In several other games you can hold a given button to charge your attack. This was not available in COH so would it fit for COT? There are a couple ways this could work.
The simplest form would be to just press and hold, you might get some sort of indicator like a x1.1 x1.2 x1.3 popup or a ring around the power could fill up with "power" The idea is that the longer you hold the more potency the power will have this could work for heals and CC as well as straight damage. The downside is that you aren't doing anything else while charging and that the target could move and your attack would be lost and the time spent charging.
Slightly more complicated would be to include a power up arrow on the momentum bar. You would press the power and after a slight delay (to avoid wasting momentum when you don't want to charge the attack) an arrow would appear on the momentum bar and perhaps the amount of momentum would change from the default color to indicate how much momentum would be used. When you release the button the momentum is converted into potency and the power fires. Conversely you could do the same thing with the END bar where charging the power causes it to use more END. Or both. The downside with this method is that it uses up that resource or those resources and prevents their use elsewhere as a multiplier or for whatever else that might use END or Momentum. Then of course there is still the charging delay (which for balancing purposes would be shorter than the previous example).
I'm not saying all powers should be this way. Maybe a particular power operates this way in a given set. Or maybe it's a power like Build Up where you charge the BU power and that gives you a short buff that can then be used to the benefit of your next power. Perhaps the mechanic could be used for transferring momentum into END or health or visa versa.
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Thinking about damage dealt as a thing that a "hold button down to build up power" mechanic would do, it occurs to me, from Grimfox's own comments, that a power set which has some way of stunning or immobilizing the target could then use "press and hold" effects a little more efficiently than a set that does knockback or has no way of making the target sit still for a half-second. As such, I think this mechanic would work best as a type of power, that is, you've got toggles, passive abilities, click-to-activate attack powers, click-to-activate-for-a-duration self-buffs like Hasten, interruptible attack powers like the sniper shots, etc and I think "click and hold to accumulate more damage" could be a type of power like that.
This raises the question of whether or not the "hold button to build power" effect is just another application of "interruptible" in the first place. Sniper attacks in CoX were interruptible for a set period of time and did a set amount of damage every time, subject to enhancement. The "hold to empower" attack would really just be similar to that, except the interrupt time is variable and the damage is proportional to it. For enhancement purposes, you could make enhancers that allow you to hold down the button longer and get more damage, or you could make enhancements that give you a greater rate of damage increase per second the button is held, and bviously people might wnat both of those, assuming they feel like they can root a target to make full use of such.
As far as making the "hold to empower" effect optional when actuall activating such powers, as Grimfox mentions, I would probably not offer that as an optional mode of any individual "hold to accumulate power" type of attack. I think that where the "press and hold to build potency" effect is warranted and useful, it should have the drawback of always needing some interruptible build-up time to get some effect. If you can't really afford that build-up time during a fight, then don't use that power in that part of the fight against that target, or even don't take the "hold to accumulate" power in your character's build, use a different, perhaps similar power that doesn't do "hold to accumulate". I can see some toons wanting faster, more rapid click-to-use powers and others, who have holds and immob and stun, being able to take advantage of more "hold to accumulate" effects. This creates different fighting styles, which is good. Obviously, you have to try to make sure there is no "right answer" that is just way better for all players, but if you can balance it such that some builds would benefit more from using "hold to accumulate" type powers of various kinds and others are better off ignoring that and using the standard "click to activate" attacks, that would be the ideal outcome, I think.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
It would also be interesting if you could slot an enhancement that could give almost any power a hold-to-charge capability. If you activate the power with a single click, it is the vanilla power. But when you charge it, the duration/range/damage/heal increases. Being able to slot this enhancement on almost any ability could lead to some innovative builds.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
As long as the math made sure that a slot that could make a power charge or not charge didn't give too much of a mechanical advantage game-wise either way, it would let people dial in how they wanted to play.
Let the twitchier players twitch (I know that's not technically twitch, I'm just saying those that like timing-oriented play) and let those who like less reaction-time based play have it their way too. Best of both worlds if possible.
I'd say give the more timing-based gameplay a tiny, tiny advantage/disadvantage depending on if they pull the timing off or not (many will do anything and take any risk for tiny advantages), and that way they feel "skill based" without really having a big edge.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
If I were the designer, I wouldn't want to have to design every power with the possibility of "what if this becomes a 'hold to accumulate' power?" due to that Enhancement being placed in it. I would allow the designers of powers the ability to use "hold to accumulate" mechanic as a tool in their toolbox that they have fully under their control. If such an Enhancement ever did come out, it should have limited application in a subset of powers, not be able to be placed in anything. That, to me, is asking for trouble. That Enhancement might be a net-drawback for many powers and no great advantage in others, but if its malfunctioning or just totally overpowered in any one power, that then becomes the new power level "standard" and people will complain if you "fix" it by making it less abusable.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Good point, but, as far as charged powers in general, I'd still say give the more timing-based gameplay a tiny, tiny advantage/disadvantage depending on if they pull the timing off or not, and that way those who want to will still feel "skill-based" without really having a significant edge.
Those type of gamers will bleed out their eyeballs for a 1% advantage. And then the majority who don't care about "skill-based" "twitch" gameplay won't even notice that 1% difference.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Agreed, Empyrean. You might also want to design it such that the amount of stun/hold/mez/immob you need in your powers to keep the target in one place combined with the amount of "build-up" you get from your "hold to accumulate" powers and their enhancements is better than the best "non-hold to accumulate" DPS otherwise available to your class, but only with a totally min/maxed build, and only with the right enhancements, many or all of which are of the highest rarity and costing you damage in the generic sense that you've replaced your generic damage enhancer with a mez or build-up enhancer here and there in the hopes of getting ahead on DPS in the exchange, when you can manage to hold it for exactly the right amount of time, within the precision of the game clock.
The hold-time sensitivity is a thing with these powers. You run the risk of holding the button down too long and thus wasting time while holding down an already-full build-up bar for no added effect, which would lower your average DPS AND cause your Momentum to fill more slowly too, while if you take your finger off the button too early, in order to get more attacks in, you lose DPS from the buildup being not totally full that way. If you make the amount of added damage per millisecond that the button is held be a rate that increases abruptly in the last say 5% of the total hold time, you might make it a little more sensitive to that and thus force people to try to get it perfect in order to max their damage.
Whether or not they want to make things THAT "twitchy" is another question. They might want to avoid such manual-dexterity-requiring challenges, who knows.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I think that makes sense.
Let's say that if a charged power isn't charged, it takes 1 second to animate/activate for an effect rating of 1.0. (as an example)
But if it is charged the effect rating increases more rapidly than the time elapsed. Thus if the charge was held for 3 seconds (for a total animation/activation time of 4 seconds) the effect rating should be greater than 4.0. This enables the player to risk being interrupted for the reward of greater effect.
[Note: This assumes that spell cooldown is included in the animation/activation time.]
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
There's also the question of "wraparound" in the build-up effect. Like, when the build-up bar exceeds maximum, it might reset to zero and start over immediately, thus causing you to try to hit it JUST right, or else lose almost all benefit if you go slightly overtime. Maybe the bar fills up slowly enough that letting your finger off at just the right time is easy, or maybe it's so rapid that getting it maxxed is very difficult, like trying to measure exactly 1.00 seconds on a stopwatch. You might also want to build in a plateau effect at the maximum build-up so as to give people a wider window to hit for maximum damage, with flashing lights and so forth when it's full and prompting you to let go.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I think TERA does that well. Granted, TERA is an "Action Combat" game. But when you hold a power too long in that game, it actually damages you. In our case, rather than doing actual damage or wrapping around like you mention, perhaps it starts sucking up a resource like END or Momentum the longer you have it charged past maximum.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
If no one has suggested this already, i would rather enjoy being able to queue the next power...
If the Power is at '4', and i press '4' again and again, while it's still queued, i can change to an Alternate effect.
This way i don't have to Hold to charge, and just mash out '4' two or three times in rapid succession. Set it and Forget it. :)
Of course you can reorder a powers Alternate effects as well. ;)
All this talk of Hold to Charge makes it already feel like my Speed Runs won't be that Speedy. :<
My thinking was that, for example, CoH had Dual Blades which was combo oriented. That gave people who like that play-style a way to play it and the advantage of having a versatile range of effects for their efforts--but it wasn't ultimately more effective than other powers, so people didn't feel obliged to play it to keep up with others.
If there could be a way to represent charging, combo, or other play-styles that people like but that weren't ultimately significantly more effective, it would allow people to have them or not based on what play-style is fun for them. If this could be done without anchoring it to one set the way combos were anchored to Dual Blades, all the better.
But, as has been brought up, if this is too time consuming to develop that could preclude it due to practical considerations.
At least at launch?
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
This was brought up a long time ago. It had been decided that we are not going to impart rapid key-presses into attacks. Selecting the next power so that it is queued will be possible, but it wouldn't work for charging the power.
We also do not have 'active' holding for increasing the effect. That is, the longer you hold an attack on a target, like say some type of freeze-ray, the better it gets at freezing the target.
Charging will primarly be used to increase a power's current effect and / or used as a method to trigger an additional or alternate effect.
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Tap to do KnockDOWN.
Hold to do KnockBACK.
That sort of thing? If the charge time is 1 second, and all animations are 1.5 seconds or longer, this should work perfectly fine.
I'd also argue that use of a charging mechanic like this would make the most sense for Interrupt Powers (like Snipe and so on), where you have to hold the key down during the Interrupt interval, which in turn could be shortened by Enhancements.
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That is all possible, yes.
Though we don't use enhancements, reducing the possibility of interrupt on a charge would be a type of Refinement (sorry, but I'm a stickler for proper terminology as there was a very concerted effort to move away from old game terms internally).
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In that case, Tannim, do us ALL a favor and publicize that proper terminology so that we can all start using it correctly. That way you don't have to keep interpolating between what we used to use (in City of Heroes) and what we'll ultimately wind up using (in City of Titans). This sounds like something worthy of a front page update, since it will help align our understanding with yours.
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Ohhh... i see.
I guess i can forget about making a suggestion for Point and Click ground AoE effects have Small, Medium, and Large diameters?
And when the power is activated, say its at '4', and while waiting for the player to click on the ground.. pressing '4' cycles through the different sizes. :(
Then a wiki/glossary/dictionary of 'proper terms' is going to be required.
Even so, I have difficulty understanding this reflexive terror of using the old terminology. I feel I can adapt to 'Refinement', and 'Momentum' and 'Reserves' represent a new system, but I expect a lot of trouble trying to escape 'Blaster', 'Tanker', 'Scrapper', and 'Controller'. 'Defender' has some play in it, but the new term, 'Guardian' has completely different connotations in another game I'm playing, so I may have trouble shifting that word's 'meaning' in my head.
I just don't get why we Must discard the old terminology.
Be Well!
Fireheart
At this point, the terminology we are using is described in this update: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/highway-danger-room
Regards,
Felix
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Right, Augments and different types of Refinements... Collecting 3 different types of things sounds needlessly complicated, but I'd need to see the system in operation, before commenting further.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Being a person with some nerve damage that makes holding keys while not impossible somewhat difficult I dislike the idea of holding to charge anything. CoH was great in that it's ease of use enabled folks with greater difficulties than mine were able to play and enjoy the game. Sometimes I worry about the features that get asked for on the forums. I hardly touch my consoles anymore because when you drop the controller without even knowing you did it kinda ruins the fun.
I hope this will alleviate some of our concerns. Mainly, charging powers won't be done for "active use". That is you won't have to hold down an attack key while actively attacking the target, like say a freeze-ray that slowly freezes the target.
None of the charges are designed to be mandatory. Powers that use a charge mechanic will have a non-charged action so they can be quick-fired.
By far, the majority of powers are your standard click to activate in some manner. Powers that do use charges do not do so for more than a few seconds at worse at this time.
Also, there are quite a few programmable mice and keyboards out there that come with thier own macro software. There is also some free macrosoftware out there as well (though some use this for some nefarious means in certain games, the basic functions are quite useful for able gamers of all sorts.) WIth a macro, you can customize a key to where you press it once, and the macro acts as if it is charged for however long you customize the "key is pressed" for.
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It seems that these two sentences are contradictory...
Because, "We don't increase the effect for holding the key." And "Charging will be used to increase a power's effect." seem to be directly opposed in the context of this thread. My only idea is that there are two discreet mechanics. One is a "hold-on-target" or perhaps "stay-on-target" and the other is "Charging."
And it seems that this freezeray example is not a true hold-key-to-charge but more like a riff on a interruptible power?
Would the freezeray work something like this? You would trigger the power, freezeray, with a single key press and the power would remain active until an interrupt event occurs like a KD or the player activating another power? And the effects, like "slow down" would remain a consistent magnitude IE from the point of successful hit freezeray has a 50% slowdown, at the end of the active duration it would still have a 50% slow down, it would not start at 10% and finish at 90%.
Charging could be the hold-key-to-charge mechanic and it does change the effectiveness of a power. Whether that is limited to damage or covers other things like hold duration or hold magnitude and potentially acts as a mechanic to switch from KD to KB.
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