Solvernia

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Hi there. Hot take incoming. So, first of all, this is a video game. Video games are meant to be fun. If the game is no longer fun, don't play it anymore. If there is only a part of this game that makes you believe that it is not fun, don't participate in that part of the game. Second, your fun isn't the only fun that matters. Let people roleplay whatever they want however they want. They are here because they want to have fun and that is not your business. If you don't like the ways other people are having fun, that's a stupid and meaningless choice to make -- but whatever. Just don't interact with them. There will always be more people to play with. Even if this person is somehow successfully convincing entire groups of other people to avoid you, that's also fine. You don't want to be playing with people who are that easily influenced to hate others. If this is a problem that is unavoidable, go do something else. There's no point in choosing to stay and play a game full of people who don't like you, or whom you don't like. There will always be more games to play. No doubt that people are going to very strongly disagree with this post. Maybe you'll disagree, too. That's fine. Just take a moment and think about the kind of people who would oppose the argument of 'let people do what they want'. Think about the kind of people who want to enforce their own preconceptions of acceptable entertainment upon you. Think about trying to do that to others yourself. Think about the bitter, seething hatred that wells in the heart of a human being who sees others having fun the wrong way. Think about that hatred building up within you. Think about how that, if you just stopped caring about what others do, there would be no such pettiness in your heart, only a sense of peace and acceptance. Understand that, and you will very quickly realize that there is no particular value or merit in choosing to be upset at others -- and anyone who believes otherwise can be safely disregarded without consequence. This is a personal problem created by you and has nothing to do with anyone else. The world does not exist to live up to your expectations, just as you do not exist to live up to the world's expectations. So there's no point in choosing to be upset over how other people play the game. Yes you can. You have the choice to not interact with them or not even be near them. It is your choice, always. And if you choose to interact or be in the vicinity of people you do not like, there's no point in choosing to get upset over that.

A lot of existing emotes mess with the player model's position, i.e. you can disappear entirely into a wall with /e kneel, and clipping exists in pretty much any non-standing emote... so IMO this isn't something too serious to consider. I did however previously argue at great length about adding speed phase style intangibility to the walk power because hitboxes suck, and fully support this.

That is all. Please. It'd be so easy.

The Bobcat couch sitting emote. Please.

I mean like the dialogue trees that newer in-mission NPCs have.

Confront is useless and power pool choices are limited. Speed/Leaping/Fighting/Leadership usually fill all four of them on most builds. You'd have to sacrifice one of those to take Experimentation or Teleportation, and you'd only get one useful power out of those pools, compared to the 2-3 useful powers you can take in the four aforementioned pools. Adding a short range charge-attack style teleport to melee powersets would be the simplest solution to make melee characters' lives better. No need to take specific pool powers, no need to do weird build shenanigans. Just upgrade the useless single target taunt with a useful charge attack. It would be a fantastic QoL addition and help to make two ATs stand out from the rest. What's so ridiculous about it?

Shield Charge, Lightning Rod and Savage Leap can stay unchanged, since they're primarily damage powers with long recharges. Elec and Savage can just end up having a beefy charge and a weaker but more frequently usable charge. There's not much need to adjust anything other than Confront. I'd honestly be okay with Scrappers having Confront changed to a charge (and retain the ST taunt) while Tanks and Brutes keep their 'come here' taunt. This would give Scrappers that diversity and uniqueness that people prize so much -- and maybe even give folks a new reason to play them over tanks/brutes. In fact, I might just rework the thread into that.

Not only this, but the fact that Confront and to a lesser extent Taunt are just not very useful powers to begin with. They are more often than not skipped and are entirely unnecessary for the functionality of the AT. As one example of many, my SR/WM tanker does not take Taunt at all and has no problem soaking up as much aggro as the game will allow. There is a perfect opportunity here to incorporate gap closers into melee powersets, solving two problems at once: removing the need to use up a power pool slot exclusively for the gap-closer and allowing a very underused power choice to be more frequently taken without interfering with any other power selections. You will still have to take the power to use it, of course, the only difference is that it now has a taunt component over the pool gap-closers that won't taunt. It's not going to be a life-changing addition, of course, but very few QoL improvements are.

Why is build diversity and uniqueness more important than personal preference and player choice? Do you think people should feel compelled to choose a powerset that they don't otherwise want to play just because it has something their preferred set doesn't? Why should people have to specifically play Elec or Savage just to have a gap closer? Why shouldn't they be able to play what they want to play without feeling weaker or less effective? Again, if your fun relies on having something that other people don't have, that's a pretty crappy way of having fun. As previously stated, the handful of posters in this thread are not "everyone else".

Example A would best be resolved by the blaster simply moving away from you and out of the range of the mob. Example B would best be resolved by improving your build so that you can handle being at aggro cap for an extended period of time. If this is not feasible, you can always kite mobs by standing in the perception range of an enemy at the edge of the pack, then running around the corner. Sure, this could be less fun, but it's a fringe use case with plenty of workarounds and the benefits of having a gap closer greatly outweigh the drawbacks of not being able to taunt an enemy at a distance.

I would love for the ability to have NPCs in a mission that have dialogue options.

Please disable hitbox clipping on the Walk power ala Speed Phase. Speed Phase is a secondary power attached to the Super Speed travel power. It allows you to run through allies and enemies, but does not prevent enemies from attacking you. It also makes you 'only affect self' so you cannot attack enemies while using it. This makes it useful for RP when you want characters to move closer together or be able to maneuver past each other at close range. Unfortunately, there are issues: Walk already suppresses travel powers and makes you 'only affect self'. This means if you want to use Speed Phase to better facilitate RP, you are forced to move at super speed, which makes positioning in RP much more difficult. The power FX of Speed Phase cannot be hidden and it produces a constant, annoying sound. It also requires a specific power selection, which means you need to use a second or third build if you didn't take Super Speed on your primary build. It wouldn't be too hard to add the same mechanic to Walk. It would not make anyone capable of doing anything they couldn't otherwise do with Speed Phase, nor would it give anyone any advantage whatsoever in gameplay. It's a pure QoL improvement and one that every roleplayer would appreciate.

The sole change being discussed here is adding a teleport component to Taunt/Confront and possibly long form AS as well, to make it fair. Nowhere did I say the taunt component of the power should be removed. Nowhere am I saying the power itself should be removed or replaced with an entirely new and different one. There would be no change regarding enemy repositioning. If you want to move a group of enemies to a different location you can still do so. In fact, this would make it easier, since at melee range your aura and melee AoEs will be taunting even more enemies. Peacebringers and Warshades in Dwarf form should have a distance closer too. No reason they shouldn't. The overwhelming minority of Scrappers who, for some arcane and esoteric reason, decided to take Confront, will still have Confront. It will just have an additional teleport element to it. No other change. If for some equally unusual reason they decide that being able to jump into melee range is a deal-breaker, they can respec. Homecoming is no stranger to making massive, sweeping changes to ATs -- just look at Blasters. However, adding a gap closer is not a massive, sweeping change. It's something that can already be done, this would just make it easier to do and make it a more natural part of the AT. This is a QoL improvement, not a groundbreaking paradigm shift.

This is nowhere near what I'm saying. You still aren't reading. Please read before posting. When I make a suggestion, I consider carefully whether it would result in more fun overall, or less fun overall. Therefore I avoid making suggestions that remove things that already exist, and instead focus on suggestions that add or improve features without causing significant amounts of change. There is absolutely no way that this addition would affect gameplay to such a degree that it would result in less fun overall. The majority of the arguments against it are centered around fringe use cases of the Taunt power in which having a movement component would be a detriment, or the classic "I don't want anyone to have more fun or more options, because I'm fine with the way things are" argument. The former is a fairly valid argument, but the latter is a harmful sentiment that has a long track record of causing problems throughout human history and should not be seriously entertained. That being said, let me explain, again, how this addition would result in more fun: Suppressed movement speed in combat is slow. 40mph is a third of what I can reach with Super Speed, and no matter how much speed you build for you won't get much more than that. 50mph isn't much faster and it's worthless to waste set bonuses going specifically after movement speed when you could be improving max HP, resists, def, etc. instead. Moving at 33% speed in combat and then randomly being shot around to full speed due to bad suppression mechanics is not fun. Being locked out of taking other pool powers because you have to take Speed of Sound or Combat Teleport to have a gap closer is not fun. Incorporating a gap closer into the useless taunt/confront powers would make them a better choice. It would make Taunt more effective and the Confront powers actually worth taking in the first place, resulting in more fun. Since every single melee powerset already has taunt/confront, it would not result in any more homogenization than what already exists. There would be no reduction in overall fun. The idea that giving every melee powerset a gap closer would make Elec and Savage less fun or meaningful to play is absurd, unless the idea of having access to something that other people don't is fun to you, in which case that's a pretty selfish way of thinking.

While it is true that the majority of players do not participate in PVP, there is indeed an active PVP community on HC. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. As for this suggestion, it sounds interesting but there are problems that would have to be ironed out. You'd need essentially a hybrid PVP/PVE model due to the fact that diminishing returns make buffers/debuffers mostly useless, and the fact that PVP rules are not balanced for PVE content.

Speed Phase is a secondary power attached to the Super Speed travel power. It allows you to run through allies and enemies, but does not prevent enemies from attacking you. It also makes you 'only affect self' so you cannot attack enemies while using it. This makes it useful for RP when you want characters to move closer together or be able to maneuver past each other at close range. Unfortunately, there are issues: Walk already suppresses travel powers and makes you 'only affect self'. This means if you want to use Speed Phase to better facilitate RP, you are forced to move at super speed, which makes positioning in RP much more difficult. Additionally, the power FX of Speed Phase cannot be hidden and it produces a constant, annoying sound. It would not be hard to add the same mechanic to Walk. It would not make anyone capable of doing anything they couldn't otherwise do, nor would it give anyone any advantage whatsoever in gameplay. It's a pure QOL improvement.

I'm not talking about Phase Shift, which specifically makes you intangible and would definitely not be a reasonable thing to add to the Walk power. Speed Phase lets you go through hitboxes without making you unhittable, and that exact mechanic is used extensively in RP -- it would be a simple and easy improvement to add similar functionality to Walk so that roleplayers don't have to take a build with super speed and have a glowy aura around them if they want to stand and emote closer to each other.

Vocal minorities are not representative of an entire demographic. People are always going to more openly and frequently comment on things they don't like than what they do like. It's unreasonable to assume that four or five people opposing a thread is a 'consensus'.

Travel suppression in combat makes you slow. Moving at only 40-50mph and constantly jumping back and forth between that and full speed at essentially random due to bad and unnecessary mechanics is not fun.

You spent the entire last page shitting up the thread with angry comments because you thought I was telling you that you were playing the game wrong. I don't think you are qualified to talk about arguing in good faith.

Not every set has a ranged attack. Not every set has a gap closer. I shouldn't be forced to play only specific powersets in order to have functionality that should be a basic feature of every melee powerset as it is literally eveywhere else.

It's a very simple and sensible change, for the following reasons: It is not fun to slowly walk up to a group of enemies before you're allowed to use your attacks. It is not fun to make a group of enemies slowly walk over to you before you're allowed to use your attacks. It is fun to quickly close the distance so you can use your attacks as soon as possible. It is not fun to have to take a specific powerset in order to do this. Do you disagree with any of these statements? If so, why?

You clearly haven't read anything I've posted, have you? Every single melee powerset has confront/taunt. They are already homogenized. There would be no additional homogenization. I'm not arguing for taking away existing powers. I'm arguing for augmenting them with a gap closer. The existing functionality of the powers would not change except that instead of bringing enemies (very slowly) to you, you will (very quickly) move to your enemies. Outside of very specific fringe cases, this changes nothing. Please read my posts more carefully in the future; I'm tired of having to explain this to everyone who has a knee-jerk rage reaction to the idea that change can be a good thing. Taking an entire power pool choice for a single power from that pool is a waste. It would be better to incorporate the functionality of those powers into a power that already exists in every melee set, but is functionally useless. This would solve two problems at once: it would make the power functionally useful and worth taking, and free up a power pool choice. Nothing but improvements.

You would still be able to do this. Melee powersets have ranged powers and epic pools do too. Ball Lightning for example would serve this purpose well as if you're a tank or brute it will taunt enemies too.