Null The Gull -> Knockback to Knockdown

[Sakura Tenshi]

Ehhh, I was on the fence about it, but the simple fact is knockback into knockdown price only make that change for the power they’re slotted into, not to mention that while it encourages set usage, it basically funnels your to very specific set bonuses while denying you others potentially. Now there’s even those who might say “don’t pick something knockback heavy then” and I say “what about those who have or those who otherwise like those powers?” It’s some Monte Cooke school of game design where some character options are designed to be traps that leave a character build not only less optimal but even less fun.

 

the only thing I will note is that there could be technically hurdles to this option.

 

edits: on the note of power creep, I sort of feel that is not a good arguement to make. Should we make all melee powers have knockback to balance out how overpowered melee ATs are? Or give blasters are hard defense cap?

 

secondly, if I could have it my way, I’d keep knockback but would want the knockback to deal bonus damage to enemies based on the strength of the knockback. Similarly I’d also like fall damage on anything Lieutenant rank and weaker to be tripled and fatal because it’s a comic book staple to defeat nooks by ledging. But that’s just me.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Sakura Tenshi

[Greycat]

2 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

The devs could, yes. And they could do it without the IO tax. We know we can choose Master Brawler instead of Practiced Brawler on Sentinel SR, so too, could we choose knock and non-knock versions of the same power. Edit: But we both know: ain't nobody got time for that.

 

No, given the experience the devs had with doing that, they decided it was a bad idea and would not do it again.

 

And personally, I've had people already try to push KB-KD IOs on my character without seeing how I play, or insisting I should slot them. Changed the minds of one team when they realized "hey, you can actually direct where things go and we're running around less." Another team basically got a middle finger and ignore.  I do *not* want that experience exacerbated by being told I must go to Null to turn off what I find as both a useful and defensively helpful effect because someone else has a kneejerk reaction to "OMG, not KB!"

[The_Warpact]

7 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Concerning Peacebringers... if anything in this game DESERVED some gorram power creep, it'd be Kheldians.

I fully agree with this. 100% fvck yeah

[Crasical]

The problem I feel is that the other Null toggles are saying 'You can do this but I don't want it to effect me'. Which is more than fair! Curate your experience. But there's not really a way to implement a "You can use knockback but I don't want it to effect me" flag; this suggestion would just lead to a lot of "Hey go change how YOU play because it annoys ME", which is more intrusive than I think a Null flag should be.

[AerialAssault]

2 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

No, given the experience the devs had with doing that, they decided it was a bad idea and would not do it again.

 

And personally, I've had people already try to push KB-KD IOs on my character without seeing how I play, or insisting I should slot them. Changed the minds of one team when they realized "hey, you can actually direct where things go and we're running around less." Another team basically got a middle finger and ignore.  I do *not* want that experience exacerbated by being told I must go to Null to turn off what I find as both a useful and defensively helpful effect because someone else has a kneejerk reaction to "OMG, not KB!"

 

If anyone asks me to slot a KB-KD enhancement I tell them to buy me one first.

 

In the one scenario someone did, I slotted it, then immediately unslotted it and sold it once the Task Force was done.

 

If you're reading this, Random Task Force Member, I do not apologise. Thanks for the money.

[Outrider_01]

4 hours ago, kelika2 said:

there it is.

every in game sociopath from everquest to elden ring has used this saying or a variant of it to justify being an ass.

from monks dropping a train on a group because they want a camp

to level 60s camping newbie zonelines on pvp servers

 

"Its just a game, bro!"

See, there is a problem....its like...a function of the power.  It's not griefing when blowing things up, that's someone having fun with no intent to cause harm.

 

Griefing, is intentionally FD dropping a train in LG on someone to get the Frenzy for the FBSS (bonus points if you know what I am talking about.  Monks are using a mechanic and abusing it to their amusement.

 

Power blast and knockback, is just a function with no intent to grief.  It's an annoyance you don't like because it causes havoc where as FD is used to create havoc.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Can we at least cut the damn difference? Make it so you only need one of the damn IOs per build so that peacebringers and energy blast users don't need 5 or more?

 

Is even that too damn much to ask?

 

Edit: Or the creation of a new one so that those who want to shut it down on only one power can continue as is?

Edited March 4, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Rudra]

9 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

Ehhh, I was on the fence about it, but the simple fact is knockback into knockdown price only make that change for the power they’re slotted into, not to mention that while it encourages set usage, it basically funnels your to very specific set bonuses while denying you others potentially. Now there’s even those who might say “don’t pick something knockback heavy then” and I say “what about those who have or those who otherwise like those powers?” It’s some Monte Cooke school of game design where some character options are designed to be traps that leave a character build not only less optimal but even less fun.

 

the only thing I will note is that there could be technically hurdles to this option.

 

edits: on the note of power creep, I sort of feel that is not a good arguement to make. Should we make all melee powers have knockback to balance out how overpowered melee ATs are? Or give blasters are hard defense cap?

 

secondly, if I could have it my way, I’d keep knockback but would want the knockback to deal bonus damage to enemies based on the strength of the knockback. Similarly I’d also like fall damage on anything Lieutenant rank and weaker to be tripled and fatal because it’s a comic book staple to defeat nooks by ledging. But that’s just me.

OOOH! Knockback doing bonus damage like in the pen and paper games! Me likey!!!!

[Rudra]

6 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Can we at least cut the damn difference? Make it so you only need one of the damn IOs per build so that peacebringers and energy blast users don't need 5 or more?

 

Is even that too damn much to ask?

Actually, this I can agree with. Only concern is for those high knock powers that people want to keep the knockback on.

 

Edit: Maybe make it so that if you slot any +KB into a power, it overrides the KD proc?

Edited March 4, 2022 by Rudra

[Marbing]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Can we at least cut the damn difference? Make it so you only need one of the damn IOs per build so that peacebringers and energy blast users don't need 5 or more?

 

Is even that too damn much to ask?

I suppose you could make it a set bonus too. Like say get 3 of this set and all powers do KD instead of KB. That way you still have to invest 3 slots but not say... 6 (for energy blast). 

Even then though, I am wondering if this is more an issue with certain powers. Do we have issue with Power Thrust doing KB? What about Force Bolt? Or is it just the Cone and AoE powers that fling things everywhere? Those powers can still be used effectively as @Greycat pointed out, so we wouldn't want to alienate those players by creating a system where it becomes an expected. 

As I said before, I am all for certain powers being looked at and lowered in mag. Melee AoE powers in particular, perhaps?

[Luminara]

21 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

The devs could, yes. And they could do it without the IO tax. We know we can choose Master Brawler instead of Practiced Brawler on Sentinel SR, so too, could we choose knock and non-knock versions of the same power.

 

That's still a global application, though.  When you select Master Brawler, or one of the Staff Melee Forms, or a Bio stance, you're applying what those do to all of the relevant powers.  There's no granularity, no choice to exclude one or two powers, it's a take it or leave it solution.

 

That's not what we need in the case of KB.  I'm sorry that doesn't hit the right note with people, but it's too broad.  That's why KB->KD enhancements exist, because that's the only way we can achieve the necessary granularity.  We can't do it with a single power that applies a "Zero KB for you!" flag across the board.

 

21 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Concerning Peacebringers... if anything in this game DESERVED some gorram power creep, it'd be Kheldians.

 

Eh.  I don't think the human form quite strikes the proper balance between dwarf and nova, but since it's damn near impossible to defeat, with LF and two heals, even at /x8, having lower damage output isn't unbalanced.  I logged into mine this morning and went to Pocket D to finish the Toothbreaker badge, heard a cat outside (his name is Arthur.  he came looking for me at the beginning of October.  i'm his best friend) and just walked away from the laptop for a few minutes.  Came back to Red Caps piled up around me... and a full HP bar.  That was at /x6.

 

I can live with spending a little longer in combat because my damage output is so low that it makes my Grav/TA scraptroller look badass, if it means I also don't have to deal with mez and can ignore my heals so easily that I typically forget they exist.  Of all of the characters I play, I consider this one the most balanced.  That doesn't mean I like playing it... every time Incandescent Strike misses, my blood pressure goes stratospheric.  But that's a me thing, not a balance thing.

[Rudra]

20 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

No, given the experience the devs had with doing that, they decided it was a bad idea and would not do it again.

 

And personally, I've had people already try to push KB-KD IOs on my character without seeing how I play, or insisting I should slot them. Changed the minds of one team when they realized "hey, you can actually direct where things go and we're running around less." Another team basically got a middle finger and ignore.  I do *not* want that experience exacerbated by being told I must go to Null to turn off what I find as both a useful and defensively helpful effect because someone else has a kneejerk reaction to "OMG, not KB!"

Ya see? This is why I only solo with my energy blaster. I enjoy sending mobs flying everywhere too much. (That said, on the rare occasions I do team with the energy blaster, I focus on things that can resist knockback like bosses or on eating a target before others have to chase it down.)

[A Cat]

32 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

secondly, if I could have it my way, I’d keep knockback but would want the knockback to deal bonus damage to enemies based on the strength of the knockback. Similarly I’d also like fall damage on anything Lieutenant rank and weaker to be tripled and fatal because it’s a comic book sta

Would be awesome IMO. Imagine the last level of ITF, and blasting all the enemies off of the bridges. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

43 minutes ago, Rudra said:

You can choose not to take the powers/power set that cause knockback.

 

Edit: This is my personal belief, but taking a set based on knockback and being upset it does knockback is like taking a fire set and being upset it burns.

 

Just as we can kick people from teams for using KB or quit from said teams for the same. Just as we can start playing a given powerset and finding that it lags behind other powersets in performance and complain about them on the forums and find that sometimes they actually get fixed.

[Rudra]

Except that the KB powers like the energy blast set aren't lagging. I find energy blast to be insanely fun after I get out of the I can't hit anything levels, and does great damage in my opinion.

 

Edit: "And today on bowling for dollars, we have Malta! Let's see how our intrepid hero does. Ooh. Bad shot! That Hercules didn't go too far. That Gunslinger on the other hand probably would have gotten decent distance if not for that pesky wall. Wait! Is he? YES!!! Ladies and gentlemen! Our hero earned bonus points! The Gunslinger is stuck! You keep going, you little psycho, you."

 

 

🤣

Edited March 4, 2022 by Rudra
Edited to change some punctuation in the edit.

[Bill Z Bubba]

29 minutes ago, th0ughtGun said:

Do we have issue with Power Thrust doing KB?

 

Yup. My fire/nrg blaster had the KB-KD IO in power thrust as soon as I was able to slot it. Why would I want to knock enemies away from my other melee attacks?

 

29 minutes ago, Luminara said:

When you select Master Brawler, or one of the Staff Melee Forms, or a Bio stance, you're applying what those do to all of the relevant powers.  There's no granularity, no choice to exclude one or two powers, it's a take it or leave it solution.

 

Not if it's applied to every power. Yes, it would be a horrific pain in the ass to code, obviously, but energy blast could be made where each attack was a choice that nullified the other choice. I choose either Nrg Bolt w/ KB or Nrg Bolt w/o. Continue on for every blast.

31 minutes ago, Luminara said:

That was at /x6.

 

+0/x6 with light form on auto and permaed? Sure, I can absolutely see that working.

 

33 minutes ago, Luminara said:

That's not what we need in the case of KB.  I'm sorry that doesn't hit the right note with people, but it's too broad.  That's why KB->KD enhancements exist, because that's the only way we can achieve the necessary granularity.  We can't do it with a single power that applies a "Zero KB for you!" flag across the board.

 

Thus the request for a new IO that does the global fix. It leaves OF and SA KB-KD alone to use granularly for those that want it and a new one that fixes the issue for an entire set so EBlast and PBs aren't unduly punished slot-wise.

[TheZag]

Null doesnt let u disable things because they were annoying.  Its because those things can force a change on your character that could potentially prevent you from playing.  Players would teleport people that did not want to get teleported,  sometimes teleporting them into a group of mobs that would kill them or off a tall building.  This was addressed well before null with the addition of the teleport prompt.

 

Group fly prevents players from using abilities that require being on the ground.  My titan weapons scrapper cant use Arc of Destruction if someone on my team runs group fly.  I literally lose a power if i couldnt disable group fly from others.  Several other powers in the game require being on the ground as well and a few still work if you are flying near the ground.

 

Kinetics speed boost and intertial reduction can make movement difficult for some players,  especially on cramped mission maps.  I rarely move faster then sprint speed in a mission even though i can handle speed boost speed.  There are players that dont have the reflexes to move that quickly and getting stuck by a box and some rubble to only get stuck again by a trashcan and a desk when u try to back up can be frustrating.

 

Even the popup tray is a change forced on you personally by moving elements of your UI around depending on your setup.

 

Each of these can easily be grouped as quality of life improvements.  They let you play your character without other players being able to force a change to your character that alters the way it plays.  A Null option to change knockback to knockdown doesnt prevent someone else from forcing a change to your character that alters how it plays.  An enemy being knocked back doesnt prevent you from ever using some of your powers or potentially make you move faster then your reflexes can handle.  KB to KD would be considered a buff and not a quality of life improvement.  Null doesnt offer any buffs unless you consider being transformed into an all powerful gull as a buff.  There is already a system in place ingame for players that want to play powersets that use knockback but dont want their powers to knockback.  There are many more powersets that dont have any knockback at all for players that dont want to use that system and also dont want knockback.

 

[flyinggecko2]

9 hours ago, Naraka said:

Considering most view such a change as a "buff" and also how it has broken some powers, I'd counter this suggestion with a more balanced option.

 

Don't turn KB into KD, just turn KB *Off*. You want to turn a "tax" into a free slot, then you owe something back. 

I'm totally okay with that! Excellent suggestion! I just want to play AR/DEV without chosing between nerfing myself and annoying my team.

[flyinggecko2]

4 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

 

This is the best response to this suggestion I've seen in ages.

You bring up several valid points. 

If one wanted to keep some KB powers and not others, the IO's exist for that.

 

Additionally, I feel that the suggestion to have the option to simply disable knockback on all powers is much better. It address removes any benefit, while simultaneously addressing all the cons.

[Marbing]

54 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Yup. My fire/nrg blaster had the KB-KD IO in power thrust as soon as I was able to slot it. Why would I want to knock enemies away from my other melee attacks?

Well that's the thing with Power Thrust, its not lighting up the dmg boards, its intended as a CC power not part of your regular attack chain. You can add a KB>KD IO in there and make it part of your chain if you so please, but all of the Blaster Secondary T1's were intended to be some sort of CC to help the blaster in a pinch. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

Just now, th0ughtGun said:

Well that's the thing with Power Thrust, its not lighting up the dmg boards, its intended as a CC power not part of your regular attack chain. You can add a KB>KD IO in there and make it part of your chain if you so please, but all of the Blaster Secondary T1's were intended to be some sort of CC to help the blaster in a pinch. 

 

It's still a CC power. Knock is CC. Be it down, up or back. They can't attack me when they're on their back. Changing it to down and adding damage procs makes it actually useful for a blapper so that I can follow it with EP and BS. Absolutely zero difference in that than procing out any other non-damaging power, like Infrigidate (yay, I finally spelled it correctly.)

[Marbing]

Just now, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

It's still a CC power. Knock is CC. Be it down, up or back. They can't attack me when they're on their back. Changing it to down and adding damage procs makes it actually useful for a blapper so that I can follow it with EP and BS. Absolutely zero difference in that than procing out any other non-damaging power, like Infrigidate (yay, I finally spelled it correctly.)

Oh, I totally agree that you CAN do that, and I definitely see the strategy (and have used it before), but I am saying that the other strategy is equally viable in some eyes. Keeping the target away from you is useful. And I wasn't saying KD wasn't CC, I was saying that the primary utility of those powers is CC and not dmg, so they typically aren't used as part of a regular DPS rotation. (unless your build allows you to proc them out like you suggested)

[Bill Z Bubba]

10 minutes ago, th0ughtGun said:

Oh, I totally agree that you CAN do that, and I definitely see the strategy (and have used it before), but I am saying that the other strategy is equally viable in some eyes. Keeping the target away from you is useful. And I wasn't saying KD wasn't CC, I was saying that the primary utility of those powers is CC and not dmg, so they typically aren't used as part of a regular DPS rotation. (unless your build allows you to proc them out like you suggested)

 

My only argument lay below. Electric Shackles has better DPA than BOTH Snap and Aimed Shot. Hard to make the argument that it's not supposed to be considered a damage attack. Especially considering that these three attacks are the ones you get to use while mezzed. And this is NOT only the case with archery/atomic. They just happen to be the first in the list with Mids due to alphabetical order.

 

Edit: But of course I agree that the highest damage attack chain probably doesn't use any of them.

 

Edited March 4, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[flyinggecko2]

2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

So what?

 

If a handful of people constantly make threads wanting the devs to give them a "I win button" does that mean they should? So what if a handful of people keep making threads about how much they hate knockback?

 

This is from a post I made back in June 2021:

 

"Well, he'd be wrong. And so are you: Here's a link to an actual poll that was conducted last year.

 

The players who say they LOVE KNOCKBACK total 52.47% of the respondents. Players who hate knockback, or who wish it was knockdown instead, total just 22.77% of the respondents."

 

Why did I link to an old post instead of just redoing the numbers myself? Because the anti-knockback people have continued to vote in that poll thus skewing the numbers. But, when it was first posted, before people knew that it'd be used as fodder for forum threads, people gave their honest opinion. And their honest opinion is that the majority of players LOVE knockback.

 

Also in that thread:

Captain Powerhouse "Knockback is a mechanic that adds a lot of "power" feel to a player. It is usually disliked in this game only because it gets in the way of optimizing kill time (something that goes back to the root of this game over-rewarding kill speed instead of task completion, but that's a topic for another day.) That is a feeling of power I heavily am against removing from the game.

 

A reason I heavily oppose the addition of a global switch for KnockBack is that as soon as it's available, anyone that does not use it will become an outcast, accused of trolling, and what not."

According to your own poll, 28% want to keep it "as is" 

 

If Captain Powerhouse wants to knock people around all day. Great.

 

If I'm playing solo, he'll yes I want knock back on.

 

If I am teaming up with my friends, I would greatly prefer not to get them killed by knocking mobs put of our brutes taunt aura.

 

Everyone wins.

[Marbing]

3 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

My only argument lay below. Electric Shackles has better DPA than BOTH Snap and Aimed Shot. Hard to make the argument that it's not supposed to be considered a damage attack. Especially considering that these three attacks are the ones you get to use while mezzed. And this is NOT only the case with archery/atomic. They just happen to be the first in the list with Mids due to alphabetical order.

 

I wonder how this stacks up across the board? Archery isn't exactly in a great place... neither really is AR...

But your point is made, that it can be used as part of a DPS rotation. However, it doesn't negate that it can also be used primarily as a CC keep away tool, and by removing KB entirely you would limit Power Thrusts effectiveness (and powers like it) to people who do use it that way. 

I brought up the single target attacks like power thrust because I typically don't see very many teams complain about those. The ones I see complained about the most are the AoE/Cone KB effects. So I was wondering if we could focus on those instead of all powers to see if there is anything that can be tweaked about the magnitude of some of those powers.