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Just haven't seen it mentioned! Let's not ignore this combo like CoH did! Don't skimp out on some really great looking attacks on those Epic Pools if that's going to be the only way to mix up Martial Arts and Gunplay for instance!
I'm sure the same could be said for those who want to play a fire manipulating scrapper type! Lack of nice looking range attacks to use regularly is suckie and unfun!
From what I've read of tertiary powers and of the [Url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/updated-classification-and-specification-chart]Class/Spec Chart[/url], it seems to me that we'll have essentially two choices: Use tertiary powers to fill in the gap left by your class and specification, or (when they are released) use a class/spec that includes Assault damage powers. I don't know whether the Assault power sets will include powers that are ranged and powers that are melee, or powers that can be used in range or melee, or both. I'm fairly sure that the tertiary powers won't be as powerful as even secondary (specification) powers.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Foradain is correct. Melee sets will focus on melee attacks. Some sets will have a lunge attack and / or a ranged attack. For thise who desire a melee focused play style with occaisional ranged attacks, use Ranged Tertiary powers. As of now, there are no Classification lockouts for Tertiary sets. The only limit really is the number of power slots the player decides to devote to Tertiary powers once they are available.
Assault sets will exists for those who desire a true mixture of ranged and melee attacks without devoting power slots to Tertiary powers.
With the range of customizations that will be available, a player can take any mixture of powers and make them fit their character's design theme (eventually - it may take us a while to get all the themed sets, tertiaries, animations, and particle effects). But that is the goal we've set.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Question: I can see that Melee powers would, likely, be more effective, in compensation for their limitations, right? Will Ranged powers be penalized if used at short/melee ranges?
Be Well!
Fireheart
Normally Ranged powers do a little less damage than the corresponding melee powers.
This is to compensate for the fact that ranged powers can typically get in one or more 'free' hits compared to melee.
From this there are essentially two fundamentally different styles possible:
Ranged classes that can 'kite'
Ranged classes that need to switch to melee to finish the battle.
The first class has some mechanic that allows them to keep out of melee range indefinitely. It is very rare for games to do like CoH did and give all enemies a secondary ranged attack to use while they were closing the distance. In almost all games a kiting ranged class is designed so that the amount of damage they do against equal level opponents takes exactly the same time to defeat and recover as it would for a melee character. Ranged characters are also much more fragile to compensate for the low risk of defeat relative to melee characters.
The second class means the ranged attacks are only a little less damaging than corresponding melee attacks, as they are intended to 'soften up' the target before they close the range. They get less defense than melee characters but by no means none, because they are expected to need to survive a shorter time in melee range.
Here's hoping they get it right the first time here then, because the one thing CoH sucked at, was it's lack of mixing range/melee attacks. Especially since, melee classes tended to use the range attacks in melee range anyways. :p
My spines scrapper didn't tend to jump back, to use throw spines and throw spine (forgot the name of the single target range attack), or else it would have ruined the single target dps :p
And the Dual Pistol set lacked any melee attacks (and blasters in general had no scrapper defense set) to mix martial arts and pistols, which was a much wanted combination by players.
Agreed. But only so far to say that if a Ranged Set has a Melee attack, it should serve mostly as a Defensive attack... in most cases that's KnockBack or Knock Away, Stun, Sleep, etc... some effect that might Stop the Foes Attack, even if its just for 10 seconds.
Well, depending on the powers in a set... 10 seconds for an Effect might be too long or just right.. all depends if its a Fast Paced/ Fast Recharge powerset. The rules the devs might follow:
* A power-set can be considered Ranged still, if
- No more than 1 Melee attack.
- Melee attack deals Low to Medium damage to foes. Less damage if Effect is Higher.
- Melee attack does some sort of Effect to foes. KB, Stun, etc... Prevent foe from Closing In. Keep foe at Range.
* A power-set can be considered Melee still, if
- No more than 1 Ranged attack.
- Ranged attack deals Low to Medium damage to foes. Less damage if Effect is Higher.
- Ranged attack does some sort of Effect to foes. Hold, Slow, etc... Prevent foe from Running away. Keep foe at Melee.
edit:
It all depends on the Designer's plan for a powerset.
For say... Squishies, an Attacking power-set can have this balance:
- 75% is DPS, and just 25% Survival built in. (i call it 'DPS Leaning')
or
- just 25% is DPS, and 75% is Survival built in. (i call it 'Survival Leaning')
or
- 50% is DPS, and 50% Survival built in. (i call it 'Non-Leaning')
In CoH, most Blaster Players chose 'DPS Leaning' power-sets.
but so did allot of Defender Players. :/
I would liked to have seen CoH have more Power-Sets that are 'Survival Leaning', even if it was just 1 or 2 sets available to Blasters.
We could argue that Radiation and Dark Blast weren't 'DPS Leaning', and you might be right, but the problem was.. they weren't 'Survival Leaning' either. Well, Radiation Blast wasn't. Radiation blast was lacking in the 'Survival Leaning' portion.
Radiation Blast had a 'Selfless Leaning' aspect, where 75% of the powers Benefited the Team.
while Energy Blast had a 'Selfish Leaning' aspect, where 25% of the powers Benefited the Team.
When designing power-sets, should have those aspects in mind as well, to keep the Game Fun. :)
This is actually very balanced, since not everyone will Team always. Then it's OK to be a bit 'Selfish Leaning' ;)
Going back to a lesson from WoW (which I've never played, but I learned about through Extra Credits), let's say your basic melee attack does X and your basic, comparable ranged attack does Y.
If X is greater than Y in some way you can truly say that:
1) Y is getting their damage penalized or nerfed as compared to X to offset the added range that Y has, which is an advantage of a different kind
2) X gets a damage bonus as compared to Y to offset the inherent difficulties the melee range poses to the user.
It turns out if you phrase it like 1, people hate you and complain. If you phrase it like 2, everyone is happy. (I forget the Extra Credits episode that mentioned this).
For my two cents: look, if you have a ranged attack, you have the OPTION of using it at a longer range than melee, in fact, that is the intended purpose of the power, I would argue. That alone, to me, means that it has an advantage over a melee attack which by definition MUST be used at melee range all the time, thus opening the user up to melee-ranged retaliation that the the ranged attack user isn't necessarily required to have to contend with if they don't want to.
It probably upsets the power balance, and in my opinion unnecessarily so, to try to add back that damage offset to the ranged attack when it is used within melee range BY CHOICE. Clearly anyone who chooses to use ranged attacks in melee terribly often is doing so because they've built their toon in such a way as to make that their best option, or at least a viable one. I think the inherent damage offset should remain in place then because otherwise you're simply encouraging ranged attackers to get into melee range a lot, which leaves the melee specialist underpowered by comparison, is counter-intuitive, and probably not something a designer is trying to do with a set. If anything, I would think they're designing ranged attacks to be best utilized at range, because that's the nature of the attack you're designing. If my character has a super-laser gun, I would think it pretty silly of the game gave me MORE damage when I bonk the mob over the head with it than I get actually SHOOTING them from some distance.
In a side by side comparison of the dedicated melee toon versus the ranged-toon-who-still-does the-same-damage-in-melee-range-as-a-melee-toon, the latter is always better because they at least have the OPTION of staying at range and not coming too close when they want/need to do so. The dedicated melee toon has no such backup plan.
Thus I feel that a fixed, unchanging damage offset, if baked into the attacks, is a good thing and I wouldn't give the ranged attackers a short-range bonus. I think the design is better if you DON'T do that, in fact.
Also, for the record, I'd be okay with some ranged attacks having a minimum range, if it seems appropriate for the attack.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Assuming that the plan is to make CoT very much like CoH, then making the range power really weak, just because it had range, meant it would hurt the dps to use it. Which, is just suckie :p
I'm not saying make them the strongest powers ever, just make it worth while to use outside of "Oh, it's a weak range attack used just for show or that last tick of life on a running target"
Attacks should all look great to use and be wanted to be used :)
Right, but my Question was whether a Ranged attack would be less effective if used in Melee, in CoT. (Not whether powersets would contain both Ranged and Melee attacks.)
IRL, many ranged-weapon attacks can be fouled by an opponent who gets into melee/grappling range. However, in Supers combat, many Ranged attacks are generated 'internally' by the Super and not easily subject to blocking/deflecting/fouling simply by being inside the 'operating-space' of the weapon.
I have played games where ranged attacks had a 'minimum distance' and using them at a closer range was subject to penalties. So I'm asking for information and discussion on that subject.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Hmmm...I know in TERA range attacks do more damage the closer you are to the target (at least some of them) but I kinda doubt CoT will go that route, and I say that, only because CoH didn't do it.
If a Build has a sufficient amount of Defense, and is at Soft Cap (many attacks won't get through), then its not good to allow ranged attacks to do more damage up close. Everyone will try to roll a Soft Capped Baster build, sinces Risk versus Reward is skewed towards Reward. :P
No, ranged attacks will not be penalized or improved used in melee distance. There was a discussion about this in another thread. Games that penalize ranged attacks in melee end up favoring melee combat. Especially when uou take a game with the possibility of a variety of mobility options available. And penalized range attacks in melee also encourages kiting, something we are going to inhibit.
Closing to melee can end up being detrimental to ranged only builds, which we want to allow as viable options. Theree may be plenty of situations where ranged attackers can always be at their most effective range which can leave the player who wanfs to be ranged frustrated. It can also be used to as a strategy to reduce incoming damage in pve, which means there would need to be significant design changes in order to achieve desirable amounts of threat represented in the game.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Thanks for the reassurance, Tannim.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Thanks Tannim, and I apologize for any confusion if I misinterpreted anything Fireheart had posted.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I played a softcapped defense Blaster in CoH. I promise you, playing in melee still wouldn't be rewarded. You'd be a dead blaster. :p
Also, after getting up so close, the increased damage stops in TERA, since it was by feet and not, oh hey, melee range OMG DAMAGE NOW. It was more of a 50ft, 25ft, 10ft type of deal (not the actual measurements they used btw).
I could see making different specifications within the "ranger" classification act differently in terms of range maybe. Like give some toons stuff that encourages them to be snipers, give others some bonuses or whatever that encourage them to stay at medium range, and give some the short range as their prefence. Could be done by playign with how they manage and use momentum, what mastery powers they have available, even the primary sets, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I think COH did things more at the power level rather than the class level. There were powers that presented the opportunity to stay at extreme range and granted a bonus for it (snipes) and there were powers that encouraged the blaster to close the gap and take additional risk to use a "superior damage" attack. Furthermore, many cones encouraged the blaster to close the gap in order to apply to the maximum number of targets. My Sonic/ was frequently in near melee range to use Howl and Sirens to dmg and sleep targets, or drop in and use Wail to finish the entire group. I'm not sure how it will work in COT but I think operating this "buff/debuff" for proximity at the power level is more appropriate than a class wide catchall.
Thematically there are situations where a ranger would get a huge bonus to pulling in tight and "dropping bombs" Though thematically it's usually a single knockout blast. But, there are also times when that same character can't bring strength to bear because they are getting the stuffing beaten out of them. And that boils down to what I would call "engagement." If the ranger pulls the surprise laser blast to a baddies head, he generates almost no engagement with the enemy. They are in and finished with combat quickly. While the ranger that is getting the stuffing beaten out of them would be "fully engaged" and thus quite weak or even helpless. This works in the movies and 'verse because before the villain lands the final blow he walks away or stops (to monologue, cause that's what villains do) long enough for the ranger to drop engagement and come up with a battle ending "surprise mother duck." In a game it would be very hard for a ranger to drop that engagement, because the AI wouldn't let up long enough to give the ranger a chance to drop engagement.
That was probably a tangent...
Sounds like something that has been considered and decided anyway.
I'd like to take a moment to request waterfowl blasting...Just take a moment and think of the sound effects. Also carp melee gets all the love.
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Why inhibit kiting?
I seldom used any sort of kiting in CoX. However, all of my mages in Lineage II depended on kiting (except the pet using Dark Wizard class whose proper name I have forgotten). Also, Rangers that I played in Guild Wars made frequent use of kiting.
CoX was the only game I ever played that enabled sniping (using a ranged attack from flight or from the top of an obstacle the NPC enemy could not climb). So in situations that would normally call for kiting in other games, I tended to hover and snipe. This is also why almost every enemy NPC in CoX had some kind of ranged attack, even if some of them were very weak.
So if you are going to inhibit kiting, does that mean you will be encouraging sniping?
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sarcasm/
For the record, my Preferred Play Style (TM) is whatever allows me to rack up mob defeats and get all of the the resulting XP, IGC, and various other rewards I duly deserve from such without exposing myself to any kind of aggro or repercussions of any kind in any way. So if you design the game to inhibit that, I'll cry about it and threaten to rage quit. I can also guarantee you that all of the other players like me, of which there are many, will do the same.
/sarcasm
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Yay, our first D& post! And much more blatant than the ones on the CoH boards. In City of Heroes, rather than come right out and say that serious suggestions for improving the game aren't welcome unless it's to stave off certain failure, and the game should instead be made as awful as possible without making it shut down, people just typed D& and let others read between the lines.
Oh, I see why. The forum won't let me post with the D word in the message?
Kiting is very seldomly purposefully a designed as the intended form of gameplay. It typically relies on manipulating AI and pathing in order to maximize the advantage of range and minimize risk to the ranged attacker. Also, many games don't also feature a wide range of possible travel powers that can improve the capability to kite and further, lead to jousting targets. Even without getting into the PvP effects on jousting, in PvE it has a similar result, maximizes the advantage of movement speed and minimizes risk to the character while taking also taking advantage of what tends to be typical AI behavior.
If kiting were an intended design, there would be very little requirements to provide anything other than ranged effects, movement, and the ability to maintain both (and well environment design but this is about character build design and expect game play tactics).
But beyond the kiting strategy, there are other game play issues that end up impacting this decision. One is griefing by pulling spawns too far from their intended locations in order to allow them to affect lower level players. Pulling spawns to unintended locations can also be done to manipulate a possible issue with the AI in order to prevent the spawns from properly responding.
Another way of looking at it is, the AI saying "why should we keep following this guy if we can never catch him, barely hurt him, and we keep getting defeated?" It is one thing to give chase, its another to chase indefinitely.
This isn't to say there will be zero kiting, as we do intend to allow a certain amount of mobility while in combat, but it will be will inhibit. There's a different between inhibit and prohibit.
Another aspect to designing ranged characters is designing ranged AI, that is AI that prefers to stay in range, and keep a certain amount of distance between themselves and a target. This is something we have to carefully apply in order not to totally frustrate melee attackers, but can also afford certain unique game play strategies and open up possible decisions for players when designing their characters.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I assume you mean my first "D&" post of the new year, not my first one ever. If you meant the latter, please see everything I wrote in 2014-15 :)
In all seriousness, I think a game like CoT will be better if it presents some kind of interesting challenge to the player and doesn't just hand said player free stuff for being lazy and doing nothing but mindless button mashing.
For example, I personally would prefer an AI that's a little smarter than the ones CoX had that walked straight into the patch of fire and then stood there and let themselves be immolated to death, just because the tanker said "yo mama..." to them. In a similar vein, kiting badguys around is boring and tedious to me and I'd rather play a game that requires some effort and thought on my part than one that comes pre-won and hands me rewards for going through the grind of boringly kiting badguys over and over ad nauseam. I quickly tire of doing that, it get's old fast, it's not fun, and it makes me want to go do something else with my time.
In my opinion, the minions should probably all just run away when they see thehero toon coming. If they don't, it's because they think there are enough of them to take you one, which would then imply that they ought to pile up on you by the dozens. The idea that one or two minions would try to fight a superhero on their own is pretty ridiculous to me. So if the minions don't just automatically scatter in every direction as soon as they see you, or else swarm the whole map at you all at once, then the AI is already being extra nice to the player (or just extra dumb, if you look at it from the AI's perspective).
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Wondering how any anti-kiting systems might interact with pulling mobs. Will the AI be smart enough to say, "Hey, somebody hurt me! I'm gonna go find them and stomp them into the ground! ALL You Guys Come With Me!" Or, will there be a sort of mutual linking, where 'Bob' and 'Joe' say, "[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVJls8Y8VOA]They shot Fritz![/url] They shot Fritz! Those lousy stinking yellow Fairies! We're gonna help you stomp them, Fritz!" Or, will it be possible to 'pull singles'?
Maybe different factions have different levels of group-aggro? Maybe the group-aggro depends on who gets shot? Shoot 'Fritz' and you may pull a single, or a couple of friends, but shoot 'Lieutenant Dan' and the whole squad will mob you?
Be Well!
Fireheart
We've discussed this in the past in a thread discussing pulling but I'll try to summarize. We want to allow pulling as a viable tactic for builds suited for single / very small groups. Always pulling a herd could encourage herding tactics. We do plan to have different tyoes of AI eventually, with different types of behaviors. Think how the old Vahz anomination spawns could be rather 'dumb', lose aggro quickly and easily pulled unless there was a ripper/mort/ etc..in the spawn.
Basically, pulling should be generally possible. Maybe not always, strategies may need to be dependent upon many factors throughout levels of the game.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Sounds like a good excuse to develop multiple tactics and strategies for dealing with opponents. That's very exciting!
Be Well!
Fireheart
Is there a reason I can't access the forums normally? :(
Would melee and range attacks in one powerset put people into kite mode?
Dr. Tyche just posted a topic about it. Guess the hard drive that stores all the site info ran out of space.
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