Furthering Merc Identity

(PixelTwitch) #21

This is a great example…

//youtu.be/e31OSVZF77w

(Glottis-3D) #22

video reminded my of some best games in ETQW.
this champion A vs champion B vs Champion C concept. realy worked there.

(Erkin31) #23

My problem isn’t to have a game with depth, but a game where the gameplay is concentrated on the abilities, like in a MOBA or MMO.
I don’t want a game where the skill is resumed to launch your ability at the right time with your teammates.

INF3RN0: I don’t talk about power. You could have powerful mercs with limited movements.
I’m talking about the fact to have some mercs which could have less movements options than others.
If you look Brink, only light characters was fun to play for me because medium and heavy had their movements limited.

So when you say “Unique movement maneuvers”, i don’t like that because movement maneuvers are really important for the gameplay/fun and shouldn’t be limited to some mercs.
I like how Tribes manage this. Heavies are slow in comparison of lights, and their verticality is more limited. But they are still able to use the same tricks than light characters to gain a lot of speed and verticality (jetpack, skiing, grenade jump, rocket jump , etc.) You are big and slow, but you have still the same cool tools than others.

(Glottis-3D) #24

[QUOTE=Erkin31;508266]My problem isn’t to have a game with depth, but a game where the gameplay is concentrated on the abilities, like in a MOBA or MMO.
I don’t want a game where the skill is resumed to launch your ability at the right time with your teammates.
[/QUOTE]
with this i agree!

(INF3RN0) #25

Abilities already take much less skill to execute compared to the gun play or teamwork reqs. This kind of stuff would never enable a low skill player nor allow them to beat a higher skilled player. These kinds of mechanics simply allow for moderately skilled timing in combination with the much more difficult player controlled aspects in order to break up the monotony of the game play. A bad aimer can strafe like a madman, but it doesn’t mean they are ever gonna hit anything. Right now all people do is strafe, strafe, strafe- but if you can mix up the typical movement patterns between mercs and how they are likely to interact with the map then almost every situation is unique.

In a MOBA you can get automated damage output at the push of a button, which is balanced by a hard counter balance system- and there’s still a lot of skill involved. In this case it’s not nearly as extreme. Instead all ‘abilities’ are simply catalysts to a situation where aim skill and teamwork will ultimately dictate the outcome. Unique movement maneuvers might make someone arguably harder to predict in a given moment, but it’s not likely that it will be the biggest factor involved- especially with perfect imbalance as Pixel mentioned. I don’t even know why I’m trying to explain it because asymmetrical game play has already been proved to work, and if you really liked ETQW as I’ve seen you say before then you should know that.

(Erkin31) #26

Maybe I haven’t understood your first post.
You talk about unique movement maneuvers available for every mercs ? As you are talking of mercs identity, I thought you talked about unique movement maneuvers availables for only some specific mercs.

(INF3RN0) #27

[QUOTE=Erkin31;508312]Maybe I haven’t understood your first post.
You talk about unique movement maneuvers available for every mercs ? As you are talking of mercs identity, I thought you talked about unique movement maneuvers availables for only some specific mercs.[/QUOTE]

Yes I did refer to extra special movement abilities available only to specific mercs, but distributed asymmetrically and balanced with weaponry/move speeds/etc. Each special movement would have their own situational uses that complimented the merc’s play style, but because of perfect imbalance and considering that much of these maneuvers wouldn’t be comparatively ‘better’ in combat is why it could work well.

(INF3RN0) #28

Here’s a rough example of integrating counter abilities into the game via merc archetypes, or additionally via perks. All counters would involve activation and have a c/d so as to limit their usage during a game. Like I said, I think that there should be a set counter ability system for all 5 archetypes, but also allowing for additional counter-ability play with specialist augments.

[table=“width: 500, class: grid, align: left”]

[B]Ability[/B]
[B]Counter[/B]
[B]Effect[/B]
    [B]Archetype[/B]


Heal
Mechanical
Delay
    Engineer


Mechanical
Hack
Convert
    Recon


Stuns
Cure
Remove (self)/ Reduce (aoe)
    Medic



Artillery
Bubble Shield
Block (self)/ Absorb (aoe)
    Assault


Detection
Signal Jammer
Cloak (global)
    FOPS

[/table]

These would be a basic foundation for all archetypes though it could vary among mercs (but should have some consistency), however specialist augments could further this sort of counter-play. Ex. pick up grenades.

(INF3RN0) #29

Ideas for possible merc stances/unique maneuvers. These would likely involve c/d mechanics, etc. Just some ideas for what I might view as complimentary to the current merc set.

[table=“width: 500, class: grid, align: left”]

[B]Merc[/B]
[B]Maneuver[/B]
[B]Description[/B]


Sawbonez
Rescue
Long jump distance bonus


Phoenix
Rally
Friendly AoE speed boost


Aura
Kick Boost
Increased forward momentum when activated during a wall hop


Proxy
Spring
Chain jumping bonus


Bushwhacker
Trip slide
Knocks down players in path of forward slide


Fletcher
Scout
Lean+shoot


Thunder
Shockwave
Falling from certain heights triggers a medium AOE slow


Fragger
Run n Gun
Sprint Shooting


Rhino
Entrenchment
Immobilizes Rhino in exchange for increased accuracy, but also increased vulnerability from rear damage


Nader
Grenade hop
Fires a grenade while jumping to give increased vertical momentum and also inflicting minor self-damage


Skyhammer
Toss
Vertical boost for friendlies


Stoker
Rope Ladder
Creates an alternative PoT for specific vertical heights, until destroyed


Arty
Grappling Hook
Moderately ranged grapple


Vasilli
Dodge Roll
Horizontal roll


Redeye
Flash
Short ranged teleport

[/table]

(Glottis-3D) #30

some very good thoughts. are thouse abilities with cooldown, or regular moves?

(INF3RN0) #31

I was thinking c/d would be needed for most.

(INF3RN0) #32

Ideas for merc ability combos. Could work something like temporarily augmenting another ability post-interaction or when combined in action.

[table=“width: 500, class: grid, align: left”]

[B]Ability A[/B]
[B]Ability B[/B]
[B]Effec[/B]t


Heal
Damage Ability
Upon receiving a heal/pack, ability damage dealt over the next 10s is returned back as health


Stun/Blind
Damage Ability
Ability damage dealt to stunned/blinded opponents drains active clip ammo per hit (lasts for a total of 6s)


Blow Torch
AoE Ability/Packs/Stations
Blow torch interaction w/ friendly results in increased radius of next used AoE Ability and increases the resupply rate (or base amnt) of the active ammo/hp packs/stations until used/destroyed


Detection
AoE Ability
AoE abilities used on detected enemies increase in duration

[/table]

TBC

(Glottis-3D) #33

then i would leave only ‘awesome’ abilities, even thogh they are less in number than mercs. and just make
groups of mercs:
simple mercs - 1 action ability, more for shooting playstyle
medium mercs - 2 action abilities, can both shoot and play around abilities
nerd mercs - 3 action abilities, not for shooting, but for ability-carnage. (mercs like Phantom and Sparks)

some ideas i would love to see - like teleport and slide.
some ideas like vertical toss - i would like to see like a standart push for all mercs. it can realy help to help newcomercs trying to failjump somewhere.
some ideas are not worthy like lean shooting

(INF3RN0) #34

Yea that could make it less complicated. Also for something like a lean+shoot ability, I think it would be one of those without a c/d.

(tokamak) #35

I like the idea of damage/heal conversion.

A medic ‘tags’ a player and any damage caused by the medic is converted into a health boost towards the tagged player (up to a certain point beyond base health) as long.

The medic can tag multiple players but the health will be split among them.

This means a medic can keep boosting either his fireteam or a particularly important objective guy by being offensive.

Was that what you meant Inferno?

(Mustang) #36

Meant to say this the other day, but I love it.

If there are going to be merc/ability interactions then it should be a designed system, not just the odd one or two.

(INF3RN0) #37

[QUOTE=tokamak;508798]

Was that what you meant Inferno?[/QUOTE]

Actually what I was thinking was that the medic would not be the one dealing the damage, but instead the player affected by the heal would regen health based on the damage output by strictly damage abilities. So for example a medic tosses a pack to nader, proxy, fragger, bush, etc and within a time frame any damage dealt by their abilities (g-launcher, grenade, mine, etc) is returned to them in the form of hp. This would basically improve forward momentum for the bottleneck breakers (assaults) or could be used to strengthen the choke point defenders (engineers), but ofc would be entirely dependent on the medic being involved.

But these were just some random thoughts, overall the concept is to create synergy between abilities in interesting ways.

(Anti) #38

[QUOTE=INF3RN0;508789]Ideas for merc ability combos. Could work something like temporarily augmenting another ability post-interaction or when combined in action.

[table=“width: 500, class: grid, align: left”]

[B]Ability A[/B]
[B]Ability B[/B]
[B]Effec[/B]t


Heal
Damage Ability
Upon receiving a heal/pack, ability damage dealt over the next 10s is returned back as health


Stun/Blind
Damage Ability
Ability damage dealt to stunned/blinded opponents drains active clip ammo per hit (lasts for a total of 6s)


Blow Torch
AoE Ability/Packs/Stations
Blow torch interaction w/ friendly results in increased radius of next used AoE Ability and increases the resupply rate (or base amnt) of the active ammo/hp packs/stations until used/destroyed


Detection
AoE Ability
AoE abilities used on detected enemies increase in duration

[/table]

TBC[/QUOTE]

I like these sort of ideas and we’ve definitely not explored this enough yet (I have massive matrix of all abilities somewhere but as yet I haven’t been able to review it and look for synergies we can add).

One thing to bear in mind with suggestions like this though is that it’s good to try and find some kind of real world abstraction that might justify the synergy or behavior, not because gameplay has to come from or be limited to realism (you can still have sci-fi devices that are very relatable), but more to help players understand why this stat buff, or that bonus, might happen.

As an example, from your list above the most easy to understand one for me is the idea that when an opponent is concussed any additional damage or explosive might increase the sense of confusion. That said, I’m not sure how obvious that effect or bonus from synergy might be during gameplay :slight_smile:

(PixelTwitch) #39

Seems like they are even mixing identities now -.-

(INF3RN0) #40

Bumping this old thread since I’m reiterating on a lot of stuff in here. With the addition of the much more powerful abilities I wanted to touch back on the concept of synergies and counters. I like the idea of highly effective abilities, however I’d like to see them achieve that effectiveness via synergies. As it stands now the ability system makes no attempt at facilitating teamwork and offer no real means of avoiding or rebutting against them. Unless these two things happen, the abilities will be viewed as nothing less than spam that contributes very little to the game.