New P2W Travel Power: Gliding!

[dangeraaron10]

I think it'd be pretty cool if there was a Glide travel power toggle from the P2W vender.  To balance it, maybe make it mutually exclusive with Ninja, Beast, and Athletic Run in terms of getting it for free and then having to purchase it if you have those other powers.  Basically, for the endurance cost equivalent to the Ninja/Beast/Athletic Run powers, your falling speed is reduced, given air control if you didn't already have it, and have your fall damage negated.  For a little extra endurance per second, you can leap and bound without worry with Super Jump or even Super Speed with its new momentum-based jumping mechanic!

 

Maybe make certain costume pieces like Rocket Boots, the various jetpacks, and wings animate while Glide is active.  Flapping wings would be perfectly fine, but it'd be even cooler if they could splay out in a gliding pose as well.  I don't expect capes to become rigid and take on a gliding pose considering that they're free flying cloth physics, but it'd be cool if such a thing got implemented.  

 

In terms of what it would add to the game beyond adding more theme powers, it could help supplement a Super Speed or Speed of Sound user's air time.  Super Jump, along with the new Double Jump, could essentially fly with a little more interaction and endurance cost than true flight while being faster.  Mighty Leap wouldn't get the same verticality as Super Jump but could glide even faster with its new popup power.  I feel like Glide alone could help further balance the existing travel powers and give players more options to get around the city.

 

To break it down:

 

• Super Jump with Double Jump -> Could easily cover the distance of any map with Double Jump's additional verticality with gliding.
• Mighty Leap with Takeoff -> Won't have the same verticality as Double Jump, but the increased jump speed will make you glide faster.
• Super Speed with Momentum -> Further extend the airtime of your momentum powered jump to cover even more ground and make navigating the city even easier at top speed.
• Speed of Sound with Jaunt -> Build up speed, Jaunt up into the air, and not immediately plummet to the ground.  Jaunt's cooldown prevents you from effectively chaining it, but with enough airtime you can activate Jaunt again in the air to keep airborne.
• Teleportation -> If you're having trouble picking a spot to teleport, Glide can give you some extra breathing room before you begin to plummet to the ground, or at least make it so you don't need to target the ground in order to safely land after chaining teleports to travel.
• Infiltration -> Gliding and stealth.  Batman, anyone?  

 

The more I thought about it, the more I liked it and wanted to post it.  Just by having a toggle (thus a tangible cost for improved travel) that reduces your fall speed while maintaining air speed and control (and offering control if it wasn't already there), you have a permanent travel toggle that can interact with existing powers in a variety of cool ways.  It's not there to replace travel powers you invested power picks and enhancement slots into, but can improve them further.

[Steampunkette]

I'd love to see a power like this. Especially if rather than a P2W power it was part of the Gadgeteering Travel Power (If and When that is ever completed and released)

 

However: There is no "Slow Fall" function. Falling is a global speed value that isn't specific to any given character. So I don't think it could be modified without either decoupling it from the global structure of the game's engine and making it a function of individual characters... which I think -might- be impossible orrrr....

 

Creating a character based value which somehow interacts with the game's idea of gravity as "Magnitude 1" Gravity. And then allows characters to have .75 Gravity or .33 Gravity Magnitudes (Thus reducing fall speed by 25% and 66% respectively).

 

And if they did -that-... they could create high Gravity Magnitudes to forcibly hurl characters at the ground at 10 times normal speed. WOOF.

[TemporalVileTerror]

I was thinking the other possibility would be making something which triggers a series of short +up commands, giving the player-character a bobbing movement as they mostly hover in place vertically.

[Steampunkette]

Those up commands would interfere with everything else involving text or character inputs. Like right now, if you're holding the W key and use the drop-down from your Friend's List to invite someone you know, the W input bleeds over and the game registers the name as having at least one W in it, somewhere, and registers a response of "That character does not exist or is not online at the moment".

 

You actively have to stand still to do an invite, or otherwise stop all keyboard input to do so.

 

Can you imagine trying to type a message mid-glide and the chat-entry getting slammed back to the left every time the Up input happens? Meanwhile, you're falling 'cause the up commands aren't going into the game, they're entering the chat window.

[TemporalVileTerror]

Is the code really that messy that movement commands can't operate without input?  That doesn't seem right at all.  After all, ++up, ++forward, and all of those commands work and allow me to type.  In fact, I make a point of using those commands to get around while typing.

If I was originally unclear, I'm suggesting a new form of movement be created.  Something -like- "hop"

To describe in a roundabout way:  "/++hop" would cause the player-character to continuously make the smallest increment jump height at a interval which would give the effective consistency of hovering while used with a Jump Pack.

Except the user isn't actually issuing that command.  The Glide Power is, and the Glide Power effectively operates as a non-cooldown-linked Jump Pack.

[Steampunkette]

++Forward, ++Up, ++Left, ++Right, ++Down. All of them function because the game's engine reads them as "Continue until input".

 

When you hit the Autorun key it isn't repeatedly sending a signal to the game saying "Run forward another 2 seconds". It sends a single signal and the game understands that as "Go until told to stop"

 

++Hop couldn't work because it's not a continuous direction, it's a matter of refreshing information. Specifically "Jump again after 0.x seconds"

 

It's not a matter of Messiness, it's just a matter of being incredibly simple and combining both text input and movement input through the same device, a keyboard, as the default.

 

If the game had been developed for 3 handed mutants or aliens so that mouse, keyboard, and joystick were all simultaneously used for game input there might have been more room for autofiring inputs like that which don't default to keyboard input and thus don't interfere with text input to the chat window... But it would have been more complex -anyway- and thus more likely to have not been the baseline and simplistic default.

 

Slowing Gravity is really the only "Way" that I can imagine we could reasonably make Gliding work.

 

It's part of why the Cryptic Engine that they built for Champions Online had the ability specifically added for "Gliding" functions to slow a character's descent or even recognize whether a player were flying up or down. Just so they could have Ice Slide and Glide as power concepts that function in the engine from Launch.

[dangeraaron10]

That would be my thought.  Just a means to reduce the rate at which you fall, rather than complex mechanisms to simulate real gliding.

 

I always knew doing even the most inconsequential things in CoH was difficult but this is at a new level!

[TemporalVileTerror]

I'm having some difficulty understanding here, or we're on very different pages with this.  I apologize if my lack of adequate terminology is causing the disconnect here.

 

From my understanding, the part of the game which recognizes device inputs seems to be separate from the functional interaction of character movement.

If I type in ++up and leave the game alone for twenty minutes, the autolog feature kicks in and boots me back to the login screen.  That suggests that the "++up" isn't being registered as a continuous active input, but rather as some function toggling a "jumping" state.

Regardless of that, and regardless of how existing input/function interactivity operates, what would we actually be looking at in terms of jury-rigging something behind the scenes which instructs the player-character to exhibit things like movement from server-issued operations?  For example, Knockback doesn't interrupt our typing, but it does forcibly move our character.  Repel, perhaps, works as an even better example, as it still allows for user input to have a modicum of control.

 

So, if my initial plan is entirely impossible with the engine, then what about just having a constant source of Repel being applied to the character from below?  We've seen that the Homecoming Team have developed and deployed some directional Knockback and Repel mechanics as of late, even if they are of a certain level of jankiness.

[Steampunkette]

If you type ++Up while Flying you'll hit the ceiling of the zone. Just like if you put ++Forward you'll eventually crash into a wall.

 

The only reason Jump -seems- to put in multiple inputs is that your character has a maximum jump height. On reaching it, your character falls, reaches the ground, and is able to go "Up" again.

 

Even when you're falling from that jump, though, the game has logged a "Continue Up" function and will continue to send your character in that direction, so you jump again because without Flying "Up" is synonymous with "Jump".

 

Hit the max height, fall, lather, rinse, repeat.

 

The command ++Up is the same between jumping and flying. Secondary limitations installed on your character make them behave differently on the player-interaction scale.

 

For a visual confirmation of this, toggle on any power which increases your maximum jump height and tap space bar (Or whatever key you have +Up or "Jump" bound to). You won't reach the maximum height. Input ++Up and you will achieve that maximum height indefinitely until to put in a new command which counters the ++Up (generally +Up or +Down). Similarly, hold the spacebar (or other bound key) to jump indefinitely and toggle on fly or hover or one of the game's other flying options and watch your character jump into a flight and keep going straight up to the ceiling. Then do the same thing by jumping with ++Up and toggling on a flight power.

 

 

[TemporalVileTerror]

Yeah, we're definitely not on the same page.

Sorry, I'm not sure how else to try and explain what I have in mind.

[MTeague]

I mean, I sort of do this now on a limited time basis on my blaster.  P2W Jump Pack plus Speed of Sound.  Zoom at full speed jump for height then kind of "tap" "tap" "tap" for the jumpjets as I move along.  Does have the max duration of the Jumpjets though before they forcibly detoggle and go to cooldown. But I can make it over half the distance from the top of the Westerman building to Mercyview Graveyard in First Ward before it runs out!

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

IFor example, Knockback doesn't interrupt our typing, but it does forcibly move our character. 

I never knew I wanted a travel power where my character is being repeatedly ragdolled for hellion golf distance in any direction I choose until I read this sentence. 

[TemporalVileTerror]

Tumbleweed Travel!

Rolling rolling rolling, keep those doggie going.

[Steampunkette]

1 hour ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

Yeah, we're definitely not on the same page.

Sorry, I'm not sure how else to try and explain what I have in mind.

What you have in mind is "++Hop" where "Hop" is "+up" for 0.1 seconds every 0.5 seconds so the character slowly loses height.

 

I get it.

 

But there is no ++Hop. There's no +Hop. The game engine does not have the capability to understand a ++Hop command as a repeating signal rather than a continuous entry.

 

... but you -did- make me think of something that -could- work. It would just -royally- suck.

 

Have the player use ++up while gliding, and have the Glider Power put a "Jump Height" Cap of 3ft on with double-jump capability, but pulse Jumpheight caps of 0ft every .5 seconds for .4 seconds.

 

It would suck. But it would work.

[TemporalVileTerror]

Then no, you didn't get it.

I know there isn't any "hop" command.  I was trying to articulate something else by using a theoretical "hop command" as a stand-in as I lack the technical terminology to accurately express what I'm trying to get across.

[dangeraaron10]

15 hours ago, MTeague said:

I never knew I wanted a travel power where my character is being repeatedly ragdolled for hellion golf distance in any direction I choose until I read this sentence. 

 

So it's Bowling for Hellions, but in reverse?

[Steampunkette]

As to the "Knockback" or "Repel" options: Both are entirely directional.

 

Knockback is based on where you are in relation to the NPC knocking you away. Repel functions the same way. You'd need to create an NPC that somehow perfectly tracks player movement and stays directly under them for it to function as a "Lift" mechanic.

 

You could "Spawn a pseudopet and have it fire" but thanks to the inherent timing system of the game, it would either fire while inside your body as you fell into the pseudopet, or from a horizontal direction relative to you, as you glided past it.

 

Knockup and Knockback are also not good options because they both have a loss of control effect tied into the design of the effect. If you were knocked up into the air while gliding you would stop moving forward and perform a "Flip" animation ('Cause that's how knockup works on flying characters) and then go back to gliding. If it didn't treat you as flying, you'd do a pratfall in mid air, plummet toward the ground, and then kip up out of the pratfall and start gliding, again, for just long enough for it to happen again.

 

Gravity Alteration is really the only way to do it, and a way the game isn't designed to function.