Yanno What? Let's Charge Those Powers!

[Terumitsu]

In some other games, a player has the ability to charge up a power or weapon over time to get more of a 'bang' when it's finally used. Megaman would be a prime example here with how you can charge up his main weapon and, in the 'X' series, enemy weapons too.

 

I was thinking that certain kinds of powers, like maybe Fireball, Slashdash, Superjump, etc could benefit from this kind of mechanic.

 

The idea of charging would mean that the power would be also invested with more energy in a short period of time and gain a commensurate boost in effectiveness capping at double the benefit/cost over a brief time.

 

So say Fireball has... A 3 meter AoE and does 100 damage for 25 energy. Numbers I just made up for the sake of example. Charging it up all the way would cost 50 energy in total and do 200 damage with a 6 meter AoE.

 

A charged up Slashdash would have a greater distance, do more damage, and have a greater damage radius in the same vein while a charged up Superjump would prove to all grineer haters that white frames can, in fact, jump.

 

The thing is, this charge time should be very short. Maybe a half second before charging begins and taking two seconds to fully kick in at most. That might not seem like all that much but a human has only so many fingers and trying to charge and shoot and dodge at the same time in a firefight means that, to be an appealing action, it needs to be both relatively brief to execute and to not hinder the normal flow of combat. It's one thing to come to a fight with a charged up Soul Punch but it's another when trying to lay some smack-down in the middle of one.

 

Now, one might ask, why do this at all if Blind Rage is a thing? Or, alternately, why use Blind Rage if you can charge up? Well, the idea here is that you would be expending both more energy as well as a little time for power. Thus you could say there is a soft cooldown of a sort in place where just having a Blind Rage mod would allow you to spam. Or do Even More damage when charged although the energy costs then would be rather high without some mitigating mods.

 

One might also ask, why not just charge up Loki's invisibility or Volt's Speed and make things extra crazy? Well, for this idea, I think buffs and the like shouldn't be included as a rule of thumb. The same with toggled powers as they operate differently. A way to think about it is that this should apply more towards 'fire and forget' sort of abilities so things like Ripline or Banish or or Sonar or maybe even Snow Globe should be passed over in favor of, say, Paralyze or Sonic Boom or Avalanche.

 

It would be a sort of case-by-case basis with several kinds of abilities but, in all, I think this would be a kind of fun mechanic to add in. I think it would add a few more options on part of the player and more options are usually good.

 

What do the rest of you think? Good/fun idea or just crazy?

[(PSN)theelix]

Would be a good idea. 

Doubt DE will do it, though. I'm pretty sure this thread has surface under their watch a few times. 

[--F--NerevarCM]

...

 

Focus System

[Stormandreas]

Focus System

I wish people wouldn't immediatly jump to the 'focus' system.

That system has supposidly been in the works since archwing (so update 7), and we haven't heard a peep about it since BEFORE Archwings release. I think its a system that's totally dropped off the radar, and will likely be very underwhelming if it does ever come out (i mean come on, over 8 updates, and not even a sample of it has appeared ingame)

[Terumitsu]

Focus System

I hate to say it but we have next to zero official information on just exactly what the focus system is, right now. We just barely have an idea of what it was originally going to do but the Devs have said that several things that were originally going to be inherent to focus, like the ability augments, have been removed to be their own thing.

 

Furthermore, are you saying that this would do the same thing as a hypothetical focus system or what, exactly?