Tiered Abilities

Great idea. If the ability automatically used the most ap available (as opposed to being a choice) it wouldn't require UI changes. I think the problem comes in communicating this to the player properly (that they will get different results based on how much ap they have).

IceIX wrote:

CaptainBatman wrote:

IceIX, any chance of this being considered?

There are few things that go up in these forums that aren't brought up in conversation. Misguided's idea about just using whichever you have enough AP for is possible, but would be substandard for the reason listed immediately afterwards. People would think they had enough for their L2 but only the L1 would go off since they were misreading another color's AP and such. It'd definitely need some UI work. Would bring an interesting dynamic to the characters that have these abilities though.

Atuomatically using the highest that you have AP for would be less useful for IM40, for example if you wanted to use two Level 2 Recharges at the same time instead of one Level 3/4/5. Or two lower level Widow AP steals when the AI doesn't have black/purple. Would need additional UI for best effect.

IceIX wrote:

CaptainBatman wrote:

IceIX, any chance of this being considered?

There are few things that go up in these forums that aren't brought up in conversation. Misguided's idea about just using whichever you have enough AP for is possible, but would be substandard for the reason listed immediately afterwards. People would think they had enough for their L2 but only the L1 would go off since they were misreading another color's AP and such. It'd definitely need some UI work. Would bring an interesting dynamic to the characters that have these abilities though.

For this idea, which is great, the dev team may want to take a quick look at Street Fighter 4 or some of the SF Alpha games that (kind of) let you select whether you want to use all your energy on one big attack or multiple smaller ones.

Personally, I think it would be interesting if the player could pick each tier they want to use every time they want to use an ability.

This would mean maybe adding a power bar to run along the bottom of the ability-activation panel. I'm thinking a largish bar that runs the whole width of the panel, segmented into the number of tiers available (e.g., IM40's recharge would have 5 segments), each segment corresponding to a tier of the ability. Each available tier (i.e., tier the player has sufficient AP for) would be lit, and the player can tap on the tier they want to use.

Interface beyond that would be a little busy, as the following information would have to be conveyed somehow:
1) That each segment of the bar corresponds to a tier (i.e., a basic explanation of what's going on).
2) The AP cost for each tier.
3) The effect of each tier.

#1 could be superimposed on the bar itself (depending on the size of the bar and segments).
#2 either on the bar itself or, more likely, underneath it. Or, along with...
#3 which would almost certainly require a second tooltip (UI bloat, yay!).

One way to display all this info -- and eliminate fat-finger mistapping of the wrong tier -- would be to have a confirmation popup similar to the one that's used with tile-changing abilities. This verification popup would have a fire button as well as info items #2 and #3.

This means that using a tiered ability would be a 3-tap process, which isn't great (or pretty, probably), but I think it's an enhancement that would be well worth the marginal inconvenience.

Personally, I'd love for this to be implemented (as it would let me use the yellow IM40 cover I have sitting in my stash).