Idea: Super Hero Vehicles


Aett_Thorn

 

Posted

From what I'm getting while playing city of heroes is that a travel power is kind of a necessity. Its not NEEDED, but getting around fog areas such as Dark Astoria is really better if you've got fly or super speed or jumping. Super hero vehicles would be so cool because you could cruise around with your SG in a souped up Transport vehicle with your SG's emblem on the front or you could ride solo and grab a bike and cruise around town without having to choose a transport power. This could even expand to having small jet planes for flight or helicopters. You could also give the vehicle upgrades like weapons or jets, for more influence/ prestige at a shop.

The lowdown looks like this.

Vehicles can be purchased with influence or prestige, but prestige gives you more seats in your vehicle and gives you flying vehicles.

USING INFLUENCE:
Motorcycles,
Small two seat sports cars.

PRESTIGE VEHICLES:
Larger vehicles such as trucks or transport vehicles.
Small jet planes.
Helicopters.

kind of a quirky idea, but it has some serious potential versus getting the transport power. It would also make traffic more of a hazard rather than just a moving wall. If your car crashed, you would have to pay for its repairs. Thoughts anyone?


 

Posted

Short answer;

Not possible with the Engine we have. Not practical; How do you strafe or jump in a vehicle? Would require literal craptons of new art assets. Have been deemed not even on any sort of burner, ever.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha View Post
Short answer;

Not possible with the Engine we have. Not practical; How do you strafe or jump in a vehicle? Would require literal craptons of new art assets. Have been deemed not even on any sort of burner, ever.
There really is no strafe, Q and E buttons turn the vehicle or mouse turns. Space Bar could either activate a boost or could activate an airlift to lift the vehicle in the air (or in the case of flying vehicles make it ascend).

Man you tried to shoot this down quick. I'm not trying to disrespect you in any way, but this is only a suggestion, I only wanted the peoples opinion of this.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Whardel View Post
There really is no strafe, Q and E buttons turn the vehicle or mouse turns. Space Bar could either activate a boost or could activate an airlift to lift the vehicle in the air (or in the case of flying vehicles make it ascend).

Man you tried to shoot this down quick. I'm not trying to disrespect you in any way, but this is only a suggestion, I only wanted the peoples opinion of this.
You have to understand that this is a very common suggestion. Those of us that tend to frequent the suggestions and ideas forum see this come up a decent amount. Most people don't search for other, similar suggestions, so don't account for the same problems that others forgot to account for.

You say that there's no strafing, but that would mean that the Q and E buttons would need two different mappings, and the game would need to be able to tell if you're in a vehicle or not.

Also, other things that are often brought up when an idea likes this comes up:

How do you handle powers in the vehicles? Do you turn them off completely? If so, this makes vehicles less useful than individual travel powers by far. Or, do you create new animations for when you're in the vehicles? This takes 5*2*3*9*10 (plus a few for the EATs) = 3240 new animations PER VEHICLE. Just as a rough idea, that's equivalent to about 120 new powersets in terms of workload.

Also, how does the car handle water? The motorcycle? How do they drive up sheer cliffs? If they can't do these things, then normal travel powers are still better once again.


Basically, to do vehicles, you either need to do a TON of work, or they end up being less useful than travel powers, or both. As such, it's seen as a very, very, very low priority.


Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus

 

Posted

Suggestions and Ideas tip: If it seems like an obvious request odds are it has been made before in the last 7 years so a search in the Suggestions and Ideas forum might be in order before posting.


total kick to the gut

This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.

 

Posted

A cursory search of "Travel vehicles" gives 2 pages of threads, in the suggestions section alone. So if it appears abrupt of us to "shoot you down," you may want to take a moment and think of where we're coming from. We've seen this exact same idea several times.

There are many reasons why vehicle travel isn't likely to happen, some of which have already been covered by the people before me.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Whardel View Post
There really is no strafe, Q and E buttons turn the vehicle or mouse turns. Space Bar could either activate a boost or could activate an airlift to lift the vehicle in the air (or in the case of flying vehicles make it ascend).

Man you tried to shoot this down quick. I'm not trying to disrespect you in any way, but this is only a suggestion, I only wanted the peoples opinion of this.
Whardal, don't take it personally when people respond to "I only wanted the peoples opinion of this." with "a simple search would have given you peoples opinion as well as a great many reason as why this will either not work or require a cost prohibitive amount of developer time to create."

We've seen the suggestion, repeatedly. Being new to the forums, you probably didn't make a quick search to see if it had been suggested and the responses to it.

Don't take this to mean that you should 'lrn2search n00b' or that you should bugger off. We actually like seeing new people around, and you will find this to be the friendliest, most helpful community of any MMO.

Welcome.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha View Post
Short answer;

Not possible with the Engine we have. Not practical; How do you strafe or jump in a vehicle? Would require literal craptons of new art assets. Have been deemed not even on any sort of burner, ever.
...Actual literal craptons? I am not familiar with this unit of measure. And I'm not sure I want to be.


"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...

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Whardel View Post
Man you tried to shoot this down quick. I'm not trying to disrespect you in any way, but this is only a suggestion, I only wanted the peoples opinion of this.
I love Bill's cut and pastes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill

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.
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.
This idea has been discussed hundreds of times over the past 6 years and none of the flaws have been resolved.


 

Posted

There's another game where the problems being discussed are eliminated in the following way:

When you're in the vehicle All or Nearly All of your standard powers are grayed out and a Completely New UI appears, giving you access to special abilities only usable while in the vehicle.

Wouldn't something like that pretty much solve all the problems that have been brought up?


THEN the issue becomes: such a system pretty much requires brand new content that demands the use of these vehicles, which is not the original idea (sg vehicles to run around the game in).

Which brings us back to the real issue which is that although vehicles are cool, they simply aren't necessary the way the game is designed. Travel powers make them unnecessary, the relatively small size of zones makes them unnecessary, and most "travel" in this game of the distance that might Require a vehicle (even for supers with travel powers) is handled "off panel" while zoning.

"There's a Council base on an island off the Chinese coast. Infiltrate it and take the Base Commander into custody" *Team jumps into a boat in IP* The next thing we see is a splash screen before we zone into the Council Base or an outdoor map of said island. Flying across North America and the Pacific in our SG Airship doesn't get displayed to us. Nor should it.


Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavicle View Post
There's another game where the problems being discussed are eliminated in the following way:

When you're in the vehicle All or Nearly All of your standard powers are grayed out and a Completely New UI appears, giving you access to special abilities only usable while in the vehicle.

Wouldn't something like that pretty much solve all the problems that have been brought up?
No. Just real quick, if it would work like a mix of Walk and Kheld shapeshifts do now you'd still have:
  • Strafing issues
  • Water use/Swimming issues
  • Probably still going to have the "can't get to the mission door" problem without any form of jump
  • Going to look really bizzare in places like The Pit in Sharkhead (Why yes, I did just climb a 75 degree angle in my car)
  • Regular citizens pushing your car out of their way (Although that little old lady on the corner tossing your supermobile into the next lane would explain why the muggers can't seem to grab a purse)
  • Potentially being either less useful than current Superspeed or too powerful compared to Superspeed depending on what the alternate powers are
  • Potentially looking really stupid in anything but an outdoor map


"Mastermind Pets operate...differently, and aren't as easily fixed. Especially the Bruiser. I want to take him out behind the woodshed and pull an "old yeller" on him at times." - Castle

 

Posted

One thing I always thought would be kinda cool is a sg vehicle that is just displayed in

the base. Kinda like the flyers and other base items you get as vet rewards. Totally

custom from a variety of different types of vehicles.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkGob View Post
...Actual literal craptons? I am not familiar with this unit of measure. And I'm not sure I want to be.
You just became familiar with it. It's a quantity that, just by thinking about it, causes discomfort

Quote:
Originally Posted by Red Valkyrja View Post
Whardal, don't take it personally when people respond to "I only wanted the peoples opinion of this." with "a simple search would have given you peoples opinion as well as a great many reason as why this will either not work or require a cost prohibitive amount of developer time to create."

We've seen the suggestion, repeatedly. Being new to the forums, you probably didn't make a quick search to see if it had been suggested and the responses to it.

Don't take this to mean that you should 'lrn2search n00b' or that you should bugger off. We actually like seeing new people around, and you will find this to be the friendliest, most helpful community of any MMO.

Welcome.
And this. Believe me, I'd love to have certain Characters use vehicles. I'd love to have my Arachnos Commander get dropped off in a Command Flyer, or some of my Heroes to use personalised Longbow Chasers to zip around.
But it's also pretty nigh impossible.

And yeah, welcome to the forums


Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

 

Posted

Wrapping up the forum.

Duely noted, there would have to be some seriously new content for this so this idea probably won't happen. But it still would be cool.

Yes, I understand that my idea is quite ambitious.

Sorry for any disrespect or annoyance I caused anyone, I should have realized that this idea probably would have been posted before.

Thanks for not being to harsh.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Whardel View Post
Wrapping up the forum.

Duely noted, there would have to be some seriously new content for this so this idea probably won't happen. But it still would be cool.

Yes, I understand that my idea is quite ambitious.

Sorry for any disrespect or annoyance I caused anyone, I should have realized that this idea probably would have been posted before.

Thanks for not being to harsh.
You weren't disrespectful, and the only annoyance you caused anyone was by bringing up a suggestion we have seen literally hundreds of times in the last 7 years. Which isn't really that big of a deal, we're used to it.

Your attitude in return contributed a lot to the lack of harshness.

You accepted that the idea is not feasible, and has been suggested many times before, so the people responding to you did so politely. Now, if you had come back to the thread saying something along the lines of: "This is the best idea about anything anyone has EVER had, and you're all brain dead morons for not agreeing with every word I say!", you probably would have gotten a very different reaction.

(I say this because people occasionally do respond to criticism of their idea like that, and they get bent out of shape when they are met with scorn)

Welcome to the game and the forums!


Quote:
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

 

Posted

All needed mechanics for vehicles are already in game. If you dont get it you have only lack of imagination. You dont "jump" anywhere. It's just shapeshift. All Techbots "difficulties" are just excuses. Only difficulty is that vehicles are probably too big to be practical inside missions. Thats all.

edit. crashing system is not possible with engine but shapeshifting to vehicle form is easy part. Signed for tiny flyers but unsigned for big cars.


Prunejuice is warriors drink.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by zachary_EU View Post
All needed mechanics for vehicles are already in game. If you dont get it you have only lack of imagination. You dont "jump" anywhere. It's just shapeshift. All Techbots "difficulties" are just excuses. Only difficulty is that vehicles are probably too big to be practical inside missions. Thats all.

And here we see Zach is demonstrating the type of response that Claws explained would have gotten a different response. You'll notice how Zach is being deliberately insulting when he says

Quote:
If you dont get it you have only lack of imagination.
and

Quote:
All Techbots "difficulties" are just excuses.
then he summarily dismisses any opinion other than his own by saying

Quote:
Only difficulty is that vehicles are probably too big to be practical inside missions. Thats all.
This type of hostile post almost always draws negative responses from other players.


Thanks for the assist Zach that was a great example of how some of the arguments get started on the forums.


 

Posted

Sorry about being hostile.


Prunejuice is warriors drink.

 

Posted


Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

 

Posted

I think because we all like this game so much it could sometimes cause little bit too emotional texts but it not looked that bad when I wrote that. No bad feelings Techbot.


Prunejuice is warriors drink.

 

Posted

None taken, it's just that calling an artist 'unimaginative' may result in some very imaginative comebacks to said comment


Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by zachary_EU View Post
I think because we all like this game so much it could sometimes cause little bit too emotional texts but it not looked that bad when I wrote that. No bad feelings Techbot.
No, Techbot's pretty much spot on.

I see more issue with ground vehicles than air:
Ok, BAM, you're morphed into a car. Your character used to be able to turn while standing still. Will the car?

If you can, It'll look pretty damn stupid rotating along its axis.
If you can't... if you have to be moving forward or backward to facilitate turning... well that's a mighty big inconvenience... and tech that isn't there.

Now, let's look at the roads. They aren't really scaled like roads in driving games. They're narrower, contain more interruptions (intersections) and have very VERY abrupt turns. Running players regularly dodge, shift to the sidewalk, and leap over stuff.

Players as vehicles, you noted, wouldn't have jump. They'd unrealistically come to a dead stop when colliding with pedestrians, other cars, or curbside obstacles. Their collision boxes are wider, making this even more challenging... and the game already has a speed cap that's hit by runners... so... again, no real benefit for a lot more inconvenience.



-------------


What I could see:

- A vehicle that serves as a kind of "insta teleporter" (particularly air vehicle). You summon your Longbow flyer. It swoops in and lands (much like how MM pets tend to appear from the periphery) and you click on it, select destination zone, and it swoops away (start loading screen).

Granted, if I'm gonna have a car that just blinks in, screeches to a halt, then screeches away before blinking out of existence, it better be a Delorean.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by chase_arcanum View Post
granted, if i'm gonna have a car that just blinks in, screeches to a halt, then screeches away before blinking out of existence, it better be a delorean.
great scott!


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Quote:
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

 

Posted

Of course it looks stupid but its possible. Thats the difference


Prunejuice is warriors drink.

 

Posted

I thought that I wrapped this up already, but Zach seems to have brought new fire into this, so i'll douse the fire before it burns into an arguement.

Again, turning is probably going to be the ultimate issue here. Can the car turn? Well "a" and "d" as strafe for the character would have to be unused in the car, requiring new content. "Q" and "E" would have to be the "key" keys used here, lol. Space bar would also be a problem and powers as well. Using an eagle strike in a car just don't work. You just bust your radio wide open and possibly destroy the transmission. So bottom line for all people who post after me, READ THIS!!

In order for Super Hero Vehicles to be a reality, new content must be made.

The idea is possible, not probable.