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City of Heroes News - Movement Powers and PvP
Posted by Jon Wood on Aug 31, 2009 | 12 comments in our forums
MMORPG.com City of Heroes Correspondent H. Hussk writes this dissection of travel powers in the City of Heroes franchise, and how it has affected PvP combat.
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The Artificial Response Mechanic "Travel Suppression" is the system that is used by CoX to handle balance to the pervasive use of travel powers as a means to attack and escape combat. It is not believed that travel powers were originally meant to be used as a means of combat; instead, they were only meant as a method of arriving at the fight destinations.
Although this is speculation: what ensued appears to be less than intended. Early on in their release, characters were performing "drive-by" attacks through the forms of travel and removing themselves from commitment of combat before any actual confrontation took place.
Travel Suppression, although artificial, is designed to counteract such an action. Through the use of arbitrary timers which can be raised or lowered, you are forced to move at walking speed levels if you are attacked or attack. While it can objectively be argued whether this system is working, it is noteworthy that all forms of PVP are going through changes at this time, which keep the characters in a state of change. It is not uncommon for the developers to allow "respecification" tokens, where a character can change his power choices, after they make they make such changes.
This could be solved if they go back to how it was originally with the travel powers.
Your ACC use to be severely reduced when you had them activated, so that would make everyone have to drop out of it in order to even fight.
They can make it so in only PVP if they want, but I saw nothing wrong with the original plans.
These days, people don't even bother switching to hover or combat jumping in PvE, much less PvP.
I swear I have read this before,most likely it is regurgitated from CoXs boards.
Either way it reads to me as someone who played a melee toon and couldn't win because everybody was moving around to fast.
But what ever,I personally just didn't like the article.I do not believe the writer has a good understanding of his subject.
This is a good idea and makes things not only more fair but believable. Travel Supression takes away from game immersion and is unrealistic.
Travel powers should be allowed to be used but with an accuracy penalty. I mean, how accurate is your arrow going to be when your super speeding by your target at 100mph? If you use the arguement that your character should have super hand eye coordination to compensate or something of the like, then slot the heck out of your attacks with accuracy enhancements to demonstrate your superior coordination and ability to strike at high speed.
Over all I am against nerfing, changing various power sets, and the creation of things like travel suppression in order to create a completely level playing field in PvP. Some powers should be better for PvP and some should not. Not every hero should be created equally. As far as PvE goes I feel the same way. If I can super jump or tunnel it shouldt be surpressed in combat and I should be able to use it as an advantage. At the same time certain foes in both PvE and PvP will have various advantages that your toon may not, it really is give and take. If someone wants to take a whole raft of travel powers they may not have enough power choices left to buy other things like healing powers or additional attacks, or stealth powers, etc.
this game is a fucking waste of time.
travel supression is retarded. it was put in to deal with the moronic fiteclubbers that couldn't compete and the idiots who said they'd pvp if they changed pvp their way, but never showed.
so yeah.
the best way to fix travel supression is to remove it from the game.
My guess is that NPC's will not be affected so will actually hurt Melee characters who are running after their opponents :S
makes me sad travel suppression is stupid.
Co is doing it as well. =/
Super heroes who had travel powers almost ALWAYS used them in combat.
instead of removing travel powers from the mix, make it an integrated part of the design.
but it's a lot more organic in CO i think. Your slower in combat, not as effective but hey if i'm flying and get in a fight i need to be a bit more careful. as opposed to CoX where i drom for 56MPH to 2 it more like 52 to 46
Except teleport, but teleport is always a red headed stepchild
still ive been able to port out of a fight in PvE pretty easy.
Again; and I've said it before... I think certain powers...travel powers included should give you certain advantages and/or certain disadvantages that others don't. This would be an advantage of teleport. A disadvantage would be dropping out of the air from 100ft and not clicking it again quick enough and sustainging a huge amount of damage from landing near a hostile mob or another hostile player, or simply from hitting the ground really hard. Another TP disadvantage (in CO more so than CoX) is that it wears off every few seconds and you have to reclick it, at which time an opponent could snap off a pretty hefty ranged attack and nail you pretty hard.
In CoX there is a big disadvantage that goes along with TP that I never could understand and that is the fact that it costs you a good chunk of endurance each time you use it. No other travel power in CoX has an endurance cost, just a penalty I never understood this since most people take hover with it to be above ground and avoid aggro without having to click really fast in mid air before hitting the ground. These disadvantages seem to outweigh the fact that you could simply TP out of a fight if you are getting your butt kicked. In fact, it seems kind of silly and ruins story continuity if a toon with TP can;t do exactly that. Or, why couldn't a speedster zip out of combat when injured to save their hide, or a flyer, fly out of range, or a tunneler dive into the ground. All of these options would be used instinctually for self preservation, so I'm not sure how further nerfing to powers is making PvP any more fun.
Nerfing = less fun an equal playing field (Not all heros are created equal... not all heros are designed for PvPing)and a button mashing contest..... I am not an avid PvPer and this is why. It's fun for me for about the first 10 minutes and then I get tired of mashing out an attack chain while zipping around in circles.
it just seems the PvPers that lose matches are very loud to game devs about how unfair it is that the speedster sticks and moves while they are stuck with hover and fly (just an example bot you ge the point) In boxing if your fast and light they train you to stick and move, why can't a PvPer do this? Why take super speed if you can't use your speed as a combat advantage?
I just don't get the idea of total equality in the PvP ring. Might as well all have the same powers then.
Im a very casual COX player and have done no PVP. I have friends, however, that up and quit because of this nerf. I really hope a better fix can be put in for all camps on this issue. A combination of ideas could be interesting. Enviorment issues coupled with slighter reductions could be the trail towards fixing this. Use your superspeed and cause a sonic boom that brings a building down or your TP causing strange effects such as cars being wirled around in the magnetic force. Accrucy lowering for range and action cost redux on Melee, maybe. Not sure but there should be a balance there somewhere.
JYCowboy has some good ideas here. I can't believe this stuff hadn't been thought up before. Especially the sonic boom from SS. I really like that one.
Remove the travel suppression and just put back in the -ACC component to travel powers. There, everyone happy now. :D
I'm not entirely convinced that's the case... but the Article itself is WAY too basic and just Generic'y feeling. It does a good job of explaining the basic interplay of travel powers in PvP but it's sorely lacking on contemporary details thus It could have just as easily been written 5 years ago. IoW: Even though a lot was learned, you wouldn't ever guess it by only reading this TL;DR article.
OtOH: There are a few good points made at the very tail end of it though... IE: Accuracy "Ramping-down" the faster you move, or fully integrating movement effects into all combat powers or using the environment around you to even the odds ...and finally... The BIGGEST problem in CoX IMO is that all Damage functions are totally independent from Accuracy. (and this was ALL Geko's fault for being an Incompetent SHUT -IN when it came to actually dealing with customers). If accuracy was tied to damage better, there would have been a lot more ways to balance Velocity VS. "Build". As it stands right now, they're ironically still using "Suppression" as the biggest balancing Crutch around, and the Writer did do a proficient job of getting that point across.