In-Fight Arena Hazards
Wicket329
Member Posts: 3,412 ★★★★★
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.
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.
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Comments
I'm a bit skeptical about this kind of thing in MCOC, specifically because our computer AI might not be able to handle it. If Kabam doesn't improve the AI to deal with these kinds of effects, they become too powerful to hand to us to use. Instead they become a weapon to be used against us exclusively. I'm not fond of game mechanics that are handed only to the AI and never to the players.
However, the Mephisto’s aura comparison is interesting. As of right now, the AI doesn’t care if your champion has an aura active and it does not result in overpowered abilities. As long as the damage is scaled to your attack as compared to the opponent’s health, I don’t think it would be overly powerful. But then again, it’s impossible to know for sure without seeing some kind of iteration of it.
That said, if you could see the node beforehand and could then bring in specific champions to counter/have fun with it, maybe. Then again, checking it out before every fight seems pretty monotonous and time-consuming, so I don't know if I necessarily like that idea.
What would be the payoff? Just some flavor to the fight or actual improved rewards somehow?
Hopefully they first introduce as a test or something like the root mechanic. This could add another dimension of challenges and help design harder content or add something new to future story content and the like.
Besides defensive nodes and oscillate, the current AI doesn't care which nodes are active and will do anything
@Chikel I’m imagining this in late game content, after players have demonstrated proficiency with so many other mechanics already. And not every space-based interaction would result in direct damage to either you or your opponent. In fact, I’d think that very few would. I’d rather see something like different buffs applying to the combatants depending on where they are or Miss not working within a certain chunk of the battlefield. Things that alter who you choose and how you fight.
Maybe there’s a Line of Fire. Crossing that line inflicts incinerate on whoever crosses it. You could choose to fight in such a way as to never cross the line, so you could use anybody. You could just pick an incinerate immune champ who can ignore it completely, or you could pick somebody like Red Hulk, Human Torch, Sunspot, Silver Surfer, or Mephisto who would actively benefit from dancing all over that line.
Using specific placements on the map of the fight for effects to occur just opens up a whole new realm of mechanics to be explored and could add a ton of depth and new challenges.
It's sounds a bit reminiscent of that "if you're close to the opponent at the end of the timer, they get a regen or unstoppable buff. If you're far away, you get one" node, whatever it's called. I always liked that one.
The biggest thing I like about this is that there are just so many ways to do it. We’re only scratching the surface here, I’m sure there are tons of cool interactions that a Dev could come up with. And this whole thing could just be done with nodes, but we don’t have many nodes (exceptions would be like backboard brawler) that play off of where the fight is in the arena.