Please tell me super-speeders will be able to run on water. That's one thing CoH did wrong that always drove me crazy. It was at the time the only super power fiction in existence where speeders couldn't run on water, and the super-speed swimming was just lame. They even repeated the mistake in Champions Online, the barely adequate 'it's okay' game Cryptic put out shortly before they tanked CoH. (thus making the total count of not-running-on-water speeder fictions to 2.)
Thu, 07/24/2014 - 19:32
#1
Running on water
I think the difficulty is dealing with the mechanics and the animations for times when you Stop Super-Speeding while over water. You would Sink into the water (mechanic 1).
And when you try and speed up again.. you would have to Rise to the top again (mechanic 2).
Handling Rising Up from the water... The 1st thing that comes to mind is:
[url=http://youtu.be/JoQywfQ6B-8?t=1m13s]Water Skiing - Rising Up on top of the Water[/url]
But thats not enough... Since theres no force to pull you, we would need to logically show how even non super strength characters with superspeed alone could Rise Up.
Approach A for Rising Up Above the Water:
- [url=http://youtu.be/UffZn_-lU54?t=17s]Butterfly Stroke[/url] that morphs into a fish jumping well over the water... and back to running on water.
Approach B for Rising Up Above the Water:
- Just a plain Ascension to the top of the water while running.
I assume Approach B is what post people will imagine it looking like, but I cant logically explain how just using the Feet alone to pump your way to the top of the water works without a character having super strength. :(
From what I understand, when a character hits a body of water, the game's scripting tells the character to sink and start swimming. It's almost like a sensor telling you when to perform an action. By making that sensor not go off while Super Speed is toggled, you can force your character to be pushed above the water whenever he moves. The only real difficulty is animating the guy doing more than just running to the surface, like with that sweet butterfly stroke idea.
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If a speedster is propelled by his legs and not some mysterious force pulling him like an invisible boat, his legs have to be pretty strong. I know I can't develop multiple horsepower with my legs, or run 90 miles an hour, but if I could my legs would have super-strength. I think most speedsters would tread water at super-speed until they reach a height where water resistance is no longer fighting them and they can lift a foot clear of the water with every step, then start running.
heh, this would be cool indeed... this is what I would see happening
1) They have to activate the ability *BEFORE* they get into the water to be able to run on the surface of it.
2) They have to *keep* on moving to be able to stay on the surface.
3) If they activate the ability whilst swimming, they will instead be able to swim faster than normal players...
Of course, this all hinges on if they let stuff like this happen ;)
Now that actually would be a pretty sweet alternative if we had underwater zones. Then Super Speed could REALLY pay off!
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It bothered me in that City of Heroes has been pretty much the only MMO that I have played that had spacious amounts of water but no real option to move *under it* (slight lie, Tabula Rasa also didn't allow it)
But with a game with so much instancing, I can see as to why they didn't have it, it is more of an open world thing anyway (especially if you involve quests with it).
This is not really new thinking for me though... I picked up point 1 from Wildstar (you can only start your mounts on dry land), and the hover boards are the only mounts that allow you to travel on the *surface* of the body of water.
Points 2 and 3 are more thinking along the lines of if you cannot use the ability on the surface, how can you still get a benefit from it?
For flight/teleport, no real change needed... infact, I would say that you could activate flight to fly out of the water... whilst Super Jumps bonus is something that I don't think would really change (apart from that you would have to be on the water base to be able to jump out of the water in one single bound...
Use your spacebar.
No seriously. In practically every game I've played, including City of Heroes, WoW, Tabula Rasa, TERA, STO and ESO, if you're in the water and press spacebar you "jump" out of the water (and splash right back down into it if you aren't using some kind of Super Jump). So all you'd have to do is (normal) "jump" to be on top of the water and then (*ahem*) you're off to the races.
I remember being shocked to find out that in WoW you could actually SWIM UNDERWATER! Most games don't bother with underwater swimming, simply because it requires a change of physics. City of Heroes could have done it relatively easily, since it already had Flight ... just define "swimming" as a special case of Flight physics and you're good to go. Still, underwater content is more/extra content to deal with, and by "disallowing" underwater movement (insert joke that all water in the world, including the ocean, is only 4 ft deep) you don't have to create and QA content for those regions.
Here's to hoping that City of Titans isn't so shortsighted in its world design.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
hmm.. +1. Worth a try.
I sure hope new players dont get frustrated, and the Help channel isnt bombarded with.. "Hey, i stopped while super-speeding on water and cant get back to super-speeding on top of the water again. Help!" :/
They actually did add swimming in CoH. There was one mission added in the final year or so that had water under a bridge in it that you could swim under, I had heard that it was a test with the intent of adding the feature elsewhere.
I thought that was added before freedom...
It falls in to the "easter egg" level of secrecy, because it was hidden away (only one *specific* map had it), and actually did nothing else for the mission/game in the grand scheme of things.
Chances are I played on the map without realising it.
Swimming, and in particular going underwater, is always going to be a hit and miss scenario. Nonetheless, I hope and expect that they are planning for the ability to swim/dive.
For the longest time, all that swimming meant for me in WoW was that I had to remember to watch the breath bar or the annoyance of being dismounted, because the rivers were always just that little bit too wide to jump. There was no significant underwater content until the third expansion (I wasn't a particular fan of that zone), so I certainly will not call foul if CoT has no real underwater content for the first few years.
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I hear you darth I always got worried watching my dive bar in wow thank goodness I was potions master and made the underwater breathing potion
Yeah, the dismounting is annoying.. which is why I like the grav-boards in Wildstar... they allow you to travel on the surface of the water... shame you cannot mount them whilst in the water though.
It is also a fine line between "you can breath for X period of time" and "you have no problems with it". Hell, even breathing potions/apparatus gear can at least make it more "convenient" (or realistic... I think you know what I mean though)
Whaaaa - really? Cool.
Once I discovered a bunch of Mithril mining nodes underwater in [url=http://www.wowhead.com/map#45.2.50.51]Faldir's Cove[/url] and around the outside of Stromgarde Keep at the tops of the cliffs, I found a node farming loop run that I could do which would have the Mithril nodes respawing just before I got back around to them. This meant that I was in effect "diving to mine mithril" in Faldir's Cove A LOT ... and since no one else ever went there to mine anything, I essentially had the place all to myself. Much easier to farm mithril there than trying to compete for nodes in either Desolace or The Hinterlands, or a bunch of other highly trafficked locations where mining nodes would be scattered hither and yon. Diving for mithril nodes in Faldir's Cove got to be so "easy" for me (I'd learned all the patterns) that there was basically only a tiny handful of nodes where I even needed to be careful about getting attacked, and the rest of them I could mine in peace without needing to PvE to get to them.
Needless to say, I was doing this on my Paladin and didn't have any water breathing, so I figure out how to dive, fight, mine and surface before running out of breath. The rule of thumb was, it's quicker to surface and breathe than it is to die and corpse run.
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Speeders ran in excess of 70 mph (my flight, 1-slotted, was 60). That should be more than enough force of feet on water to stay up (balance as if on ball bearings is something else, though!)
For that matter, my non-speedster avatar ran at 37 mph with sprint on, 1-slotted. That should do the trick, too!
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
Do you hear that, all other stupid MMORPGs? I [i]ran[/i] at 37 mph, and was not using my "horse", and had no energy bar draining away in 5s so I slowed to a crawl.
I outran the tier 3 "speeders" in SW:The Old Republic, without even activating my "speeder".
Tiny worlds they feel they have to make you move slowly in. When will the design idiocy stop?
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
[url=http://www.sbmania.net/pictures/20b/170.png] TO THE INVISIBLE BOAT MOBILE![/url]
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
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Exactly, except without the fire.
It was ok in Champions. I always did feel like ALL of that water in CoH was kind of wasted space where something awesome could have been. So, I'd vote for at least Champions style stress-free underwater space/zones (or something better). But, while I'd like it, I agree that it would be less than even just an annoyance if CoT never has it. A nice perk, not an essential.
Now, if they somehow made underwater/water powers--for which there is an absolutely TREMENDOUS amount of precedent in comic books--an integral part of the game, that'd be something new under the sun in MMORPG's. But difficult to pull off, I'd imagine.
...which is me getting completely off-topic from the thread topic which is speedsters running on water :P.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Big wow... you run at a basic level that is faster than Usain Bolt... Strangely enough, the same is in Wildstar (the basic run speed is just beneath Usain Bolts *sprint* speed IIRC.
These are just numbers...
Hell, in Eve Onine I spit on your "70km/h" top speed, and throw an almighty 4000km/h in your face back. In comparison though, the 700km/h speed requires about the same level of reaction speed as the 37km/h speed in CoX
Well, if you wanna drag Eve into this, my Maelstrom tier 3 battleships could 1-shot the most decked-out level 50, 24-purple-chugging tank. Six inch wide slugs at a thousand miles per second would do that to a (granite) guy.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
Shame that the 1200mm artillery weapons had lousy tracking... although saying that, they are marvellous for the long range stand off fights....
Heres a video example of what people might be look for:
[url=http://youtu.be/g-2uwhdZZs4?t=3m44s]Video[/url]
more like THIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5v2qBBD-gE
Start at 2:19 I don't know how to make it do that for you.
Het Izzy, how do you get it to start where you want in a link you make?
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
[img]http://i.imgur.com/jseSzhl.png[/img]
You Must run very fast.
[url]http://www.metacafe.com/watch/mv-vH3L/remo_williams_the_adventure_begins_walking_on_water/[/url]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYRNBZOKp_M[/url]
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
According to the Physics Guy in the link RottenLuck provided, one would need to run at ~110 kph (or faster) to be able to run on water. Note that this exceeds the movement speed cap for Super Speed in City of Heroes.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
It doesn't, we could go ~145 kph on land. I'm not sure I buy it anyway because you could slide a short distance across water at half that speed, the problems are maintaining your speed and your balance until you get to the opposite shore. Maybe the physics guy covered that.
it changes when you have these on:
[img]http://d-infinity.net/sites/default/files/styles/slideshow/public/FloppyShoes.jpg?itok=42SDiJbo[/img]
;)
Of course in a world where people fly... we can fluff the physics abit.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
Physics Bedamned Full Speed Ahead!
By the way. Are we going to have underwater stuff and a water breathing power that matters?
I remember in COH I had a character named Trident who looked like an underwater character and I said he could breath underwater but he was really a blaster with force blasts and force manipulation (It looked like he had bubbles around his fists)
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Silly me. I got caught assuming that those speeds were in kilometers per hour. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why your mathematics and physics teachers always insisted that you show the units.
Ah, well. Wikis.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Why would anyone assume Kilometers? that's just crazy
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Sensible people use stadia anyway.
I can't convert unless I know the number of pints to a stadium.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Depends how long the game lasts...
Spurn all ye kindle.
Well there are two kinds of speedsters. Guys like Superman who just power it out, and guys like Flash (and presumably Quicksilver) whose powers trick physics somehow precisely so they don't need to power it out.
Not gonna go into the physics of the Flash and his "speed force", because it's illogical and all over the map. His speed affects the air he runs through, giving it energy and motion to counteract a tornado, but if he runs near lightspeed, he's not leaving a roostertail of hundred gigaton nuclear explosions.
In either case, they push the air out of the way, and therefor so too would push water.
Not only could they effortlessly pop out like a cork, they could kick and fling themselves miles into the air.
It's a non issue. The only difficulty would be building a cool "rise out" animation!
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
If DCUO can do it, CoT should be able as well. :)
~110 kph = ~70 mph
Run speed cap for City of Heroes was 90 mph.
So ... theoretically ... doable.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I can understand if we can't have this at launch...so much to do for the game by then...but I would love for the characters to be able to interact with the world a bit more. Running on water, climbing or running up walls etc. I'm sure the game engine can handle it but it all comes down to time and resources.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I think DCUO lets you run on walls. I was never a big fan of seeing a person 90 degrees going up a wall. I just cant buy it. They should just Climb super Fast, darn it. :<
Which is strange considering that it has been shown in numerous cases by superspeeders....
Watch this:
http://youtu.be/Li3RxJxcPwo
Now picture them at superhuman speed
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Pshaw.
I think that [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5v2qBBD-gE&t=135]THIS[/url] is what people are really wanting out of Unreal Engine 4 when it comes to running on water.
And for those who would like to watch the entire scene from the beginning ... [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5v2qBBD-gE&]linky[/url].
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I totally agree, that's why I already posted the same video up above
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
So.. running on water for a Speedster .. is kinda like running on Sand for a regular person?
It seems to me the bottom line would be that it has been shown that UE 3 can do all of this, and there's no reason I've seen anyone mention that Super Speed can't just be built this way right from launch in UE 4. Unless for some reason they simply choose not to--and this is all classic speedster stuff.
I'm not programmer, am I missing something? Why wouldn't they?
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
There should be no difficulty unless the engine is sloppily designed. The surface of water is a known boundary, it has to be to switch to swimming animation on one side of it.
So if speed > x and WantsToRunOnWater
use surface of water as land to run on.
The only issue is if the engine treats water as a special case and you can't do that.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
DCUO Has their toons being able to run over water with acrobatics or super speed so what is the problem?
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YES. THIS. If I were so inclined (and knew how) I could make a lengthy compilation of running on water clips, including DC Universe. That's a decent game, though it has its flaws, I sometimes log in as a speedster just to run on water and up the sides of buildings.
GW2 has entire underwater map areas you can swim around in (using your aquabrether as headgear) indefinitely. You need an underwater weapon too, which gives you different attacks than your dry-land weapon. There are caves and tunnels to swim around and explore, junk towers built by the hostile, amphibious krait to climb to the top of, underwater villages populated by peaceful quaggans to swim around in, get missions, do them etc. Some of the underwater areas are hard to find, have treasure chests, etc. It's nice. I don't think CoT need this right away, but it might be a thing they could add later if they wanted to.
As far as running on water, I like it. It would be cool if the height of the "rooster tail" of water you kick up in your wake is dependent on the speed you travel at.
Edit: There are also some cool looking giant sea monsters that spawn here and there and need like 20 people to bring them down, plus zombified pirate ships that rise up out of the water too.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Yeah, GW2 was the first MMO I can think of that really incorporated inderwater worldbuilding as part of its core. I hear RIFT did underwater very well, but I had left the game by the time they added the Nightmare Tide expansion. WoW had several underwater zones, and with Cataclysm really went seriously underwater in places like Thousand Needles. But with all that, they were really just zones where you hover and run out of breath. Other games have the ability to swim under water, too, but don't really do more with it than WoW does. Wildstar, AION, Everquest 1 and 2, even DOMO and a few other anime style games come to mind.
Archage did a marvelous job creating underwater areas and I can remember being the first person on my server to discover the homage to Finding Nemo.
Underwater adventures would be a great idea for a future expansion, but it would require so much reworking of the core capabilities. For instance, burning powers with a fire theme... how would they work underwater?
Rather, think it far more attainable and just as interesting to give players an option for an underwater lair... but I think we've taken this thread off topic again. (guilty face)
[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.
I would honestly say, don't change them at all. Let the player decide/rationalize/dismiss how their powers work underwater. With the customization being as in depth as it's looking to be, if Fire under water bugs them, then they can probably make a second set of animations they can swap to that fit the situation.
This isn't without precedent after all, video games have been handwaving away fire working underwater since their inception. Fire mages in WoW aren't suddenly useless in the ocean. Fire Controller's Hotfeet and Fire Imps didn't go out if you stood in the water, and so on and so forth.
A richer, deeper world might define how fire, electricity, ice powers work underwater, and that is a rock paper scissors part of the decision when designing your initial power choices.
Fire might be weakened and turned into more of a steam/boiling type power. Ice would freeze but float someone up. Electricity might be amplified, or always do aoe, or damage the caster a little.
But any game that has flight built in (which impacts level design as well as /stuck problems) gets underwater more or less for free.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
You have just listed all the reasons why underwater adventures in games are the least favorite adventures.
see also this article: https://biobreak.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/6-reasons-why-mmo-devs-need-to-give-up-on-underwater-environments/
GW2 and Archeage (and I think RIFT?) understood that if you are going to send people underwater you need to go all out and do it right, or don't even try.
If CoT wants to send people underwater, I recommend we either go all out and make it worthy of the franchise or don't even try. There's nothing underwater otherwise that needs to be done for gameplay. Swimming or running on the surface is as far as we need to take it.
I think this is definitely a step in the right direction, Gorgon. The considerations you've provided sound like they could be a fun alternative to playing on dry land. Aesthetic decoupling would make this a bit more problematic, however, because themes like electricity or fire are only aesthetic and are completely independent from the powerset mechanics.
[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.
Add in that most "physical" powers would also be affected when under water and that different power sets could share some aesthetic options, and it becomes an even bigger problem to "do right".
And yet underwater combat is still one of the least popular aspects of GW2 as well.
The look or theme of the powers is, if anything, only a small part of why people don't like underwater content. Putting in extra work to alter powers for the environment is ultimately a waste of time, money and effort if you can't fix all the other reasons people hate underwater as well.
Ultimately i don't think it's worthwhile to bother doing underwater content at all.
I could see "underwater" being a thing they roll out post launch as a major new piece, with basic water effects like CoX at first, then more GW2 style stuff later.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
So, while underwater, disable Attack powers, but leave Travel powers, and Discovery powers active?
I dunno, in Quake the Thunderbolt lightning gun would electrocute everyone in the water, including the shooter. I thought it glorious and a very situational power (it came into play in the Scourge Done Slick speed run, where they didn't quite save the Earth, but reversed time 15s and sacrificed themself at the end to shorten things. Go watch on YouTube, it's a brilliant animation.)
Anyway, if powers are not inherently fire or ice, etc., but these are mere visual representations, the underwater effect would have to be tied to that instead.
Would this lead to secondary builds or outfits or whatever for important underwater raids? Probably. And?
The goal is to have fun, not to straight jacket everyone into an excruciatingly limited variance.
Put fun in, I could waste days stacking blocks. Let buildings get knocked down, followed by npc workers rebuiding things over days.
Introduce new things the same way, not pseudo construction ala WOW. So much fun and money lying on the floor and no one wants to pick it up.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
I dunno, in Quake the Thunderbolt lightning gun would electrocute everyone in the water, including the shooter. I thought it glorious and a very situational power (it came into play in the Scourge Done Slick speed run, where they didn't quite save the Earth, but reversed time 15s and sacrificed themself at the end to shorten things. Go watch on YouTube, it's a brilliant animation.)
Anyway, if powers are not inherently fire or ice, etc., but these are mere visual representations, the underwater effect would have to be tied to that instead.
Would this lead to secondary builds or outfits or whatever for important underwater raids? Probably. And?
The goal is to have fun, not to straight jacket everyone into an excruciatingly limited variance.
Put fun in, I could waste days stacking blocks. Let buildings get knocked down, followed by npc workers rebuiding things over days.
Introduce new things the same way, not pseudo construction ala WOW. So much fun and money lying on the floor and no one wants to pick it up.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.