An idea that just came to me. Suppose you've got badguy standing in the end zone of a football field, and a blaster standing on the ten yard line. Blaster and badguy are firing ranged attacks at each other. Insert Tanker standing on the 5 yard line, off to one side so that the baddy and blaster still have clear shots at each other. Okay, now, instead of Taunting the badguy to attack him, the tanker uses his "Gravitational Attraction Aura" or "Magnetic Field Aura" power and then when the ranged attacks pass by the tanker, they get diverted towards the Tanker by the aura he's emitting. So the bad guy is still aiming at the blaster, but you use 3D real time projectile physics to determine the path of the ranged attacks and they get pushed toward the tanker in this case. Maybe the blaster has a similar aura that repells ranged attacks in a similar way. I think the auras would have to have appropriate ranges, endo use, etc, maybe they don't work against all types of ranged attacks, maybe they have to roll to hit each attack that enters their airspace, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Interesting, but could be a major pain in the ass to code for what's passing by the tanker.
Having a personal defensive aura would just act as +defense with a cool animation. Being able to apply your aura to abilities not affecting you would be tougher.
Overall, great idea, I can see it being really difficult to code though.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
If it is workable, the idea could be applied to raid/TF content as well, for certain cases where the boss is using special machinery or spells as protection, especially if the protection is an object not attached to the boss. Watching everyone's projectiles get physics'd away from or to the special object would be a pretty cool indicator of what the players need to do to make the boss vulnerable. Too often, raid bosses just go invulnerable for no apparent reason and the game lacks intuitive visual hints on how to proceed.
+1. :<
Some kind of hint (environmental or other kinds) would be nice. :)
So like take the STF in CoX for example, what if the towers each gave Recluse an aura that either repelled a certain type of damage away or or redirected it to the tower itself, which then absorbs the damage (e.g. the electric tower absorbs electrical energy to repair and power itself, for example). Then you'd have to figure out whiuch tower can be approached from what direction in order to avoid the other towers effects, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Yes. A lesser version of your idea takes the form of placeable, stationary "shield pets" which absorb or deflect projectiles aimed through a surface, and may also block enemies' (and friendlies') movement, appearing as temporary physical objects or energy barriers. Although it's not yet a common feature in MMOs, some do offer this as a thematic power, usually in ranged / engineer / traps powersets. Even this simpler form requires a solution to Sand_Trout's note, since the pet isn't necessarily protecting the summoner and in any case, it's only protecting from a certain direction and is often limited to handling damage of specific types and positions. Hopefully UE4's tech is capable of such shield pets; coding them may reveal the path to expand it to your grander version.
Everything you're talking about relies on a system of Animate First/Resolve After ... as opposed to the City of Heroes system of Resolve First/Animate After. I'd hope that by now people would realize that Unreal 4 is a game engine designed for First Person Shooters, and as such is perfectly capable of handling Animate First/Resolve After physics involving projectiles and hitboxes.
What you'd really be wanting to do for the kind of "aura" you're talking about is have a PBAoE field that either imposes a debuffing penalty on projectiles moving through it (either by slowing them down or by multiplying the range "cost" of moving through them) or which actually alters the trajectory of projectiles passing through the field ... such that a projectile fired at the source of the field will hit, because it's going straight in on a radial line, but trying to hit someone other than the source of the aura will probably miss because the flight path will "bend" either towards or away from the source of the aura (think Repel/Attract) causing shots fired on a chord line through the aura to fly off course and then presumably miss their intended target(s).
You can DO what I just described if you're running on a "shooter" game engine that Animates First/Resolves After and uses Hitboxes to determine if an attack "connects" with its intended target. You can also have that very same "shooter" game engine doing all of that while you provide a built-in Aimbot that does all of the automatic work of pointing your projectiles the right way FOR YOU (ie. Tab Select Target functionality).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I think it should not be too hard to code actually. Rather than attempting situationality into it, simply have the tanker apply a -hit debuf on the villain and trigger a special 'miss' animation where ranged attacks start off normally towards the boss's ranged target but then after a short while get their target overwritten to be the tanker. The 'chase the target' mechanism is already in the game(*) so it should be all automatic from then on.
(* assuming of course that the game resolves the hit/miss first and then executes the animation. Otherwise it is still in the game but may take a little bit more work to create the visual effect of a an attack chasing a specific target).
Yeah, it was that post (of yours,. Red, in a different thread about tab targeting) that gave me the idea in the first place.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Or even simpler, if projectiles cannot pass through characters and objects without hitting them, all you would have to do is increase the hitbox of the tank in the example as soon as he activates the aura. On the other hand then you would have to alter the hit- animation and I don't know if that really is less work.