Vehicles!
hi. welcome to the forums and game. this idea is brought up over and over again and shot down due to various reasons. below is some good reading for you that will give you explinations as to why vehicles won't work and also some quick tips on searching.
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Disclaimer
Yes. This is a cut and paste reply that I keep handy, as well as a quick bit of instruction on how to search. Neither are meant to cause fights or to be insulting. The search instructions are in, not just because forum rules say flat out to search, but to help you and anyone else reading this use the search tool effectively.
The body of the cut and paste reply is the way it is because we've seen these arguments numerous times before. They're a summary of the salient points that come up each time. They are not here to insult you, make you feel stupid or otherwise "bring you down a peg." Instead, they are meant as instruction and information. Please read through the points and the explanation behind them to see the issues that are commonly brought up in response. They may not always match your suggestion 100% - in fact, you may have explained around one or two of them - but they're there for consideration and refinement of your idea.
Yes, I do look forward to the time, with some of these suggestions, that someone not only addresses all the points, but does so exceptionally well. It'll probably be added to the end of the cut/paste reply, with credit. For now, though, read and consider the points. They really are just there to help you, and move discussion along to help ideas evolve.
If you're going to see this and say an "evil forum vet is just shooting down your idea," or "You think you're the last word because of your post count," you're wrong. Heck, if you say the second, you've just worried more about my post count than I have in the last four plus years. Tongue-in-cheek comments in here are meant as humor, not put downs.
Searching Effectively
1. Click on "Search" up at the top of the forum.
2. On the left, under "Forum(s) to search," select "Suggestions and ideas."
3. On the right, Keyword Search Terms. This is probably where your problem was if you did search. Try the following, exactly as typed:
+vehicle -"re: "
This will search for anything with the string "vehicle" in the title.The -re: portion of it removes replies, so you'll see the root of every thread that comes up, letting you see just how many threads there are on this. (The last helps for other subjects, as well.)
Be sure to put the space between the colon and last quote.
4. Click the "In subject" radio button. This is a search, not a cute blonde in a bikini. Here, you want to ignore the body.
5. Leave Username Search blank.
6. Date range, Newer Than, change the 1 to a 3, and the time to Months.
7. Result format doesn't matter. Click on "Submit."
The subject at hand: Vehicles.
Vehicles as travel powers. This gets brought up a lot.
Short answer, don't expect it.
Long answer:
There are a lot of problems with the idea.
1. Movement.
Forward and back,even turning - ok. But you can do things that a vehicle can't - such as strafe (direct side to side or angular movement.) It doesn't work with a vehicle. There are also issues such as drift and "realistic" handling. We can go side to side, as mentioned, and make immediate right angle turns. Cars... not so much.
2. Movement, part 2.
Go stand in the road. No, not you personally. Take your character out and stand in the road, if you're heroside. Or even in the path of civilians. What happens? You get pushed. While not as big an issue with a motorcycle, perhaps, a car would have issues. What happens if two cars meet head on - yours and an NPC, or yours and another player's? Do you just pass through each other? Would you be satisfied with that very odd result? Or would you get stuck? How about those NPCs, can they walk and push your car, or are they walking through it? Neither answer is very satisfying, and intelligent, dynamic pathing is too computationally expensive.
3. Terrain.
Not every place has roads, or even makes sense for "off roading." Go look at Founder's Falls. Go look at Crey's Folley. Or Eden. Try to get to the north islands in Talos. What, do you have a kubelwagen? Look at the Pit in Sharkshead. Try to use your travel power (car) to get up to some of the doorways in high caves. Cars and motorcycles would be more like Superspeed - horizontal movement, period. And look - I'll be blunt - flat out *stupid* tied with, say, Combat Jumping or Superjump.
4. Combat.
You get ambushed on the way. How do you fight? Just have your powers blast out of the rolled up windows? How do you buff or debuff? EVERY power would need a new animation. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Then you want people with motorcycles instead of cars. Redo ALL the animations AGAIN. And they still wouldn't make sense - how do you use Footstomp in a car? Or Stalagmites?
5. Customizing.
Yeah, it would come up. Not everyone would want a sports car, or a mid-70s Buick boat, or an exotic, or a minivan, or whatever else.
6. Making "sense."
This was touched on in terrain - how do you get across water? How about the Shadow Shard? And if you want downright ridiculous looking, go do the heroside 25-34 Respec. Look at the Sky Skiffs inside of rooms or the reactor room. It makes no sense and looks *ridiculous.* Something that, yes, the devs try to avoid.
That's just a quick overview of why vehicles as generally envisioned aren't a spectacular idea for a travel power.
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you also can get a raptor pack(fly temp power) in Kings Row between lv's 5-9 by doing 3 radio missions and the safegaurd mission after those. the contact will show up on your map when you enter the zone. and if you are past lv 9 then at lv 10-14 you can get a zero-g jump pack(super jump temp power). but keep in mind that at lv 14 you can get a travel power of your choice if you have already taken the power pool that a travel power is in. you only have to take 1 power from the pool before you can take the travel power from the same pool.
also, you may want to check out paragonwiki.com for pretty much all the game info you would like to know as well as ask here on the forums.
This is the first impression the forums will ever get of you.
Congrats.
Hey Sharker! I see you don't have Bill's updated vehicle post, so I'll just quote your's and add the rest at the bottom.
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Disclaimer
Yes. This is a cut and paste reply that I keep handy, as well as a quick bit of instruction on how to search. Neither are meant to cause fights or to be insulting. The search instructions are in, not just because forum rules say flat out to search, but to help you and anyone else reading this use the search tool effectively.
The body of the cut and paste reply is the way it is because we've seen these arguments numerous times before. They're a summary of the salient points that come up each time. They are not here to insult you, make you feel stupid or otherwise "bring you down a peg." Instead, they are meant as instruction and information. Please read through the points and the explanation behind them to see the issues that are commonly brought up in response. They may not always match your suggestion 100% - in fact, you may have explained around one or two of them - but they're there for consideration and refinement of your idea.
Yes, I do look forward to the time, with some of these suggestions, that someone not only addresses all the points, but does so exceptionally well. It'll probably be added to the end of the cut/paste reply, with credit. For now, though, read and consider the points. They really are just there to help you, and move discussion along to help ideas evolve.
If you're going to see this and say an "evil forum vet is just shooting down your idea," or "You think you're the last word because of your post count," you're wrong. Heck, if you say the second, you've just worried more about my post count than I have in the last four plus years. Tongue-in-cheek comments in here are meant as humor, not put downs.
Searching Effectively
1. Click on "Search" up at the top of the forum.
2. On the left, under "Forum(s) to search," select "Suggestions and ideas."
3. On the right, Keyword Search Terms. This is probably where your problem was if you did search. Try the following, exactly as typed:
+vehicle -"re: "
This will search for anything with the string "vehicle" in the title.The -re: portion of it removes replies, so you'll see the root of every thread that comes up, letting you see just how many threads there are on this. (The last helps for other subjects, as well.)
Be sure to put the space between the colon and last quote.
4. Click the "In subject" radio button. This is a search, not a cute blonde in a bikini. Here, you want to ignore the body.
5. Leave Username Search blank.
6. Date range, Newer Than, change the 1 to a 3, and the time to Months.
7. Result format doesn't matter. Click on "Submit."
The subject at hand: Vehicles.
Vehicles as travel powers. This gets brought up a lot.
Short answer, don't expect it.
Long answer:
There are a lot of problems with the idea.
1. Movement.
Forward and back,even turning - ok. But you can do things that a vehicle can't - such as strafe (direct side to side or angular movement.) It doesn't work with a vehicle. There are also issues such as drift and "realistic" handling. We can go side to side, as mentioned, and make immediate right angle turns. Cars... not so much.
2. Movement, part 2.
Go stand in the road. No, not you personally. Take your character out and stand in the road, if you're heroside. Or even in the path of civilians. What happens? You get pushed. While not as big an issue with a motorcycle, perhaps, a car would have issues. What happens if two cars meet head on - yours and an NPC, or yours and another player's? Do you just pass through each other? Would you be satisfied with that very odd result? Or would you get stuck? How about those NPCs, can they walk and push your car, or are they walking through it? Neither answer is very satisfying, and intelligent, dynamic pathing is too computationally expensive.
3. Terrain.
Not every place has roads, or even makes sense for "off roading." Go look at Founder's Falls. Go look at Crey's Folley. Or Eden. Try to get to the north islands in Talos. What, do you have a kubelwagen? Look at the Pit in Sharkshead. Try to use your travel power (car) to get up to some of the doorways in high caves. Cars and motorcycles would be more like Superspeed - horizontal movement, period. And look - I'll be blunt - flat out *stupid* tied with, say, Combat Jumping or Superjump.
4. Combat.
You get ambushed on the way. How do you fight? Just have your powers blast out of the rolled up windows? How do you buff or debuff? EVERY power would need a new animation. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Then you want people with motorcycles instead of cars. Redo ALL the animations AGAIN. And they still wouldn't make sense - how do you use Footstomp in a car? Or Stalagmites?
5. Customizing.
Yeah, it would come up. Not everyone would want a sports car, or a mid-70s Buick boat, or an exotic, or a minivan, or whatever else.
6. Making "sense."
This was touched on in terrain - how do you get across water? How about the Shadow Shard? And if you want downright ridiculous looking, go do the heroside 25-34 Respec. Look at the Sky Skiffs inside of rooms or the reactor room. It makes no sense and looks *ridiculous.* Something that, yes, the devs try to avoid.
That's just a quick overview of why vehicles as generally envisioned aren't a spectacular idea for a travel power.
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That's just a quick overview of why vehicles as generally envisioned aren't a spectacular idea for a travel power.
Further discussion
This I think merits a bit of extra commentary, honestly.
"Vehicles" covers a lot of different ground for different people. Some only consider cars/jets/motorcycles vehicles. Others add jetpacks, wings and the like. Much of the above considers cars and similar sized vehicles, with nods to motorcycle type vehicles.
Jetpacks and such, I don't see happening as travel powers. As costume options for Flight? Or as invented pieces that interact with Fly, similar to wings? Absolutely - but they don't need to be a separate travel power for that. I'm all for more jetpack and wing (or combination) designs. Besides, there are so many "temp" jetpacks, I don't see introducing yet another one as really being feasable - just my opinion.
But vehicles - cars, specifically - as a travel power, have issues.
One way to have them "somewhat" work.
For all that, I know some people *would* still like to pull up in front of a mission. So how do we do it?
A temporary power, based on the same tech from the Mac/Valkyrie pack Mission Teleporter. The temporary power would:
(a) be an invention - dropping from enemies. (A reward, because you saved... well, we'll get to that,)
(b) be a single use each time - you can only hold one at a time, not one of each, one total.
(c) use rarely used salvage, because... it's rarely used, and cheap. No Luck Charms here.
(d) come in multiple varieties.
How does this get around the various issues?
Terrain - It doesn't pass terrain. It just arrives.
It follows the same 'rules' as the mission teleporter - it's not indoors, doesn't go to contacts, etc. Just mission doors.
Customizing - It's not "your" vehicle. It's a temp power. You've called a cab, limo, or other transport.
Power animation - since you're skipping the space in between, no powers can be used 'til you arrive anyway.
The varieties?
- Limo: Stereotypical slightly stretched black limo.
- Checker cab: The classic yellow cab.
thanks forb. i took it from a more recent post that someone had done that must have his old one still.
I'd be happy if we could just ride on existing vehicles. I've spent a long time trying to get on that blimp. Dang it! Let me on!
I've also tried to hitch rides on cars and trucks driving by. I still do, from time to time, even though I know I can't. I keep hoping that someday it will be an unannounced quality of life treat or an odd bug.
I like the idea of the temp power.
I could also go for a mission (safeguards, for example), that you jumped into a vehicle and it actually moved. So that instead of getting the load screen you would get a mini cutscene of the vehicle getting from here to there.
It may never happen, but I like to wish for silly things.
50s: Inv/SS PB Emp/Dark Grav/FF DM/Regen TA/A Sonic/Elec MA/Regen Fire/Kin Sonic/Rad Ice/Kin Crab Fire/Cold NW Merc/Dark Emp/Sonic Rad/Psy Emp/Ice WP/DB FA/SM
Overlord of Dream Team and Nightmare Squad
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I'd like them to add a "secret" room to the blimp, so we can go inside and look out over the zone.
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But if you can even get up to the blimp, you can already look out over the zone...
"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
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This is the first impression the forums will ever get of you.
Congrats.
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Not to spark false hope, but the Devs are on a serious roll lately. I mean, Power ustomization is like a massive breakthrough. Architect, issues aside, is something no other MMO can claim. And soon we're getting a morality system.
Just saying, you never know if vehicles are really impossible...
*Hopes REALLY @#$%ing hard...*
The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)
Virtue Forever.
They never said they were impossible. Unfeasible for a variety of reasons, (cons outweigh pros of adding them by a lot) but they could theoretically do it. The main con that i didn't see listed in they lengthy reply above is this.
What could they do to differentiate vehicles from current travel powers without turning the game into "City of Jetbikes"?...not a direct quote, but that's essentially one of Posi's concerns.
Furio--Lvl 50+3 Fire/Fire/Fire Blaster, Virtue
Megadeth--Lvl 50+3 Necro/DM/Soul MM, Virtue
Veriandros--Lvl 50+3 Crab Soldier, Virtue
"So come and get me! I'll be waiting for ye, with a whiff of the old brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable, with an unhappy bloody end!" Demoman, TF2
One of my very first dissappointments when I started playing city was the tram did NOT offer a view as you rode on it. I was thinking like boats from EQ or even kinda like the griffons in WoW.
...that is all
Personally, I wouldn't make it a Pool. I would make it unlockable somehow. In essence, require somebody to use a differant mode of transportation for awhile until they can get their ride. Said vehicle can have it's own avantages and disadvantages.
1) Functions like PFF. Massive Defense/Resistance buff, but you can't do anything but move. Additionally, it just plain disables all non-auto powers.
2) Ground speed would probably be close to SS, probably a bit slower. Air speed would be similar. The idea here is to find a middle ground between SS and Fly.
3) Disallow usage on instances. That would just be silly.
4) Possibly an interruptable cast time. That way you can't use the PFF effect to save your butt. It's debatable whether or not this should be added, I say yes because powers like Pocket D ports do for this very reason.
5) The really hard part: Adding a totally new custoization system.
6) The even harder part: Creating a throttle-based movement system. Replacing current controls with controls emulating a vehicle, Forward is gas, Back is brake, Left/Right turns. Bonus points if there's a horn button
The whole point of having a vehicle is just for show, frankly. There's really no strategic advantage. It's all so you can say "Hey, look at my sweet ride!"
Anyways, that was way too much typing that will likely bite me in the [censored] once somebody with a five-digit post count gets ahold of it.
The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)
Virtue Forever.
I'd love to be able to chose a super vehicle as one of my powers. Something you could upgrade as you gained levels would be awsome. Besides I'm tired of running everywhere.