Movement Suppression

[Glacier Peak]

4 hours ago, Cancrusher said:

Wait a second... waaaaaiiiiitttt a second.   Are you guys telling me than when I auto-follow a targeted mob with superspeed on and it forces me into a slow-motion bionic man montage, that it doesn't actually have to be that way?   🤔

 

If so, please fix this, I beg you.  🙏

Speed Phase is your friend

[MTeague]

I'm perfectly fine with getting rid of Movement Suppression. 

But I would very much want it removed for enemy NPC's as well, and I'd like to see enemy NPC's exploit it more.

 

Sky Raiders. Goldbrickers, Longbow Eagles, etc.  Let's see them do their damndest to maintain distance and blast away at melee from range, zipping away at max velocity as they exhilerate in no more movement suppression. Let's see some Council using strategy to spread out and focus fire while actively trying to avoid being clumped up!

[cranebump]

13 hours ago, biostem said:

That's honestly more of a PvP issue to consider - the computer-controlled enemies can pretty much react instantly...

Ah. Well I guess that makes sense. Thanks.

[biostem]

3 hours ago, MTeague said:

But I would very much want it removed for enemy NPC's as well, and I'd like to see enemy NPC's exploit it more.

I don't want to derail things too much, but I think that enemy NPCs need to have some sort of "reaction time" factored into their responses, so a player character jumping or teleporting into the middle of them, who was previously undetected, isn't met with an immediate and simultaneous response...

[Coyotedancer]

4 hours ago, MTeague said:

I'm perfectly fine with getting rid of Movement Suppression. 

But I would very much want it removed for enemy NPC's as well, and I'd like to see enemy NPC's exploit it more.

 

Sky Raiders. Goldbrickers, Longbow Eagles, etc.  Let's see them do their damndest to maintain distance and blast away at melee from range, zipping away at max velocity as they exhilerate in no more movement suppression. Let's see some Council using strategy to spread out and focus fire while actively trying to avoid being clumped up!

 

I don't think the NPC have to deal with it as things stand, I can't say I've ever noticed any of the multitude of "frequent runners" (Not just wolves, but Eagles and Ancestor Spirits and Illusionists and Goldbrickers and Sky Raiders and Spectrals and Air Thorns and Seers and Animus and... yeah. You get the idea. <_<) we have in this game being slowed down in the slightest as they jet off across the map at full speed. While we're stuck like a sloth in glue if we want to chase them down.

 

I've been asking for Movement Suppression to be removed in PvE for *YEARS*.

It's annoying as all hell given the frequency of RunAway!RunAway! mob AI.  

 

 

 

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by Coyotedancer

[Reiraku]

5 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Sure, and I'd be fine if they added that.

 

But Movement Suppression as it currently exists in game doesn't make IRL sense, doesn't make comic book sense and doesn't even make sense in the game itself. There's literally no reason for Movement Suppression to continue to exist.

Funny you should mention that.

Before we had Travel Suppression as we know it, the devs implemented a to-hit penalty when SS, SJ, Fly were toggled on. It was hugely unpopular and lasted about one week before we got the travel suppression we know today. There were other reasons they implemented it (eight total from the conversation I had with Castle about it), but I wasn't privvy to all the details. PvP factored into about 3 of the 8. Enemy AI had something else to do with it.

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

I don't want to derail things too much, but I think that enemy NPCs need to have some sort of "reaction time" factored into their responses, so a player character jumping or teleporting into the middle of them, who was previously undetected, isn't met with an immediate and simultaneous response...

Thank you for that! I've always hated the fact that, as soon as you're within aggro range, every enemy in the entire group instantly draws their weapons at the exact same time. It makes them all look like robots, or NPCs.

 

40 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

I don't think the NPC have to deal with it as things stand...

I think they do... sometimes.

 

Sure, Warwolves will jet off into the sunset like they're on crack, but how many times have you seen a Longbow Eagle turn and try to fly away at .000001 MPH? I see it happen all the time. The only reason that I remember it is because it looks so weird. He'll be leaning forward in a fast flight pose, but then moving slower than grandma crossing the street with her walker.

 

If that's not Movement Suppression then I don't know what is.

[Coyotedancer]

4 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Thank you for that! I've always hated the fact that, as soon as you're within aggro range, every enemy in the entire group instantly draws their weapons at the exact same time. It makes them all look like robots, or NPCs.

 

I think they do... sometimes.

 

Sure, Warwolves will jet off into the sunset like they're on crack, but how many times have you seen a Longbow Eagle turn and try to fly away at .000001 MPH? I see it happen all the time. The only reason that I remember it is because it looks so weird. He'll be leaning forward in a fast flight pose, but then moving slower than grandma crossing the street with her walker.

 

If that's not Movement Suppression then I don't know what is.

 

I can't say I've ever seen an Eagle or any of the others slowed down in combat. They do drift around slowly before we engage them, but once we're into it with them? They move at full speed. 

 

I'd love to see a confirmation one way or the other from one of the powers folks, though. 

 

 

 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Coyotedancer

[Cancrusher]

6 hours ago, biostem said:

I'm not saying I'm in favor of travel power suppression, but the devs did include powers like hover and sprint, which do not suppress while in combat, so you could always try slotting up swift and sprint if you wanted faster movement speed while in combat...

 

When you auto-follow a moving target, it supresses your travel powers so that you slow down and can't catch the mob until it stops, unless you disengage auto- follow and follow it manually. 

 

That's what I'm talking about here.  Every power has this issue:  Superspeed, sprint, etc.

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Reiraku said:

Funny you should mention that.

Before we had Travel Suppression as we know it, the devs implemented a to-hit penalty when SS, SJ, Fly were toggled on. It was hugely unpopular and lasted about one week before we got the travel suppression we know today. There were other reasons they implemented it (eight total from the conversation I had with Castle about it), but I wasn't privvy to all the details. PvP factored into about 3 of the 8. Enemy AI had something else to do with it.

Fly actually had that 50% tohit debuff at launch and it was simply added to the other travel powers in issue 4. Like you said, it lasted a week before implementing the current version of travel suppression.

 

There's a whole bunch of people in this thread who're still blaming PvP for travel suppression being a thing, but if you'll direct your attention to your nearest PvP zone or arena map you'll find travel suppression is completely nonexistent in PvP. Those who want unsuppressed movement in PvE have plenty of options - click buffs, auto powers, and set bonuses aren't subject to travel suppression, nor are Combat Jumping and Hover.

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Coyotedancer said:

I can't say I've ever seen an Eagle or any of the others slowed down in combat. They do drift around slowly before we engage them, but once we're into it with them? They move at full speed. 

 

I'd love to see a confirmation one way or the other from one of the powers folks, though. 

Not a powers guy but travel suppression is implemented in movement powers on a per-power basis and it's pretty likely the NPC versions never got it added. There's not really any reason for them to have it either, the AI is pretty dumb.

[Glacier Peak]

NPC AI be like, attack if:

Endurance > 0

If Melee: In range? Yes, attack.

No, get closer or use ranged attack. 

[srmalloy]

11 hours ago, macskull said:

There's a whole bunch of people in this thread who're still blaming PvP for travel suppression being a thing, but if you'll direct your attention to your nearest PvP zone or arena map you'll find travel suppression is completely nonexistent in PvP.

I think a big part of that is how the devs went from "We won't make PvE changes for PvP reasons" to "We won't make PvE changes purely for PvP reasons" to "We'll try not to make PvE changes for PvP reasons", and then stopped talking about why some PvE changes were being made as more and more things got changed in attempts to 'balance' PvP.

[Glacier Peak]

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

I think a big part of that is how the devs went from "We won't make PvE changes for PvP reasons" to "We won't make PvE changes purely for PvP reasons" to "We'll try not to make PvE changes for PvP reasons", and then stopped talking about why some PvE changes were being made as more and more things got changed in attempts to 'balance' PvP.

Luckily the HC Team knew the wiser and turned off movement suppression in PvP zones and the Arena by default when they started this community.

[Reiraku]

5 hours ago, srmalloy said:

I think a big part of that is how the devs went from "We won't make PvE changes for PvP reasons" to "We won't make PvE changes purely for PvP reasons" to "We'll try not to make PvE changes for PvP reasons", and then stopped talking about why some PvE changes were being made as more and more things got changed in attempts to 'balance' PvP.

Outside of Hurricane, there wasn't a power changed with PvP in mind as the primary reason. Even after they changed Hurricane, Castle still thought it was too good but left it alone. This is evident as after i13, when PvP was given its own set of rules for how powers were balanced, the devs didn't go back and rebalance powers in PvE. It's because the balance was done for PvE to begin with. PvP has been, and would always be, an afterthought to the devs.

[macskull]

21 hours ago, Reiraku said:

 This is evident as after i13, when PvP was given its own set of rules for how powers were balanced, the devs didn't go back and rebalance powers in PvE.

I think this is the nail in the coffin to that argument, tbh. They had four years while the game was still live to go back and "un-nerf" stuff but they didn't touch a single thing.

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, macskull said:

They had four years while the game was still live to go back and "un-nerf" stuff but they didn't touch a single thing.

I'm not sure that "the devs didn't do anything about it back on Live" is a good argument, considering all the warts they never addressed, going all the way back to the giant rework of Regen based on their internal testing that a Claws/Regen Scrapper (with just SOs, this being prior to inventions) could handily solo +8 content, where it turned out after all the changes were made that the internal test server didn't have the purple patch applied, so their test scrapper was hitting about 10x as often for 10x as much damage as it should. Which started the 'nerf Regen every update' meme.

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

52 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

I'm not sure that "the devs didn't do anything about it back on Live" is a good argument, considering all the warts they never addressed...

It's not a good argument. "The devs didn't do anything about it" proves nothing except that the devs didn't do anything about it. Who knows why? Maybe they just didn't have time, or it was too low on the list, or they forgot about it, etc., etc., etc.

 

Some of the PvPers want to continue the practice from the retail forums of defending PvP by insisting "the devs only ever nerfed ONE power because of PvP." But, unless they're psychic, or they were actually on the dev team, they can't possibly know that. Maybe Mac's right, or maybe the retail devs nerfed a ton of powers because of PvP. We'll never know. And they'll never know either, but they continue to insist that they do know.

 

Whatever. Let 'em continue to spar with the ghosts of the past. Let 'em to continue to fight their war to defend PvP, even though they're the only ones on that battlefield because no one is trying to delete it from the game.

[cohRock]

Heh, I've been ignorant, and did not know there even was movement suppression (MS).  Because of endurance concerns, my characters never use full travel powers during missions.  (Well, I will occasionally Sprint to catch up to team if they are ahead of me for some reason.)  So Fly, Super Speed, or Super Jump are used between missions, while Combat Jumping or Hover are used within them.  So the effect MS has had on me has been nil, and it would not matter to me if it were kept or removed.

Edited March 11, 2022 by cohRock

[InvaderStych]

5 hours ago, macskull said:

I think this is the nail in the coffin to that argument, tbh.

 

Agreed. Now, can we also put the PvP distraction in this thread to bed as well?

 

They're different environments with different rules, and that's just what we're going to have going forward without making changes so broad that scaling the mountain of consensus isn't going to happen.

 

Now, back to our regularly scheduled discussion of PvE, and whether or not Travel Suppression still has a functional place in that portion of the game.

 

Please skip the "there are plenty of ways to get non-suppressed speed" comments.  We know, we've been doing that.  I'm more interested in the conversation that @Reiraku has alluded to - what were the "5 out of 8" - reasons to have TS in PvE?  If we had that information we could have an informed discussion. 🍻

 

On 3/9/2022 at 5:12 PM, Cancrusher said:

When you auto-follow a moving target, it supresses your travel powers so that you slow down and can't catch the mob until it stops, unless you disengage auto- follow and follow it manually. 

 

That's what I'm talking about here.  Every power has this issue:  Superspeed, sprint, etc.

 

That's not Travel Suppression, that's a function of how Follow works.  This will happen on a moving target, as you noted by listing Sprint which does not suppress like a Travel Power, anytime you are naturally faster than they are.  I don't know the mechanics of why, and consider this to be Follow's Unforgivable Sin so others would have to speak to the actual mechanics behind that.

[Reiraku]

5 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

 

 

Some of the PvPers want to continue the practice from the retail forums of defending PvP by insisting "the devs only ever nerfed ONE power because of PvP." But, unless they're psychic, or they were actually on the dev team, they can't possibly know that. Maybe Mac's right, or maybe the retail devs nerfed a ton of powers because of PvP. We'll never know. And they'll never know either, but they continue to insist that they do know.

In this case, it would be because of me and Castle talking about it. I won't go much further into the topic as to not derail the conversation, but a lot of these details came about around when Blasters got Psychic Blast proliferated to them. 

Back to the PvE side of things, enemy AI actually was changed relatively early on when it came to aggro and player proximity. If you look now, enemies will delay slightly (very slightly, but noticeable) when they notice you to when they attack. Before, they were quicker on the draw and would fire just as you could attack them within their aggro range. Before travel suppression, it was pretty easy to lock an enemy into "melee" mode by getting close enough to trigger that change in the AI, but never let them get close enough to actually attack. You could just run a mob in a circle while blasting away freely. The check to target ranges cycles a lot quicker now, I believe. This change coupled with travel suppression, solved a vast majority of the problem. 

[ForeverLaxx]

You know what I like most about the "PvP ruined my PvE game!" crowd? When I catch them blaming PvP for PvE changes in a game that doesn't even have PvP.

 

Some people just want a group to blame, and PvP is an easy target because so many people seem to hate the idea of comparing their reaction times and decision making against real players rather than against AI.

 

Now, obviously, I'm not claiming that CoH doesn't have PvP (it obviously does), but because of my experiences both with mega-toxic raiders/PvErs that far outstrips any toxicity I experience in PvP and the fact I've had people blame PvP in a game with literally zero PvP in it, I never take the "PvP ruined my PvE game" complaint seriously anymore. Not to mention that CoH specifically isn't guilty of this for probably 99% of the changes made. I'd say 100%, but I'm sure there might have been something that was shown a light upon it due to PvP getting changed for PvE and I'd rather not "lose the argument" because of one obscure change I didn't account for.

 

In any event, movement suppression is something that allows the PvE in this game to even begin to pose a threat to a player by forcing you to move slower and risk retaliation for engaging a mob. That's a game balance knob and nothing more. I understand that it seems silly in light of the current meta of Defense Softcaps and Nuke-the-spawn every 30 seconds turning most content into something exceedingly trivial, but cutting out suppression would only push us further down the hallway of power. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think we're already too strong as it is and if I wanted to play a mindless "blow up the screen" game I'd just play a shmup or a beat-em-up, not an MMO.

[A Cat]

11 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

You know what I like most about the "PvP ruined my PvE game!" crowd? When I catch them blaming PvP for PvE changes in a game that doesn't even have PvP.

 

Some people just want a group to blame, and PvP is an easy target because so many people seem to hate the idea of comparing their reaction times and decision making against real players rather than against AI.

 

Now, obviously, I'm not claiming that CoH doesn't have PvP (it obviously does), but because of my experiences both with mega-toxic raiders/PvErs that far outstrips any toxicity I experience in PvP and the fact I've had people blame PvP in a game with literally zero PvP in it, I never take the "PvP ruined my PvE game" complaint seriously anymore. Not to mention that CoH specifically isn't guilty of this for probably 99% of the changes made. I'd say 100%, but I'm sure there might have been something that was shown a light upon it due to PvP getting changed for PvE and I'd rather not "lose the argument" because of one obscure change I didn't account for.

 

In any event, movement suppression is something that allows the PvE in this game to even begin to pose a threat to a player by forcing you to move slower and risk retaliation for engaging a mob. That's a game balance knob and nothing more. I understand that it seems silly in light of the current meta of Defense Softcaps and Nuke-the-spawn every 30 seconds turning most content into something exceedingly trivial, but cutting out suppression would only push us further down the hallway of power. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think we're already too strong as it is and if I wanted to play a mindless "blow up the screen" game I'd just play a shmup or a beat-em-up, not an MMO.

All enemies having ranged attacks already guarantees retaliation though. And even with suppression, it is still possible to kite enemies and engage in a range v range fight. 

[Lens Perchance]

Reminds me of the launch days, trying to grind between contacts in Independence Port with my triple slotted Super Speed kat/Regen scrapper. I may have been part of the reason they added suppression 😂

Edited March 12, 2022 by Lens Perchance
a word

[biostem]

Obviously the reason for travel suppression is to force people into hover and combat jumping...