Suggestion: allow us to turn around when immobilized

This is a PvE suggestion. When a mob immobilizes you, every class has some skills that can free yourself. But some of those skills launch you forward or backwards and sometimes that is not an option when there is a cliff or other terrain consideration. It would be nice if being immobilized didn't also prevent us from being able to turn around so we can properly aim our immobilization removal skills.

im·mo·bi·lize/i(m)ˈmōbəˌlīz/verbverb: immobilize; 3rd person present: immobilizes; past tense: immobilized; past participle: immobilized; gerund or present participle: immobilizing; verb: immobilise; 3rd person present: immobilises; past tense: immobilised; past participle: immobilised; gerund or present participle: immobilising

prevent (something or someone) from moving or operating as normal."fear had immobilized her"synonyms:   put out of action, disable, prevent from moving/working, make inoperative, render inactive

Immobilize works as intended

It's a video game. Do you really want to get into a discussion of all the "real world" rules they modify or ignore? ;)

There are game mechanic reasons for why immobilized means exactly that. I can see in a competitive environment, immobilizing one's adversary could yield an edge with tactical placement and location of things around the target. Allowing any movement or turning reduces or eliminates this advantage.

I would suggest that in cases where the skill that breaks immobilisation causes an accompanying movement, it's deliberately designed so that you have to think about how/whether you use it. This means you have to consider your positioning during play. Your suggestion would simplify things in a way that I think is less fun.

when you are getting immobilized, it might just be better to condi clear yourself. Besides that, you can already move while being immobilized with teleport skills.

There are indeed mechanics in place that depend on angle of attack and orientation. If we let Immobilize enable our Thieves' and Mirages' backstabs, it should enable enemy backstabs too.

@kharmin.7683 said:There are game mechanic reasons for why immobilized means exactly that. I can see in a competitive environment, immobilizing one's adversary could yield an edge with tactical placement and location of things around the target. Allowing any movement or turning reduces or eliminates this advantage.

Which is why I said this was a PvE suggestion. Give me a couple of examples where this change would negatively affect casual open world PvE? I am serious; you may have some good reasons that I haven't considered.

@flog.3485 said:when you are getting immobilized, it might just be better to condi clear yourself. Besides that, you can already move while being immobilized with teleport skills.

Yea, but not every class has access to an immobilization removing skill like teleport which, by the way, can be aimed even while immobilized.

@Biff.5312 said:I would suggest that in cases where the skill that breaks immobilisation causes an accompanying movement, it's deliberately designed so that you have to think about how/whether you use it. This means you have to consider your positioning during play. Your suggestion would simplify things in a way that I think is less fun.

I see your point about positioning. But in my experience in open world PvE, you burn through mobs pretty quickly in a wide variety of environments and you don't always have a choice in positioning. I guess I see it as a minor change that doesn't concern me that it would make my time playing any less fun.

That's not what immobilized means

That's not what immobilized means

The rollback skills are nice but they do have their "problems". Immobilize, fear and wards can feel terrible when using these skills. A suggestion I have seen in the past was ground targeting aim (warrior gs 3 whirlwind attack) rather than the current "always rollback".

@raykor.6723 said:

@flog.3485 said:when you are getting immobilized, it might just be better to condi clear yourself. Besides that, you can already move while being immobilized with teleport skills.

I never said that teleports would remove the immobilize condition. I said that you could move (out of harm’s way for example) while still being immobilized.

However all professions have access to condi clear skills, traits or even abilities that significantly reduce how long you are going to be affected by condis and you should use them imo.

@raykor.6723 said:Which is why I said this was a PvE suggestion. Give me a couple of examples where this change would negatively affect casual open world PvE? I am serious; you may have some good reasons that I haven't considered.

I don't have any PvE examples; however, I question whether or not Anet would split a condition between game modes. Have they done so before?

Some skills let you auto attack ignoring faced direction while others that are categorized the same way don't. Immobilization just makes it obvious that not all basic skills are created equal.

Thief rifle can attack in any direction and was fixed to do that ignoring facing problems. Yet when I try to do something with Guardian it just prevents me from attacking at all. The definition of immobilization is literal, but being consistent and just abolishing facing direction limitations entirely just needs to be a thing.

@raykor.6723 said:

@Biff.5312 said:I would suggest that in cases where the skill that breaks immobilisation causes an accompanying movement, it's deliberately designed so that you have to think about how/whether you use it. This means you have to consider your positioning during play. Your suggestion would simplify things in a way that I think is less fun.

Fair enough, although for instance I am thinking of how revenant mistwalking required me to pay a lot more attention to where I was standing and what terrain was around, because if you're careless you'll end up inside a rock or falling off a cliff. To me this is akin to that. It's a small additional challenge in a game where there aren't enough challenges.

Or, now hear me out in this. Don't put yourself in a spot where you break immobility off of a cliff. There needs to be some sort of player responsibility here.

I completely disagree.

In fact, that's a problem with immobilize that needs fixing. I consider it a bug.
Immobilize will allow you to turn around if you were not moving while immobilized, if you are not in action camera mode or holding the right mouse button to control the camera. This will cause the skill to automatically make your character face the enemy even if they are immobilized.
This also allows basically all NPCs to turn around while immobilized, since NPCs never move while attacking.
So immobilize inconsistently prevents turning.

To fix the bug, it should always prevent turning.

Not only we should NOT be able to turn around while immobilized, skills should never ignore immobilize and cause the creature to turn to face the enemy. An immobilized enemy should not be able to move, and that should include turning.

One possible way to fix it could be giving all creatures a fast turning time. Similar to the turning time mounts have, just waaay faster so it won't affect combat extremely.
That way, when they are immobilized, they cannot turn around at all. If the skill were to attempt to force the character to face the target, they won't be able to turn since turning would be properly considered movement because of the turning time.
Instant turnaround is unnatural, unintuitive and bad for the combat. There has to be at least a split second to do an about face, and immobilize should prevent it. The intuitive combat flow with immobilize would be actions like putting it on enemies to be able to do a flanking attack without them turning around to avoid it. It would be a decent counter to players who keep walking in circles to flank in PvP.

@raykor.6723 said:

@"Biff.5312" said:I would suggest that in cases where the skill that breaks immobilisation causes an accompanying movement, it's deliberately designed so that you have to think about how/whether you use it. This means you have to consider your positioning during play. Your suggestion would simplify things in a way that I think is less fun.

So if it's a minor change that doesn't concern you, why start a thread asking for the change? You always have a choice of positioning though, you can make that choice before you engage, by dodging, or dodge rolling out to a more advantageous position. The only way I can see "not having a choice" is if you're just standing in one spot button mashing, in which case, maybe add the dodge button to your mash up?