So this whole knockback back and forth that's been going on here got me thinking. Knock[b]back[/b], knock[b]down[/b], knock[b]up[/b]... there was something missing: Knock-[b]Into[/b].
What a knock-into effect would be is a knockback effect with a target. You hit an enemy and it goes flying towards a target, either colliding with it or landing right next to it. No target available? Just normal knockback.
To show what I mean, have a few power examples:
[b]1. Megaton Punch[/b]
Attack one enemy, 60ft 10 degree cone selects first enemy target in range, punched enemy impacts the other, causing an AoE explosion that does damage and knockdown. Basically like Shield Charge in CoH, except you use an enemy as a projectile instead.
[b]2. Teleport: Flash Step[/b]
Attack one enemy, teleport behind them, enemy is knocked towards you. Power can be used X times before having to recharge. This is an iconic teleporter/superspeeder move that CoH never got right. Ideally, using all the charges should put you back near where you started from.
[b]3. Grappling Hook: Pull[/b]
One enemy target. Knock-Into target: You (harmless). GET OVER HERE! Throw hook, catch enemy. Pull. Enemy is now prone in melee range.
[b]Bonus: "Magnetic" tanks/patches[/b]
Yeah, not a power as such, but instead of having a sticky aura around a tank or damage/debuff nullifying knockdown, why not have them be magnets instead? If an enemy is knocked in a tank's general direction, it's rerouted towards the tanker where it will land harmlessly at his feet. Or in a damage patch. Of course if you're knocking something directly away from it, the tracking would assume you're trying to put distance between tank and enemy, for some reason, and do that. Otherwise a power like the Megaton Punch up there would nullify itself.
It should probably be activated by a power, like a taunt aura, to give the tank a bit of control when they want to attract foes or not.
And to give the enemies a bit of use of this:
[b]Boss fight: Enviromental Hazard[/b]
Everyone learns not to stand in the lava/acid/orbital blast area. But what if the enemy had a special power to knock you exactly into that? I mean, that's what WE would do if fighting an enemy near a lava pit, so why not give the AI a helping hand?
It turns some player skill into being scripted, yes, but the ability to knock one enemy into a pile of them so they all explode is a very superpowered thing to do. And a working Flash Step move would totally make a teleporting melee character awesome. It's a bit of a tradeoff, at some points, I'll admit, but it could be a very versatile tool for designing powers.
Basically, knockback with a target opens up a lot of creative ways to make powers. Push, pull, go bowling for badguys, a singularity that sucks enemies towards it... Lots of options.
So, what do you think?
City of Pool...
Don't get me wrong, this would look cool, but it would be incredibly hard to get the Punch or Flash Step to work on slower connections. There's just so many events that have to happen quickly and in order.
Grappling Hook (and variants such as Tractor Beam) could work on its own merits, though, without needing to create a "knock-into" effect. I think it would have interesting interactions with the Mass/Balance stat mechanics I proposed elsewhere: the relative masses could determine who is pulled to whom, and the relative balances could determine if they stay upright. You could yank them to you, or you could be Indy getting dragged by the truck...
The "Magnetic" stuff could work like Gravity Well in Star Trek Online. And yeah, it should never be a passive, always a toggle or (less preferably) a click.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
The 3rd one is not something that I would call a "knock into" though. I can see where you are coming from, but for me (and people who have played some other MMO's), it is just a "gap closer" move, either to keep a mob in melee range (if its wandering off), or to get one into melee range.
The reversal of that would be instead of pulling the mob towards you, you could dash *into* melee range with the mob (similar to the Warrior Charge move in World of Warcraft for example).
The flash step one is similar in this respect, although it *is* a nice effect, it requires you to use it twice to actually get the "knock towards you" effect. Might as well make it like that as *standard* (One activation: dash towards mob, knock it towards where you started from, and then dash back). It could be an upgraded version of the basic version "appear next to the mob).
Only the 1st one is something that I would actually call a "knock into " effect.
I had thought that a 'Gravity Tanker' would be interesting. Perhaps the defensive set could be some form of personal density manipulation, with effects similar to Invulnerability and a 'gravity gradient' aura that continually pulls in passing enemies and crushes them at the feet of the Tanker. For Attacks, the whole Gravity Control suite would be interesting, transformed into short/melee range attacks. Wormhole would translate the Tanker and all enemies within his 'grasp' back to wherever he dropped his 'anchor'. And Singularity is his DPS buddy.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Gravity tank? I kind of like that idea, I don't think I've seen this before. Of course, with CoT's divorcing theme from powers, it's also a magnetic tank, a wind tank, or any other idea you could think of to create suction around your character.
My first post here, may have been a bit of tired stream of consciousness, so let me just try to break the mechanics I'm thinking of down...
[b]Knockback should take a [i]target[/i] and [i]impact[/i] variable.[/b] Shortened to "Knock-Into".
If no target, it's the usual fling. If there's a target, it checks if Impact is set. If no, the knockee lands next to the target, if yes, it checks the impact payload, which is like a granted power. Then it activates the impact effect on the target.
Basically, allowing a knocked target to act as a proxy for any kind of ranged attack/buff/debuff effect you could imagine. So, yeah, you could, to make a silly example, make a power that knocks an enemy into an ally and heals the ally. A cookie to anyone who comes up with a thematic reasoning for that one.
That it allows for vectored knockback is a great bonus, too. Like a force wall power that knocks enemies towards the user, a tornado like pet that does knockback with Target=Self to keep the enemy tapped in the vortex, and the use it has for any kind of grappling hook power. The pull example is just one. I just picked it because it's both Batman and Spider-Man approved.
This also allows for some pretty powerful powers. I mean, if the requirement for using one is "Hit THAT guy with THIS guy", then the payloads could be allowed to be more powerful than your average ranged attack due to it becoming situational. And that in turn would make knockback more desirable in teams if the best non-nuke AoE blast is a power like the Megaton Punch.
I like the idea of beating on villains using other villains as a weapon, but I worry that setting up complex targeting could be an issue. Straight-line Knock-back would work for this, if we treat the displaced opponent as a 'cone attack'.
Heh. I just invented the sport of 'Minion Bowling' in my head.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I used to joke about Weapon Proficiency: Enemy.
Please note that "Minion Bowling" is something that would definitely work better using an Animate First, Resolve After sort of game engine, because you'd essentially be using Foe NPCs as projectiles at that point ... meaning you'd want to be using Hit Box behaviors to resolve that sort of thing. If you use a Resolve First, Animate After solution, you wind up with "homing Knockback" into secondary targets ... which is just weird from a behavioral standpoint since Knockback Victims will tend to make relatively "slow" projectiles (comparatively speaking). Imagine [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Defender_Buff.Force_Field.Force_Bolt]Force Bolt[/url] (enhanced with [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Kinetic_Crash]Kinetic Crash[/url]!) causing this kind of thing (bowling alley pin strike sound FX optional!) and watching the poor hapless Minion Victim curving (helplessly?) around through a corner to hit a fleeing Foe NPC (steeeeeeee-rike!) or just passing through terrain as though it wasn't even there. That just gets too weird ... not to mention creates lots of opportunities for "knocking" Foes outside the "walls" of the open space and trapping them inside terrain (as City of Heroes often did on cave maps especially with irregular wall shapes) and rendering them inaccessible.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I kind of agree. The power of the Impact part is basically turning a knocked target into a bomb.
Using the Megaton Punch again. The melee attack is clicked, it resolves, confirming a hit. Before animating, it uses a narrow cone to check for a secondary target, which if found will be set as the destination marker for the knockback. The punch animates, does damage, and sends the enemy flying. The enemy is now a flying projectile that on contact with any other enemy will explode in the style of CoH's Shield Charge. If it impacts a solid surface rather than an enemy, then the impact trigger fails and nothing happens. That should avoid the whole knocking enemies through geometry part. An energy blast curving through a wall is one thing, but an enemy needs to be kept within the play area.
The targeting is basically used to make a vector to maximize the chance of hitting something. The flying speed from an attack like that should probably be on par with most ranged attacks, too, for extra Oomph. This kind of power move needs to be sold really well, to the point of Popeye style exaggeration in launch speed. It simply won't do to punch the enemy like that and have him sail gracefully through the air. It has to be "PUNCH! SLAM! BOOM!" Basically, selling the super strength of the user though style.
The fun part, of course, is figuring out what else can be used as Payload for an impact trigger. Big explosion is one thing, and probably the obvious one, but when it comes to superheroes (and villains) there's room for much more. Set a guy on fire with a DoT, and allow impacts to spread the DoT. Could be a control power where you slam two enemies together for a powerful Stun. Maybe even have a default impact payload of doing minor damage. To teach people with knockback early on that hitting one guy with another can have an effect.
It's still a rather basic idea. I just want knockback to actually [i]do[/i] something rather than being there because it kind of has to since, you know, superheroes.
Not really sure how 'thematic' it is, but you could posit some sort of vampiric effect that pulls some of your target's life force out of their body into a nimbus around them (damaging them in the process), and the nimbus discharges into whatever living object touches them next (healing them); if they haven't been touched by a living object within a certain amount of time, the nimbus collapses, restoring part of the damage done by extracting the life force in the first place. So if they weren't knocked back, you could hit them egain to get the healing effect yourself, or if you knocked them in a direction where no one could get to them to drain the nimbus and get the heal, it would be an effect like Spectral Wounds.
So... you grab onto someone's soul with a dark power and yank it and the enemy in tow into an ally to do a heal?
Well played, if a bit creepy. Have a cookie.
Now that I think about it, some form of suction or gravity is fairly common both in comics and in video games but I cannot think of an example in the prior game.
Cyclonic effect, gravity well, magnetic attraction, hypnotic suggestion, vertigo, lots of ways to explain this thematically.
The more I think about this the more odd I find its absence.
-joe
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
Game engine oversight/flaw. City of Heroes was programmed in such a way that Knock vectors could only point AWAY from the casting character (KnockBACK) or AWAY from the direction of gravity in the area (KnockUP). Apparently the programming was done in such a fashion that a "negative vector" direction on KnockBACK would have resulted in either a divide by zero or a square root of -1 styled "you can't do that" kind of result preventing it from happening since it would break the game engine somehow. In the conversations with Dr. Aeon and Protean at the Player Summits, both of them lamented the fact that there was really no way to "suck" characters to a specific point without using Teleport to achieve the effect. They even tried doing a hexagon of equidistant pseudopets all doing PBAoE Knockback simultaneously to try and Knock a target into a "center" somewhere ... and it just didn't work because it was too inconsistent.
I know for a fact that the Unreal Engine does not have this limitation because in TERA the Lancer class has a pair of "come over here!" abilities it uses as a gap closer, moving the target rather than the caster.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
And the Batman Arkham games have the Batclaw. Launch at enemy, pull. Enemy is now on the ground next to Batman. That is a bad place to be if you're fighting Batman.
Giving knockback a vector independent of the angle from the caster is a nice thing to have. I could also see some Force constructs hitting enemies around, like a pair of clapping hands used as a cone attack, shoving the enemies together with a boom. Very much like Green Lantern that one.
It could make for a visually-pretty power effect -- you shoot a beam effect at your target, the beam effect blows right through the target and out the other side, partially dragging a spectral image of the target out of the target's body (making them jerk as the life force is dragged out of them) and pulling the target along with it (the knockback); if the spectral image touches another character, it 'pops' and creates a healing effect around the character that touched the spectral image; if no one touches the spectral image, then after a short time it snaps back into the target and disappears, with a healing effect around the target. I recall a number of loosely-similar visual effects that have appeared in movies, so there's source material to work from.
You could have fun with the visuals, too, and make the color of the 'spirit form' when it gets pulled out depend on the alignment of the target.