Forking off of the tab-or-twitch mechanics thread...
Assuming tab-selection mechanics, I'd love to have the [b]option[/b] to turn on a set of crosshairs and use it to 1) select targets, or 2) target AoE/cone attacks (no "select a target" requirement).
The problem I have with "click on the target with the mouse" is that, especially with my constant use of mouse-look plus keyboard commands, I lose track of where the mouse pointer is. So I have to stop looking at my intended target, find the mouse pointer (imagine the big target-laden, sprite-drowning final battle in a Rikti mothership raid), and click on my target, which has likely moved to another part of the screen in the interim. On a 1080p display it's easy to lose that tiny mouse pointer; on my 1600p it's guaranteed, and on the 2160p (a.k.a. "4k") displays that will be more common in 2015/2016, it'll be endemic, even if you double the cursor's size.
If I could skip the "find the mouse pointer" step, it would save a lot of annoyance. Since I'm already nearly constantly using mouse-look, I can just point me at the target and use the crosshair to select it. (Then use ctrl-tab or something to select whatever is behind it if necessary).
This also lets people free-aim cone and AoE attacks, a frequently requested feature (though, for AoEs by definition, it will only be able to control the range if aimed at the ground).
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I'd at least like to see this on Test. I was a big fan of cone AoE and being able to 'free target' would be nice. I also used to lose the mouse pointer. I thought it was just me who did that...
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I would like to see a variety of options for something like this, either via a boresight/targetting retical, or something more visible like WildstarsGuild Wars 2 "telegraphing" mechanism. so that you know WHERE it is going to go, even if you try some funky camera motions (even better if the telegraph appears on "mouse down"/"Key down" action).
I tended to lose the mouse cursor in CoX (compared to other MMO's), even worse if the mouse *wasnt* where I thought it was, and I accidentally clicked the wrong power...
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XYrwjBnY8I&t=4793]/em whimpers sorrowfully[/url]
At the last Player Summit in Spring 2012, I managed to corner the lead engineer (Neon Walker) and tell him about my ... troubles ... of being able to find the mouse pointer on a 2560x1440 screen when the mouse pointer hasn't had any scaling done to it since I started playing on a 640x480 screen in 2004. To my surprise, apparently this had never been brought up as a Quality of Life issue for the team before, like ... ever ... but as soon as I mentioned the problem, he immediately grasped the nature of the issue I was bringing to him. I just wanted the option to be able to make my mouse pointer bigger so as to scale it to the dramatically increased resolution size(s) of modern screens, and Neon Walker figured that it ought to not be difficult at all to bring mouse pointer scaling to City of Heroes since it would be a fairly straightforward (and simple!) Feature Request.
As you can see from the above video link ... my Feature Request GOT APPROVED ... with the Worst Timing Possible.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Actually, here's a weird thought ...
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBHZaen4VxE]Let's do both![/url]
Functionally speaking, if you've got the programming set up to do a Tabula Rasa styled boresight aiming method, such that by default your attacks are "aimed" by your camera angle, rather than by target selection, in 3rd person shooter fashion, you have all the parts and pieces you need for multiple methods of UI driven gameplay. The reason why you want to use a 3rd person shooter setup as your baseline assumption is because the Tabula Rasa styled Tab Lock To Target functionality is then essentially nothing more than an "aimbot" routine built into the game. The Unreal Engine ought to have NO DIFFICULTY operating on an FPS basis, since that's what it is designed for.
Ah ... but then how do you recapture the old City of Heroes Tab To Target system? Simple ... you just overlay the Tab To Target system on top, essentially as an extended feature of the "aimbot" used to provide the Tab To Target Lock functionality, because in an FPS setup that's all that a Tab To Target really is ... an aimbot (after a fashion).
All you'd have to do then is provide Game Option controls via menus to turn on/off the Target Reticle UI feature (again, reference Tabula Rasa for examples) so as to choose how you want the game to "look" on your screen. Thus, if you want to Tab To Target, you'll be able to turn the Target Reticle off ... but if you want to play Tab To Target Lock you can turn the Target Reticle on.
Note that this not necessarily as far fetched an idea as it might at first appear. Star Trek Online features an First Person Shooter Mode for its Ground environments, and it is running on the same core game engine that powered City of Heroes. Furthermore, by relying on essentially a 3rd Person Shooter core model (with "aimbot" functions built in to make the game "easier" than a pure Shooter game) a lot of the "weirdnesses" of the City of Heroes engine could potentially be pre-empted, such as the "resolve first, animate after" behavior that made grenades bounce around corners and through terrain in order to hit their moving targets. Granted, some of those issues would be exchanged for others in a Predictive Behaviors environment, but with "aimbot" functionality built into the basic services of the game, and an option for Tab To Target styled "aimbot" control available, City of Titans could achieve a remarkably diverse set of playstyles allowing Players to choose the method which best suits them depending on network latency between them and the server(s). People with high latency (including 1000+ ms) could play in Tab To Target mode (ie. City of Heroes controls), while people with lower latencies (such as 300 ms or less) could choose to play in Tab To Target Lock mode (ie. Tabula Rasa controls) for a more "active" style of gameplay.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but MWM has not said that they have or will have such functionality.
A swing and a miss. The point of my proposal is that [i]tab to target is never turned off.[/i] This is [i]not[/i] Tabula Rasa sticky-gunsight targeting, nor do I want it to be, because of the way that targeting also deselects for you, or even switches targets. No, the idea is real simple:
1) Player enables boresight option
2) Boresight is overlaid in the center of the screen.
3) A key—say tilde—will select the target in the sight when pressed, same as if the player had clicked on the center pixel of the screen with the mouse.
That's it. Dirt simple. Super predictable. Completely optional. Usable regardless of your ping.
Which IMHO does not work nearly as well as it should because it lacks any useful target locking. I would love it if it worked as well as Tabula Rasa... but it doesn't, so I grudgingly shut it off.
Please don't feature-creep this into unworkability.
[b]EDIT:[/b] I realize you're playing off item #2 in my request, but that could be a whole different can of worms, much as I'd like it, and I really, really want to emphasize that AoE/cone targeting isn't a package deal with boresight selection. Maybe I erred in mentioning it at all.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
"A key—say tilde—will select the target in the sight when pressed, same as if the player had clicked on the center pixel of the screen with the mouse"
So long as we can key map. I always used tilde for an emergency "target nearest".
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Homeless.
I like it. It would be useful, and since the crosshair targeting is just another option (as opposed to removing the ones many former CoX players would be used to) it seems like it should be pretty noncontroversial (though I feel like I am dissing the Internet a bit in saying something like that ^_^7).
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
Lin, you're usually better at logic and critical thinking than this. Read what I read again. Now find where I suggested turning off Tab To Target functionality.
Can't find it? That's because that isn't what I was proposing.
What I was suggesting was being able to turn off the Target Reticle UI elements so as to unclutter the screen for people who don't want to play using Tab Lock To Target.
Furthermore, I recommended working on a 3rd Person Shooter plus "aimbot" functionality basis because that setup allows both Tab Lock To Target as well as Tab To Target to co-exist simultaneously, while also enabling additional possibilities (such as Cover due to proportion of obscurement of Hit Box). Such functionality and options are simply not available if working from the reverse direction of starting with a Tab To Target baseline that works the same way as what City of Heroes did in its engine (and which Star Trek Online tries to do with the same engine).
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Of [b]course[/b] you can key map! Heck, I have no idea which key would make sense for the default anyway. And that's what I've always used tilde for, too; it's just that the MMO default mappings I've seen have left tilde unused (for some reason).
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Right here:
Two paragraphs prior, you defined "Tab To Target Lock" as either the Unreal Engine default or the Tabula Rasa system (it's not clear which, but you specifically indicated an "FPS basis" which implies twitch mechanics) two paragraphs prior:
Put together, that's a pretty clear either-or: start with twitch and overlay tab targeting on top with a player switch.
So you were paraphrasing the part in my original post where I said "I'd love to have the [b]option[/b] to turn on a set of crosshairs..." I even boldfaced the word "option", but it was apparently still unclear. Nuts. >_<
And that's a fundamental change of the game mechanics toward the twitch-game model (that has been soundly rejected by devs and players; see the other threads), which means a lot more development work, which makes it almost certain the whole proposal gets rejected entirely, and what I meant by feature creep.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I like the idea of being able to select a target via multiple vectors. Mouse to select anything visible (or invisible) on the screen, a Tab-for nearest/next, or farthest, or previous, and a 'boresight' to select the center of the screen, via an activator key. How about if mouse-pointer and boresight auto-highlight potential targets, if toggled in Preferences?
Would that be like targeting with a virtual HUD? Seems it would, if the camera was rolled forward to first-person view. Boresight could simplify targeting with the camera or mouse-look, too. Actually, I'd want to put 'mouse-look' functionality onto the keyboard, so I could flick a glance left-right-up-down. Then if I see something, I could take control of the camera with the mouse and look more carefully... maybe with a small zoom-function?? Might be hard to manage in an outdoor zone, but it would be cool.
Be Well!
Fireheart
It be good to let the user choose from a set of different sizes. maybe even a different graphics. oh yea... Solid Outline, fill with Inverted pixels grabbed from the screen. ;) Wait, is that possible in Unreal? :/
I'd settle for an easy way to activate a 'splash' around the pointer.
Be Well!
Fireheart
You'd need to have a different highlight from whatever is applied to the currently selected target (if any). For example, if a selected target gets a red outline, the boresighted target would get a greeen highlight, and the mouse-hovered target would get a blue highlight. Remember that I'm trying to avoid an "either/or" mode switch between mouse and boresight target selection.
I think CoX had that on the arrow keys by default, and the zoom was on the scroll wheel.
IIRC, unless Unreal is replacing Windows' cursor functionality outright, enlarging the mouse cursor is just a Windows API.
That's a possibility too (and probably another thing that would be handled at the Windows level), but then you're playing Marco Polo with your mouse. So it's better than the initial case but still a little clumsy.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
The Unreal Engine, under the hood, is basically a First Person Shooter game engine. That's what the core of the game engine is built around and intended to handle. That's the foundation.
The thing is, it's perfectly possible to run on a FPS "core" in the game engine and have a City of Heroes kind of Human Machine Interface via the use of "aimbot" functionality, where the computer (the server, specifically) handles all of the issues around "[b]I[/b] attack [b]THAT[/b] target" without requiring the human playing the game to "steer" their attacks manually. When you "outsource" the task of being able to steer your attacks onto your desired target, you effectively make possible Tab To Target functionality when using a FPS engine core, because the "aiming" of your attacks is handled server side, rather than client side, negating Network Lag as a factor in being able to attack/hit a particular target.
Take the "aimbot" functionality all the way to its logical conclusion and you've got Tab To Target.
Apply a limiting factor to the "aimbot" functionality (ie. can only Target Lock what is in the center of the screen) and you've got Tab Lock To Target.
The only difference between the two is essentially a matter of keybinds/macros and the appearance of the UI overlaid on the screen, which is a fairly trivial difference from a programming standpoint. My point was that doing this is easier to do if running on a FPS driven core system, even if the Player plays the game in a fashion that doesn't operate as though the game being played is an FPS type UI.
Tab To Target systems essentially use an override of camera direction to decide where attacks "go" downrange.
Tab To Target Lock systems do essentially the same thing, but place more limits on the engagement of the Target Lock On feature, meaning that Target Lock is controlled by use of camera direction rather than by use of mouse pointer or by use of TargetEnemyNear styled programming functions.
These two approaches need not be oppositional/exclusionary, since they are effectively different degrees of "freedom" for the same functionality. So long as you're building on the right sort of foundational core, you can DO BOTH rather than being limited to an either/or choice. The foundational core that best allows, permits and supports both types to be used is the FPS game engine core ... which is what the Unreal Engine essentially is under the hood.
Beware premature optimization, lest you accidentally amputate own hand at neck level.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Okay, but your aim-bot adds an extra layer of complexity between me and my Tab-targeting. I'm sorry, Redlynne, I'm not seeing how this functionality would improve my experience. I would probably have to play with it for a while, get a real feel for it, to appreciate the subtle differences. I think, in order to make what you envision happen, you're going to have to get into Unreal and program it, yourself. Then you can offer the module to the Devs.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Ummm... the Aimbot she's talking about it just a cut-down version of tab targeting... as I read what Red is saying, she's advocating having tab-targeting work just like it did in CoH, with the possible addition of other functionality.
[url=http://107ist.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Daniel__s_Facepalm_by_xAikaNoKurayami.jpg]/facepalm[/url]
[img]http://107ist.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Daniel__s_Facepalm_by_xAikaNoKurayami.jpg[/img]
Fireheart ... what you just said is the equivalent of being upset that 3+1=4 because what you asked for is 2+2=4 and what you actually want is just a 4 with no addition involved in getting there because Math Is Hard and makes the computer's head hurt.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting over here doing algebra instead of arithmetic and showing that X+Y=4 solves all of the addition problems/computations that result in an answer of 4 ... only to be told to stop solving everything that could result in an answer of 4 because there is only one way to get to 4 and that is [b]to just 4[/b] ... full stop.
Or to put an even finer point on things ... so long as you get your Tab To Target functionality [i]and it works[/i] why should you care how that functionality is achieved under the hood [i]if that's all you care about[/i] and it is achieved in a manner that is completely transparent to the Player?
Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
So long as it PLAYS the way you're expecting it to, what do you have to complain about?
Even more to the point, if you can get the functionality you want [i]and get more[/i] on top of that, why do you want to reach for the most restrictive, least extensible, and worst expansible option [i]if you don't have to go that way to get what you say you want[/i]?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Small problem with that plan: Redlynne's field is tech support, not programming.
Come to think of it, that could explain a lot.
I'd do something like that myself, but I'm not able to drop what I'm doing, download UDK3, and spelunk the docs right now for personal reasons. Izzy's the only one here I know is doing that, and he's focusing on the character creation stuff. Further, I'm sure the devs are drowning in whatever technical details need to be resolved right now and will get to this when they're ready. And maybe not even then; this all could well be moot for some other reason nobody's touched on.
For all I know, the devs resolved this long, long ago. Heck, I volunteered to help them a month ago and never heard back. They're probably full up on tech types and just need content creators right now.
In any case, I think I've made my point, Red might have made hers but I can't even tell what it is anymore ("hope for a miracle"?), she's got a view of the guts of this engine that may or may not be accurate, and I'm not sure there's any more to be said.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Okay, please bear with me, I'm not trying to be stupid. I'm not trying to be deliberately provocative. Please, let's not call names or try to say something is stupid.
I'm genuinely trying to understand.
What function does this 'aim-bot' serve. What does it add to my experience, that is, somehow, 'Not The Same' as tab-targeting.
I can envision how Lin Chiao Feng's 'boresight' acts as an additional target-selection and power-direction device.
However, Redlynne keeps talking about some other device that's supposed to make things different and I [b]Don't Have Enough Information[/b] to understand what it IS!
I'm not trying to pass judgement on the idea. I'm not trying to insult anyone. I'm not trying to Annoy anyone. I'm trying to understand.
So, if I seem foolish, please don't conclude that I'm stupid, I'm merely Ignorant and nobody has bothered to clue me in.
Great!
'Cut-down' Tab-targeting? What 'other functionality'?
It's like you're all saying that 'rugose demi-sleeves' would be great, but I don't know what that is. And when I try to ask what that is, you /facepalm, declare my question stupid or irrelevant, and reply that it's Self Evident!
Be Well!
Fireheart
An "aim-bot" is industry jargon for a program that runs in the background of a first-person shooter game. When the player takes a shot, and before the "takes a shot" packet is sent to the game server, this program uses an algorithm to determine what is being shot at and changes the aim point to guarantee a hit. This modified "shot" is then sent to the server.
The net effect is that a player using an aim-bot never misses unless the bot can't figure out what is being shot at. It's generally considered a cheat, however, if this functionality is built into the client, the net effect is similar to tab selection of targets.
Except [b]it's not[/b] because an aim-bot has no way to shoot "through" one target to hit another behind it, while tab selection can easily do that. Which (among other reasons) is why I'm assuming that tab selection, as it would be implemented in CoT, would need to use some other mechanism besides an aim-bot-like algorithm to achieve its objective.
Because Red's assuming context not in evidence. It's really annoying.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I'll try to explain, but I may not have it exactly right myself ^_^
The Unreal Engine, being a platform mostly used for first-person shooters, can definitely use the mouse-look "what is in the middle of your screen is what your shooting at" targeting that is common in such games. If the devs are planning to use the tab targeting system which I understand was used in CoX (and is used in WoW, CO, and SWTOR) then they either have programmed or are planning to program that in. In between you have games (where you use mouse-look, and if you don't have something targeted then what is in the middle of your screen is what you shoot at, but you can also lock on to a target by putting it in the middle of your screen and clicking the tab button (or whatever you have it mapped to), and as long as the target is on your screen you shoot at it, not what is in the middle of the screen.
What Redlynne is proposing is to start with the mouse-look/tab-to-lock (which may already be included in the UE as licensed?), and adding in the tab-to-target. The aimbot is the bit of programming that lets you keep target on the enemy you selected, even if your and/or his movement moves the center of your screen off of him. Then we add in a switch (in the options menu?) to turn the targeting reticle (crosshairs or whatever) off or on, and another to switch from mouse-look to the click-and-drag camera movement most games with tab-to-target seem to use, and we're set. Set one way, you see targeting and screen movement just like CoX, but if you click the button mapped to the Boresight target, whatever is in the middle of your screen gets targeted. Switch to mouse-look and turn on the reticle, and it works like the FPS games, but if you lock a target it stays locked, and you can still use the tab-to-target cycle if you want.
The good thing about this, if the devs decide to go with it, is that the people who like the FPS style can have that, and those of us with poorer reaction times (whether because of their computer, their connection, or whatever) can stick with the tab-to-targeting. Or both, if you want to use different features in different situations. This lets us appeal to a broader player base.
The downside is that this would require programming that the devs may not have time for, and if they already have the targeting system worked out, switching to this could require tossing what they've done already.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Ah ... that's different then, Fireheart.
So let's look at the problem from a behavioral, human interacts with machine perspective then (for starters), shall we?
How does Tab To Target work?
Basically you just hit the TAB key (or other key bound to that function, doesn't have to be TAB) and targets within your field of camera view are automatically selected for you. Keep hitting TAB and which target is selected will just cycle progress through the available options within your field of camera view. Additionally, you can mouse click (usually Left Click) on a target in order to select it, rather than using the TAB keybind, if you have a specific target in mind and don't want to TabTabTabTabTab to get to it. Furthermore, there are additional keybinds available such as TargetEnemyNear and TargetEnemyFar and the like which you can set up as well. TAB is usually just bound to a TargetEnemyNext function by default so as to let it do its target cycling thing.
So far, so obvious, because this the behavior exhibited by City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Star Trek Online (in Ground RPG mode) and plenty of other Tab To Target style games. The field of view for engaging this functionality is ... the entire screen. If you can see it on your screen, you can Tab To Target onto it. Pretty simple.
What is the "service" that the Tab To Target DOES though? Well, the service or functionality it provides is to disassociate the direction that your attacks go from the direction your camera is pointing. In the City of Heroes context, I could Tab To Target, lock on target, swing my camera view over 120 degrees AWAY FROM what I had target locked, attack, and have my attack hit something I could no longer see on my screen. City of Heroes did an extra bit of functionality in that when you attacked something outside of your camera view, the game would automatically slew your camera view back into alignment with the target you were attacking, but only if the target was outside your camera view.
So you've essentially got two things going on at once. You have your camera view angle and you have your vector to target angle, and these two things don't have to be the same, thanks to Tab To Target.
In First Person Shooter terminology, that "service" being provided by the Tab To Target is effectively an Aimbot. This is because the computer controls the aiming of your attacks at the designated target, once a target has been selected. The Player is no longer "aiming" through control of their camera view angle. Aiming of attacks to go from "here" to "there" are not being handled by the Player controlling this process manually without computer aids, because with Tab To Target the computer is handling all of that stuff for you. That's why with a Tab To Target functionality/service you can point your camera view away from being centered on your target and still hit your target (even if your target lies outside your current camera view angle). The computer (client, server and/or both) are handling all of the "aiming" tasks for you, once you've designated your target. The programming is acting as a "bot" to automatically/automagically provide you with the service of being able to aim your attacks at your target, rather than onto empty landscape where your target "isn't."
With me so far?
This means that it is perfectly possible to build a game on a "core" of a First Person Shooter model, with projectiles flying in straight lines and so on, rather than curling/bouncing around and through obstacles in order to reach their intended targets when animated, and have the game FEEL LIKE to the Player that what is happening is a Tab To Target user interface, simply because the game features built in "aimbot" support that emulates/mimics the gameplay feel and functionality of Tab To Target by use of "aimbot" services. Remember, City of Heroes (and Star Trek Online now) use a game engine that effectively runs on a "roll dice and decide first, animate after" sort of system, producing some of the more bizarre/hilarious results we're familiar with where slow moving projectiles could "chase" targets around corners and fly through obstacles and so on. But with a First Person Shooter core underlying the game, where attacks need to intersect with hitboxes downrange, things like projectile travel speeds can become important balance point considerations, because faster projectiles will arrive "quicker" and thus potentially require less windage or "leading" of targets when they move perpendicular to the angle of your camera view (effectively dodging "around" your shots, if they're slow enough on projectile speed). Thus you can get differences beyond just simple range between a grenade thrown by hand (slow), and a grenade hurled by a grenade launcher (fast). Note that at melee ranges, these sorts of time delays due to projectile speeds effectively disappear (for what should be obvious reasons).
The Unreal Engine is built for First Person Shooter games. It has all of the "shooter" mechanics natively built into it, because Shooter games is what it was made for. But if you add support for Aimbot functionality into the game you're making, you can effectively [b]--> EMULATE <--[/b] the Tab To Target styled experience of games such as City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Star Trek Online and so on and so forth, using the exact same commands and controls you are familiar with and expect to have. All of the "services" and functionality that make Tab To Target "work" can (and presumably would) be available through use of an Aimbot functionality that would be keyed from the client (as in on/off, this one vs that one and so on), but actually "run" by the server, effectively negating a substantial portion of any network latency and lag issues between client and server. You wouldn't be able to eliminate ALL of the latency and lag issues, of course (because that's impossible), but you'd be able to mitigate enough of them to deliver a Tab To Target gameplay experience for everyone, even for people playing from the other side of the planet with a long distance connection to the servers with latency rates of 5000+ ms.
With me so far?
So then what is the Tab Lock To Target that I've been concurrently talking about?
Well ... consider that with the familiar Tab To Target of City of Heroes, you could hit Tab and be able to cycle through selections of every target on your screen inside your entire camera view. If you can see it, you can select it as a target. That's the basic idea for Tab To Target, right? So what happens when that is no longer true? What happens if the only portion of you screen in which you're "allowed" to lock onto a target is ... the very center of your camera view? So instead of using your entire screen as the available region to Tab To Target, the only place you can "do" the same thing is in the very dead center of it in a small-ish region that happens to be represented by a Target Reticle UI overly feature so that the Player "knows" where this area is without needing to guess? Well, in that case you've set up the conditions for needing to use your camera view angle as a precursor to being able to Target Select then haven't you? You wind up needing to slew your camera view angle so as to put the target you want to select into the dead center of your screen and then you hit TAB to lock target onto it and ... you engage the Aimbot functionality onto that target.
From that point onwards, once the Aimbot is engaged, it makes no difference if you got there via Tab To Target ... or via a keybind for TargetEnemyNear ... or did it by use of aiming with your camera view angle and used Tab Lock To Target on whatever was in the center of your view angle. The Aimbot works the same way [i]regardless of how you designated what you want your attacks to hit[/i]. When you attack, your attacks go to wherever the Aimbot is currently angling your attacks to, which ought to be wherever your target is (assuming the range isn't too great and the projectile flight speed so slow that the target can move away before the attack reaches its intended destination). Target Lock is Target Lock, and the Aimbot handles all of those functions for you on the game server, rather than on your client.
However ... how that PLAYS on the client computer is [b]RADICALLY DIFFERENT[/b]. Tab To Target is a very easy, simple to the point of being simplistic system to use. Press keybind, target gets selected. Done. Tab Lock To Target in the Tabula Rasa style, where you need to slew your camera angle onto your target in order to select them for Target Lock is a style of gameplay that is a lot more dependent on the Player and how the Player is "controlling" their view of the action.
Again, I refer you to [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5jjhAG1ZMQ&t=75]this youtube video[/url] of a Tabula Rasa Sniper in action. I've set the link to start at 1m15s but what I want you to notice and pay attention to is from 1m16s to about 1m42s where you can see the Aimbot functionality working in a Third Person Shooter styled arrangement. I [b]strongly recommend[/b] pausing the video when it is loading, clicking on the gear icon in the bottom right of the video window, selecting 480p for high resolution playback, and then setting the viewing window to large player mode (to the right of the gear icon) so as to be able to see most clearly what is happening.
You can see the Target Reticle in the center of the screen, with its center triangle and the roundel around it. You can see the Player lining up that Target Reticle with the Juggernaut at about 74-75 meters away (that's the number under the red bar showing the target's HP) which is inside the 60-100 meter range of the [url=http://tabularasa.wikia.com/wiki/Torqueshell_Rifle]Torqueshell Rifle[/url] weapon being used.
At 1:21 in the video, you can see that the roundel portion of the Target Reticle [b]DETACHES[/b] and begins "tracking" the target Juggernaut quite clearly. You can then see the Sniper take a shot with their Physical Damage Torqueshell Rifle (which was a mistake, because Juggernauts were IMMUNE to Physical damage), and you can see the projectile fly from the weapon to the target (and pop up the IMMUNE damage result on impact). The Player then switches weapons (from a Physical Torqueshell Rifle to a Sonic Torqueshell Rifle, because Juggernauts are NOT immune to Sonic damage) and proceeds to attack again until the Juggernaut is destroyed. Note that the Tab Lock To Target is maintained the entire way through here, because the roundel continues tracking on top of the selected target, even though the camera angle is being slewed around somewhat so as to keep the target NEAR, but not exactly dead center of, the current camera angle. You can tell because you can see the small triangle of the Target Reticle getting aimed elsewhere (like at a piece of bridge terrain at 1m39s), but when the attack is actually fired, it flies straight and true from the Sniper to the Target because the Aimbot functionality is handling all of the target angle control "from here to there" features for the Player.
So in this context, the "cut down tab targeting" that Bellerophon mentioned is essentially a limitation of the full screen Tab To Target system such that it only works within a very small area of the screen (ie. the center only) ... hence the "cut down" part of that statement. What the computer actually DOES with that tab targeting however is exactly the same ... it tells the computer to aim all of your attacks for you at the target you have selected/designated as what you want to be attacking, regardless of where your camera view is angled. The only difference is how large the area is in which a Target Lock can be established (within the entire screen or just within the center of it) and whether or not you can do so using a mouse cursor (and mouse click) or just by using the camera view angle (putting the target to be locked onto into the center of the screen). That's it. That's the difference as far as the programming is concerned. The difference to the PLAYING EXPERIENCE though is nothing short of revolutionary.
The advantage of doing it all this way is that it all basically runs on top of a "manual targeting" shooter styled system, as Foradain points out, where if you have no target selected/locked onto, your attacks just get shot out to the dead center of your screen. This "no target" means of attacking can then be used for all kinds of things, such as cone attacks (think shotguns) where "aiming" isn't exactly all that important due to the width and range of the cone (which is precisely what Tabula Rasa did). Note that this also creates interesting opportunities for PvP gameplay mechanics, when Powers like Confuse can force an undesired switch of Target Locks, and Powers like Taunt could be used to PREVENT Target Locks from being kept on anything other than the caster of the Taunt ... forcing use of "manual" targeting (through the center of the screen) without use of Aimbot features and functionality (ie. you might not be able to "trust" your Tab To Target). Such mechanics could also be applied to PvE, if they are granted to Foe NPCs in order to "draw fire" away from targets the Players want to engage. Think of things like immobile "Taunt Jammer" styled destructibles in the hands of Malta (perhaps even thrown as "sticky" grenades?), or Illusion Controllers, and so on.
In other words, there are a wealth of opportunities that can be had by running on a First Person Shooter engine that can EMULATE the features and functionality of a Tab To Target gameplay like what City of Heroes had. It means that you can have BOTH, once you implement the Aimbot functionality that makes Tab To Target possible. My point is that if you do it RIGHT, you this doesn't have to be an OR question ... it could be an AND question ... and needless to say, I very much prefer the AND version of the question with an answer in the affirmative.
It is possible to do Tab To Target [b]AND[/b] Tab Lock To Target ... both ... when running a game on a First Person Shooter core engine. The Unreal Engine is a First Person Shooter game engine. Why reach for OR exclusively when we can go for AND?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Wait, "Manual targeting"? Really? Why? That's adding twitch mechanics to a game that really doesn't need it.
I mean this is the basics for how how it worked in CoH: "No power can activate without a valid target selected." Note that a valid target could be Self, the ground (or air) or other object. If a power that affected another object, be it enemy, ally or otherwise would automatically lock on to a target on the first press, then activate on the second.
This boresight aiming has potential if used to merely have a crosshair in the center of the screen that you can use to target with. Imagine if you during mouselook mode in City of Heroes had a crosshair and you could left click or something to target whatever you're pointing at. That'd be neat.
But the ability to use powers without a target? Having to use aimbots? That's way overkill for what actually needs to be done. Which is "Power directed at target, server resolves". Again, target being enemy, ally, self, or point in space chosen in advance of the activation.
I'd like a crossheair or something to be an option to turn on at all times, though. Like how you had a dot in Mirror's Edge, despite not needing to use a gun in that game, it would be neat to have a visual aid when flying.
And right on cue, McNum comes along and demonstrates a lack of reading comprehension so total as to be laughable if it weren't so sad.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Funny, my PBAOE attacks didn't generally require a target at all.
Point Blank Area of Effect. The target is "Self". All powers in CoH had a target.
Is (City of Heroes) == (City of Titans) a true statement?
Will City of Titans be running on the same game engine created by Cryptic that City of Heroes ran on?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
No, it's not. But neither is it Tabula Rasa.
City of Titans is, however, a self-titled spiritual successor to City of Heroes. You know, the whole "Plan Z" thing. As such, the starting point is "Why did City of Heroes do it like this, and what can be changed for the better through either addition, removal or outright replacement?" So, as a baseline, it works to say "As City of Heroes, but..." unless otherwise noted.
Considering that the City of Titans development team has already said no to twitch mechanics for this very reason, as well as to ensure the game is accessible to a many players as possible. If the whole 3rd person targeting thing comes down to Unreal Engine 3, then you are underestimating the flexibility for UE3. What does Mortal Kombat, Batman Arkham Asylum, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown have in common? Unreal Engine 3.
XCOM being the prime example here as it does use a tab targeting with randomized accuracy and it works really well. It's a turn based strategy game, of course, but the targeting and attacking controls are pretty similar to how City of Heroes did targeting. Target, choose power, confirm. At least in the PC version. So, no UE3 is not locking into being shooters. Those are just the showcase games.
Oh, speaking of XCOM, there's a targeting feature from it that I'd like to see in CoT. Bind Mouse4 and Mouse5 as previous and next target by default. Same buttons as forward and back in most internet browsers. It comes pretty naturally when playing.
So right now, due to the developers saying *no* to twitch mechanics (of any shape or form), I am looking at combat being stationary (combat with rooting), the inability of being able to avoid telegraphed attacks (because the game engine did the combat roll, and started the animation at the same time), and because of rooting, if i start attacking at the *wrong* time, I am screwed beyond belief, because there was (with the vast majority of abilities) no ability to cancel an attack once you had started.
However, I am sure that if rooting was removed, we would see more of an active combat system right out the box.
Does this automatically make it "twitch"? Depends on your play style entirely. I know that it *IS* a different feel entirely compared to what CoX had.
And hell, when people use the term "twitch mechanics" it covers so many area's here.
People have used it for:
1) Combat with no rooting
2) The ability to move out of the way of telegraphed attacks
3) The option for a different form of targetting attacks (where you can free aim more attacks
And this is just *some* of the things off the top of my head.
So if the developers are saying "no to twitch mechanics", I have to say "so the combat will be *exactly* the same as CoX, with no difference whatsoever"... because of what the playerbase calls "twitch" is essentially "everything that CoX never did".
Well, I don't now the exact definition the developers use, but I'm thinking it's something along this: Mass Effect is too much twitch. XCOM is too little.
Basically, manual aiming is out. But moving around is not. You won't be able to dodge attacks that have already resolved, but there will be special attacks that give a warning first and don't resolved until some time has passed after the warning. Like Anti-Matter's huge satellite beam in CoH.
We could use a more precise definition of this from the developers, though, but I don't think thy're ready to say until they have it locked down themselves.
Still, I'd think "Less twitchy than Mass Effect" is a good bet.
Gangrel makes a good point that there are lots of interpretations of what "twitch" means when used by various players. And many degrees within each variant. We should probably avoid the term and be more specific in discussion.
As for whether combat will be exactly the same as in CoX, it sounds from MWM's comments in this interview
(http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/interviews/10706-Resurrecting-the-Superhero-MMO-City-of-Titans-Q-A#DKTvdY0lKEfPRYt5.99)
as though it will either be the same or very close at launch, but that they will try changes bit by bit as time goes on and see how the playerbase reacts. I can see why a dev team might want to go down such a path in this case: it's hard to judge how representative of the community a number of vocal forumites might be, but if they start with a baseline from the spiritual predecessor and introduce a change in the game they can mine actual game data to determine the playerbase reaction.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Heh, to go by the comparison they made to Mass Effect in that same interview, I can see the ads now:
[size=20]Play CITY OF TITANS![/size]
[size=15]Less twitchy than Mass Effect, but more decisiony![/size]
Spurn all ye kindle.
Very good. You win a cookie.
But when you're trying to explain how something works in real time when played, it really helps to have examples (like videos) that show exactly how the principles and concepts you're expounding upon WORK in actual practice when put together and used. Have you seen how many words I've written trying to get an IDEA across which is demonstrated by all of 25 seconds of video involving gameplay?
The phrase "tried and tested" exists for a reason. Being able to DEMONSTRATE that something has been tried, tested and worked just fine isn't a disqualifier for understanding how things COULD WORK, just because the demonstration came from a game that wasn't called City of Heroes.
Oooh, oooh, can I play too?
{McNum mode: ON}
This feature didn't exist in City of Heroes, therefore I insist that it not be included in City of Titans!
{McNum mode: OFF}
See? Not exactly very helpful. You were citing how something was done [i]in another game[/i] (in this case XCOM) so as to demonstrate a successful concept or feature, and I just came along and shot you down on the grounds that your suggestion wasn't "pure" enough due to its origins (ie. not City of Heroes sourced) and dismissed it.
For extra bonus points, I'd be WRONG in my assertion that such a feature didn't exist in City of Heroes ... because it most certainly did (it just wasn't set up that way by default). It was perfectly possible to bind Mouse4 and Mouse5 to the functions of TargetEnemyNext and TargetEnemyPrevious, although you would have needed to do so through use of the /keybind command (or include it in a /bindloadfile). Indeed, such functionality is alive and well in Star Trek Online, which runs on exactly the same game engine as City of Heroes did. Indeed, I would be very surprised is City of Titans did not offer similar keybind functionality, although it would be perfectly understandable if such functions were not mapped to Mouse4/Mouse5 by default as you've requested.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Thanks for the information, everyone.
If I'm understanding correctly, This 'aimbot' functions as a target-director, which essentially says 'This is the target I'm shooting, ignore my camera'. In that way, it's effectively the same as Tab-targeting. However, the 'aimbot' is slightly smarter, and keeps track of line-of-sight and obstacles and maintains an on-screen indicator of where the shot is going to go. The aimbot keeps track of 'shot is good' so it can mitigate targeting-lag, separately from animation-lag (which is what makes shots curve) and the on-screen 'hinting' of the aimbot can cue the player to move, if needed, to ensure 'shot is good'.
In the absence of the aimbot's target-lock, the boresight indicator shows that shots will go where you're 'looking'. And here's where it gets 'interesting'. What if one could temporarily decouple the point-of-aim from the aimbot's locked target, to the boresight, release a Cone attack, or melee, or even a single-target shot, and then return to the previous target without ever losing the target-lock?
That's something I've wanted to do occasionally, in my usual tab-targeting games. It's easy enough to 'target nearest enemy' and attack what's in front of you, but much more difficult to re-acquire your previous target. And Cone attacks are often best aimed 'between' the available targets, rather than 'at' any of them.
And then there's the Other side of this. How many times have you ducked behind cover, to break line-of-sight, only to have the enemy continue to shoot you Through your cover? If the NPCs also had an aimbot, then the game would know that the 'shot is Not good', despite any lag.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Try addressing points rather than being rude. Also try not to put words in my mouth.
I brought up XCOM to show that you don't need to cludge in some Aimbot system in UE3. As XCOM demonstrates, Target, Action, Resolve works perfectly well without having to play third person shooter over it. Mass Effect, too, even though it's half a shooter, with superpowers. Target enemy robot, hit Overload, enemy robot goes pop. No aiming needed.
As for the amount of words. Brevity is the soul of wit, as it were. It is with discussions as it is with software design: The less you need to get the point across, the more elegant the design.
So, I believe the point here is... "What benefit does it have to nerf tab targeting to put in free aim? What problem does adding this complexity to the design address?"
If it only exists to add complexity, cut it. If it solves a problem, weigh the solution against the problem and decide from that. Obviously that will be a subjective ruling open to discussion.
In fact, ask that question every time with the City of Heroes game design as the baseline. Since that is the common reference we all have here. That's why I refer back to CoH, you know. A common frame of reference helps communication. Hm, might actually be a good idea for a discussion. Simplicity vs. Complexity.
As for the mouse4-5 thing... you'd be surprised how few games can count higher than mouse3. It's annoying, really. So, I hope CoT will, but it's one of those things that [i]should[/i] be a standard feature... but isn't. Luckily CoT is designed with PCs in mind.
The Secret World uses Tab Targeting, it also does not root you when using your basic attacks. There are a few that do root you, however. I don't consider it all that much "twitch-y" based combat.
Does this automatically make it "twitch"? Depends on your play style entirely. I know that it *IS* a different feel entirely compared to what CoX had.
And hell, when people use the term "twitch mechanics" it covers so many area's here.
People have used it for:
1) Combat with no rooting
2) The ability to move out of the way of telegraphed attacks
3) The option for a different form of targetting attacks (where you can free aim more attacks
And this is just *some* of the things off the top of my head.
So if the developers are saying "no to twitch mechanics", I have to say "so the combat will be *exactly* the same as CoX, with no difference whatsoever"... because of what the playerbase calls "twitch" is essentially "everything that CoX never did".[/quote]
To get an answer to your question, you'd have to ask the ones in charge of creating the game. It's their definition that they'll be using. However, after a quick check on the interwebs, it appears that most people see Twitch combat as aiming with the mouse (twitching the wrist) as opposed to using the tab key to select a target. Skyrim is definitely Twitch based combat. you aim with the mouse, and can dodge incoming attacks.
This is very similar to The Secret World. There are some attacks by the NPCs that will show a circle or an arc of affect, Once the circle or arc is filled by the progress indicator, the power goes off. If your character happens to be inside the area of affect, the character takes damage. Or, in some cases, just flat out dies.
Pleased to be of service. Hadn't realized you didn't know all the terminology I was using already.
Correct.
Just for reference purposes, any kind of "shot is good" sort of functionality would fall in the "nice to have" category, since it would be a Quality of Life kind of upgrade, but wouldn't be [b]necessary[/b] in order for the game to function or play. Referring again to Tabula Rasa's gameplay, it was perfectly possible to Target Lock on something that moved behind terrain or an obstacle. If that happened, the UI did not change colors or otherwise indicate that your target was now obscured or otherwise behind Cover so as to "warn" the Player to not attack while those conditions persisted. So it was perfectly possible (and happened from time to time) to fire shots into intervening terrain and not deal any damage to your selected target because the shot never reached the target's hit box. It was therefore incumbent upon the Player to figure such things out by watching and paying attention.
This is definitely one area where Tab To Target and a Tab Lock To Target difference could emerge, and would probably need to be "controlled" via whether or not a Target Reticle UI element would be in use. If there is no Target Reticle UI element, the presumption is that the game is being played in Tab To Target mode, and the Aimbot could be programmed such that attacks can only be made when Line of Sight to the selected target is clear (ie. when the attack is "legal") in much the same way that City of Heroes did, where you could "cue" attack Powers when you had a target selected but no Line of Sight. Conversely, if the Target Reticle UI element is present, the presumption is that the game is being played in a Tab Lock To Target mode, and the Aimbot could be programmed such that attacks are to be made when keyed by the Player, regardless of whether or not there is a clear Line of Sight to the selected target or not. That would then represent the outer "poles" of combat behaviors for cueing of attacks when a Line of Sight to selected target is not clear. Such a decision could be set in the Game Options Menu and could either be tied to the the Show Target Reticle choice, or be made independently of it.
Note that being able to attack when a target is obscured by terrain [i]could potentially be useful[/i] in certain edge case situations, which necessarily would involve "cleverness" as well as potentially "trickery" on the part of Players (including what amounts to "trick shots" with ranged attacks) so I'd definitely want to keep my options open on THIS piece of functionality if at all possible.
Tabula Rasa allowed this sort of thing ... after a fashion ... but in a way that wouldn't replicate easily (or well) into a City of Heroes kind of context. I say this because Tabula Rasa allowed Players to equip 5 different Weapons (Rifles, Grenade Launchers, Shotguns, Blades, you get the idea), and whether or not a Target Lock "stuck" on Foe NPCs really depended on which Weapon you currently had active. Shotguns were cone attack weapons, and as such when you switched over to them, they dropped a Target Lock because they attacked everything within their field of fire indiscriminately.
Essentially, Fireheart, what you're asking for is a way to "suppress" a Target Selection on demand so as to tell the computer, effectively, "yes, I do have a Target Lock selected, but I want to ignore that temporarily so I can do manual boresight shooting to the center of the screen without dropping Target Lock" essentially. I can certainly see WHY you'd find such a feature to be useful/helpful, so in that respect it sounds like a good idea to me. Best way to handle this would be with (drum roll please...) a "+Keybind/++Keybind" styled functionality, just like I've been advocating for some time be made available as a Knockback to Knockdown "clamp" switch ... and for many of the same reasons (including allowing Players to decide which, if any, keys they want to bind such a functionality to).
Man, the sheer number of times in City of Heroes I wanted to aim using my camera angle instead of a Tab Lock on a Foe NPC ... *whimper*
I'm operating under the assumption the the Foe NPCs would be using the same programming to target and attack as the Players do ... albeit using an AI routine for the decision making process of which targets to attack, with what, when.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Ok, apart from the broken quoting there, I think I get where you are coming from.
World of Warcraft is another game that doesn't root. Guild Wars 2 is another... Wildstar is another, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Champions Online, Star Trek Online. They will have abilities that cannot be cast "on the fly" as it were, but they are (overall) more mobile than CoX was. Yet there are people who have said that is "too twitchy".
But if you look on these forums, there have been people who have been opposed to even *moving* out of the way of AOE's because it is "too twitchy". So does being able to dodge incoming blows count as "dodge" (either just by not being present when the wind up happens, or moving out of the way of the "telegraphed attack" like TSW/Wildstar/Guild Wars 2 does, or does it only count when combined with mouse aiming (FPS style).
Personally, I would like a more mobile version of CoX. Rooting was (in my eyes) one of the worst things about the game. Especially when coupled with the long uninterruptable animations (there is one exception that I just forget the name of, a psychic snipe... am sure that there were a few others), but they were in the *vast* minority compared to the rest of the game.
Very well, here's my answer.
[b]No more food for you.[/b]
It wastes my time, and my efforts are obviously wasted upon you ... because ... as a wise BOFH once said at alt.sysadmin.recovery ...
Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, while others merely gargle.
And some pee in it.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Ahh, the darling BOFH, I still await the new stories on El Reg as and when they come up.
Sometimes I just wish I had a cattleprod, laxatives, duct tape and an air tight safe (or even a server room with a "faulty" fire retardent system) to help those in charge realise that meddling in the affairs of "lesser mortals" is painful.
And remember, you can *NEVER* use a cattle prod too much, especially when you hot wire into the mains electric.
I notice you keep avoiding the point.
"Why do you want to add complexity to the targeting system? What problem does it solve?"
Answer that instead of being rude and condescending. Or do you have no answer, since you keep skipping that? You did the same in the knockback thread. It's not going to work.
We said that being required to move out of the way of AOEs to correctly play a character whose powers are Defense-oriented is too twitchy. If it's a completely optional mechanic that comes up rarely enough not to be completely unbalancing, and if it doesn't produce tremendous data spikes every time an AOE goes off, I'd have no problem with it. I can't speak for anyone else.
Right, but the thing is that there will be some "who can soak it" and others who cannot soak it.
So if you are playing a class that can *soak* like a mofo (either via agility/dodge/parry/block) or just have resistances out of the rear end (a nuke feels like a sneeze against you), then you might not *have* to move at all.
But for those classes who *cannot* take that risk, get caught, then so what.
And if the mechanic is purely optional (as in even the squishies can stay in it), then what is the point of having a mechanic in there?
The 2nd part I find interesting, because if lag spikes are being produced by the game whenever an AOE goes off, then there needs to be work done on the game engine, because if the game is like CoX, then the lag produced by an AOE going off will be unplayable.
Well, i believe Unreal has Animation Blending, so the upper body can show the Defender do the Resucitate Animation of the upper body, but allow the lower body to move, well... after 1 second of being rooted. I dont know, Rooting sometimes gives the effect of Beleavability... but we can try lowering the rooting length to just a second, maybe 2, depending of the power. :)
The alternative to tab targeting in City of Heroes, targeting by clicking the mouse, was not very useful. In a busy fight, if there was a particular enemy you wanted to target - for example, one that was beating your teammate, or had an annoying power like an END drain - usually he was behind another mob, making him untargetable unless you jockey the camera around quite a bit. The developers of the original engine evidently tried to address the problem of one guy's targeting hitbox being obscured by another by making them small and difficult to find. It didn't help. It probably annoyed the Hazard Zone Security Officers, too, since you had to click a fairly sensitive area before they would notice you. More often than not, if I was on a team I had to pick that one enemy that was causing trouble by spamming the TAB key, or something like "/targetname sap".
An alternate targeting scheme that doesn't care where your mouse is and works from the geometry visible on the screen rather than an invisible targeting box would be nice. A bonus is that you can use it while keeping both hands on the keyboard if you like.
Odd, you seem to have changed the point.
The answer to your prior point is, What nerf? I know it's considered bad form to answer a question with a question, but I'm not seeing any nerfing in this proposal. If you don't like the boresight targeting, don't use it.
The answer to the current point can be found in posts 23 and 24. To restate it, this proposal adds flexibility, allowing the game to appeal to a larger number of people. Those who don't like FPS style targeting can turn off the reticle and turn off mouse-look. Or maybe that would be the default, and those who do like FPS style targeting can turn them on. Those who find it occasionally useful can turn it on or off as they please.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
I have noticed that, many times, an NPC would start (telegraph) an AoE attack and the characters had a brief window in which to get out of range before the AoE went off, if they so desired. It just didn't show the outer range limit of the AoE, nor visual progression timer of the AoE, while it was going through its activation. Those were for the tier 9 type or "rain" type AoEs. There was no delay between animation and to-hit roll with the "lesser" AoEs like Fireball, Frost Breath, and Shadow Maul.
Of course, the difference between the two types is that the fireball, and the like, are all foe targeted AoEs where as the others don't require a foe to be targeted.
If I could skip all the "your stupidity renders your argument invalid" posts, these threads who be much more interesting.
-joe
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
+1
if MWM is going to use anything from these forums, you gotz'ta leave that out ([color=#FF0000]or color it different, so we can Skip It![/color]). :)
Yes, this. If manual dodging mechanics enable my glass cannon type to avoid more attacks than he could in CoH, that's great. I'm all for it. But it was originally proposed as a way of doing away with sets like Ice Armor and Super Reflexes, and forcing players who wanted their characters to be hard to hit to lrn2dodge.
It seems to be the way of these suggestions that they start out as regressions, removing popular features that were deliberate innovations in City of Heroes, or EQ, or the first graphical CRPGs, and replacing them with features of older games. There's an outcry, it's not enough like CoH, it's moving further from the comicbook superhero genre, whatever. Then the same proposal is made as an added feature over the top of the existing functionality and it becomes much more appealing, although a few stubborn people still want nothing to do with it.
Wooow, Slow down. You forget, some of us liked CoH/CoV because we could stay in the game and fight, while talking with others in our family eather in the house or on the phone and still be effective. This Dodging thing sounds like a pain, and i wont be able to multitask as well. :/
You dont get bugged (like Wife Aggro) as much when you're playing?
Whay kind of game was it? How did you pause? or Did you just Die?
You're asking for trouble if you add Dodging. at least 1/4 of the player base will leave the game, if not allot more. I know i would, or I wouldnt play it as long in one days worth as i would have CoH/CoV.
please... Stay away from Call of Duty type of mechanics or anything that needs more than 60% of my attention. Well, for the majority of the time in game. ;)
I get back from work to [i]this?[/i] Why did this need to turn into another flamewar over "twitch"? We've got two threads of that already at least.
IMHO the main objection people had to "twitch" mechanics was the dependence on a low-lag connection. So I think I'm justified in turning that around and saying that for the "what is acceptable" discussion, the main objection is not "twitch mechanics" by name (which, as several have pointed out, can be fuzzy) but to anything that can get screwed up by lag. So the real challenge is "what can we get without creating undue dependence on a low-lag connection?"
Boresight target selection: no problem! The client is the one taking aim direction and resolving it to a target, so if it sends anything to the server at all, it's "I selected that target", just like it does when you hit tab.
Boresight AoE and Cone aiming: might be tough. The client still does the work of figuring out where the aim is, but the server has to be the one to resolve which targets get hit (otherwise a cheater could simply declare all targets as being hit). If there's enough lag, the player is shooting where things [i]were[/i] and will likely miss if the targets are moving. Whereas if it's aimed at a [i]target[/i], there's less problem because the aim will follow the target when the server gets around to resolving things.
Press-to-shoot, fast-recharge "powers": This gets rough because lag can mess it all up. Probably not going to happen.
Click or key to dodge: STO has this, so it can be done, but it's lag sensitive, so lag can kill you.
Things resolved at start of animation vs. end: with a laggy connection, waiting to the end degrades into "resolve immediately and target did not evade", which screws the target. But if there's no abort, and there's rooting, you're a sitting duck. I don't think there's a good answer to this. A laggy connection guarantees that you're going to soak every AoE because it'll get resolved before you even see the enemy animate it. (TT highlighted this.)
Now regarding some other points brought up in the thread...
Upper and lower body animations can be decoupled to try to avoid rooting (though it could well be a play balance factor to require rooting as a downside to powerful powers). My main problem with that strategy is that there are several cases where it just looks wrong. Think [i]Exorcist[/i]. So there might need to be some extra code written to, say, make sure the upper body is not doing something completely unsupported by the lower body's direction.
Rooting for everything is definitely something that can be put on the scrap heap with ED. It was a necessary simplification a decade ago, I'm sure, but now not so much.
Last but not least: /signed what Pengy said. Both times.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Dodging in Star Trek Online is double-tapping a movement direction key: your character then does a "dive out of the way" in that direction. This shouldn't require that much more attention than, say, selecting targets the old-fashioned way or setting the tank up in the best spot to hold aggro.
Most importantly, though, it should be treated as a "nice extra" but not a "your character is gimped if they don't."
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
That brings something up, though. There was an incarnate trial in CoH that involved avoiding axes falling from the sky. You had to keep moving in that fight. Those of you with family aggro, how did you manage it?
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Agreed. This is why these threads get heated, in my opinion. The first proposal in a given theme (dodging mechanics, alternate targeting, whatever) is usually [i]way out there[/i] relative to City of Heroes, and sounds much more tiring, frustrating, and generally a pain. Then baggage gets carried over into new threads, which is what I'm doing, so I'll shut up now.
That Apex TF is the one where I first noticed that some folks who were regular participants in other parts of the game just couldn't seem to manage aspects of the somewhat more dynamic AV battles Paragon was adding. They'd die and die in the Battle Maiden fight and complain that "the blue circles are everywhere!" and such. Not a huge biggie in CoX's case, since those more move-y battles constituted such a wee part of the total fighting in the game, but if it moving about was a more general-content thing, I think those folks would be out.
I have been playing a game that has patches you need to double-tap-move to roll out of during general battles. It's fine, but if I think of that gameplay as what I get in return for losing those other folks (who I enjoyed teaming with in the other content), it doesn't seem like a great trade.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
Thats exactly the trade I am very much hoping to avoid.
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
Careful, Redlynne, don't just insult the guy for talking. Look at the question he asked. It's valid.
I can agree with him, that it seems like you're advocating a 'nerf' of tab-tageting and suggesting it should be replaced by something that doesn't add functionality.
I've managed to pry enough details out of the discussion, though, that I can see how a typical tab-targeting system lets us start at the nearest or farthest and walk through the targeting queue. A 'boresight' with an 'aimbot' allows us to aim the camera and 'look' at the target we want, have the 'aimbot' guess what we mean and pick up a target, and we can either 'twitch' the camera to point towards a different target, or accept the lock and tab-walk through the queue to the target we want. Thus, the 'aimbot' allows us to start in the middle of the target-queue, instead of the ends, WITHOUT picking up the mouse and clicking.
That's relatively minor for a Melee character, but could be a big deal for a Ranged character.
Still, from the PoV of someone accustomed to driving the CoH interface, it's not that big a feature, and NOT useful if it's going to interfere with tab-targeting.
I see it as an alternate means of selecting a target and not revolutionary. Someone who was accustomed to the 'boresight and aimbot' interface might find it more useful still.
That said, I see no reason to reject it, as long as my tab-targeting is intact. If, on the other hand, it DID interfere with tab-targeting, if it tried to force me to learn some more difficult method, then I'd fight it and stomp it and light it on fire.
People who ask questions are not out to challenge you, Redlynne. They're just trying to understand. They're trying to have a conversation about the matter.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I'd don't recall being able to dodge the direct fire weapons in STO, just the grenades. Mainly because there is a warning circle where the grenade is going to land. At least, I haven't been able to dodge the direct fire weapons. But, I try to avoid the ground combat in that game as much as I can.
[color=#ff0000][b]Moderator Note:[/b][/color]
As pointed out by some, this thread's getting too heated. Redlynne, no more attacking McNum for being McNum, that's ad hominem and a personal attack.
Pull back, calm down, and address the topic, not the person.
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
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I *personally* never suggested this as a method of doing away with Ice Armour or SR....But I can see where you could have gotten that idea from though.
Would there be some attacks that could one shot even the hardest most toughest tanker out there? Yep, but only in VERY LIMITED and situational circumstances (thinking "raid level" attacks here. They would still be telegraphed though). Could they survive something similar if they had support players with them (buffers/healers)... possibly. But they *shouldn't* be able to do it solo.
The other thing that this could allow is instead of just having "stats high enough that allow me to live", it can allow the "good enough" squishy pull it out of the hat.
I would like to stress that something like this would be limited for AOE attacks, including cones/placeable effects, attacks with a "splash" effect afterwards. It can also be used for the "big windup" attacks as well.
Also, you would be limited as to how many times you could "quick dodge" successively as well (twice every 10 seconds or so seems enough), whilst you might just be able to saunter out of the AOE if you had enough warning for it.
Believing that requires a complete misinterpretation of the word AND ... and substituting in the word OR instead. That's basic Reading Comprehension 101 failure right there. Persisting in believing that the word OR was used when in fact the word AND was used throughout is just willful denseness.
Correct. The functionality at the programming level is essentially unchanged, in terms of what "services" the computer is providing the Player. The only change being made is "how" the Player engages or "accesses" those identical services. The only "change" is the human/machine interface ... which then changes how the game "plays" because you're changing how the Player controls and manipulates their gameplay, altering the experience of playing the game.
For example ... [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_dance_revolution]Dance Dance Revolution[/url] can be played using your hands on a standard game controller ... but it's often more fun to play using a "mat" that you can dance ON using your feet. The only difference is the control(s) method and how the human "plays" the game (using either hands or feet) ... but the difference in the EXPERIENCE of playing the game using the two difference means and methods is radically different and calls for entirely difference Player skills (ie. hand to eye coordination isn't all that useful for dancing feet, for instance). Same game ... different control methods.
This is going to have to be one of those cases where, since you haven't personally experienced it yourself, you're just going to have to trust me (and Gangrel and Lin Chiao Feng, who I know played Tabula Rasa, and Lin Chiao Feng and Brand X who have played TERA, and so on). The simple fact of the matter is that the Tabula Rasa control system was VERY intuitive and extremely easy to use ... once you had adapted to it. Furthermore, I personally found it [b]easier to use[/b] at ALL ranges (from long to melee) than the Tab To Target system used in City of Heroes. Indeed, since both games existed concurrently, I had the opportunity to play both in the same time frame and found the Tabula Rasa system [b]superior[/b] in my estimation to the City of Heroes system *because* the Tabula Rasa styled controls were more "player driven" than being "computer driven" like they were in City of Heroes.
And yes, that "adaptation" I mentioned worked both ways ... in that after playing Tabula Rasa for a while and adapting to its playstyle, coming back to City of Heroes to play I would need to [i]adapt again[/i] so as to school my reflexes and responses to play City of Heroes "correctly" again. I would note that this kind of phenomenon also occurs for me when switching between Star Trek Online and TERA, due to the different styles of control inputs for those games. So in a lot of respects, which one is "better" than the other, if you had them both available in the same game, would largely be a matter of taste, preferences and familiarity ... since what is "familiar" is often preferred over the "new" even if the "new" is somehow "better" in some form or fashion (and as proof I offer people's preferences for their chosen Operating System on their computer, including the version number of that Operating System).
Which is why I was at pains to say if you've got Tab To Target going on AT ALL in a First Person Shooter game engine, then this other method becomes AVAILABLE as an optional alternative control scheme. At no point did I ever suggest "dumping" or outright "replacing" Tab To Target in its entirety. If anything, I was "piggybacking" on Tab To Target services and functionality so as to make other options easily available.
See above mention of Dance Dance Revolution and what use of a hand controller vs a mat on the floor does to how a game "plays" simply by changing how the Player interfaces with and "controls" how the game plays. Different control methods and schemes call for different skills [i]from the Player[/i] ... even though the activity to be accomplished is exactly the same, with the same desired outcome and results. Same tasks, different methods ... new gameplay.
Hence why I was very careful in my setup to get Tab To Target "working first" as the baseline minimum set of requirements, because that's what people (like yourself) are expecting ... and messing with expectations can be BAD™ (see Global Defense Nerf and Enhancement Dysfunction backlashes in City of Heroes history). I laid out everything that would be needed to make Tab To Target "work" in a Shooter game engine ... and then showed how making just a very few optional tweaks (which were mainly subtractions rather than additions!) to the user interface allowed for the creation of an entirely alternative style of gameplay that [b]reused all of that Tab To Target programming[/b] with only minor alterations/modifications. That way you can get BOTH rather than being forced into an EITHER/OR situation at the Development level, because you can support both styles of game controls using the exact same programming under the hood of the game engine, giving you a "Twofer" at a cost of something on the order of +10% development effort and making yet more options available beyond all that.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
In support of Gangrel's point, I would say that attacks like Anti-Matter's Obliteration Beam on a countdown timer that is CONSTANTLY displayed in the User Interface makes for a perfectly reasonable "telegraphed" attack where it is incumbent upon the Player(s) to "NOT BE THERE" when the attack finally lands.
[img]http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//0/00/View_obliteration_1.png[/img]
[img]http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//2/24/View_obliteration_2.jpg[/img]
[img]http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//2/2b/View_obliteration_3.jpg[/img]
As Gangrel points out, this is a "raid level" type of attack, and therefore its inclusion in a raiding event is permissible/excusable. Another example of this sort of thing would be Battle Maiden's "falling halberds" of Blue Doom™ in the Apex Task Force ... although in that case they were pretty annoying because of how [i]frequently they would fall[/i] making it almost impossible for Melee characters to remain in contact with Battle Maiden (thereby nullifying their effectiveness as DPS output), forcing almost all damage to come from Ranged sources because Battle Maiden would just stand in the Burning Blue that would faceplant Players in seconds.
However, inserting this sort of "Omega Damage" attack into more "regular" gameplay should be completely frowned upon. I'd say that these sorts of telegraphed "nuke" attacks should be limited to NPCs of Arch-villain (and just as an aside, I always want to have the in-game NPCs call Redlynne an "Arch-hero" at least once!) ranking who are Raid Bosses. The only exception I can think of being acceptable to to that rule would be ... Giant Monsters ... and even then, you'd want to be careful about allowing such an attack. Although I must admit I would have liked to see a [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Kronos_Titan]Kronos Titan[/url] doing a PBAoE [b][url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacrossMissileMassacre]Macross Missile Massacre[/url][/b] using a "high tech" variant of [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Defender_Ranged.Archery.Rain_of_Arrows]Rain of Arrows[/url] involving missiles that rain down to explode on contact (instead of "mere" arrows) and which covers a [b]radius[/b] (not diameter, radius!) of about a city block ... with the Kronos Titan striding forward out of the smoke and devastation completely unharmed by its own weapons ...
[img]http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//b/b0/Kronos_Class_Titan2.jpg[/img]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
That is correct: direct fire weapons aren't dodge-able.
IMHO, this proposal is pretty much done. Points have been made, some people like it, others don't, and it's about as clear as it's going to get.
ZM, if you feel like locking this thread, it won't break my heart. Sorry for the trouble.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I am now going to throw a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_wrench]monkey wrench[/url] into the entire works of what we've been talking about up until now (don't I always do this?) by pointing out something that even *I* hadn't realized until last night (and was too tired to type up).
The Unreal Engine is a Shooter Game engine. That means it is designed to handle Hit Box intercept equations and ... stuff. That means the game engine can run on a basis of targets not being "hit" until they are HIT ... meaning animate first, resolve after ... rather than the City of Heroes standard of resolve first, animate after.
Everyone with me so far?
One of the side effects that this kind of game engine would have is how it handles ranged combat ... specifically, how it would handle the projectiles used for ranged combat. This would then open up a [i]very interesting[/i] realm of game balance possibilities, because it would be somewhat trivially easy to (at the development level) define ranged attacks that use animated projectiles as having both a Flight Speed and a Flight Time ... which in combination would compute to a range result. The important point I'm wanting to make here is that Range on Ranged Attacks would be a "computed characteristic" as opposed to being something "inherent" to the Powers themselves. The reason WHY that would be important will become apparent momentarily.
In a number of games, with Diablo II being the first one that I can recall, there are game mechanics that effectively work as a sort of "[url=http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Slow_Missiles]Slow Missiles[/url]" (which is what the Diablo II Amazon ability was called). What it does is create a "field" (think AoE) in which projectiles have their Flight Speed reduced ... which then makes avoidance of those projectiles potentially easier to do (because they're moving much more slowly) so as to prevent intersection of those projectiles with a character's Hit Box. Such a power effect is only possible in a game engine which relies on ... animate first, resolve after ... and use of Hit Boxes to determine which (typically ranged) attacks can do Damage to a Foe. Note that an interesting side effect of use of this ability in Diablo II by an Amazon involved an interaction with the Sorceress' Frozen Orb spell.
[img]http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/images/0/06/Screenshot025aq2.jpg[/img]
The way the Frozen Orb worked is that you had a central "ball" that shed shooting ice shard fragments out of it in all directions. The ball moved somewhat moderately quickly, but the shard fragments flew fast, and the ball just kept shooting out these shard fragments as it flew.
Now, in Diablo II PvP, it was [i]normally a good idea[/i] for an Amazon to use Slow Missiles since it made it (relatively) easy to move to avoid projectiles with their Flight Speed reduced by 2/3rds ... but against a Sorceress with Ice Orb, it was effectively a Suicide Move! That's because although the Flight Speed of the Ice Orb would be slowed, as would the Ice Shards it was shedding (at a normal rapid rate) ... all of those projectiles would get "caught" in the Slow Missiles AoE [b]and stack up to insanely lethal levels[/b] of saturation. The way that Slow Missiles inter(re)acted with Ice Orb in a PvP context then was to effectively [i]concentrate the firepower[/i] into a slow moving wave of pure annihilation that could kill ANYTHING that touched it, simply because of the stacking that the Slow Missiles enforced.
I should also note that the same kind of "double edged sword" interaction occurred with Lightning Enchanted Bosses (LEBs) and the dreaded Multishot Lightning Enchanted Bosses (MSLEBs) where the lighting sparks that these Bosses would emit when hit by Player attacks could be slowed by the Slow Missiles ability of the Amazon ... resulting in the same kind of "slow rolling WAVES OF DEATH!!!" of concentrated Hatred™ that would kill you dead if any of it touched you because it was stack concentrated so much by the reduced Projectile Flight Speed modifier of the Slow Missiles AoE field. Meteors falling from the sky "took forever" to land (and explode) because they fell so slowly, and a bunch of other really ... interesting ... effects happened as a result.
The way that Diablo II handled Slow Missiles was as a Debuff applied on click of the ability in a PBAoE around the caster, effectively "marking" Foes for alteration of their Projectile Speeds for the duration of the ability. It was not an "aura" maintained around the caster, presumably because the Diablo II game engine couldn't handle variable projectile Flight Speeds once the projectile was in flight (we're talking 1999 game development here). However, the Unreal Engine is a heck of a lot more ... robust ... than Diablo II's game engine was, meaning ... it ought to be perfectly possible to modify the parameter for a projectile's Flight Speed while that projectile is in flight (*significant look of important idea being conveyed*).
So ... in a City of Heroes styled context ... what kind of powerset would be most appropriate for a Slow Missiles thematic effect?
/em looks meaningfully at Force Fields ...
Consider what would happen if Force Fields had a Power that effectively reduced Projectile Speeds by, say ... -90% (just for easy math and illustration purposes). So a projectile that moves 100 meters per second normally would move at only 10 meters per second inside the "force" field slowing that projectile down. If such an attack normally only had a Flight Time duration of 1 second, that would mean that normally that attack would have a 100 meter range ... but inside the Force Field "slow" effect, that same attack would have only a 10 meter range! But that range reduction doesn't occur because the "caster" of the attack has been affected ... it happens because the projectile "carrying" their attack has been debuffed.
Note how this sort of mechanic is something that would give a Force Field powerset a "range advantage" against opponents ... up to an including the possibility of making ranged attacks travel "so slowly" as to make them easy to step around/dodge in a sort of "bullet time" fashion. At the same time, this wouldn't necessarily be an advantageous thing to have in all circumstances due to the danger of being on the receiving end of saturation attacks (such as the aforementioned Ice Orb and Lightning Enchanted Boss situations seen in Diablo II) in which a slowing of Flight Speeds could result in damage concentration that is detrimental to survival.
My main thought is that doing something like this in Force Fields is something that ought to be a PBAoE Aura toggle, making it an effect that moves with the character generating the field ... although an alternative variation could be to cast it on a Target Location area, so as to generate an "obstacle" for enemy ranged attacks to pass through. The enhanceable aspects of the Debuffing could involve increased slowing of projectile Flight Speed(s), increasing the "bubble" radius of the effect itself (thereby costing more Flight Time to penetrate the effect relatively speaking), as well as being able to increase the distance away from the caster that the effect can be cast (ie. the Range).
The thing that makes all of this possible (and reasonable) to do, however, is ... a Shooter game engine that animates first, and resolves after, by making contact with Hit Boxes.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yes you do and [b]please for the love of ${DEITY} give it its own thread.[/b]
[IMG]http://imageshack.com/a/img842/9286/if3i.gif[/IMG]
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
The Hazard Zone Security Officer problem was bizarre because it was range-dependent. If you were out at the limit of clickable range, you could usually click almost anywhere on the figure, but the closer you got, the more limited the 'acceptable' target was -- and it wasn't consistent; sometimes I had to click on their head, sometimes on their leg, and sometimes the crotch area (which always felt like I was groping the security officer to get their attention). I demonstrated the effect to Positron at the booth NCSoft had at SDCC one year, and he agreed that it was a problem that needed to be looked at, but I never saw any resolution of the problem.
Fine ... have it your way ... faceplanter Kuroko.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]