So, I'm curious about something because I've seen it done in a number of good and bad ways. Travel powers are fun and to be honest sometimes a mood might strike where I just want to fly around the city. (Not Millenium city, too small.)
This leads to a slight annoyance I recall from CoH, CO and DCUO [i]sort[/i] of charged that up by building some acceleration into your powers. I was curious if the CoT team had plans to make our travel powers accelerate instead of just flip a switch and in two inches you can go from 0 to 604 MPH.
Not every travel power will deal with mileage like this, teleport, for instance wouldn't gain any acceleration, perhaps it would gain a recharge buff or something but I really can't see how.
I think it would be a good idea to make velocity and acceleration two aspects of each travel power, as well as other powers that move you across the screen. Velocity is obvious, it increases your speed across the board, at take off this doesn't help as much as once you're reached top speed. While Acceleration really only helps you build speed faster and thus helps more at take off.
I really don't like how CO and DCUO handled this, since in both you're dealing with predefined tiers of speed(And the fact that Gotham is always a dark and stormy night....), travel for so long and you're buffed up, which is obviously not how this works.
I'd really enjoy if you could turn travel powers into something more than just something to get around, I want to be able to have races with other heroes or villains.
The powers this would obviously most effect are Super Speed and Flight, super jump has a 'speed' but the curvature of your velocity is different, you're going as fast as you can when you take off, slow down near the peak then you're accelerating again, but down.
Super Speed and Flight speed are obviously not you have it or you don't, usually there are varying degrees, how you could encorperate this into base, no clue, but with speed and acceleration 'enhancement's, even powers that buff slight or speed, could also be included. Just some thoughts...
I could see where it might be OK to give powers like Super Speed and Flight some kind of "acceleration bonus" that would kick in after a certain amount of time using those powers at "regular speed" in non-combat situations. But as soon as you're aggro'd and/or attack something the bonus should drop.
Something like this might even be an alternative to CoH's travel suppression - instead of being forced to go from "normal" speed to a very slow travel suppressed snail speed we could have combat simply preventing any "accelerated" speeds. In effect the "normal" base speed of these powers would become the new travel suppressed speeds of CoT. I doubt travel suppression would be hated so much if the actual suppressed speeds are not really all that slow to begin with.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Yes and no, I see what you mean by needing some 'thing' to denote normal speeds and accelerated speeds. Combat power suppression makes a lot of sense since you can't be hit by something without it changing your momentum either redirecting, halting or dropping it. Though I feel like there should be some kind of counter perhaps that denotes how long you've been moving without stopping, this would be some kind of analogue or fraction of your current speed, once you get into accelerated speeds you've got a second counter with a different equation for how the counter equates to your speed based on your acceleration.
I feel like it should work like this, and I'll use flight for example since it's my favorite.
Normal Speed counter: 1-60 direct 1-1 ration, 1=1 MPH, 60=60
1-30 takes a minute to achieve, while 31-60 takes another minute, so two minutes to reach top normal speed.
Acceleration reduces the time it takes to reach cap, lets say by 25%, max slotted for 3 acceleration, giving you effectively 30 seconds from 0-60 Mph 'normal' flight speed.
Velocity enhancements would increase the number of tokens in the normal range, again for ease lets only do 25% increments and it lets you get a top normal speed of 105, but that effects acceleration since 2 seconds = 1 counter = 1 mph.
105 counters would take 3 minutes twenty five seconds base and 53 seconds with max acceleration enhancements.
I'm really not sure how this example could move into accelerated speeds, since by concept some heroes can reach super sonic speeds and create sonics booms, that would be fun, but also very hard to achieve. It would also require proper scale, which CoH never quite had a grasp on realistic sizes.
What you're basically contemplating here is something that the Champions System (pen & paper, as opposed to the online game) called Non-Combat Movement. Basic idea was that when you weren't "threatened" by anything (ie. Not In Combat) you could move farther/faster because you could focus your energies/attention span on MOVING only as opposed to also needing to defend yourself. There was a basic Debuff tradeoff made when engaging in Non-Combat Movement in that system, and it was one that pretty much relied on Powers Of Two in order to be able to reach "ludicrous speeds" as needed within comics. That way, you could purchase a short range combat teleport, which would allow you to jump to any point on planet Earth when Not In Combat.
In a City of Titans context, the way you could go about designing such a game mechanical behavior would be through Enhancements of Powers. Essentially, you'd have two kinds of Enhancements that you could slot ... a Combat type and a Non-Combat type. The Combat type would have a x1 multiplier on what the Enhancement "does" to the Power, and be subject to a Diminishing Returns curve. The Non-Combat type would have a x2 (or greater) multiplier on what the Enhancement "does" to the Power, [i]and NOT be subject to Diminishing Returns[/i] ... but Enhancements of this type would only be active/effective while your character is Out Of Combat.
Note that if such a "dual track" system of Enhancements were implemented, I can imagine a circumstance in which a "Non-Combat Damage Enhancement" would actually make sense (as odd as it sounds at face value) ... for what amounts to a Sniper Attack made as an alpha strike. [b]One Life, One Shot, One Hit, One Kill.[/b] In other words, a dedicated Spike Damage build designed to attack (once) from Out Of Combat, as opposed to a Pressure Damage build designed to attack (repeatedly) while In Combat. Also known as the Rogue/Stalker style assassination strike. Combine THAT with a PBAoE Placate [i]that drops you Out Of Combat[/i] and you could potentially even use such slotting for melee range "nuke" type Powers that require a "combo attack" in order to use most successfully/advantageously.
Note that such a bifurcated Enhancement system would even allow for different degrees/levels of Stealth ... while In Combat and while Out Of Combat. So the underlying concept is relatively sound. However, you'd quickly run into the point that In Combat vs Out Of Combat slotting of Enhancements would be placed in direct competition with each other, which ... again ... would tend to promote a diversity of playstyles and build choices.
In other words ... having a "Travel" Power would be more a matter of putting Enhancements into Slots than it would be a matter of choosing an entirely different Power (Hover vs Fly, for example) to get the job done. Note that moving such a functionality into the realm of Enhancements (or Boosts or Augments or whatever), rather than keeping it in Power Selection, means that there will be a wild [i]profusion of movement speeds and methods[/i] as opposed to the cookie-cutter-ism we saw in City of Heroes, where almost everyone "moved" at the speed cap for their movement type(s) with little to no extra slotting.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yes and no, I see why that would be a natural result of such a system that caps your speed in combat, though the idea I had in mind was more about the idea of how you really can't start at top speed the way CoH. I do like the effects that stem from what you suggest in addition.
Though it would be quite entertaining with the variation in movement and maneuverability that we'd see under the acceleration and dual track enhancements, to have races. I know it's not the 'point' of the game to run or fly around but I did it a lot and it would provide more for players to do instead of content locusting.