Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Get over here!


"Fatality" - Mortal Kombat

The pull mechanic in WAR is an interesting gameplay mechanic. Two classes have a single target pull, White Lion and Marauder. As these are just a single target pull, they do not get noticed as much. There are two other classes with AoE pulls which is causing a bit of a stir. The Engineer has the ElectroMagnet and the Magus has Chaotic Rift. It should be noticed that to get these abilities, they have to go 13 points into a mastery tree.

I play an Engineer, but I like my grenades... so no pulls for me. However I do see some issues with this ability. When combined with Bright Wizard/Sorceress AoE spells, it can become extremely deadly. I have seen this first hand. The situation is not as hopeless as the forums may say though.

I am still in T3, and have only seen 1 Engineer using it in a scenario. Destruction pretty much quit the game and it ended early. I thought you guys were hardcore and Order was weak? I have been in several matches with a Magus that had the ability. It is quite annoying, but in those cases it was not game breaking. I took it upon myself to stop that Magus. It is a location ability, so to use it the character has to come to where he wants people pulled. I would save my Konockbacks and interrupts just for him. Didn't work all the time, but it did sometime.

My real gripe with the ability is that it pretty much makes collision detection pointless. We go through the trouble of setting up a wall of tanks and this ability completely negates it. I do not think it needs to be removed though. Here are some thoughts:

  • Maybe Toughness and Strength should play into the resist calculation. This way tanks would be more likely to hold their ground.
  • It should not be instant cast. Also, a visual cue that the pull is about to happen may help people feel more in control. It would also give more of a chance to stop the pull.
  • The radius is currently 65 feet. That seems a bit much, how about 32 feet?
  • The pull through walls/doors is a bug and hopefully has been fixed.
  • Can we have Scorpion's voice say "get over here!"?
  • Mortal Kombat II (the movie) was awful.
The AoE pull should be a situational tool, not the dominating force it has become. The games building geometry/geography can make it near impossible to stop or delay sometimes. It is a neat idea and helps break apart a Zerg-ball, so I would hate to see it removed completly.

2 comments:

Eerie, I just compared WAR to Mortal Kombat as well. GET OUT OF MY HEAD, Werit!

Not because of the pull mechanic. In the late 80's there were 2 fighting game, SF2, and MK. It reminded me of the video game war with WoW, and WAR.

Oh and the MK2 movie, sucked big time.

Great minds...

MK1 was good, not sure how they made MK2 so bad. I mean even for a video game movie it was bad.

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