Sorry to take so long to get back to you, Redlynne.
No worries.
No complaints.
To be honest, the mere fact that an Analysis Of Alternatives approach is taken, in which the pros/cons of other options are weighed and measured (by people
IN THE KNOW™) is the greatest confidence builder of your response.
I'm not expecting every notion to be taken on board and implemented (let alone promised) ... but having confirmation that outside notions and inputs are at least Entertained For Analysis is excessively important for transparency, which ultimately yields high confidence that whatever ideas "win out" in the end will be the best possible implementation, rather than simply being the First/ONLY interpretation considered (all others need not apply).
For PFF, it's a bit of a moot point now that I've changed it again, but at the time it was indeed using that method; a timed toggle that turns itself off after a set period. The reason it's got a lockout on top of that is basically just so that I can give it a short-ish recharge without worrying about the uptime on the effect getting way too high at extreme levels of global recharge.
I saw the patch note update for PFF changing to a Self Only effect after 30 seconds ... which is a very reasonable modification.
However, this does concern me on the point of "telegraphing" to the Player that "their time is up" and that the function of the power is going to shift.
Being able to keep track of a 30 second duration
while busy fighting in combat is not a Player Skill that most of us will have (a rare few will, but they will tend to be the exception, kind of like how some people can handle
Bullet Hell gameplay as if it were nothing).
Ideally speaking, you would want any kind of "Player Facing Telegraph" indicating that "your 30 seconds are almost up!" to be something which is client specific only (so other Players can't see the telegraph).
The simplest option would be something like putting an indicator ring around the power in the power tray (use a different color than other functions) so that a Player who is paying attention can notice.
Even more ideally speaking, you would want to put a countdown NUMBER superimposed over the power's icon in the tray, displaying how much time is left before the power reverts down into a Self Only effect.
An alternative option for this "Player Facing Telegraph" would be to do something with/around the character avatar (such as a transparency fade in/fade out or a particle ingathering effect or whatever).
The problem with doing something to/around the character avatar is that in DENSE combat situations (think iTrials and Mothership Raids) where there are a ton of power FX flooding the screen, it can be extremely EASY to miss visual cues centered on your own character. The sheer quantity of "visual noise" that happens in DENSE combat contexts can easily overwhelm any visual cues oriented around the character avatar (especially if those cues are ... subtle).
Idea being that just like with a traffic light ... you want to have green, yellow and red conditions ... where the yellow is an indicator that a red is Coming Soon™ so that preemptive action can be taken before the hard cutoff condition engages.
For repulsion bomb, it actually also does already work sorta like that, albeit with only two levels. It's got a 75% chance for mag 2 and 66% chance for mag 1, which results in a 8.5% chance for no stun at all, a 16.5% chance for just mag 1 (only stuns underlings unless there's another power to stack on), a 25.5% chance for just mag 2 (stuns minions), and a 49.5% chance for mag 3 (stuns minions and LTs). I just didn't give it more levels because there's not really a functional difference between mag 0 and mag 1 of applied stun and I didn't want it to be able to stun bosses, but it basically uses that method.
MAG 1 is only useful against +0 Level opposition.
As soon as you face a +1 Level opponent, that MAG 1 isn't going to be enough.
This is the reason why a number of mez powers for Controllers do things like MAG 2.1 and the like, so as to be able to overcome the Level Adjustment.
Now think of how this power is going to work (or not) in the context of facing +3/+4 Foes.
It's going to be
pretty darn lackluster and lose a significant portion of its "oomph" and usefulness as a Stun mez generator.
I would recommend doing some testing against less advantageous
Con Total matchups to verify that the implementation you've designed will "degrade gracefully" in the way that you want at Orange/Red/Purple stages in a way that is acceptable for how you want the power to function game mechanically under the hood.
You've probably already done this, but since it has not been discussed on those terms, I mention this simply for the sake of completeness of perceptions and understanding of what you're doing.
Force bolt as a narrow cone pseudo-line attack is interesting, but there's a couple of reasons why I don't want to do it that way instead of the TAoE.
Which is
FINE.The first is that it doesn't really mesh mechanically with the goals of the revamp and set. As you note, hitting multiple targets with a line-style cone tends to be more of an occasional bonus than an effect you can rely on. This would be fine if force bolt was already a widely useful power that just needed a bit to take it over the top, but the main reason the TAoE effect is being added in the first place is that it's a power that was useful but pretty niche and needs stuff to broaden its general usefulness, so the aoe effect kinda needs to be more on the easy-to-use side. Making use of a line-style cone also requires careful positioning to line stuff up, but force field is already a set that needs you to move around a lot to position yourself to direct knockback and/or repel effects in the directions you want, so you're less likely to find yourself free to maneuver to properly exploit a line-style cone.
The second is more of a technical limitation, the mechanic that's being used to limit the power to only deal its full effects to the main target only works on a TAoE. That effect functions by an override that set a separate radus for different effects in the power - the effects that are intended to apply only to the main target have their radius set to 0, which on a TAoE means that they will only affect the central target. On a *cone*, though, that just means they won't affect anything at all since the only thing at radius zero of a cone attack is the player, and there's no other way to differentiate the 'main' target.
In which case ...
COUNTER-PROPOSAL.- You want the "main effect" of Force Bolt (that does damage) to hit the selected $Target.
- You want the "secondary effect" of Force Bolt (that does knockback/knockdown) to hit others nearby to the selected $Target.
The "method" you have selected to achieve this goal is a Target AoE ... which does damage+stun to the selected $Target and a separate "splash" effect to any additional Foes in a 15ft PBAoE radius around the $Target.
In effect, you've got a Single Target Ranged Attack that creates a PBAoE effect around the $Target ... and the combination is a Target AoE.
If you were to switch over to a Cone Attack approach, you could do something broadly similar in implementation as a PAIR of simultaneous Cone effects.
"Main" attack = 5º Cone ... deals damage + stun ... Max Targets: 3 ... requires selected $Target
"Splash" effect surrounding "Main" attack = 15º Cone ... deals knockback ... Max Targets: 10 ... requires selected $Target
The primary advantage of switching to a Cone attack formulation like I'm advocating for here is that it enables all kinds of Clever Gameplay options, starting with being able to (usefully!) enhance the power for RANGE.
Cone attack powers benefit ENORMOUSLY from Range enhancements ... so much so that I'm honestly surprised by how few people recognize this fact.
Being able to "put a cone in a cone" like I'm talking about here would turn Force Bolt into a "piercing linear" attack as far as damage is concerned (hence the 5º cone for the main effect) but also one that has a kind of "bow shock/wave front" of knockback surrounding it that "blows away nearby stuff" as the Force BOLT flies past as a secondary effect.
In terms of implementation, if you have to use a Pseudo-Pet mechanic to make it work, I would honestly give the knockback cone effect to the character and then assign the narrower "main damage" cone effect to the Pseudo-Pet to deliver (which sounds, backwards, I know) ... but the reasoning for this would be the difference in Force Feedback procs versus Positron's Blast procs (or any damage procs, really). Since the character would be casting the knockback, any Force Feedback procs that result would accrue to the character directly (since that's a Buff The Caster proc condition) ... while any Damage procs that result affect the $Target (since those are a Debuff The $Target condition).
The Target AoE solution that you've got makes Range enhancement relatively superfluous.
The selected $Target can be farther away, but the "splash" radius cannot be enhanced/changed.
The "Cone within a Cone" solution makes Range enhancement a much more desirable modifier to build for (and strategize around!).
The selected $Target can be farther away AND the "splash" radius around them INCREASES the more distant the $Target is from the caster (narrow up close, wider out farther away ... because ... CONE).
Such a "configuration change" in how the power works (game mechanically) then makes possible a far wider range of engagement strategies and tactics, rewarding Clever Gameplay by characters.
It also means that the power "behaves differently" at different ranges, such that you get a mix of short/medium/long range strategies and tactics when it comes to combat ... and Range enhancement will seriously modify "what you can do" with the power at long range.
The only thing "missing" from the power in a "Cone within a Cone" formulation would be an Expanding Refraction Distortion Ring FX in the air around the Force Bolt projectile itself that could be used to visually indicate the size of the Knockdown Cone around the "main" Force Bolt as it travels out to maximum range, to give Players a good sense of the volume of space that the Force Bolt is plowing through and affecting along the way. However, since that would be a
MASSIVE ASK as a Feature Request, I want to be clear that such a development would definitely fall into the "nice to have" category of blue sky wishful thinking ... rather than being any kind of a realistic (or even remotely reasonable!) development effort that ought to be undertaken with respect to Force Bolt. It would dial the Coolness Factor™ of the power up to 12(!) ... but would be nowhere near as simple to implement as modifying some database entries.
For force bubble, a range debuff actually sounds like a pretty interesting idea. I can't make any promises, but I'm going to play around with the idea at least.
We make every pretense of competency around here ... ^_~
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