A new way to travel: Waldram's Stutter Warp
The 'Give remote grid access to all profs' thread on the Next Patch forum died for me when Lilnymph drove the point home to me that asking for more of the same, only now for everyone, was a very easy and totally not original thing to do, and while I disagreed that giving Grid to the masses was that big a deal, I do dislike copycatting and unoriginality, and had to agree with her that coming up with something else would be much much better.
In the end of that thread I took it upon me, and indeed encouraged others, to think of some NEW kind of travel thingy.
Which was very hard, because in RL there is only one way of travelling, and in AO there are only 2.
In RL, as in AO, travel consists of going places through normal space, and so if you want to go from point A to point Z, you HAVE to go through all the other letters in order to get there. Taking a train, plane, car or just hoofing it, they are all just variables in speed.
In AO we run everywhere, and even our planes and cars are only just a modifier to our basic Run Speed, so that if you are a fast runner your plane goes faster too, which looks absolutely absurd once you write it down, but I find AO gets easier to play if you disconnect your logical processes (but try to retain your common sense). The bottom line of this is that any improvement for any prof in the way of normal space travel in AO would boil, once you remove the trivia, down to a simple Run Buff.
This is a problem for someone trying to come up with a new transportation mode. It's a problem because Run Buffs are a Fixer speciality, and so there might be some objections from them.
Not that it really matters, because a Run Buff for other profs would just be more copycatting, and in fact even less original than the public grid evac idea, and so for me it's a complete and utterly forbidden no-go area.
This brings us over to the OTHER way of travelling, available ONLY to the blessed inhabitants of Rubi-Ka, which is the shortcut. We have 2 short cuts, Grid or Whompah, both of which means that we don't have to go through all those tedious 24 other letters of the alphabet (3 more if you're Scandinavian, and the Chinese are of course a completely different matter). The Whompahs are a completely fixed, no travel needed at all between A and Z kind of short cut, and the Grid requires a bit of movement, but not very much compared to the actual, normal space distance travelled (although if you decided to go from Old Athens to West Athens by Grid you might find that just running there would have been faster, especially since there is only one zoning involved in running there).
So, to sum up what everyone already know, each individual Whompah has one or two fixed destinations, with NO travel needed for same, and each individual Grid Term is, in potentia, connected to all other Grid Terms, with SOME travel needed for your destination.
And if I can't give (the word give here used in the extreme circumstance that my idea would actually be used) another prof a Run Buff, then I would have to give them a short cut.
Giving another prof their very own kind of Whompah structure I did not even consider...
The Grid (or something Grid like) is completely out of course, and although I did have (I think) a kick-ass idea for MP transportation, I deemed that one to at least vaguely resemble the Grid, at least to hostile eyes (and I do believe that at least some of the eyes that saw it would be hostile), and so I have canned that one for now.
Which bring us to the finale of this extremely long, tedious and pompous post: My idea for a new way of travelling, and this one is for Engineers. I don't think anyone will argue that Engies don't deserve SOMETHING, and this one could be considered some kind of consolation prize at least, seeing as the whole pathing thing seems to be taking some time.
So with no further painful drawing out of time, here is my idea:
Waldram's Stutter Warp
The Engineer forms a miniature warp gate anomaly around himself and his pet, and by manipulating the anomaly uses this to 'jump' relatively short distances within his LoS. The effect of this is that the Engineer can travel 1 (one) map square at a time in the direction he chooses. Some care should be taken while using the stutter warp, as trying to zone while using it might result in a crossdimensional superstring conflict, with catastrophic results for the Engineer.
Requirements:
Nano Cost: 50
Cast: 1 sec
Recharge: 1 sec
NCU: 1
QL: 50
Prof: Engineer
Lvl: 50
MM 230
MC 230
TS 230
Not in combat
If used while changing zones, 10% chance of big spectacular explosion, and a swift return to Reclaim
Ok, first of all, the numbers on display here are all taken pretty much out of thin air, and are of course debatable. I put a lvl req (which I consider to be evil) because FC seems to like them very much, and I'm trying to package it a bit here. Ditto the zoning penalty.
Points I'd very much like to have people debate in addition to numbers, reqs and penalty:
1: Is there even any point? Would it result in an actual increase in travel speed?
1a: If there is a point, would the travel speed gained be WAY TOO much?
1b: If there is a point, should it be implemented, and how hard would that be?
2: Should it be part of a line of nanos, so that the uber Nobel engineers could warp 2, 3, 4, 5 map squares at a time?
3: Is it unfair to give the Engies this? Meaning, will it detract from some other prof?
And this concludes todays presentation...
Been playing Giants recently?
I see what you are saying, and your discussion is excellent. I envisioned what you are saying is akin to the sea nymph movement in Giants, which was utterly amazing to play. I think this is a great idea, for both engies, who need something cool, and for MA - who would benefit from it as the Nymph did in Giants.
I see two main problems. both of them are old boring debates I would rather referrence than bring up for yet another endless rehashing of old threads.
Point 1 is that we are an RPG rather than a FPS. It seeems that many people have taken this arguement to a panacea of all woes and great excuse. It seems that some people feel that the numbers game is more important than the viceral feel, and so in this case if someone were to warp, and the dice had already been roled in the transaction, the effect would still hit. you can see this when buffing someone running away from you, the buff will still take place, even if at the end of the cast, the target is out of range. My conclusion to this part of the argument, is that some people enjoy playing the game while in altered states of consiousness, and anything approaching FPS behavior would cause them to spill their beer, and not beable to play.
Point 2. AO doesnt do a good job of distances. Lets face it, there are rubber band warps, black doors, pet pathing issues, mobs stuck on chairs, ranges are not an important factor for most items, there is no height or distance advantage, mobs on the horizon that are attacked appear immediately at the attacker and so on. The visual and distance range does not factor deeply into gameplay. If distance / range / height were to be fixed, then this would be amazing way to play. for example, an engie would run into the main room, get everyone to aggro, then warp to a place of safety. this would provide enough time for the rest of the team to get their alpha strikes and nukes off, and the croud of mobs would be decimated, meanwhile engie continues to pop off his pistols at the survivors.
My feeling is that if distance mechanics were reexamined, and the drunken inflexible rpg flamers were silenced (or just stoned further), then this would provide a strong addition to the game.
(on the point of zones, I would rather see them get rid of zones all together, with one large continous gameplay area. If the code could be elevated to a yet unavailable level the only thing i could see us loosing with zones is the ability to soft reboot your character by zoning)
Ani
