Talking Travel Suppression

[Joshex]

so, travel suppression especially the actual "travel" parts of it are outdated. I assumme they have not been updated nor reconsidered since Live.

since live there have been alot of changes to travel powers, and recently a change to the movement speed caps.

we could at least adjust the travel suppression proportionally... but actually no we cannot(using the current travel suppression system, I'll explain later). I did a bunch of math, the base fly speed (without fly powers) in example is 21.48mph at lv 50. I went into a pvp zone and attacked an enemy and got the travel suppression info for lv 30, it's - a multiple of 1.87 base fly speed(only dependant on level, one Uniform rate for everyone regardless how many speed boosts you have and regardless the max (uncapped) speed your powers total to) which comes to -40.1676mph. now with jetpack my fly speed is 51.04mph (at 50), these numbers wont be exact as I'm comparing lv50 and lv 30 stats and suppression but it's illustrative.

51.04 - 40.1676 = 10.8724mph remaining, which is like a slow jog in game. meanwhile with default out of the box fly, fly speed totals to 67.76, which is understandable that a power choice would be slightly better than a temp power. "roughly 17.72mph better". which means roughly we're talking 28.2924mph after travel suppression. this is also relatively slow, and quite fair honestly, it's still with-in reason for such an attacker to be attacked back as people can catch up at 28mph, and no one is dropped to a speed of 0mph by suppression alone.

according to mids the old flight speed cap was 58.64mph, however somewhere (mids) I get varying caps now with afterburner, from 67.76mph to 80.11mph as a cap. alot of this is new and was not present when travel suppression was designed. I've been told the cap was raised even further in game now to 4x this (another player as source).

if the old travel suppression for fly speed was 1.87*base fly speed, based on a cap of 51.04, if the true cap is now 80.11, travel suppression should echo this; 80.11 / 0.5104 tells us that the new cap is 156.9553291536% of the old one so increasing the travel suppression multiple by that to compensate for this raise in cap would give us 1.87 * 1.569553291536 which gives us a modified travel suppression multiple of 2.9350646551 or roughly 2.94 which * the base flight speed 21.48 would be -63.0451887931mph which is obviously well above the default fly speed of jetpack and would slow down default out of the box fly to less than 4mph.

this means such an adjustment is unreasonable, meaning the changes to the flight speed cap cannot be reflected in travel suppression the way it's handled now.

this means adjusting travel suppression for flight speed would have to factor a multiple of the individual character's Total flight speed, rather than their base.

wait stop, why is this necessary at all?

alot of changes have happened, major revisions to aerobatics for example, changing afterburner into it's current form, ALOT more +fly speed is now possible than on Live. just flyspeed IOs 6 slotted alone on both fly  and aerobatics with afterburner yeilds 102.4mph (capped at 80.11), and inherent slots on health and stamina have freed up 4 extra slots which could be abused to more easily cap fly speed even to 80.11 easily, giving a stark disadvantage to non-flying players. it is my understanding that travel suppression sutracts from the total mph uncapped then applies the cap if necessary. where 102.4 - 40 is 60mph which is greater than the former cap of 51!! thats cruising

Zip Zoom YEET I attacked and I'm gone seeya! I'll be back to snipe ya just out of range SUPA FAST you wont have to wait long for defeat. essentially you don't even need a good build, just a glass cannon with lotsa flyspeed, recharge and tohit from a couple build-ups. real easy to just destroy anything in pvp without trying. all because of increased fly speeds and travel suppression disproportionally effecting players compared to what it was before all this. make a good build with some def, regen and some good pvp tricks like debuff AND the glass cannon sniper trick? that's a blatant abuse of the pvp system, it'd be hard for much to stand against it.. it's a very one-sided fight.

I'm not naming players, I respect the player that was doing it, but it highlights that changes to the game since live have yet to be balanced in pvp. and speed caps are one of them that is pretty badly needed.

on Live, it was actually pretty difficult to build a speed cannon that had any form of defense or regen or anything at all to help it stand. a few good hits and it'd probably be mezzed, held, stunned, slept or otherwise dropped. and so it was fair. but now, it's MUCH easier to do not just a speedy-glass-cannon but rather a scrappy-speed-glass-cannon.

however for builds that are not all trying to abuse the speed caps, or where picking a travel power means dropping alot of survivability (on an AT and sets where that is what you are is survivability), just so you can catch a speedster kinda says "don't play anything that can't fly", and "wasn;t this the whole purpose of Travel Suppression to begin with? (I remember the arguments from the Live servers which led to it)) and makes me look at those "you must be on the ground to use this power" powers and all those armors on tanks which require so much patching up with extra powers and being forced to take kick or boxing to get them, and no major improvement to the speed of getting def or res and say "this is no longer a pvp where most tanks that were good before can stand., this has become a lop-sided pvp system just down to move speed"

I mean did we learn nothing from the past? I've seen other PVP in the past where people learned the speed'n shoot realy fast, they'd just circle someone at range and fire fire fire., there was no way a non-ranged could ever reach them they were just too fast. that was so very long ago (in a game I can't even remember the name of) that, I thought we learned our lesson collectively, (that probably wasn't even an online game now that I'm remembering it a bit better, still can't exactly remember what it was exactly though).

the old speed tricks where "I'm not over powered you just either need to move as fast as I do, or have a full team to take me down."

So yeah Travel Suppression based on speed need to be proportional/relative to the amount of speed a player has. if the total speed is 102.4mph -40mph from a 1.87 modifier is still going leave sonic the hedgehog quite giddy with his puns about everyone being slow. but if it were not 1.87* base speed, and rather your flyspeed * 0.213, that'd be a different ballgame. that would bring it back down to where move speed is not king where builds can still play without move speed.

lets illustrate this: your flyspeed (102.4)* 0.213 = 21.8112mph after travel suppression.

Why 0.213?!

51.04(total flight speed at 50 with jetpack) - 40.1676(this is 1.87* base speed (21.48mph)) = 10.8724mph (the speed this jetpack user can fly at after travel suppression) keep these numbers in mind.

(10.872/ (51.04/100= 0.5104))/100 = 0.213 using this number gives us the proportional percent(multiplier) of the total fly speed that is fair to leave the character with after they attack for the next 3*attack tier seconds, (where attack tier is 1 to 8?, so for superior damage it's 24 seconds?).

1 to 8 is based on: weak(1), light(2), minor(3), moderate(4), high(5), very high(6), extreme(7), superior(8 ).

the thing here is "21.8112mph" is still comparitively much faster than toons with a jetpack (10.8724mph) and faster than toons with fly alone and one slot with an IO (80.19 * 0.213= 17.08047mph)

Speed still means somethign and gives a slight advantage without it being overpowering like it is at current:

jetpack(10.8724mph) "I can still move at a jogging pace", fly 1-slot (80.19 -40.1676 = 40.0224mph) "I'm almost fast enough for an average plane to take off", fly 6-slot aerobatics 6-slot +afterburner (102.4 - 40.1676= 62.2324mph) "Seeya! Byelo! I'm A YEET OUT after I spank ya."

can you see the difference?


also that's just illustrative for lv 30. but using the same algorithms with different numbers from different level pvp travel suppression can generate such a multiplier for any level.

[Redlynne]

Travel power suppression was implemented by Cryptic/Paragon Studios to prevent "jousting" as a PvP strategy (the CoH equivalent to "bunny hopping" in PvP in other games).

It was a kludge then and it's a kludge now (still).

The foundational problem is that City of Heroes is fundamentally a PvE game, with only a vanishingly small minority of players engaged in PvP (despite plenty of game infrastructure having been built and dedicated to the purpose, starting with the oversized and essentially EMPTY Arena buildings). All attempts to "nudge" City of Heroes away from being a good PvE game into being a "fair" PvP game have foundered upon the fact that Player's are CRAFTY and CLEVER, able to leverage ANY advantage they are given in extraordinary (and unforeseen) ways.



One of the basic mismatches is that "games ought to be FAIR" in which opponents are (supposed to) have "equal opportunities of winning" ... such that the only deciding factor in combat ought to be Player Skill.

Of course, we all know that is NOT the case for how "fights to the death" work.
It might be how "fighting for sport" works, but not how "fights to the death" work.

SPORT fighting can have all kinds of RULES imposed on it to try and create a "level playing field" for the contest to take place.

DEATH fighting is all about MAXIMIZING ADVANTAGES such that your opponent cannot effectively fight back, rendering them PREY for the taking.



In medieval times, it was the armored knight on horseback with a lance who could kill any footman with a cavalry charge that was a Big Threat military strategy.
Counter? Massed longbow archery protected by pikemen for the "we hurt you, but you can't hurt us" response.

In WWI aviation, there was the entirely conventional strategy of Attacking Out Of The Sun, because if your opponent couldn't SEE you (until it was too late) the element of surprise and first strike would often win the day.
Counter? Massed formations of planes who would be able to cover each other in which some would survive the first strike from surprise.

In the past decade, in combat against non-state actors, the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) became something of a preferred tactic and strategy for surprise attacks.
Counter? Improved sensors, armor and training to be prepared for ambush.



So this cycle of Measure vs Countermeasure is hardly something new in the history of mankind.

Extending it into the realm of PvP with superpowers, there are going to be matchups where things get "decidedly unfair" in terms of tactics and strategies.

• Teleport Foe onto piles of Trip Mines being a classic (functionally a YOINK! onto a group of IEDs).
• Jousting via excessive speed being another.
• Hover Sniping thanks to extreme Range enhancement has been a favorite in PvE before it became a useful strategy in PvP.
• Mez vs Squishies being something that predates PvP, since it is a major threat in PvE already.
• "Juggling" via repeated Knock* powers that preclude opponents taking actions is another favorite.

My point being that PvP is fundamentally and foundationally UNFAIR to those who participate in it. Trying to make PvP "fair" for everyone and anyone who engages in it is something of a Mug's Game.

So far, the only successful way to "balance" PvP games has been to essentially "lock" Players into a set of predefined classes of combatant (like how Team Fortress 2 or PUBG does it), rather than the BYOB (Bring Your Own Beer Build) method of allowing Players to bring their PvE characters into PvP and EXPECTING everything to "balance" the same way that they do in PvE (where Players mow down hundreds, if not thousands, of Foes between individual defeats).

The "demands" of PvP are NOT the same as the "demands" of PvE ... so of course any system that starts on a foundation of PvE will tend to founder when it needs to cater to the demands of PvP "fairness" in outcomes.

Gets worse when you realize that in PvP, NO ONE wants to engage in a "fair fight" ... because in PvP the motivation is to make the fights as UNFAIR AS POSSIBLE in order to extract an advantage over your opposition that they will find hard to counter.

[Joshex]

I hear that, but the way I consider it is, for any at and build that put in time to design a careful build for their AT and sets, making it able to stand by statistics+basic strategy, then you tell them "nah you need max flight speed or everyone with a half-assed move speed build will just joust you", it crosses a line from a comparison of sportsmanship, to just blatant disregard, everyone will make dozens of cheap move speed builds with a couple cranked-out attacks.

the point is if it relies on move speed to "cheat" having to build yourself solid, then move speed needs looking at. and as proposed the old TS was designed with lower move speed caps in mind, so it needs adjusting. but as stated due to the way it's built at current it's not proportional to total speed, just a multiple of base speed, which wont scale well and allows abuse "all you have to do is get 60mph over the travel suppression reduction and you can bunny hop and joust, even though you're not supposed to be able to do that".

essentially travel suppression now only effects those who don't max out their speed, to a very disproportional amount of effect. it's pretty bad when you have this one guy bunnyhoping all over the place taking cheapshots on anyone with low health stealing kills from the people who wore them down as nothing more than an opportunist. it makes the real fighters want to move to another locale, but if that player follows...then you seek adjustments after figuring out what system he has abused and broken to be able to bunnyhop or joust.

but if the devs aren't willing, even though they acknowledge the problem, then you'll get less and less people involved in pvp. which kinda defeats the purpose of having it at all. essentially, pvp here is a very small group, because of the "speed abuse" that is now possible.

on protector server back on Live, when movement speeds were much harder to achieve whilst keeping any real power in attacks and defenses, and the caps were lower; you had people eyeing the list of online users looking for anyone in PVP zones, it was common on an average day to cross paths with a PVP zone lurker, and then you'd likely die the first time because they caught you off guard, then have a good brawl the second time, evevn if they were ranged, travel suppression would slow them considerably after attacks so you could chase. in those days the paragon devs lauded how balanced it was. it was about your build, not your move speed or some other cheap trick. sure movement was important, over small distances, you know to step out of AoEs, or back out of range to snipe then placate with a good amount of stealth then kite to make it hard to be retargetted. ranged and melee had their strategies, each one could win, and it was based on a good build + mechanics, rather than mechanics + a so-so build.

oh well, if the devs here aren't willing to see that people are finding aways to do things that were supposed to be bmitigated by travel suppression.. or aren't willing to consider revisions to fix it, then people just wont pvp as much. it really is a shame, given how it was balanced on live. I mean thats the whole reason powers have different outputs in pvp, perhaps move speed powers should have pvp alternates which give considerably less speed so that like 65mph is the output of a pve move power that does 102mph before travel suppression, so at lv 30 65-40 = 15mph versus unenhanced 10mph, but I like the proportional multiplier I designed better as it does afford something for effort in move speed whilst mitigating abuse. essentially at lv 30 it mitigates you to 21.3% total uncapped speed.

[Redlynne]

perhaps move speed powers should have pvp alternates which give considerably less speed

Now THAT is a recommendation that can potentially be implemented.