I know Commanders aren't going to be in at launch, but is there any info on any work done on them yet?
Is anyone on the dev team tinkering with it at all?
I'd hate to find out a year into the game that the engine can't support the concept or something like that.
—
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
We've demonstrated the technology in a few demonstration videos well over a year ago. We know they work, but the added labor to make a full system vs a prototype is too much for launch.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I think Unreal can DEFINITELY support the concept and functionality of them, I don't think that's the problem. What may be a problem is server load, but there are ways to temper that (which the devs have said they're tinkering with).
Good question overall though!
I'm an old mastermind just waiting to be unleashed into a new city.
Good things come to those who wait.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
How'd I miss that? Are they on the YouTube channel?
Now I gotta go look again.
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
In the backer area.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Pet managing classes essentially work on the building blocks of everything else that goes on in making a game work. As far as I'm concerned, if the fundamental "basics" of how classes work are functionally sound, then making a Pet managing class becomes a question of integrating all of those elements properly ... but you have to get those fundamental building blocks made FIRST before you can do new and nifty stuff with them. To my mind, putting off Commanders until after launch simply makes too much sense. It's a "walk before you run" kind of evolution, and right now everything's still in the "crawling" phase (let alone getting to the "cruising" phase, which I'd hope that parents with children would recognize almost immediately).
Build it RIGHT in the first place, from the ground up, with SOLID foundations before you reach for the sky, rather than rushing to build anything (and everything) in a sandy spot.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I dunno. No other MMO has been able to do pets like CoV did Masterminds.
My concern is command and control.
In games like Champions and Star Trek Online, pet commands are buggy at best. Age of Conan and Guild Wars, rudimentary and basic.
The only other games I've seen with the advanced controls Masterminds had are games like Dragon Age or Tom Clancy games, where it's a staple of the whole game, built in from day one.
In MMO's, only WoW hunters and warlocks come close, and it's still less ambitious than Masterminds were.
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
And that right there is "the whole ball game" as they say.
If you're going to be given a "herd of cats" then you need a way to be able to "herd" those cats by Player command(s) in order to give the Player a [i]semblance of control[/i] rather than just letting chaos take its course with the Player along for the ride. But it order to GET to that point, you need to have a LOT of other little fiddly bits all nailed down and standardized in order to be able to organize and orchestrate how all of those bits and pieces can be commanded and controlled by the Player. Again, it comes down to making sure you can walk before trying to run.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Thank you for bringing up this reference.
The logic trees we can make with our allies in DA would be good examples to follow for our pets in CoT. For those reading this who are not familiar with Dragon's Age, it allows us to select certain stimuli to trigger actions and then select the actions to be triggered, and barring any stimuli, the allies will act in accordance with pre-programmed logic.
But first, let's bring up how MWM said they intend on scripting pet behaviors [url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/129978#comment-129978](from this thread in October 2017)[/url]:
So it appears as if the pets will manage their own power usage and resource consumption based on certain hard-coded stimuli just like all the other NPCs will in the game. In addition, I would also suspect that there would be the same overarching behaviors such as [i]defensive[/i], [i]aggressive[/i], and [i]passive[/i] that the controlling player will be able to impose like we see in every other pet class in every other MMO.
But back to the Dragon's Age reference. What if the [i]modules[/i] we have in CoT are less fully hard-coded and more like [i]Madlibs[/i] where the player will be able to insert choices and stimuli? What if we could specify our own stimuli for power usage and resource consumption. So it would be a lot like the Dragon's Age ally behavior in that there would be a default behavior, but it would be editable with select choices to customize it to our play style and situation.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Keep in mind that AI behavior can change based on momentum buildup as well.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Which brings up another question: Do my pets each have their own momentum, or is it me and all my pets considered as a team?
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
We haven’t designed Summons Sets yet, but any current pets like the ones from Control Sets have their own Momentum.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
If any devs are familiar with Sacrifice, it would be nice to have similar troop selection and formation options.
"THE TITANS ARE COMING! THE TITANS ARE COMING!"
My ideal commands are Move To, Follow, Stay, and Attack my Target, with Aggressive, Defensive, and Passive stances.
Although I'd love to see Follow my Target and Defend my Target.
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
It's not really an MMO, but Ark has some pretty good pet functions. Off the top off my head there are commands for stay, follow, aggressive, passive, defend, graze, breed, gather (materials) and attack target. You can even ride many of the pets and most of those you can't you can either carry in your hands or it perches on your shoulder.
I would love to see riding and shoulder perching as a pet class option. A pet could get different functionality based on if it is being rode or not and if it is shoulder perched or not. An eagle for example could execute distract attacks when not perched and give increased perception to the character when perched. When riding a big cat you could get increased speed and jump height all the while being able to attack with both the pet and yourself at the same time but both suffer damage from any attack to either (needs a drawback).
This would make pets more interesting to me and give some uniqueness to a MMO pet class that I don't think other games have really explored (other than Ark of course).
I expect that pets will get the aesthetic decoupling treatment as well, but it isn't hard to come up with a large section of pets that could logically offer similar functionality as each other. There are a bunch of different birds of prey as well as mythical, supernatural and science based pets you could use in place of an eagle for example. Pixies, drones, imps, Bubo the clockwork owl, big flying insects (either swarm of singular) and so on.
Just a thought and might be unlikely due to the issues that animated models have with interactivity.