Return the jump ability to felids

[EugeneJudo]

I noticed that in 0.16 felids no longer have an innate jump ability. I found it to be one of the most versatile parts in the character as it acted as a perfect way too counter their lack of health by offering an escape if you become surrounded too quickly. At the very least it should be obtained at some point in their development such as when they reach level 6. Are there any other changes too this character that I missed?

[njvack]

For what it's worth:

The ability never worked particularly well in its original form. Its original intent was to combine attacking and translocation, but because it ended up being a low-level ability, the attack become only a tool to ensure the repositioning wasn't brokenly powerful rather than a meaningful thing by itself. This was particularly true for stabbing, which had to be disabled in jump-attack so that it didn't break stealth. Boots of jumping never saw much use, and while there are a few fans of felid jumping, that species already has tremendously good positioning ability.

The shadow-step ability with Dithmenos uses the core jump-attack targeting code and is similar to jump-attack in many ways. So fans of jump-attack can worship Dith to get an ability that works better in general because of shadow-step's very specific (and non-annoying) targeting restrictions, its better range, and its not having awkward compromises from trying to combine attack with movement on a ability requiring no investment.

Despite the shared code with shadow-step, a lot of the code most in need of refactoring was simply removed, including the interactions with melee-attack. I enjoyed coding jump-attack back when I was learning the codebase, especially finally figuring out the difficult direction UI code. But now that the feature has evolved into something better, I'm happy to see all this code and bad gameplay go the way of item destruction. rip in peace.

[EugeneJudo]

For what it's worth:

The ability never worked particularly well in its original form. Its original intent was to combine attacking and translocation, but because it ended up being a low-level ability, the attack become only a tool to ensure the repositioning wasn't brokenly powerful rather than a meaningful thing by itself. This was particularly true for stabbing, which had to be disabled in jump-attack so that it didn't break stealth. Boots of jumping never saw much use, and while there are a few fans of felid jumping, that species already has tremendously good positioning ability.

The shadow-step ability with Dithmenos uses the core jump-attack targeting code and is similar to jump-attack in many ways. So fans of jump-attack can worship Dith to get an ability that works better in general because of shadow-step's very specific (and non-annoying) targeting restrictions, its better range, and its not having awkward compromises from trying to combine attack with movement on a ability requiring no investment.

Despite the shared code with shadow-step, a lot of the code most in need of refactoring was simply removed, including the interactions with melee-attack. I enjoyed coding jump-attack back when I was learning the codebase, especially finally figuring out the difficult direction UI code. But now that the feature has evolved into something better, I'm happy to see all this code and bad gameplay go the way of item destruction. rip in peace.

I'd argue that while felids do posses exceptional speed which greatly improves their ability too escape multiple attackers, it doesn't really do much in the way of escaping smiters, which are dangerous at every point of the game due to the minimal amount of health. I've very often ended up jumping away from or jumping straight too smite attackers to take them out as quickly as possible. A compromise would be to make jumping not in itself an attack but simply something which randomly positions you around an enemy, while being loud enough to wake them up so as too not impede upon shadow step.

[EugeneJudo]

It could be renamed to pounce and made a felid only perk. I'm primarily trying to get this back because it was one of the most fun abilities to use in the game. Jumping came with its own set of risks such as trying to sneak attack what appears to be a lone priest and you end up surrounded by a hoard of them, and you could never really fully expect where you'd land making it a calculated risk as too whether or not it was a good idea to jump.

[tasonir]

I found jump boots to be wonderful items that lead to some downright awesome tactics against certain monsters. There's really nothing quite like jump attacking an ancient lich after it has fired an OOD off at you, and then seeing it hit some other monster instead, while you take down the lich directly.

True, they were probably even more useful since I was with Chei, but getting over an OOD is useful to even fast characters...

[Quazifuji]

Worth noting that Ru, currently in Trunk, does provide a "Power Leap" ability that lets you jump 3 tiles and damage everything near where you land at the cost of exhaustion and draining. More powerful than jump attack and available to any race. Of course, you have to deal with Ru's rather unique conduct to get it, and it's possible Ru won't make it into stable release.

Anyway, I never really played Felids while they had the jump, and only found the jump boots once on a character that was really close to winning anyway (I believe it was a MiBe), but I did find the jump extremely fun to use when I had it.