Area-of-effect QoL and parallel powers

As an ardent blaster, one of the biggest annoyances I have in the middle of a firefight is targeting the right enemy for my area-of-effect powers. Now, before the imminent chorus of "I pity the foo who don't learn to play", let me explain further.

The coverage of AoEs is entirely dependent on the target, let's call him "anchor" for the purposes of this thread. So let's say there's a large group of Fambly goons ahead of you and your Ham Grenade has just recharged. Ideally, you'd want it to hit the center of the spawn so as to hit most, if not all of the enemies. But to do that, you need to target the schmuck closest to the middle, something tricky to do considering all those other schmucks in front blocking your click-target aim. By the time you've cycled through all of them to find your ideal target, odds are your team has already moved in and any semblance of a plan vanishes into thin air.

Consider another situation - there are two mobsters in front of you and you eye your Fistful of Furrows. But both are some distance away, from you and each other, one on your left and other on your right. If you shot in the middle, you could hit both of them, but if you shoot directly at either, the other will escape unscathed.

Let's rewind a few seconds further - the fight is in full swing and there's a nice cluster of bad guys straight ahead. You target the enemy in the middle, Let Down for some extra damage and the baddie suddenly drops dead the moment you unleash your Bad Breath attack. Your intended target no longer valid, your character latches on to the closest available target - that single goon that just ran past you and well away from the grouping you planned to attack.


What I propose is an option to use a drop target, of the kind you may remember from such powers as Teleport, Wormhole or Rain of Arrows, to determine the direction and point of attack. By removing the enemies from the power activation equation, the hero can focus more on shooting in the direction they want and less on mashing the tab key and playing mob guack-a-mole.

"But Quinch!", you say, "what if I like the way the AoE powers work now? What if I want to attack something that's in midair and far from any surface where I could place a targeting reticle?" Well, have no fear! It would be easy* to implement a system which would add both versions of the power to your tray and, when either version is activated, both powers would be sent to the recharge box, giving you the ability to use your power any way you want without giving you a power for free.

"Oh, it's obvious you didn't give a whit of thought of how that would even work," I hear you cry. "Every power needs a target to activate." And how right you are. Many powers create a dummy target, often called a "pseudo pet" to act as an intermediary between the power user and the target. So activating a power via a reticle could simply create a dummy object which the drop power would recognize as a valid target for the classic version of the power, and vanish after the appropriate real targets have been flagged as recipients of that power, not even waiting for the power to execute fully.

"Wow," I hear. "And maybe, with parallel powers, we could even have different versions of powers with different effects! Strong single-target attacks or weaker area of effects! A slow-recharging buff which would increase resistance or defense!" And maybe we could; the combinations would be endless.

But that, as they say, might be a topic for another thread.



*read: it would probably take time and effort to implement and Statesman knows when we'd get an actual working version, but it's not completely impossible... I think.

An open letter to NCsoft

So... change all AoEs to Location AoEs, and double the number of buttons in my (already full) tray?

No, thanks.

Or simply remove the power icons for the mode you don't want to use from your power tray?

{post-pre-work edit in progress. Please hold. Processing. Done.}

Let's say you've just hit Lv2 and picked up Buckshot from the trainer.

There is now a "Buckshot" power in your enhancement screen. Only one. You can enhance it any way you want, just like before.

There are now *two* Buckshot powers in your Power list - "Buckshot Target" and "Buckshot Reticle". Consequently, they're now both in your power tray, but you can delete or shuffle them around or any way you want like any other power icon.

When you fire either of those powers, they both begin to recharge and neither can be used again until they're recharged. Of course, one balancing point of this system would be that both "aspects" of the power would need to have identical recharge time.

And finally, both aspects would use identical enhancement values, namely those you've slotted in the "Buckshot" power in the enhancement screen.

I hope I've clarified things a bit.

An open letter to NCsoft

It would be nice to choose the direction rather than the target for targeted AoE. You probably don't need two power icons though. If you have a mob targeted, it will work in the old way. If no mobs are selected, a targeting reticle will come up and you can pick your direction.

I'm not sure about extending it too far as to switching between single-target attacks and AoE attacks this way. This is because the two types of attacks are cosidered different in the game, and there are different IO sets for them.

Ouch. Yeah, good point. As for the "reticle if no targets are selected", what if your target is suddenly invalid? You get a reticle, but you want to attack a specific target - if you click on it, the game wouldn't have a way of telling if you're clicking to activate the power or to select your new target.

An open letter to NCsoft

It's an interesting idea, but that's not how the powers system actually works. Location-based AoEs summon a pseudo-pet at the location, which deals the damage, whereas targeted attacks deal damage directly to the targets. There's no way to have an attack switch from being a pseudo-pet to being a direct-target attack, because what attacks do is written into the attack, itself. Even if you can make effects conditional, you can't make the power's TYPE conditional without adding two versions of the actual power.

Castle has already said that two versions of many powers, even if you can only have one version at a time, is out of the question. That's a maintenance nightmare.

Even if we assume a miracle happes and a power CAN be made to switch between direct-target and a pseudo-pet, that's not a 1-to-1 transition, as pseudo-pets have their own modifiers and inherit buffs a little differently from regular powers. There's a reason the Blaster and Corrupter versions of Blizzard do the same damage, even though Blasters have a much higher ranged damage mod. The blizzard pseudo-pet has its own modifiers which disregard AT mods.

At the end of the day, it's an interesting idea, but I feel it would complicate this far too needlessly. Yes, sometimes it sucks to target the right enemy, but that's part of the game. You have a mouse pointer. Use it. There are a few incredibly rare instances where you can't click-target (things behind your camera get selected, big enemies hide small enemies, etc.), but by and large you can just use the mouse and avoid all of this. That's as opposed to making every AoE a two-click ordeal. Specifically since I don't actually CLICK any of my powers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

{...}tion-based AoEs summon a pseudo-pet at the location, which deals the damage, whereas targeted attacks deal damage directly to the targets. There's no way to have an attack switch from being a pseudo-pet to being a direct-target attack, because what attacks do is written into the attack, itself.{...}

The pseudo-pet effect isn't a conditional, but the first step of a two-step process. The pet does nothing itself - it's simply there to provide a viable target for the second step, which is the activation of the standard version of the power with the pet as the target. It's possible that Wormhole already uses a similar method - the reticle provides the coordinates for the exit point, but it's the character itself that seems to be the origin of the knockback effect.

Castle has already said that two versions of many powers, even if you can only have one version at a time, is out of the question. That's a maintenance nightmare.

Yeah, probably. Still, the idea appeals to me, so it can't hurt to throw it out for discussion.

An open letter to NCsoft

Sure, it works for AoEs because those have variable ranges of actication, but how are you going to direct a cone when cones have a set cone length?

Simple - make it so the maximum distance the reticle extends is the length of the cone power. Even better, then you would also have a visual representation of coverage - if the reticle is behind a mob, it would be the sign that it's close enough to be caught in the effect.

An open letter to NCsoft

I think it's a good idea. The actual implementation and the user interface can be left to the dev. It seems like the idea cannot be easily fitted into existing framework, and some coding needs to be done.