If Godzilla attacks, he needs to breathe Atomic DEATH! Getting caught in his breath attack ought to be instant death for most players.
I don't need to be coddled. I'm smart enough to attack from the rear. Let the guys 30+ levels take the front. If I get caught and wake up in the hospital, so be it.
Giant monsters need to be DANGEROUS. I could see Godzilla with a low level radiation damage shield: get close take some damage. Hit and run is what is needed.
I would like Giant Monster to be run by a developer with a sense of tactics, and a wicked sense of humor. The GM should not just appear in a parking lot and stay there. It should rampage about the city.
Furthermore, even if the city is not a destructible environment, one or two tall buildings ought to be built that way for giant monsters to knock over. We could RP getting real cheap apartments there.
No one should be able to camp a GM. They should appear randomly about the city.
I think the best GM would be a giant Armadillo. He could burro underground and pop up anywhere, tear open the side of a building, and eat office workers with a long sticky tongue. That tongue needs to be just as bad as a breath weapon. I want players who get caught to be helpless as their monitors show them getting pulled into a giant set of chomping teeth...and its back to the hospital.
GMs need to be terrifying. that means it should be a risky business going after one.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
Unfortunately, the amount of movement required to avoid the "firebreath" would be too much "twitch gameplay" to be worthwhile. Even if you have to move just a small distance to the left or right, it has already been shouted out by some of the forum (mainly with the reasoning being "lack of reflexes" or "think about those with bad internet connections").
Which is a shame, because I do like the idea of being able to avoid damage just by not being *there* when it goes off, instead of just relying on the RNG to see it hit/miss.
On the flip side though: I am NOT a great fan of attacks that you can not avoid, no matter what[1]
[1] Although ironically I am not against debuffs that can be cast and hit one person at random from those in the party. If it is part of a mechanic[2] not really a problem. Just so long as it isn't "instant death no matter what".
[2] Kuralak the Defiler from Wildstar springs to mind, debuff/buff management is the core of the whole encounter. but you cannot get 2 stacks of the debuff or you die (thankfully, it is only the first application of the debuff that is random targetted (or if someone who has the debuff/buff dies it then spreads to a random "non debuffed" player)
With the unreal 4 engine there shouldn't be the lag we had with mass attacks in COH.
It should be easier to avoid the head of a GM. Besides we will have warning if we use the Godzilla example...the spines would glow just before a breath attack.
If dodging is hard, let the level 30 people take the head and focus instead on the sides and back.
what I'm really asking for is a challenge, and not a giant pumpkin in a parking lot. Without risk, its not all that fun.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
I won't discount the possibility of positional avoidance. If done right it gives different roles a time to shine and turns the encounter into a tactical puzzle. This does not mean however that every "big encounter" would require this design. It is something that can also go horribly wrong, favoring only certain play styles and even favoring particular types of powers. As such any encounter with this design would require a notification which provides time for players to avoid the attack. We won't incorporate twitch-response into core game play.
Now the concerns of timing affected by things out of the player's control are very valid. Latency can occur with the best engines, and really is more of an issue of the players internet connection to the game server and response timings to and from. There have been some interesting experiments that are out there in dealing with latency,though nothing that has been made available as a simple plug in with server architecture. There are things we can do to optimize latency, but only just so much.
It is also unforeseen if creating something akin to a godzilla size creature would not cause any lag regardless of our use of an engine. Lat can be the result of the user's machine and while again we can optimize there is no guarantee that we can create scenarios that won't tax lower end machines differently than general play.
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It sounds like you are talking about a ultra-high damage, long-range cone attack. There is a tank role in this game.
In a single group, keep all tank/boosted aggro characters clustered together on one side of the monster and let all DPS attack from sides and rear. Have healers focus on the meat-shields so they can survive and keep aggro off DPS.
Now it's a gameplay tactic instead of a twitch situation, right? Am I missing someting? This would be fun and fine, and not that different from many CoH gameplay situations.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
That tactic was common throughout All of the City. Tanker would 'turn the mob' to face away from the team, then hold-on, while they uncork the DPS. It didn't matter if it was one foe. or many, and size was irrelevant. The fact that teams would often ignore this nicety and simply steam-roller the target, doesn't mean it wasn't a useful tactic.
To a certain extent, the prevalence of 'Kaiju-class' enemies would be a turn-off for me. Giant Monsters are not a 'thing' in my culture. I genuinely do not expect a giant bumble-bee to terrorize downtown Cityville. Radar would spot the thing when it first took off and vector the Air Force into it. In City of Heroes, when there were 'Giant Monsters', they were usually not more than 20 feet tall, and they were most often associated with some special event. They weren't, Themselves, the special event.
Despite recent movies, 'Godzilla in Massachusetts' doesn't feel authentic.
Be Well!
Fireheart
This is one of those metagame issues that I'm sort of on the fence about.
While it might be "realistic" for a giant Godzilla-like monster to be able to insta-kill most human-sized characters (even "superpowered" ones) I'm also generally against anything in a MMO that can routinely insta-kill players.
I'd probably be fine with a Godzilla-like monster in CoT that had the POTENTIAL to one-shot kill players as long as the players in question had to do very, very stupid things in order to fall victim to that kind of attack. Basically what I'm saying is that as long as you obeyed even the most simplistic form of good tactics (like don't stand still directly in front of where Godzilla is stomping around) then it should be effectively almost impossible to suffer the one-shot kill.
In a nutshell one-shot kills by GMs should be possible but only if you do something incredibly stupid or careless. The threat of it can exist but it shouldn't be something that becomes frustratingly commonplace or unavoidable.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Right, but if the game becomes about Dodging the Stompy-Feet (tm) or the City-wrecking Nuclear Halitosis, then maybe I don't want to play that game. I'd feel much more heroic if I'm playing my tanker-type Stalwart and I'm the one that catches the Stompy-Feet (tm) and trips the monster. If the torrent of world-shattering flaming venom rushes out and I'm left standing there in the aftermath, seemingly unharmed, and I smile (ting!) Then I'll feel like a hero!
One-shots for doing something 'stupid'... well, hell, being a hero is Often about doing something... 'stupid'.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I'm not suggesting anything even remotely like a twitchy, arcade style gameplay that would instant kill anyone within a one mile radius of a GM without cat-like reflexes. I'm simply suggesting something more along the lines that if you were dumb enough to stand motionless next to the feet/tail a 100 meter tall monster for more than say 5 or 10 seconds there ought to be consequences for that and in that case I'd think a one-shot killing should at least be within the realm of slim possibility. Such an attack could be made so easy to avoid that the only people who might fall victim to it would be those that are AFK if for no other reason than to keep people awake and prevent some kind of trivial AFK exploits.
As I said I generally do not like one-shot kill scenarios in MMOs. But when all is said and done if we're seriously talking about super-huge city wreaking giant monsters here I think there should at least be a slim chance of something like that happening.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
OK, I can see your points about the game being twitchy....and I agree.
What I'm really saying is, I want a tougher monster...maybe up the damage potential and get rid of the instant death part.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
Going off the title of this thread, If you don't recall taking damage from a giant monster it's because the tanks were doing their job. For instance, I know first hand from playing a blaster that a hit of Luska's ink would bring me from full health to death's door. Now, I am ok with the monsters being more than just a sack of hit points, but they do not need insta-death attacks, especially when two consecutive hits can kill most archetypes.
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That wasn't MY point :P, which was that the specific situation you outlined is more of a team tactical consideration than it is twitch. As Fireheart said it has precedent in CoH and I think it'd be fine. Now, if such a cone were on mobs, lieutenants or boss and especially if you were soloing, it WOULD be twitch, just exactly like it is in TSW.
Which brings up a point. Such mechanics aren't just "twitch or not" in a vacuum. It can depend on the situation. In mobs, such an attack would definitely create a twitch situation, but on a single giant monster, it's more of a team tactical consideration.
Whereas, as people have said, an "insta-death cone" that not even tanks with healers could handle and that everyone has to run from WOULD be twitch even on a giant monster. Though actually I think maybe I remember something like that in some of the newer Praetorian Trials? Not sure...
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Yeah, I was often the Tanker, so I can't recall ever NOT taking damage from a GM. *grin*
Be Well!
Fireheart
I have to agree with this to a certain extent. I like to play a lot of melee classes, and the last thing I want to do to clobber it's ankles when I'm in a fight. At least let me run up it's back, or try to scale it's hide (pun intended) to stab it in the face.
I admit that might be too taxing for this game engine, but one can dream.
While it might be cool to be able to climb on giant monsters it would take a whole dedicated set of animations and movement commands to make that happen so I wouldn't count on it anytime soon.
By the time CoH ended it offered many different temp powers that provided flight/jump capability. That's likely going to be the working alternative for non-flying melee types in CoT as well.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Just look at [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffeq4cy08l4]Shadow of the Colossus[/url] (link to a speedrun of it, just because that is what came up first in my youtube search history for it), just to show how intriguing it can be (and also how sometimes things might not necessarily be done as intended)
But if I can climb up it, then I would expect it to be able to dislodge me/knock me off it (dpending on overall size of monster), and I would have to try to stay attached to it.
But alot of other games have done the "fighting on part of a giant THING" style of gameplay. Typically beat em ups/platformers, but those are typically without risk of your character falling off it, or if there was a risk, then they typically had a "twitch" style mechanic to stay attached (Quick Time Event/Hammer the button to stay on) style of thing.
Ive always wished the giant robots in the 3rd mission of the ITF would turn on and you had to defeat him in pieces because of his size.
Start with the arm, leg, leg, arm, then head. Each stage with different attack chains.
Hit markers on bigger enemies unless it is like hamidon in First Ward.
Think of Shadow of the Colossus
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I never tried to claim that were no other games that have ever done the "climbing on a big creature" scenario.
I simply pointed out that for CoT that would have to be an entirely new feature (since that kind of thing never existed for CoH) and considering that this game is being created on a very limited shoestring budget it's easy to guess that the priority for getting something specialized like "climbing on a big creature" would be fairly low. Let's just say I would very surprised to see something like that on launch day at any rate.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I think it would be really cool, (but probably not easily doable), to encounter a giant robot which you could enter though one of several openings and fight your way up through the inside to disable it before it reaches it's target while at the same time other heroes can fight it from the outside to slow it down or stop it.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Well really anything is "doable" as long as someone has the time/money and puts in the effort to do it. ;)
The idea of jumping inside a huge robot to fight it from the inside might actually easier to do software-wise than "climbing" on the outside of one. Once inside the robot it could just be treated like a weirdly shaped multi-level building with gears and wires everywhere. You could keep it simple and not worry about having any windows to the outside or even worry about motion of the robot - it'd be like how CoH treated door missions on-board those big cargo ships.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Could do it with lots of moving parts and stairs and automated defense mechanisms, even 'mechanics' and guards. A 'vertical' dungeon full of noise and smoke and bright flashes.
Climbing on the outside... doesn't seem doable, except with a great deal of Twitch.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I think climbing on a giant monster might be doable without Twitch. You just need a special button (Press 'G') to grapple the giant monster and your character is latched on. From there, your character can take swipes at their leisure and it's basically like auto-follow. The monster could knock you off throw using a RNG mechanic, instead of twitch, or staying on the things back requires extra endurance.
But, if that really doesn't work, then at least have the attacks animations include high jumps to show melee aiming for places higher than the ankle.
Please avoid twitchy play. I just do not have the same reflexes as i did 20 years ago.
It would be difficult for me to convince my friends, my neighbors and my parents to sell all their houses,
at the same time, so I could afford experimental surgery that might not work.
So I thank you and on the behalf of my neighbors friends and parents to avoid requests for twitchy play.
However those evil greedy doctors are going to curse you for denying them money from an unnecessary expensive surgery, that my insurance probably would not cover.
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Personally, I think back to some of the JLU and similar cartoons. Remember all those normally immovable guys like Superman? Yeah...I want there to occasionally be something big enough to slap them into tomorrow. Not take them out...but MOVE them a LOT.
We don't want twitch-based mechanics so positional avoidance isn't going to be a big thing but there IS something to be said for 'uh oh...he's LOOKING and me..' and going somewhere else. Perhaps a LONG lead time for really nasty powers? Not so much twitch then as common sense.
I want giant-sized enemies to be something people are AFRAID of
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I remember many times I would have to respawn or be rezzed while fighting a Giant Monster in a huge grouping of players... And a lot more times of being healed while fighting them... Needed types were healers, buffers, DPS, debuffers, and tanks to taunt and take the hits... And it took a lot of time to get them down. That was for Devilfish, had to take out the tentacles first... And others spawned minions that required a set of people to act as crowd control... They weren't all that easy to take out... Missing debuffers who knew what they were doing, and it was just about impossible to win... And, even at level 30ish, there were times I went down when not being healed or buffed properly... Timing issues happened... So, GM events weren't an easy stroll in the park in CoX... Hopefully, there will be the likes in CoT...
Argh!!! This is supposed to be a reply to #14...
Yah, a cinematic melee attack against a Giant Monster would be hella cool to see or actually pull off successfully... Too bad it would almost definitely overtax lesser 'puters, and, probably take a huge amount of coding as well... *Sigh*
I just remembered that there is an up the walls type movement power in DCUO, so, a lot of the necessary coding may be done already... Actually getting our hands on the necessary coding to make running up a GM possible may be a whole other problem...