I'll add this here as well, Quicksand and perhaps other attract powers are applying too much Force to the pull though the linear velocity of the pull is slight and gradual, the force is causing it to be impossible to actually escape the pullforce by any means. essentially turning it into an Immobilize.
Attract should have some status resistance or status protection for powers that provide status res or protection to Hold and Immobilize, as it's essentially a sibling effect at this point. AKA tankers with enhanced anti hold and immobilize should be oblivious to the fact attract even exists unless a player is using it and has enhanced the attract.
a guide to how I'd balance this in a servo controller:
given a normal movement of 7 Linv with a max force of 35 and a min force of -35. here we will merely subtract from the Max and Min Force applied to reach 7 LinV keeping in mind the minimum force to achieve 7 LinV is 7 force and that will be slow and over time.
so the math for Attract only, should go something like this:
Attract (applied to player)= player Max force -((Max Force - Player LinV) *0.9) = Max force, Player Min force -((Min Force + Player LinV) *0.9) = Min force
the outcome with my illustration of 7 LinV and 35 Max force and -35 Min force is:
Attract = 35 -((35 - 7) *0.9) = 35 - 25.2 = 9.8 Max Force, -35 -((-35 + 7) *0.9) = -35 - -25.2 = -9.8 Min Force. 35 and 7 are illustrative insert the actual player servo LinV and force there.
So in this illustration instead of the player having 35 force to push them to a linear velocity of 7, they now have only a force of +/- 9.8.
if attract + slow: half the outcome of applied/subtracted force/movement of each effect.
so instead of a multiplier of 0.9 use 0.45 instead and drop the -speed to -45%
They need to share 90% of the player's movement. More if enhanced, but mobs shouldn't be able to do what they can do now.
Edit:
an 0.45 multiplier when combined with -speed would probably be like a mag 8, 0.9 on it's own is a mag 8 to 10
The reason I'm specifying this is because right now Attract is subtracting >= 100% player movement Force.keep in mind if the Force of the attract Exceeds the player's Movement Force, then in most cases (except in the preferred direction, if this game's physics has one) then the player will not be able to move directly away from the Attract.
hmm in that case the player needs to retain 50.1% of thier movement force at minimum to be able to move away at all! so the calc should change.
[modifying]
the calcs above were meant to show how much force the player has left (and consequently the opposite would be the amount of force Attract has. Forgot to mention that bit.)
but If I were to guess, I'd guess you are not modifying the player's movement force, but rather just applying Attract force. IF So, use these calcs:
Attract Force Added = ((Player Max Force - player Linear velocity) / 2) * 0.9
in an illustrative example with 35 force and 7 linv to the player's movement, our attract would have a force of: ((35 - 7) / 2) * 0.9 = 12.6 Attract force.thats 90% of half of the player's movement force! enhanced you'll easily go over the half-way point to maybe 180% of the player's movement force.
with status effect protection or resistance et cetera, they would then need to have 80% protection to be able to move, slowly if the attract is enhanced. keep that in mind here.
Also remember *0.9 is for Attract ALONE.
if doing -speed as well, lower the -speed to -45% and use a *0.45.
if this is not clear, let me know.
Ugh, I have to explain one more thing about physics don't I?
What is "Preferred Direction"?
Some people hypothesize that there may be a real world preferred direction, for example towards or away from an object in space. This has merit, in that as you are closer to a larger object (in example the Sun) there is more pullforce being applied to you if you are near Earth than if you are for example near Mars, so hypothetically if you move away from the sun towards mars it's subtracting your potential speed and you're fighting to get there. Where as if you were going towards the sun from Mars to Earth
1: there is less pullforce near mars prohibiting you from gaining speed, so you gain speed faster,
2: not only that, the pullforce of the Sun would be directing you Forwards in your journey so you wouldn't be fighting it, causing the time for example for light from Earth to reach Mars to be longer than it takes for light from Mars to reach Earth.
we know the distance is roughly 10 light minutes one way, so 20 light minutes total, but "Preferred Direction" hypothesizes that >50% of 20 minutes MUST be from Earth to Mars. in fact it could go so far as a clear 75%:25% ratio or; 15 minutes from earth to mars: 5 minutes from Mars to Earth. this is hypothetical. but it illustrates Preferred Direction.
In SOME Game Engines such as blender in example, preferred direction DOES happen. but for different reasons; it has to do with the Order that force is applied. typically it MUST be applied in GLOBAL force (on the Global WORLD/Universal XYZ axis'), so LOCAL Vectors are converted to Global Vectors and the force applied Locally is then applied by the same rules, Typically with POSITIVEs being applied BEFORE negatives.
this means positive force may have a few miliseconds of 1 frame more time to add Force than Negative has, causing Equal forces applied in exactly contrary directions to not result in no motion at all, but rather SOME motion towards the Preferred Direction!
in the game world this means in example it's impossible to get away from an attract by going south, you need to go north. because game physics.. I have tested this in blender and it took more than +10 force difference in the negative direction to counter 10 less force in the positive direction. again it really depends on how force is applied in the engine.
