Devs: Any hope for the flight pool?
By
Aaron123,
Posted on: 2006-01-23 09:14 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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If ED affected everything than the other movement speeds should be slower as well, not just hover. Is that the case?
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Sort of, except that people didn't always bother to slot the other movement types as heavily as flight as they thought they were fast enough, so didn't really notice.
As Monument says, my main is a stone tank who used to heavily slot swift so he could move at acceptable speed in granite armor (which slows you and doesn't stack with any other movement enhancing powers including sprint for the uninitiated). This does need a look post ED as I now feel desperately slow. Possibly so as not to unbalance other peoples' movement, allow stone tanks to stack sprint with granite armor now rather than adjusting swift.
Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
and 70+ others including 2 other 50s and a CoV 40
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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Hover: We might buff it some, at some point. However, it should never be an effective travel power.
[/ QUOTE ]Why not? You don't think a power slot and 6 enhancement slots is enough of an investment to fly as fast as we can run?
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How about instead of Hover, rename it to Combat Flight and make it as effective as Combat Jumping?
[/ QUOTE ]It was called combat flight in beta. They renamed it to hover because you couldn't, you know, actually use it to fly in combat.
I for one admire the devs' resolve in maintaining the comic-book purity of this game and keeping aerial dogfights well out of it.
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It's a SHAME it took 4 issues to FINALLY deal with that TERRIBLE, risk vs reward exploit in PvE with the Travel Power Suppression compromise.
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Great post, but is this one sarcasm?
I never understood the claims that jousting gave an advantage in PvE. I did it a few times early on and noticed that they got a melee attack on me just as I got one on them, and they got to hit me at least once per pass with a ranged attack too.
When supression hit, someone said something about people soloing Countess Crey using jousting. What I didn't get was, jousting caused a MASSIVE hit in DPS, to the point that I don't believe anybody that claims they could beat the Countess' health regeneration while doing it. Meanwhile, I soloed her during this period while standing right in front of her, barely beating her health regen with a near constant attack chain.
Can someone explain to me how jousting could be used to give any significant advantage in PvE?
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It can't. Suppression was for PvP, and I wish the devs would just admit it.
I can design no less than ten builds that can exp with NO risk much faster than anything Supression can do. Jousting could not let you beat anything you couldn't beat with a few lucks. The mobs have a near instant reaction time and can easily get a return shot in often times. However, players don't and jousting was a MAJOR tactic during I4 test when Suppression was added.
PvP is also why they won't go back to -acc that they started with. That too easy to circumvent.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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Hover: We might buff it some, at some point. However, it should never be an effective travel power.
Flight: I'll talk to geko about it. No promises. (I got spoiled by the Holiday Jet Pack, too!)
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That's cool. While I'm at it, I'll throw my (many) thoughts on movement pools into the mix:
Fly needs a modest decrease in endurance cost and/or a bump to its base speed.
Hover is just too slow. If it were about 50% faster (whatever the unenhanced speed buff of AM or SB is) it would be a viable combat power. It should never be a viable travel power, IMO, but it shouldn't make me feel like a meth junkie needing a fix when I forget to toggle Fly back on. Adding some minor resistance to a soft status effect would be nice... maybe knockback and/or immobilize?
Group Flight has several issues.
1) -Acc penalty instead of suppression. This is mostly just annoying for my characters, but its a big deal for Masterminds and their pets, I guess. Personally, I think it needs be brought in line with the other powers.
2) Flight Speed enhancements don't seem to affect your "passengers," which causes people to drop if they spend too long outside the effect. Granted, an observant person will pay attention to these things, but still... I've been on the falling end of things, and it was very unfortunate (landed right next to a group of +5 Freakshow - oops)/
3) Excessive endurance cost. I can see it being a bit higher than Fly, but at least with Fly I don't need to slot for endurance reduction if I don't want too.
In reference to someone else's comment about Leaping, the reason that pool gets used sooooo much is its versatility. Combat Jumping is just better that Hover in most circumstances. Jump Kick is lame, but easy to skip (kinda like how Hover is frequently skipped in favor of AS). Super Jump is faster than Fly and allows you to get almost anywhere. SJ is also good for PvP since its much harder to suppress/nullify than Flight. Then we get to the real culprit, Acrobatics. Nevermind that SJ is a great travel power, Acrobatics prevents the bane of Dark Armor and Fire Armor melee toons, knockback. That's not even mentioning everyone else with PBAoE and short range powers that don't have some kind of status protection...
As for the Teleport pool, Teleport and Group Teleport are the only ones that really need looked at. Both are extremely endurance hungry, and Group Teleport really should allow you to "prompt for teleport" (maybe a prompt automatically prevents toon from being group TP'd). Otherwise, that pool is just fine.
Lastly there's Speed. Hasten was always horribly overrated, but its still handy for toons that feel the need to spam heals/buffs/controls or with powers that take an absurdly long time to recharge. Flurry as always been very so-so; good for managing endurance, but that's about it. Super Speed is a fun power, though suppression killed many a speedster concept character. And finally there's Whirlwind, which is just and odd power. Incredibly fun, but odd...
While I'm thinking about it, has anyone noticed Whirlwind doing knockBACK instead of knockUP in PvE? I ask because the other night, one of my SG-mates (a kinetic/electric meleefender) was reporting that Whirlwind was knocking enemies away from him, rather than juggling them. He was very upset about it, actually. It was his best tactic for fighting bosses. Unfortunately, I don't have anyone with Whirlwind or a banked respec to test out this claim.
Well, that was wordier than I originally indended... oh well.
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Hover is just too slow. If it were about 50% faster (whatever the unenhanced speed buff of AM or SB is) it would be a viable combat power. It should never be a viable travel power, IMO
[/ QUOTE ]Why not? Define 'viable'. Running, to me, is a viable travel power and I get that for free.
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If ED affected everything than the other movement speeds should be slower as well, not just hover. Is that the case?
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Not exactly. Combat Jumping and Sprint when added to the Fitness pool powers Swift and Hurdle can become effective travel powers with only one or two slots. Hover gets no such help and is always onerous to use.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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I for one admire the devs' resolve in maintaining the comic-book purity of this game and keeping aerial dogfights well out of it.
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Are you serious?
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Hover is just too slow. If it were about 50% faster (whatever the unenhanced speed buff of AM or SB is) it would be a viable combat power. It should never be a viable travel power, IMO
[/ QUOTE ]Why not? Define 'viable'. Running, to me, is a viable travel power and I get that for free.
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To you, it may. That however doesn't mean it's the same for everyone else. I personally build my characters for concept, and my main character is a Martial Artist who's basically a powerful source of kinetic energy. He flies, and floats in combat. Hover used to be great for this concept, now it's not.
There's no real reason why Hover should be so slow, and there's no reason for Fly to have so many disadvantages in PvP.
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Are you serious?
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No, that was my attempt at dry wit. 
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To you, it may. That however doesn't mean it's the same for everyone else.
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That was bad quoting on my part. I meant 'why not' to 'hover should never be a viable travel power'. As long as it's significantly slower than flight (which could stand to be faster), there's no reason it can't be much faster.
It's ridiculous that fly is the slowest travel power and burns endurance like mad. Add the fact that hover is a miserable sad PvP power (because of it's slowness), we got ourselves the worse travel power so far.
Devs please fix the damn power!!! Who the hell thought it was "working as intended"?
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Hover: We might buff it some, at some point. However, it should never be an effective travel power.
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I think a lot of people would like it if it were faster than unslotted sprint with three flight speed SOs.
As for effective at travel, Combat Jumping + Hurdle can already do this to a point. Getting Hover to where it can work about as well shouldn't break anything. Not saying as fast, but it really should be better than sprint, especially with slots invested.
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i got to throw my approval on the hover debacle. since ED i haven't bothered taking hover for any reason on any character. i'll take the AS everytime, at leasdt it has the use of -fly.
hover is just a contest to see who can sit still the longest.
I think with 3 slots it should be as fast as Sprint and Swift, maybe a little slower. It's just hard to justify outside of purely for character concept any other way, if you ask me.
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Flight: I'll talk to geko about it. No promises. (I got spoiled by the Holiday Jet Pack, too!)
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Definitely, and not only for the 1-13 crowd, either.
So many of the zones practically require a 3D travel power. The unrealistic placement of walls, cliffs, etc. make it insanely frustrating to play without a 3D travel ability (Hover, Fly, SJ, or TP).
And I'm not only talking about places like Faultline. It's pretty much every zone outside of Atlas, Galaxy, and Mercy. Getting off the ferry from Cap au Diable to Port Oakes and want to get up into the city? Sorry pal. Even though it's a couple hundred yards to your right, there's no way to get there without running all the way north and around through Marconeville. There are dozens of examples of these. And some zones (like the Shard) are punitive for anything except Fly or Teleport.
Looking for exploration badges? Again, better have a 3D travel power, or you're simply not getting a number of them w/o tp begging.
What's the solution? Well, better zone design for a start. It would be great if whoever designed the physical layout of the zones remembered that some heroes/villains take SS.
Unfortunately, better zone design in the future doesn't really help the dozens of zones that already exist. I don't see reworking all the zones just to un-gimp that aspect of SS, though there are quite a few spots where the lack of stairs is a criminal oversight and could quite easily be corrected and which would make SS a ton less frustrating and improve its QoL.
Here's my take on the Flight pool currently. I've been mainly playing a Fire/Dark corruptor for the past 2 months, and I use Air Superiority and Fly. Obviously I didn't fit Hover in there since I took the Air Sup route. I use Fly in combat as a means of knockback protection.
Some people would argue that the end cost is acceptable because "we aren't supposed to use 'travel' powers in combat". Obviously the devs have designed travel powers around the notion that people are going to do this, or there wouldn't be any suppression. So to that extent, Fly should be a viable power to have running during combat. I don't think with its current endurance cost that it achieves that. Like many people I had the chance to use the holiday jetpack, and in side-by-side comparison the jetpack was far superior. The only failing of jetpack compared to Fly was the odd suppression built into the jetpack, but then that was probably intentional.
Getting to my point though, you can overcome 1 of the drawbacks of Fly with slotting, be it the slowness or the endurance cost. To handle both drawbacks, you would almost have to 6 slot the power, and it's a bit insane to invest that many slots into a movement power. (Though with ED many build have quite a few slots that are useless anywhere else...). So in short, one of the aspects of Fly needs to be addressed, the endurance consumption, or the flight speed. I would personally prefer the endurance cost be lowered, as End Cost reducers are more expensive.
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Flight: I'll talk to geko about it. No promises. (I got spoiled by the Holiday Jet Pack, too!)
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... perhaps you can get the lizard to do something. At least on the endurance cost.
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Agreed on the end cost. Ok, it's the safest travel power. But it's also the slowest to offset that.
What is the extreme end usage for?
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While your at it, take a look at teleport's cost also? Both have been out of proportion with super speed and super jump since release, and it just doesn't make much sense...
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Well, I sort of agree with the Devs' thinking regarding the end usage on TP. It's very heavy on the end usage (could be slightly less, but should still be the highest) because it's the safest and fastest travel power.
With 3 slots for range and one slot for end reduction, I would never get beat to a mission. And you can get away in an instant, provided you have enough endurance to do so.
Yeaah...don't care at all about hover it's fine as is.
Fly however...I mean the base fly isn't much (if any) above Sprint for crying out loud...Fly's speed should be a fair bit more than it is base and have a higher cap.
i wouldn't say hover is fine. It was the only travel power that truly benefited from 6slotted and is now unfairly hamstrung. Fly does, however, need a speed increase and end rdx.
Level 50 is a journey, not a destination.
▲Scrapper Issues List - Going Rogue Edition▲
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Hover: We might buff it some, at some point. However, it should never be an effective travel power.
Flight: I'll talk to geko about it. No promises. (I got spoiled by the Holiday Jet Pack, too!)
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Well, it would be nice if you could still reach the old 6 slot hover speed 3-4 slotted with SO's. I use to love it as a GREAT combat flight. I think I've respec'd out of it on most of my toons now...
And either increase the flight speed of flight the same, or significantly reduce the endo cost. It's a hog. It's slow. The jet pack was a not-so-subtle reminder of that. Sure it was slow... but I removed fly from my trays the whole time I had it because it didn't suck endo... that sure made up for the slowness. And I could afford to fly around with my toggles up, which was kinda nice for a change.
My super leap, TP, and SS characters have a much greater chance of 'running away' with their power. The endo cost isn't nearly as bad. (Ok, TPs endo cost is pretty high, but has a great escape factor.)
Sure, it's hard to PVP a flying toon without another flying toon... but not impossible. There's a heck of a lot of ways to bring a flying toon down...
I think the most important thing we should be getting across to the Devs is this:
This is a super hero game and aerial combat is a big part of the genre and should be part of the game. Its not. That alone should be worth your investigation.
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
I think the big issue here was the fact that Flight uses so much end for very little speed, and hover does not. That's why everyone was 6-slotting hover.
Sure, lots of people would like to see the speed of hover increased, but I would rather see the speed of flight increased and it's end drain cut to level out closer to super speed or super jump. There's a reason why 90% of people take those two powers; they're fast and cheap to use.
If you put flight on somewhat similar footing, you'll no doubt see about as many fliers as you do jumpers and runners. I don't want to see flight faster than super speed, but I most definately don't want to have all my end drained using flight just to get across a zone. It's not very heroic (or villanous for that matter) to fly accross a city scape to fight a big battle only to tell your foe "wait a minute. I've got to catch my breath."
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I think the most important thing we should be getting across to the Devs is this:
This is a super hero game and aerial combat is a big part of the genre and should be part of the game. Its not. That alone should be worth your investigation.
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Something like this perhaps ?
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
An EvilGeko's wish for the Flight Power Pool
AIR SUPERIORITY - NO NERFS!
Justification - If it ain't broke; don't fix it!
HOVER - Base speed increased to base walking speed; flight speed enhancers moved to schedule C; protection to disorient
Justification - Slight speed increase, moving speed enhancers to C still only provides a bit more than now. The mez protection is just a balance with CJ immobilize protection. It would be nice if Hasten had Sleep protection for symmetry, but I won't push my luck.
FLIGHT - End the scaling. Power is as fast at level 14 as it is at level 50. Reduce endurance cost to that of SS.
Justification - As others have stated Flight at level 50 is more or less fine. The flight speed enhancer thing gives it a slight boost. Low level fliers no longer feel like a slow burden to their groups. Pre-Stamina; SOs flight doesn't drain you of endurance
GROUP FLIGHT - End any scaling. No additional cost for each teammate.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
Hover should be as fast as Sprint is. Exactly the same speed.
Fly needs to be slower than SJ, but the difference shoud be minimal for the following reasons.
SJ has some escape advatages built in that Fly does not, and a MUCH smaller Endurance cost, to boot.
Add to that that the speed of SJ currently is much greater than Fly even over a horizontal distance, making Jump dramatically faster at getting you out of range of anything you might happen to aggro. It is more than 40% faster, in fact, at getting you safely away.
Additionally, as other posters have pointed out, there is a huge selection of powers designed to bring a flyer down to earth, and much fewer for a SJer.
Fly's only real advantage is that it works well on indoor maps, where SJ and Teleport fail to have much of an effect. But even in that, Fly is outdone by Superspeed, which can propel you through spawns before they have a chance of reacting.