For these, the item level always increases by 5. So if we get 1125 maximum shield for 5 item levels that means we get 1125 / 5 = 225 for each item level.

For our higher examples let's see if they fit into this. The difference is 24750 - 22500 = 2250 and it increases by 110 - 100 = 10 item levels. 10 item levels should be 10 * 225 = 2250. So this matches.

The other one has a difference from 30375 - 24750 = 5625 and has an item level difference of 135 - 110 = 25. So the increase should be 25 * 225 = 5625.

Great!

Start Value

So we know that the increase is constant. This means we can represent our shield via a linear function.

Mathematically a linear function has this basic formula:

f(x): y = mx + t

Since our function is dependent on the item level, which means the value changes if the item level changes. We can replace x with our item level. m is the increase which is our 225 for each item level.

f(itemLevel): shieldStat = shieldIncrease * itemLevel + startValue

f(itemLevel): shieldStat =  225 * itemLevel + startValue

Using a random shield - I like to use items with item levels like 100 so let's take that one. We have a 22500 maximum shield on it. If we assume the value for our formula is 22500 and the item level is 100 we can simply calculate the start value by inserting our data into the function.

f(100): 22500 = 225 * 100 + startValue

f(100): 22500 = 22500 + startValue | -22500

 f(100): 22500 - 22500 = startValue

f(100): startValue = 0 

So we've mathematically shown that there is no start value. What does this mean? It means if we multiply the item level with the shield increase of 225 we get the shield on our prime shield item.

It also means that if we had a shield with item level zero it wouldn't have any maximum shield.

Item Level 170 Shield

So for example, if we were to wonder what an item level 170 shield would just have to insert it into the formula:

f(itemLevel): shield = 225 * itemLevel

f(170): shield = 225 * 170

225 * 170 = 38250

So now we know an item level 170 shield has a 38250 maximum shield.

WildStar: Proc Chance of Prime Drops Result Update

This was a bad idea and I'm kinda running out of time to write this post so here we go in three, two, one...

Recap

So you might or might not remember that I was wondering about the proc rate of items in prime expeditions, or any prime content for that matter, in WildStar. So to check whether or not the myth of it being 25% is correct I started my drop research. Of course, starting off the sample size is small so the values are anything but accurate. I've now continued for another week to get more samples and that's why I'm here now.

Research State

So the current state is almost as I planned it. My goal was to reach a total of 100 samples. I've... reached 96 samples. I know, I know, 100 samples are still like nothing. However, it's at least a number I have proof of and that's something that matters to me. Well without further ado let's look up my old research and start the comparison! That's something I haven't done yet on my blog.

So back in my first research, I had

• 44 samples
• 35 without a proc
• 5 with only one proc
• 4 with a double proc

The current state is 

• 96 samples
• 68 without a proc
• 19 with only one proc
• 8 with double proc
• 1 with quadruple proc

Calculating the Chances

It's nice looking at those numbers but we want to see chances so let's go calculate the chances. The only interesting values are how many items of these samples had at least one proc and how many didn't.

In our first example it were 4 + 5 = 9 items so 9 / 44 = 0.204545 or 20.45%.

Currently we've got 19 + 8 + 1 = 28 items with at least one proc from 96 samples so 28 / 96 = 0.2917 or 29.17%.

As you can see our proc rate jumped by about 8.7% and is now far above the 25% people believe it to be. Well with only 96 samples the number still fluctuates a lot.

Concept of Checking

We use math to check if everything went as it's supposed to be and whether or not we've made mistakes. We can use this checking to see if our number is accurate and how far it might be off.

If we assume to have a 25% chance to proc an item and the chance does not change, additionally we can proc an item multiple times, it's safe to say that our chance to get two procs is the chance for the proc to occur and then the same chance again. This means our chances in this scenario are the following:

The chance for no proc: 75%

Chance to proc: 25%

Chance for two procs: 25% * 25% = 6.25%

Chance for three procs: 25% * 25% * 25% = 1.5625%

Chance for four procs: 25% * 25% * 25% * 25% = 0.390625%

and so on. This means if we calculate the chance on how many items at least proc'd twice the chance we get here must equal the chance for one proc multiplied by itself. We can continue this throughout all our occasions. You can call this forward checking.

In our example: 

25% * 25% should equal 6.25%. If not our check fails. If it does, perfect.

Well obviously if I'm naming this "forward checking" there must be another type of checking. Not hard to guess, the opposite I'll call it backward checking. Backward checking works by doing what we just did backward. We take the chance of for example two procs and divide it through the chance to proc at least once. The result should be the lower value.

In our example:

6.25% / 25% should equal 25%. If not our check fails. If it does, perfect.

Forward Check

So let's apply this forward check to our newest numbers.

Our chance for one proc is 29.17%. So the chance for two procs should be 29.17% * 29.17% = 8.51%. So let's check out what the chance actually is. We got nine items that have at least a double procs from 96 samples, that's a chance of 9 / 96 = 0.09375 or 9.375%. So as you can see our chance for double procs isn't too far off from the chance for only one proc. Of course with our sample size, this could just be a coincidence.

We can do the same with the quadruple proc. The chance for this one should be our chance for at least one proc multiplied by itself four times.

29.17% * 29.17% * 29.17% * 29.17% = 0.7240%

With us having only one such proc from 96 samples that's a chance of 1 / 96 = 0.0104 or 1.04%. This one is a bit too high. Now let's do the other check.

Backward Check

Without chance being 9.375% for at least a double proc if we divide this through our chance of at least getting one proc the result should be the same chance we divide through. If not our numbers are still off of what they should be. It's important for them to match up but more to this later.

9.375% / 29.17% = 32.14%

Now that's off by about 3%.

Conclusion

So as you can see all our checks failed forward and backward. This was to be expected though. A sample size of 96 is still not enough. So what do these checks tell us? If the numbers don't match up we can assume one of two things.

• The system does not work as we assumed (the chances change)
• Our chances are off, wrong or incorrect

So what went wrong? In our first forward check, the chance we've calculated was 8.51% but we got 9.375%. This means we've gotten more at least two times procs than we were supposed to if we assume the at least one proc chance of 29.17% to be correct. Same with our second forward check. We've got more quadruple procs than our proc chance of 29.17% for at least one proc allowed. So we can say 29.17% is wrong. So what must change for our number to get accurate? We need to get either

• less at least double procs
• more at least one procs and more without any proc

Our backward check more or less tells the same. The resulting chance from our calculation is slightly higher. This is the result of our at least double proc being too high or our at least one proc being too low.

So what can we take from this? The research kicks us in the face with a "keep on researching".

and with this, I'll leave for now. If I make another post on this it's most likely going to be a test of significance.

WildStar: Contract Board Track Completion

I love the contract board. Most often I can't complete it due to the low amount of people that are doing it or since I'm not online when people do it - if they do. So this is a little disappointing. Why do I love the contract board? Because of the loot, you get.

The Contract Board

The contract board in WildStar is a menu option and a device like NPC you can interact with. This contract board gives you the option to select three out of five contracts in PvE and PvP each. The five contracts you can choose from are:

• Level 1 - repeatable rewards 50 points
• Level 2 - once a day rewards 150 points
• Level 3 - once a day rewards 450 points

These points can be collected and concerning the amount you have you can select rewards. The reward track for PvE and PvP is split and you collect points for them individually just like the contracts are individual. For the PvE reward track, you get rewards at 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 and lastly 5000 points. The rewards you can choose from 1000 to 4000 is an item of either item level 90 or 100 - this equals early raid gear basically - or alternatively an item that can be used to buy extra stuff or to get reputation in an area that is supported by this faction. The PvP reward track gives you item level 65 items or the same choice as in PvE for an item that can be used to buy extra stuff or get the reputation in an area. The milestones in this one are 1000, 2000 and 3000.

The big thing about these reward tracks is the last milestone. Once you reach 5000 points in the PvE track or 3000 in the PvP track you have the choice. This choice again depends on whether you've done the PvE or the PvP track.

Player vs Environment:

• One random superb, raid-quality assault gear and those items for reputation and stuff
• One random superb, raid-quality support gear and those items for reputation and stuff
• One random very rare character-bound unlock-reward

Player vs Player rewards are similar:

• One random excellent, PvP-quality assault gear and those items for reputation and stuff
• One random excellent, PvP-quality support gear and those items for reputation and stuff
• One random very rare character bound unlock-reward

Additionally completing either will reward you with 2 platinum and 50 gold or 2500000 copper to make the number unnecessarily big.

Protostar Contractually-Obligated Settlement

The item that gives one random very rare character bound unlock reward is called Protostar Contractually-Obligated Settlement. This item has a secret that everyone should know. There's only a limited amount of unlocks you can get from it. Additionally, once you have the unlock unlocked you won't get it again. So what happens if you have everything unlocked that can come from this item? You get 5 platinum instead. If you reach this point you get 7 platinum and 50 gold every time you complete the contract board. That's 7500000 copper! 7.5 * 10^6!

So How Many Contracts It is?

If we're assuming you do every contract available every day you would finish one level one contract, three-level two contracts, and one level three contract. That'd reward you 50 + 3 * 150 + 450 = 950 points. You need 5000 points in PvE and 3000 in PvP. Dividing the 5000 by the amount we make every day we can determine that we have to do a complete daily round of contracts 5000 / 950 = 5.26 times or 6 days. For PvP it's 3000 / 950 = 3.16 times or 4 days. Unfortunately, depending on which server you play on - I heard American servers are more active - you might not be able to do all the contracts or maybe it takes you too much time. So let's assume you're only going for the big fish. This means you get 450 a day. In PvE, you would need 5000 / 450 = 11.11 times or 12 days. In PvP that's 3000 / 450 = 6.67 times or 7 days. Alternatively, we can say the level three contract is out of our reach. This may often happen in PvP when the contract is to play a warplot match. I haven't seen a warplot match pop up in like 3 or 4 years or so. So if we say we only do the level two contracts we get three times the reward points of 150. That's 3 * 150 = 450, so as much as a level three contract means the calculation is the same.

"I'm Hella Crazy Hardcore I'll Push the Reward Track Through!"

If you plan to do the contract rewards with only level one contracts get ready to be doing 5000 / 50 = 100 contracts in PvE and 3000 / 50 = 60 contracts in PvP. I don't wanna tell you it's not worth it but... I think there are better ways to get 7 platinum and 50 gold.

Daily Income

So as we've calculated it takes 6 days for PvE and 4 days for PvP to get the reward tracks of both done if you do all the contracts a day once. This means that in 6 days you will get the last milestone of both PvE and PvP reward tracks. That's 7 platinum and 50 gold twice. If we want to know how much that is in daily we have to divide the amount through the times in days it took. So for PvE that's 7.5 / 6 = 1.25 and for PvP it's 7.5 / 4 = 1.875. So doing this we will get 1.25 + 1.875 = 3.125 platinum a day.

Income Per Point

Calculating the income per point isn't overly complicated either. We get 7.5 platinum for both PvE and PvP. The PvE reward track requires 5000 points. So one PvE reward track is 7.5 / 5000 = 0.0015 platinum per point. Calculating it in gold we could either recalculate or multiply it with 10^2. 750 / 5000 = 0.15 gold. Going further down we have again times 10^2 (since 1 gold is 100 silver). 0.15 * 10^2 = 15 silver. So each PvE reward track point is worth a 15 silver. 

A level one contract gives 50 * 15 = 750 silver or 7 gold 50 silver.

A level two contract gives 150 * 15 = 2250 silver or 22 gold 50 silver.

A level three contract gives 15 * 450 = 6750 silver or 67 gold and 50 silver.

Next, let's go through the PvP track. Here we need 3000 points instead of 5000. This means each point is worth 7.5 / 3000 = 0.0025 platinum. That's 0.0025 * 10^2 = 0.25 gold and 0.0025 * 10^2 = 25 silver. Doing the same with the contracts as we did before we get:

A level one contract gives 50 * 25 = 1250 silver or 12 gold and 50 silver.

A level two contract gives 150 * 25 = 3750 silver or 37 gold and 50 silver.

A level three contract gives 450 * 25 = 11250 silver or 1 platinum 12 gold and 50 silver.

I Can't Get 7 Platinum and 50 Gold Yet

If you haven't gotten all of the unlock rewards you will only get the normal 2 platinum and 50 gold instead of the 7 platinum and 50 gold. In this case, all our calculations are wrong. However, you can still calculate it the same way you just have to change the numbers.

Our daily income now changes to 2.5 / 6 = 0.42 platinum and 2.5 / 4 = 0.625 platinum every day. Summing it up we get 0.42 + 0.625 = 1.045 platinum every day from contracts.

The income per point also changes. We now only get 2.5 platinum for 5000 points from PvE contracts so 2.5 / 5000 = 0.0005 platinum, 0.0005 * 10^2 = 0.05 gold or 0.05 * 10^2 = 5 silver per point. The value of our contracts now also changes:

A level one contract rewards 50 * 5 = 250 silver or 2 gold and 50 silver.

A level two contract rewards 150 * 5 = 750 silver or 7 gold 50 silver.

A level three contract rewards 450 * 5 = 2250 silver or 22 gold and 50 silver.

For our PvP contract point value it is 2.5 / 3000 = 0.00083 platinum, 0.00083 * 10^2 = 0.083 gold, 0.083 * 10^2 = 8.3 silver. And the contracts change accordingly:

A level one contract rewards 50 * 8.3 = 415 silver or 4 gold 15 silver.

A level two contract rewards 150 * 8.3 = 1245 silver or 12 gold and 45 silver.

Last but not least a level three contract rewards 450 * 8.3 = 3735 silver or 37 gold and 35 silver.

WildStar: Proc Chance in Primals [On-Going]

I've been wondering about the proc chance or chance of items to drop with a higher item level before and asked friends what the proc chance is. Some mentioned that someone tested it on the PTR (public test realm) and shared their results on the Reddit or forum but I couldn't make that data show up. The others said a death mentioned the chance as an example chance. So I guess it's up to myself to test it myself.

Checking Drop Rates

Loot tables, drop rates, etc. are really tedious to check. The reason these things are so tedious is if you have no vendor or alternative to get the drops you need to farm. This means repeating the same content over and over again to check every single instance of the drop.

Calculating the chance of something to happen works via stochastic. We divide the number of instances or cases through the number of all possibilities. So if we say our item dropped three times and we ran the content 25 times we have a chance of 3 / 25 = 0.12, 12% to get that item.

However, what we want is the rate of procs. For this, we're going to assume a few rules that may or may not be given.

1. The proc chance will always be the same
2. Items can proc several times
3. There's a limit to the procs 

The limit is determined by the base item level. Each proc increases the item level by five. The maximum item level is 170. So that means a prime level 0 item, which has an item level of 65 can proc (170 - 65) / 5 = 21 times.

To get the proc chance we're gonna ignore any multi procs for now and just look at any item that procs at least once. We divide this number through the number of items we've gotten in total. The counter chance is the chance to get an item that has no proc, as in an item that has the base item level.

To correct errors and check the values, a double proc must have the chance of the single proc chance multiplied by itself. Vice versa, the double proc divided by the single proc chance must result in the single proc chance.

Gathering Samples

To gather the samples we need to run easy and fast content. It would be even better if we do the same content with the same circumstances to prevent from getting unwanted values in. The fastest prime content is prime level 0. One of my favorite instances to get through fast is the expedition infestation. My runs were around five to six minutes. So I've been running through this expedition in the past days and trying to get a small number of samples:

• 44 items in total
• 35 without a proc
• 5 with only one proc
• 4 with double proc

Knowing this we also know the number of items that have at least one proc is 5 + 4 = 9. We can already calculate the chance of getting an item that has no proc. To do this we divide the number of items without proc through the total amount of items.

P("no proc") = 35 / 44 = 0.7954, 79.54%

We can easily calculate the other ones as well:

P("only one proc") = 5 / 44 = 0.1136, 11.36%

P("only double proc") = 4 / 44 = 0.0909, 9.09%

Though these are only nice to know.

The actual chance that would be relevant is how often we get a proc. There are three ways to calculate this.

P("at least one proc") = 1 - P("no proc") = 1  - 0.7954 = 0.2046, 20.46%

P("at least one proc") = P("only one proc") + P("only double proc") = 0.1136 + 0.0909 = 0.2045, 20.45%

P("at least one proc") = (5 + 4) / 44 = 9 / 44 = 0.2045, 20.45%

Running our checks.

Applying our rules:

P("at least one proc") * P("at least one proc") = P("at least two procs")

Since we had no proc above two we can take P("only double proc") which is 0.0909. Filling everything in we get 0.2045 * 0.2045 = 0.0909, 9.09%. Calculating it gives us 0.2045 * 0.2045 = 0.0418, 4.18%. If we're assuming the rules we've created apply, these numbers will draw nearer.

If we reverse calculate from the double proc to the single proc we divide the double proc through the single proc. Keep in mind:

P("at least two procs") / P("at least one proc") = P("at least one proc")

The actual P("at least two procs") we have is 0.0909. So if we calculate 0.0909 / 0.2045 = 0.4445 we'll get 44.45%. Again the numbers 0.2045 or 20.45% and 0.4445 or 44.45% will draw closer to each other. So we could assume the drop chance may be between 20.45% and 44.45% at this point.

The Myth

I heard the drop chance was 25%. If we assume 20.45% and 44.45% draw closer equally we can find the middle by taking the difference and subtracting half of the difference form the higher value. 

44.45% - 20.45% = 24%

24% / 2 = 12%

44.45% - 12% = 32.45%

This is just an estimate that might not be accurate at all.

On-Going

The sample size we have consists of 44 items which means there are going to be huge fluctuations in percentages for each new item we get. To be certain we need to keep on collecting data until we have enough so that the fluctuations are low enough and the difference in our checks is small enough. Most optimal would be a fluctuation lower than 0.0001 since we've rounded up to 0.01%.

Bottom Line

I'm gonna continue my research and make a new post on this next week since I had this topic planned twice accidentally. Whelp :P If you have the information somewhere I'd be glad if it's shared. Well... I'm off to get more samples now evening or night. :P

WildStar: Total Essences of Daily Areas

Less theorycrafting, more analyzing. Something  I was wondering is... aside from the ten times bonus, we get once a day, which of the daily areas rewards the most essences? I did my research and now I know.

How to Figure It Out

Simple. Go to the daily areas, complete the quests, look at the quest rewards. Okay, let's take a step back and look at what we have. There are four daily areas. Crimson Badlands, Northern Wastes, Star-comm Basin and Malgrave. Additionally, we have Arcterra but I'm not gonna count it in since it doesn't reward any essences and it isn't in the daily area rotation of the ten times bonus. So we need to know how many quests each of those areas has and how many essences they reward.

Crimson Badlands

Going down our list we start with Crimson Badlands. This deserted area has got a total of 16 guests. We have six NPCs or quest givers that give between one and three quests. In total, they give 11 quests. Additionally, in the underground, we got another quest. So that's 12 quests in total. There are 4 additional path quests, one for each path. Each and every one of these rewards 24 essences by default. So we get 24 * 16 = 384 essences doing them and 240 * 16 = 3840 essences when it's daily. However, we just looked at one side. Crimson Badlands has quests for Dominion and quests for Exiles. Both sides have the same amount of quests but once you finished the Exiles quests you can still do the Dominion quests even with the ten times bonus. So we get twice the amount of essences. That's 384 * 2 = 768 or 3840 * 2 = 7680 essences during the ten times bonus.

Having a signature account increases this amount further. We now get another 120 essences for each quest. So we have 24 + 12 = 36 essences for every quest, 16 Dominion and 16 Exile quests makes 32 quests, which in return results in 36 * 32 = 1152 essences or 360 * 32 = 11520 with the ten times bonus. We also may get the Drusera bonus but that one differs from person and person respective to the amount of missed essences so I'm not going to calculate this one.

Northern Wastes

Our second area the cold and snowy Northern Wastes daily area presents us with a 5 NPCs or quest givers. Aside from the first, they all give 3 quests. So that's 1 + 4 * 3 = 13 quests. Again here too we have four path quests. So in total, we have 17 quests available in this frozen place. Just like Crimson Badlands we can complete all these quests on a Dominion character still getting the ten times bonus as the Dominion and Exile quests are unique. The essence reward for each quest is the same. Just like in Crimson Badlands we get 24 for each quest. So that's 24 * 17 = 408 essences on one of the faction sides with the ten times bonus 240 * 17 = 4080 essences. Doing both sides we get 24 * 34 = 816 essences without ten times bonus and 240 * 34 = 8160 with.

So we can already see an increase in essences for this area but it also takes an additional quest.

Star-comm Basin

Here we've got a... special daily area. This one shares the quests for both Dominion and Exile so we can only get the bonus with one of the characters. Another specialty of this area is that the quests change. There are 3 quest givers. Each gives 2 quests, so that would be 3 * 2 = 6 quests. However one of the quest givers gives different quests according to the position he's standing at and the position is relative to the current theme. So depending on when the theme changes and how often you can do six to ten quests a day plus the four path quests. So in total ten to 14 quests. The essence reward is also higher in this area. We get 40 essences instead of 24 for each quest. That means we get between 40 * 10 = 400 and 40 * 14 = 560 essences. With the ten times bonus that's 4000 to 5600 essences. Now assuming you still do the area with the other faction you get an additional 400 to 560 essences.

With all this data we're left with 400 + 400 = 800 to 560 + 560 = 1120 essences without ten time bonus and 4000 + 400 = 4400 to 5600 + 560 = 6160 essences with ten times bonus. Assuming we have signature bonus this amount increases by 50%. So we get 60 instead of 40 essences. Going through the numbers again that's between 60 * 10 = 600 and 60 * 14 = 840 essences. With ten times bonus it's 6000 to 8400 essences and last but not least doing it with another faction it's an additional 600 to 840 essences. So between 600 + 600 = 1200 and 840 + 840 = 1680 essences. Now with the ten times bonus it's 6000 + 600 = 6600 to 8400 + 840 = 9240 essences.

Malgrave

The last daily area and again a special one. This daily are consists of one quest rewarded after the 4th phase of a five-phase event that occurs every four hours. It happens around the R-12 containment facility. This quest does reward quite a handful of essences though. Accepting the quest and getting the reward from the respective faction NPC rewards 120 essences with the ten times bonus it's 1200 essences. These are also possible to get with both factions so we can get 240 essences without the bonus and 2400 with the bonus. Being a signature player we get 360 essences without and 3600 essences with the bonus.

Conclusion

If we would do all the daily areas in the order they reward the most we would start with the ten times bonus. Aside from that one listing the top reward areas, we would get the following ranking:

1. Northern Wastes with 816 essences 
2. Star-comm Basin with 800 - 1120 essences
3. Crimson Badlands 768 essences
4. Malgrave with 240 essences