Something that I've been mulling over for a while has been the idea of a phasing powerset - the ability to move through solid objects, or move solid objects through you. I haven't seen it mentioned much at all, and I don't know if the devs had something like this in mind, but I was kind of thinking it would be an interesting and fun defensive powerset.
I love phasing as a power, despite a swath of troubling physical implications. E.g. falling through the ground or getting trapped in or half-in something, leading to a horrible horrible death. I've always wanted to see it represented in games in some form or another.
I could actually see phasing animations being an option for the "Agility" powerset. Essentially, if you think about it, phasing is a kind of evasion based defense (make stuff not hit you by making it go through you). With that in mind perhaps phasing in and of itself isn't necessar, but rather can be used as a type of agility.
Would any body else be interested in phasing? Have any of the devs thought about including something like this at some point down the line?
Name: Safehouse
Ranger: Gunner
Primary: Force Blast
Secondary: Atrophic Aura
Tertiary: Kinetic Melee
Travel Power: Parkour
Status: Traveling. Following rumors of a huge city in Massachusetts that is teeming with supers.
The number one problem that a properly done phasing set presents is ... different rules for different characters.
Specifically, the baseline assumption that "solid" objects (and terrain and world geometry and so on) automatically block the passage of EVERYTHING in the game world. If you can "walk through walls as if they weren't there" then there's literally nothing confining the PC to staying "in the bucket" of defined space that the PC needs to stay within in order for everything to "look right" in the game.
The simplest and most obvious example of this is that stuff like walls typically only have one sided textures on them. Look at a wall from the "wrong side" of the wall and the wall is transparent ... because the PCs are "never" supposed to be looking at walls from the outside in, only from the inside out. Yes, that's an optimization "cheat" used by nearly every game, but the point still stands.
The only way I could possibly imagine this sort of thing working in a UE4 context would be that SOME objects can be phased through, and they would have to be deliberately designed with such a notion in mind, while most objects (by default) do not. So the easiest example of this would be something like a security grating or jail cell bars, where there's (plenty?) of air gap for something (smaller) to get through but which are too narrow for a human to get through. Functionally speaking, this kind of element would effectively act like a "Locked Door" and the only way to "unlock" it is to activate a Phasing Power. That way, the "Door" is closed (and locked) to anyone who isn't Phased (because it's a physical barrier) but is OPEN (and unlocked!) to anyone who IS Phased ... allowing them to pass right through the object.
Such a setup allows Phasing to turn into a bit of a Get Out Of Jail Free card (given the assumptions behind jail cell bars as being adequate for containing NORMAL humans), but by having objects that amount to being "Doors" that are "closed" while UNPhased yet "open" when Phased, it then becomes possible to create means and ways to access what are essentially Secret Passages (sneaking into ventilation ducts without removing the grills anyone?) ... but those alternative routes to access areas and "stuff" all need to be defined in advance, meaning that's a non-zero amount of extra work to do on the Development side of things.
So ... CAN it be done? Yes, it can be done ... but it's extra work to accommodate additional content design that only a minority subset of Players will be able to take advantage of. Granted, it would be incredibly COOL™ to have stuff like that in the game, but it would require a non-trivial amount of extra work in order to do so, and the small number of Players who would ever be able to see it/make use of it argues against doing it from a [b]Return On Investment[/b] standpoint when it comes to the allocation of Developer Resources (time being the most critical and FINITE of these).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Thanks for taking the time to type up such a thorough and well reasoned response to my proposal. See, I had been thinking narrowly about just phasing as it can apply to combat, but you're looking at a much broader application that would be such a huge game changer that I had not even thought about.
You're totally right, for the open world, phasing would become hard to do. As you broke it down, I would even venture that that would become a nightmare to implement. For my day job we have to spend a lot of time doing cost benefit analysis for projects; looking at this, it would be a huge cost for something that would either not benefit or would break the game. Like using the "walk through walls" exploit from old Pokemon games to cheese the world map. In that context phasing is almost like a stupid OP travel power.
That said, what if it was limited phasing? As in, only using it with combat applications? In that case, wouldn't it function more as a defensive type set such as reflexes? Sure, you ain't walking through walls or reaching into people's chests to crush their hearts (I feel like I saw that in a movie somewhere), but you are evading enemy tactics.
What if only one skill in the powerset, on a huge cooldown, allowed the "opening of a locked door?" Almost like lock picking (don't know if lock picking is planned for this game)? No walking through walls, but if you're sufficiently skilled you can "pick the lock". Or do you think that poses the same issue?
Name: Safehouse
Ranger: Gunner
Primary: Force Blast
Secondary: Atrophic Aura
Tertiary: Kinetic Melee
Travel Power: Parkour
Status: Traveling. Following rumors of a huge city in Massachusetts that is teeming with supers.
I agree it's a cool idea in principle. But it's also one of those ideas where the Devs would almost have to re-design the entire game around the phasing concept to make it work well. It'd have to be something -every- PC and NPC was involved with in order to make it viable and fair. It'd be the "City of Phasing" - that might be a cool game, but it wouldn't be CoT.
Maybe if the phasing was limited to just your character's body instead if trying to involve phasing INTO other objects it'd be more viable for CoT. As a defensive power/concept it'd be just like you were a "ghost" as far as bullets et.al. are concerned.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Yeah I think that was kind of more what I had in mind. Having been given the breakdown of it, I can definitely accept how broken and horrible it would be to put together for general use (even if my personal character concept would be, in my imagination, capable of that), but I would hope to maybe see it utilized in a purely "defensive" capacity at some point in the life of the game.
Name: Safehouse
Ranger: Gunner
Primary: Force Blast
Secondary: Atrophic Aura
Tertiary: Kinetic Melee
Travel Power: Parkour
Status: Traveling. Following rumors of a huge city in Massachusetts that is teeming with supers.
Well I don't necessarily see why we can't still have it as an animation set. Could be fun to turn into a cloud of smoke whenever you dodge an attack
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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Basically, what Redlynne said. Which is why we aren't including any pjhasing for launch. Phasing will most likely appear in its own Tertiary set.
We can't apply it as an aesthetic because phasing itself is a mechanic. And aesthetics don't drive mechanics.
We would have to create new rules in our to hit system which recognizes an successful evasion to trigger a phase aesthetic. The aesthetic would have to be interlinked with combat mechanics which is something we don't have aesthetics do.
To further complicate the matter, this aesthetic option wouldn't be governed by the same rules as actual phasing since it is aesthetic. It can't be used to day, evase an attack and during that evade time, move through a phasable doorway. It would be the only aesthetic in the game that would have combat applications.
Then we have plans to include effects which can actually affect a phased state. Such as en opponent who is also phased, or being caught in a phased location with opponents.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Oh interesting. So, even if it was purely developed for use as a defensive set or aesthetic, it would be a big haul? I genuinely didn't think that it would be that complex. So it ultimately comes back to, even for just defensive stuff, you have to code a whole system to handle it.
Name: Safehouse
Ranger: Gunner
Primary: Force Blast
Secondary: Atrophic Aura
Tertiary: Kinetic Melee
Travel Power: Parkour
Status: Traveling. Following rumors of a huge city in Massachusetts that is teeming with supers.
Perhaps the most ... ambitious ... way you could possibly handle Phasing would literally involve "phasing" the instance you're in on the server.
Think of any instanced Mission Map that was used in City of Heroes.
Now duplicate that map so that you have 2 copies of it to work with.
Name one of those copies the "standard" map and name the other copy the "phased" map.
When you activate your Phasing Power, you don't just engage a mechanic (nothing hits me, I take no damage from any sources, etc.) ... instead you SWITCH WHICH MAP YOU'RE ON. You "leave" the Standard Map and move over onto the Phased Map. Presumably the Phased map will be "less populated" than the Standard Map, and there might be certain features selectively "missing" from the Phased Map, allowing you to pass through them (things like closed/locked doors on the Standard Map are "not present" on the Phased Map so you can "go through" them on the Phased Map just fine) and so on. So basically all your Phasing Power does is move you to the exact same spot on a duplicate (but slightly different) map.
Note that working Phasing in this fashion then lets two different characters "Phase Out" and fight each other while they're Phased, simply because they will have "moved" onto the same map together, and all of the usual rules of combat and the "solidity" of objects would still apply.
After that, it's basically a design decision as to whether or not to show "echoes" of PCs and NPCs from "the other phase" in your current phase (whether standard or phased) so that a Phasing Power does not in and of itself equate to an Invisibility Power in addition to being a Get Out Of Jail Free card.
Again, you're looking at a non-trivial investment of time and resources in order to support a functionality that will only ever be used by a small minority fraction of Players in the game. Granted, it would be wickedly cool thing to do and be able to play, but again, the [b]Return On Investment[/b] factor is marginal at best.
As for using Phasing in a combat context, what you're describing sounds an awful lot like using Super Reflexes to produce a [b]NO GET HITSU!![/b] style of gameplay. The key to how Super Reflexes worked was that it modified chances to hit/miss, and so it ought to be quite possible (and also EXPECTED at this point) that City of Titans will have something similar ... and all you need to do is build a headcanon around what your PC is doing is "flickering" between phases to make your opponents miss when they otherwise would have hit, and make your attacks hit when they otherwise would have missed or been blocked or whatever. [b]THAT[/b] sort of thing ought to be quite doable from a game mechanics standpoint, since it basically involves "biasing the odds" of things happening in your favor.
Basically that comes down to being akin to what you see being done with the Demon Sword Gram in this (epic!) fight between Kirito and Eugene.
[youtube]qFlVK5oW5BU[/youtube]
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
That would not work in an active-multiplayer instance. And requires waaay too much work to handle something that is more easily achieved.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
What? But you don't want to load more work on your sure to be heaping plate? :P
Name: Safehouse
Ranger: Gunner
Primary: Force Blast
Secondary: Atrophic Aura
Tertiary: Kinetic Melee
Travel Power: Parkour
Status: Traveling. Following rumors of a huge city in Massachusetts that is teeming with supers.
Already ahead of you.
Now, broadening a hit/miss bias mechanic out into being able to explain it away with phasing ... that would seem to be perfectly doable at the game mechanical level. Making the aesthetics work with that sort of thing would be a different matter, although I suppose you could (theoretically) rig something where if an attack results in a Miss then your character briefly "flickers" into a state of reduced opacity to represent that your character Phased Out momentarily to allow the attack to pass through them rather than hit them. On the offensive side of things, it would be even easier to deal with. Your attacks that Hit "stop worrying about clipping issues" and just start clipping through stuff with abandon so as to show that your attacks just Phase right through any "solid" protection schemes (shields, armor, bubbles, etc.) as if they weren't even there ... hence being able to clip through them willy nilly.
At that point, you might as well make the whole Combat Phasing thing for attacks (+to hit) and defenses (+to be missed by attackers) into its own Powerset so as to be able to control how it "works" under the hood in a more granular way. It would however make for an interesting variation on Super Reflexes in much the same way that Willpower wound up being an interesting variation on Regeneration (among other things).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I already had said we could link the hit mechanics to the aesthetic, but is something to avoid. Being that aesthetics are intentionally decoupled from mechanics. And that Phase is a mechanical status a character, target, object can be given. There are effects which can affect such that are in a phased state, including entire locations which can be phased.
Making a phased aesthetic for dodging attacks conflicts with the phased state mechanics.
Now, could we make an aesthetic that triggers based on combat mechanics? Yes. We plan to provide certain variations of this (for backers you may recall a certain emote triggered by control effects vid). But you won't see stuff that crosses the realm of infringing on actual combat mechanics where we would have to make separate rules for the aesthetically-triggered-event and the combat mechanics.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Right. Exactly. This sort of thing a bridge too far for the structure that the game is intending to use. However, there's a big difference between merely saying that (in a way that comes across as a "just because" due to lack of details) versus diving head first into the details that would be necessary and realizing "ah, right, that wouldn't work now would it?" instead.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
That's why I really appreciate the breakdown that you guys have given me. You didn't just say "yeah no not happening buh bye." You actually educated me a bit and gave me food for thought :)
Name: Safehouse
Ranger: Gunner
Primary: Force Blast
Secondary: Atrophic Aura
Tertiary: Kinetic Melee
Travel Power: Parkour
Status: Traveling. Following rumors of a huge city in Massachusetts that is teeming with supers.