I feel rooting players during attacks will be a HUGE mistake and entirely ruin the super hero feel of combat. Especially for melee characters, but for ranged ones as well.

Even in terms of PVP balance, if a melee character can lunge and quickly finish off a ranged opponent, allowing the ranged opponent to move away while attacking balances that out, so it's not really an issue to allow full mobility.

Super heroes move during combat a ton and not allowing this is likely going to ruin combat.

Let's look at another way rooting players during attacks would be bad- Getting out of aoe telegraphs. if you're locked in an animation throwing a punch, and cannot move while doing it, you will be hit by the bad zone.

I get where you are coming from and agree...mostly. I think the strongest attacks should have a root. It should require focus to fire off. That is also seen quite a bit in comics. Stand still, brace and let loose.

ShamanatDawn wrote:
Having only a few powerful attacks require you stand still would be ok, but not everything, and nearly all melee attacks should be mobile so the player can stay in range.

Also instead of animation locking people in place, have the attack cancel on movement so if an enemy is targeting you with something you need to dodge, you still can.

ZeeHero wrote:
Completely agree. Melee should never be rooted.

ZeeHero wrote:
I feel like simply cancelling the attack isn't enough. Throughout lore it seems like most "ultimate" attacks come at the expense of increased risk/vulnerability to the attacker. Maybe that's a trope, but it also seems fair intuitively. Like, maybe it cancels and also triggers a cooldown, I don't know. Otherwise you could spam your finishing move, dodge when necessary, and just hope/wait for the timing to sync up.

However it happens, I think there should be a consequence to mistiming an attack or chain. In reality there would probably be a consequence.

Another alternative to a cooldown, maybe moving would cancel the attack and also cost you at least some, if not all, of the resource that would have been consumed by the attack. Like, you were powering up, but the disruption caused your resource to be diffused. That also seems realistic and intuitive.

I really want to agree with this thread, but that one statement seems too simplistic/easy.

On a completely separate note, in my experience a standard keyboard is kind of klunky as an interface controller for interactive combat. I don't know why, but it seems like they're more suited to orthogonal motion, especially compared to game controllers, which are designed to be handled dimensionally (via grip) rather than in a planar fashion (i.e. hands hovering over buttons). If I think of something like Tekken, attacks are fundamentally motion-based not keybind-based, and at least half the game controller is devoted to motion-based inputs. A few other keyboard-driven games I can think of simulate motion during combat by having complex animations for what is a predetermined path or collision. I'd be interested to see how that plays out.

Anyway, I'm just mulling because it's late. I agree with the general idea.

But curious, is the suggestion that avatars not be rooted specifically during the attack animation? Like in CoX, you could pop an attack, move, and pop another, but you couldn't move during animations. And if you attacked out of range, you would auto-move to range and animate. I'm just wondering because if I'm jumping over a mob and attack with a sword-based attack mid-jump, how can SilverHelm be expected to animate for that particular physic (vector, relative aspect, velocity, etc.)?

The problem is animation lock negatively impacts the feel and flow of combat, how playing the game feels to the player. it doesn't feel smooth or fair to die because you were in animation lock. it feels punishing and unfair.

For game design purposes animation lock should be minimized as much as humanly possible.

It worked fine in City of Heroes. This isn't a highly-mobile action game like DCUO. I feel like moving while executing a Crane Kick (the example they used in the interview) is silly and impossible to animate.

alltrueist wrote:
SOME moves could root as long as they do not cause animation lock. but for the sake of this games future success I hope it is actiony and highly mobile. it's a super hero game for crying out loud. One reason I never got into City of heroes is I never felt like a super hero. combat sucked ass.

City of Heroes was a game in a now extinct market. This is 2017. Games have to adapt and change over time and become more modern.

To put things in perspective, even ancient MMOs like World of Warcraft do not root you during attacks, especially not melee, but not ranged either. Ranged casters don't get rooted, they just have to stop moving to finish a cast in those games.

it would be a HUGE mistake from a very basic game design perspective to lock players into place while animating their attacks, in any game, it was a mistake in city of heroes and it will be one here.

I am not overly pleased with the recent East Asian games where you live or die by your skill in dodging and positioning your angle of attack. It places too much weight on the manual skill of the RL player rather than picking the right power (and the right character) for the job. This may be great if you intend your game for serious e-sports competitions, but that seems very remote from the target audience for a spiritual successor to City of Heroes. And for the record I flat out disagree with the opinion that the system in CoH was flawed. I was able to play the game during the years when I had a great deal of trouble with repetitive stress injury to my wrists due to my then job, and this would have been quite hard with modern games that require constant maneuvers even for basic non-boss PvE combat. I got used to the particular flow of the game before we were even out of beta and never thought about it for the rest of the game's lifetime. While I think that you can certainly have a spiritual successor to CoH with or without rooting during attacks, I still feel that a focus on the abilities of the character rather than the RL player is at least part of that legacy.

I realize that no matter what the outcome here, one of us will be disappointed. Sometimes you simply can't have all options. So I must live with that. But I want to say that it is not quite as simple as the original poster makes it sound. You can go too far in the other direction, at least too far for some of us.

If you think City of Heroes sucked ass then you're probably not the audience for this game. Again, DCUO is a very actiony game, you should try that out and see if it fits more what you're looking for.

alltrueist wrote:
I think you're missing the point. Living or dying by positioning is literally how every successful game does high end content. it's much more engaging than simply picking the right powers and being handed a win based on that.

If VO goes the route of limited mobility I fear it will fail as a superhero game.

After reading the interview on provengamer.com, I will have to side with the devs and go with needed balance for the game. I had no real issues with CoH's gameplay so am fine with rooting. If I want an arcade action game I can go play DCUO or Marvel Heroes or countless FPS games. I'm confident we will see other advancements to tell us it is a game for 2017.

We did experiment with mobility-supportive motions/animations and found that it made balancing the experience very hard. In one situation we had a ranged characters moving and attacking, maintaining an impossible-to-close gap between melee characters. To counter we experimented with giving melee character lunge attacks to close gaps, but in some cases, especially PvP situations, a melee character that was well-positioned during a combat scenario could dash to a ranged target, floor them, and finish them off rather quickly. Aside from that issue, we also experienced what we refer to as floating melee. Some melee attacks such as sword or staff attacks felt like it had reasonable impact during strafing and running, but it’s really hard to implement a martial arts style standing kick without sliding the character around on one foot. To really give the game proper balance, and to support the types of animations we’re creating for the game, we had to root players

ZeeHero wrote:
City of Heroes had 'tells' towards the end of its life in the higher end content where you had to move out of an AoE. Probably not exactly what you wanted but it was present and you couldn't just sit in one place spamming powers.

SavageFist wrote:
The problem is animation locking characters (even in melee!) is NOT done in most successful games and they balance things just fine. If they are having to restrict movement so severely to "balance" melee and ranged they are doing something wrong.

SavageFist wrote:
And locking characters in place while attacking will only make smart mechanics like these into punishing mechanics becuase you won't be able to MOVE you'll be trapped in an animation lock!

If they do this, EVERYONE will be a Dragoon.

ZeeHero wrote:
We had no problems avoiding these telegraphed attacks. Some of the worst powers were probably around 2-3 seconds and those were not the majority while they had the requisite oomph to be deserving of a rooted attack, something that you pointed out above was ok for the most powerful attacks. Some of the alpha powers like from blasters could hardly be considered harmful timewise like Nova or Inferno. Going to use Thunderous Blast or Full Auto, well yes they do take longer but you get to do them as a ranged attack not a PBAoE.

Some people complained CoH was slow but coming from other 'action' games like GW2 or ESO, I really don't see them better or worse because you could move while attacking. The tradeoff appeared to be getting 4 to 6 powers that you just spam which to me was boring. If rooting has to be implemented so I can again play on a team of all defenders, get a controller with a proper hold that is longer than 2 seconds, mix and match just about any archetype and come out on top, etc then I will gladly take the rooting. It is really moot though as the devs already tried to make the game without rooting and decided they could not balance this type of game with it included.

ZeeHero wrote:
Even if this is true, the success of those games could be due to other factors like genre or graphics. City of Heroes / Villains fended off competitors that were newer, were based on existing intellectual property, and had the opportunity to learn from CoH's mistakes. If they could have succeeded by making the game rely on the players' manual dexterity, they would happily have done so. But CoH was still the leading superhero MMORPG when it was shut down and has remained the gold standard ever since. So a more character-based approach hardly seems like a deadly sin.

I also believe a game that relies less on elite gaming skills will draw a greater proportion of families and casual players, which was one of the strengths of the CoH community. Community matters less to grow a large following, but it matters in retaining a loyal player base.

Perhaps if the game engine allows, they could add high-level content that relies more on manual dexterity. But the notion that rooting players during attacks should in itself be a cause of failure seems to be an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof, like reference to a game in the same or similar genre that achieved great success through position-based combat without also having better graphics, existing intellectual property, or other obvious benefits. So far I can't think of any such game.

The only game which ever did rooted attacks right that I've ever played was Champions Online and this is becuase you could instantly STOP using the attack at any time by releasing the button and then be able to move.

Also most melee and some ranged attacks still allowed full mobility, it made combat fun and engaging and its why I didnt touch City of Heroes for more than an hour and opted to play the game which did combat correctly, even if said game eventually devolved into something bad becuase of neglect and poor management.

If they cannot even understand the fantasy and allow our heroes mobility to feel like, y'know actual SUPER HEROES, I will continue playing FFXIV and not bother with this game.

I will be SURE to post my feedback on the system during alpha and I pray for VO's sake they change it to something workable which feels heroic and not slow and pedestrian.

As you can tell I feel extremely strongly on this issue becuase combat is the most basic way of conveying the super hero feeling in a game. if they cannot make it feel right, then they have failed.

I never had an issue feeling like a super hero in City of Heroes. The sheer amount of powers, power effects, the amount of foes you could fight at one time(something rarely seen in fantasy MMOs) especially in groups and the mix/match dynamic of archetypes made me feel very powerful. I did sign up for FFXIV for a month recently but can't stand the travel and how one small 3ft hill is a barrier to my legendary hero, the same problem I ran into in WoW, GW2 and ESO. I only played up to around level 15 so maybe the game becomes more dynamic but other than the story, beautiful environments and interaction with the persistent world(something I hope VO can implement), I would take CoH combat over FFXIV. I will also trade rooting for travel powers anytime so molehills and small walls do not make me feel less heroic though I do have a nemesis in the omnipotent power of bushes in these superhero games that stop you dead in your tracks.

SavageFist wrote:
your problem is you never tried jumping over the rocks or bushes. you also only played up to level 15, you didn't even get your mount yet. you can't say you've given the game a decent try until you've at least got past the first trial or 2.

Also I'll point out that you're not a legendary hero until you defeat your first evil god (Primal). this happens at roughly level 20 and you only become more legendary from there.

But going back to the point, It won't matter how many effects or powers there are if using them feels clunky, slow, and immobile. You need to experience the joy of moving while using all your powers, having a duel with a villain or a practice match with another hero as you fly and jump all over the place chasing each other landing hits and missing sometimes, (actually missing not RNG stat miss). Once you have experienced good combat in a super hero game (like how Champions Online managed to do, although it could have been even better) there is no going back to the outdated system City of Heroes succeeded despite having.