Underwater?

City of Heroes is my favorite computer game by far.

I can't sing enough of its praises.

However, I'm going to invoke the name of the evil, "other" game...World of Warcraft.

I played WoW for a few months because some friends got into it and I wanted some online/social time with them. The game was fine in its own way, but it just didn't grab me.

However, there was ONE aspect of WoW that I was fascinated with and thought would be a GREAT addition to City of Heroes...the ability to travel underwater.

The idea of Aquaman-esque characters and new enemy/ally/archetype factions like merfolk/lemurians/etc. just sounds too cool not to explore if it's possible.

I can already see a new power pool for waterbreathing and swimming.

Is it possible that this could come about one of these days?

Thanks!

This has been a much discussed topic over the years. In fact, an 'underwater zone' ranks right up there with a 'moon zone' as the most requested. There are likely several areas already in the forums if you search on 'water' and see past discussion (I did not check).

That said, they are toying with it. There is a small pool outdoors in Grandville somewhere where you can go underwater, and several areas within some of the Cimerora instance maps where you can swim under the stone bridges.

We can already swim underwater. They devs just haven't used it much yet. Maybe we'll see more of it in "Going Rogue". For now there's a Cimoran mission where you can swim underwater and a small pool in Grandville.

No need for a waterbreathing/swimming powerset.

City of Coralax.

A recent-ish text bubble change on the ITF has one of the 5th Column soldiers mentioning Atlantis - why this was changed remains a mystery - for now

I'm still not a fan of the idea. It just imposes far too many limitation and ignoring those limitations makes it just patently silly. Fire underwater, electricity underwater, freezing rain underwater, hurl boulder underwater... The list goes on. I don't want to get into it, but I just don't see it working.

And, yes, I've seen what Champions Online did with this. They landed right in the middle of the bullseye of "SILLY!!!"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Sam: What makes it worse is that Planetside got "water" effects right back in it's 2002-2003 beta and launch. Nothing like driving a Prowler over a bridge and into the water. (ker-plunk, ker-walk, ker-die 5 feet from the shore)

So where is this pool in Grandville? I'd like to add that to my tour list...

Anyways, I am per usual all for having underwater stuff. I mean, this game already allows you so much freedom of exploration, the sky literally being the limit, and yet the comparatively simple idea of going underwater is untouched.

But there are the matters others brought up...How do we breath? Well, we don't! It's not that odd of a concept to apply some sort of meter or time limit to swimming underwater, requiring you to come up for air periodically. Of course, there should likewise be ways to circumvent that limitation. A crafted or purchaseable temporary air tank? Or maybe alter a few powers to add protection from drowning, for example Force Field powers could easily provide air to those under their effects.

"But what about fire?" you say. This is where suspension of disbelief comes into play. It just wouldn't be fair to disallow certain powers for the sake of realism. At the risk of invoking the name of WoW: I never had any trouble setting things on fire while underwater. This was never explained, and frankly nobody cared. This is a game, one in which we fly around in technicolor spandex and shoot lasers from our eyes, not a model for reality. I'd advise you to try explaining how anything in this game is possible before asking whether or not things can burn underwater.

Sam please forgive me if I find your position humerous. I will agree with you 100 percent about the sci-fi perspective because there we want to believe it could actually happen, but when you apply it to the super hero genre it's funny. The natural laws of physics don't apply in this genre, and I'm not talking about the powers themselves but how they get used. We've seen comics/cartoons/etc. where a hero rescues/lifts/carries/flies an ocean liner, super tanker, toppling building and they don't collapse/tear apart at the stress points like they would in the real world. Or a giant crevasse appears during an earthquake and the hero grabs the ground and pushes the earth back together then welds the ground shut with his heat vision.

Just look at that recent Superman movie. Lex caused massive portions of the ocean floor to suddenly rise to the surface, and we saw giant crevasses open up underwater using supermans vision, and we saw Superman lift millions of tons of rock and fly it into space yet those siesmic events caused no massive tidal waves. What happened in the movie was at least as massive a siesmic event as the earthquake that occurred in the Indian Ocean in 2004 and killed 240,000 people in 11 countries.

I'm gonna be the only one to oppose this: /no

I'm galeophobic, and afraid of sharks, as I'm a huge wuss... Yeah, even in CoH. I know that the FIRST boss enemy is gonna be a big ol' Great White.

Yeah, it would be nice for some people, but I've got other things on my list of preferred.

Entrance to zone has an NPC whose dialog says "If you aren't able to survive for prolonged periods underwater our mages will enchant you when you enter".

Now we can all be buoyant and water breathing!