Favorite Video Game Mechanics

Reloading isn't a cooldown because 1: you can choose to activate it prematurely, 2: you can cancel it (in most games), 3: it's activated based on a fixed number of uses and not the time BETWEEN uses. The only time this isn't true is for weapons with overheat mechanics like the plasma rifle, but even that differs itself in the sense that it never NEEDS to have a cooldown because you can choose to pace your fire so that it never overheats. Cooldowns would be the equivalent of shoot > waiting several seconds because you shot > shoot again. You could make a case for weapons that have a single shot in the magazine like a charged incineration canon, but I even find a hard time buying that argument because you can convey the rate of fire through a short animation. If it's long enough to where I need a stopwatch to tell me when I can use the action again, it's a cooldown.

 

Yeah, I mean reloading definitely works differently than a traditional cooldown after usage, but I think I could call it a form of cooldown because it's bare bones are the same--it's a time requirement before further ability use. I don't see why there can't be bundles of ability uses (like firing a weapon) between cooldowns. I think we can both agree on the differences between reloading and a stereotypical cooldown, but I think it's just a matter of what you're willing to include in the realm of cooldowns.

Regarding the last bit, there is an internal stopwatch that begins after each shot, whether you see it or not. I think that this is definitely, technically a cooldown. I think it's just that when that stopwatch starts to go on long enough, people start calling it a cooldown. At what time threshold that happens, I dunno.

 

The fastest firing gun in the universe is on a cooldown by that definition. I don't know what you think the next logical step would be if we're to take that logic at face value. That's not the way English works.

 

The reason I thought this was interesting is because people had said that they dislike cooldowns. And I wanted to get people to ask, "At what point does a cooldown become a cooldown?"



What exactly is a cooldown?
Can there be different kinds of cooldowns?
When do cooldowns make your experience more enjoyable?
When do cooldowns make your experience less enjoyable?

 

cool yourselves down over.

 

I actually love cooldowns

 

How would a game like Overwatch, where there are so many varying types of abilities on different cooldown times, work without abilities being on cooldown?

 

compelling argument

 

Again, if I can't tell without a timer when I can engage in an action again, it's a cool down.

It would probably work better. When you walk in a room and see literally any character, how could you possibly know which one of his handful of abilities he has up and which are down without insane team communication (which still is lost in high player counts like 6v6). I'm aware of how pro ow is played, people watch for stuff, call it out when it's burned, and make a push.

As opposed to looking at a character and knowing exactly what he can or can't do at all times. It's the same as not knowing if the enemy in H5 has his thrust up, there's too many variables in a normal match to truly ever KNOW everything going on.

Abilities just need to be tuned so that they can be used at all times, either through strength or difficulty of execution.

 

Also Overwatch is not a true shooter. The game values teamwork more than anything else. Where in other shooters one player can carry teams on occasions.

Now I am going to share my idea for a game similar to OW but work better as an esport.

First it would be 3v3 instead of 6v6 because a smaller player count is spectator friendly and also more financially friendly.

Second you would have your damage, tank and support class but with a much smaller cast because it is 3v3 and doesn't need as large of a cast.

Third there would be variation between characters but it would be just stuff like jump height etc. base abilities.

4th rather than having abillities you would have an item list that would have class dependent items as well as base items that are not cooldown based but usage based.

fifth the main gametype would be a multi round system similar to CSGO but the objective would 1 cp attack and defense.

 

Charging an ability > Using an ability insantly and waiting for a cooldown

 

I suppose that makes sense. So your main beef with cooldowns isn't just the fact that you have to wait a certain amount of time between using the ability, but rather the way that delay is conveyed, especially to the enemy team? I think that's the difference Spranklz is trying to decipher.

Like purely said, I guess Overwatch isn't the perfect case study for this argument since it's much more team-based than individual skill-based (tell that to every pro genji out there). In a game like Overwatch it's better for the game if you have to call out "Tracer no recall" or "Hog no breather" rather than having a visual cue on Tracer or Hog telling that to you.

 

as long as the ability can't just be spammed endlessly... I guess to avoid that you'd need a sort of cooldown right? But perhaps that's what multi means by balancing and tuning the abilities...

EDIT: So like what about an ability that consumes "fuel" and once used up, can't be used again at all, or at least until you find said "fuel"... too much like a cooldown or better?

 

It's not the visual cue, it's wanting to do an action that the game is telling you that you can't do because....no reason. Because someone put an arbitrary timer on it.

Think about what thrust is, it's just a mega strafe. What if your strafe acceleration was really, REALLY shitty unless you pressed a button and increased your strafe speed for 5 seconds. That's basically what the thrust in H5 is. Now imagine you are in a gun fight and you manage to win, now his teammate comes around the corner and starts shooting you. Your strafe button expires and is now on a 1minute cooldown. You sit there and get pelted until you die because your strafe is shitty. You see how stupid that sounds? That's what the thrust button in H5 is to me. It's saying, I COULD have won that fight, I HAVE the skill to beat you..but the game won't let me use it. Because some random dev decided that a skill intensive aspect of the game should be tied to a timer. It's basically stripping the mechanical skill in favor of resource management. And resource management is one of the most uninteresting least desirable thing you can have in a game in my opinion.


Ow takes this concept and expands on it a million times. The most impressive part of a good genji is not just the accuracy with shurikens but how they move and string the abilities together. So what happens when you walk in on the greatest genji player in the world while their abilities are on cooldown so he can't dash or reflect? Nothing, they just strafe and jump. That's not an indication of how good they are because the game won't let them use their skills.

Let's imagine the genji dash was retooled so that you could do it without cooldown but you have to kick off a wall to trigger it, maybe a slightly reduced distance. And the reflect was infinite use but it functioned like dark souls parry mechanic where they have to press the button within a specific frame to counter the action.

Now when you fight genji, you KNOW what you're up against because his abilities are ALWAYS up, it's just up to them to utilize their skills by bouncing from wall to wall with the dash constantly, and it's up to them to parry with perfect frame timing and it's up to you you mix up your shot pacing and stay away from small rooms.

As opposed to "oh he just dashed, we have 8 seconds. Oh, he just reflected. Stop shooting and then start shooting as he stands there."


One is dynamic, allows players to succeed, removes ALL randomness of not knowing what abilities are up, and actually makes the player feel like their character.

The other is just pressing buttons and then waiting for the game to tell you that you can press them again. ESPECIALLY in a hero based game where you want to drive character identity, are you even your character when your abilities are on cooldown? What is tracer while you wait for your dash abilities? Nothing. Is roadhog even really a tank or is he just considered a tank because he can heal a lot? Is he a tank when he can't heal? The character I think I like most is Pharah because she just flies, so she actually feels like what she is. It's not tied a long winded timer, you just anyways hover around. I wish her launch ability and physics rocket were tied to the same ability though, that way you could freely launch yourself upwards whenever you need to but you have to be near the ground to explode the missile and actually be affected by it. Maybe 2 physics missiles in the chamber and then required to be reloaded.

 

the aforementioned "Jedit Knight" games had a bank of force power... juice I guess. Abilities simply drained part of that bank depending on how OP it was. If you used up the bank yo uhad to wait for little bit to ge tit back up to max. I feel it did actually create a good balance between these two competing ideologies (cooldown vs spamming it). You could spam it a little, but if it was an OP ability, you probably would need to wait a little cuz it used so much universe juice.

 

I mean if you want to see what Overwatch is like without cooldowns just look at TF2.

Also, the team game aspects of Overwatch would drastically change.

Spectators also like cooldowns because it makes it easier for them to read a fight and the outcome of it. That is part of the reason why LOL DOTA and OW are so big as esports.

 

I'm guessing Zenyatta is probably your favorite designed healer then? None of his abilities are cooldowns. Lucio to a certain extent too, the boop is really the only ability that's affected majority by cooldowns.

I get what you're saying better now, especially with your Genji example. Basically, you only want your abilities to be limited based on decisions made by the player, not just the time of the cooldown.

I personally just fail to see that cooldowns are necessarily bad. I can see how skill-based and decision-based limitations are maybe more desirable to play with, but from a balance standpoint, I don't think cooldowns should always be avoided.

 

It'd be a fun challenge to balance all the hero abilities of Overwatch without cooldowns.