In-Fight Arena Hazards
In another discussion today, I was reminded of something that was mentioned a long time ago in a Dev Diary: Arena Hazards. The idea here was that there would be some kind of obstacle or hazard in the fight arena for the player to contend with. It seems like a really cool idea to me and I wanted to see what the community's take on it would be. An easy to imagine version of this would be Wall Spikes.
I imagine it would work something like: the back wall on either side of the arena is spiked. When either champion is backed into or knocked against their wall, they suffer a burst of X% of the opponent's attack as physical damage. This would incentivize aggressive gameplay and heavy chaining against the wall for huge damage payoffs. In turn, it would disincentivize more passive or defensive playstyles such as Quake's. It would additionally serve as a Quake counter node that does not necessarily harm other evade-reliant champions such as Spider-Ham or Elsa Bloodstone.
There are plenty of other forms this idea could take as well. There could be a kind of Tug-of-War mechanic where different buffs or debuffs activate depending on which side of the center line the combatants are on. There could be a Spotlight on a certain section of the arena negating Miss effects while in that zone. Combine that with Tunnel Vision as a node and that could be a fun interaction. There's really no limit to what a clever designer could come up with when using this kind of mechanic.
So, what do y'all think? Would you want to see something like this in-game? Do you have other ideas of how you'd implement it? I'm personally super excited by the idea and would love to see it explored.
